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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Home as Found, by James Fenimore Cooper
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Home as Found
+
+Author: James Fenimore Cooper
+
+Release Date: November 20, 2003  [eBook #10149]
+
+Language: English
+
+Chatacter set encoding: iso-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOME AS FOUND***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+Home as Found.
+
+Sequel to "Homeward Bound."
+
+By J. Fenimore Cooper.
+
+Complete in one volume.
+
+1871.
+
+
+
+
+
+    "Thou art perfect."
+                PR. HON
+
+
+
+
+
+Preface
+
+
+
+Those who have done us the favour to read "Homeward Bound" will at
+once perceive that the incidents of this book commence at the point
+where those of the work just mentioned ceased. We are fully aware of
+the disadvantage of dividing the interest of a tale in this manner;
+but in the present instance, the separation has been produced by
+circumstances over which the writer had very little control. As any
+one who may happen to take up this volume will very soon discover
+that there is other matter which it is necessary to know it may be as
+well to tell all such persons, in the commencement, therefore, that
+their reading will be bootless, unless they have leisure to turn to
+the pages of Homeward Bound for their cue.
+
+We remember the despair with which that admirable observer of men,
+Mr. Mathews the comedian, confessed the hopelessness of success, in
+his endeavours to obtain a sufficiency of prominent and distinctive
+features to compose an entertainment founded on American character.
+The whole nation struck him as being destitute of salient points, and
+as characterized by a respectable mediocrity, that, however useful it
+might be in its way, was utterly without poetry, humour, or interest
+to the observer. For one who dealt principally with the more
+conspicuous absurdities of his fellow-creatures, Mr. Mathews was
+certainly right; we also believe him to have been right in the main,
+in the general tenor of his opinion; for this country, in its
+ordinary aspects, probably presents as barren a field to the writer
+of fiction, and to the dramatist, as any other on earth; we are not
+certain that we might not say the most barren. We believe that no
+attempt to delineate ordinary American life, either on the stage, or
+in the pages of a novel, has been rewarded with success. Even those
+works in which the desire to illustrate a principle has been the aim,
+when the picture has been brought within this homely frame, have had
+to contend with disadvantages that have been commonly found
+insurmountable. The latter being the intention of this book, the task
+has been undertaken with a perfect consciousness of all its
+difficulties, and with scarcely a hope of success. It would be indeed
+a desperate undertaking, to think of making anything interesting in
+the way of a _Roman de Société_ in this country; still useful glances
+may possibly be made even in that direction, and we trust that the
+fidelity of one or two of our portraits will be recognized by the
+looker-on, although they will very likely be denied by the sitters
+themselves.
+
+There seems to be a pervading principle in things, which gives an
+accumulating energy to any active property that may happen to be in
+the ascendant, at the time being.--Money produces money; knowledge is
+the parent of knowledge; and ignorance fortifies ignorance.--In a
+word, like begets like. The governing social evil of America is
+provincialism; a misfortune that is perhaps inseparable from her
+situation. Without a social capital, with twenty or more communities
+divided by distance and political barriers, her people, who are
+really more homogenous than any other of the same numbers in the
+world perhaps, possess no standard for opinion, manners, social
+maxims, or even language.
+
+Every man, as a matter of course, refers to his own particular
+experience, and praises or condemns agreeably to notions contracted
+in the circle of his own habits, however narrow, provincial, or
+erroneous they may happen to be. As a consequence, no useful stage
+can exist; for the dramatist who should endeavour to delineate the
+faults of society, would find a formidable party arrayed against him,
+in a moment, with no party to defend. As another consequence, we see
+individuals constantly assailed with a wolf-like ferocity, while
+society is everywhere permitted to pass unscathed.
+
+That the American nation is a great nation, in some particulars the
+greatest the world ever saw, we hold to be true, and are as ready to
+maintain as any one can be; but we are also equally ready to concede,
+that it is very far behind most polished nations in various
+essentials, and chiefly, that it is lamentably in arrears to its own
+avowed principles. Perhaps this truth will be found to be the
+predominant thought, throughout the pages of "Home As Found."
+
+Home as Found.
+
+Chapter I.
+
+  "Good morrow, coz. Good morrow, sweet Hero."
+
+  SHAKSPEARE.
+
+When Mr. Effingham determined to return home, he sent orders to his
+agent to prepare his town-house in New-York for his reception,
+intending to pass a month or two in it, then to repair to Washington
+for a few weeks, at the close of its season, and to visit his country
+residence when the spring should fairly open. Accordingly, Eve now
+found herself at the head of one of the largest establishments, in
+the largest American town, within an hour after she had landed from
+the ship. Fortunately for her, however, her father was too just to
+consider a wife, or a daughter, a mere upper servant, and he rightly
+judged that a liberal portion of his income should be assigned to the
+procuring of that higher quality of domestic service, which can alone
+relieve the mistress of a household from a burthen so heavy to be
+borne. Unlike so many of those around him, who would spend on a
+single pretending and comfortless entertainment, in which the
+ostentatious folly of one contended with the ostentatious folly of
+another a sum that, properly directed, would introduce order and
+system into a family for a twelvemonth, by commanding the time and
+knowledge of those whose study they had been, and who would be
+willing to devote themselves to such objects, and then permit their
+wives and daughters to return to the drudgery to which the sex seems
+doomed in this country, he first bethought him of the wants of social
+life before he aspired to its parade. A man of the world, Mr.
+Effingham possessed the requisite knowledge, and a man of justice,
+the requisite fairness, to permit those who depended on him so much
+for their happiness, to share equitably in the good things that
+Providence had so liberally bestowed on himself. In other words, he
+made two people comfortable, by paying a generous price for a
+housekeeper; his daughter, in the first place, by releasing her from
+cares that, necessarily, formed no more a part of her duties than it
+would be a part of her duty to sweep the pavement before the door;
+and, in the next place, a very respectable woman who was glad to
+obtain so good a home on so easy terms. To this simple and just
+expedient, Eve was indebted for being at the head of one of the
+quietest, most truly elegant, and best, ordered establishments in
+America, with no other demands on her time than that which was
+necessary to issue a few orders in the morning, and to examine a few
+accounts once a week.
+
+One of the first and the most acceptable of the visits that Eve
+received, was from her cousin, Grace Van Cortlandt, who was in the
+country at the moment of her arrival, but who hurried back to town to
+meet her old school-fellow and kinswoman, the instant she heard of
+her having landed. Eve Effingham and Grace Van Cortlandt were
+sisters' children, and had been born within a month of each other. As
+the latter was without father or mother, most of their time had been
+passed together, until the former was taken abroad, when a separation
+unavoidably ensued. Mr. Effingham ardently desired, and had actually
+designed, to take his niece with him to Europe, but her paternal
+grandfather, who was still living, objected his years and affection,
+and the scheme was reluctantly abandoned. This grandfather was now
+dead, and Grace had been left with a very ample fortune, almost
+entirely the mistress of her own movements.
+
+The moment of the meeting between these two warm-hearted and
+sincerely attached young women, was one of great interest and anxiety
+to both. They retained for each other the tenderest love, though the
+years that had separated them had given rise to so many new
+impressions and habits that they did not prepare themselves for the
+interview without apprehension. This interview took place about a
+week after Eve was established in Hudson Square, and at an hour
+earlier than was usual for the reception of visits. Hearing a
+carriage stop before the door, and the bell ring, our heroine stole a
+glance from behind a curtain and recognized her cousin as she
+alighted.
+
+"_Qu'avez-vous, ma chere_?" demanded Mademoiselle Viefville,
+observing that her _élève_ trembled and grew pale.
+
+"It is my cousin, Miss Van Cortlandt--she whom I loved as a sister--
+we now meet for the first time in so many years!"
+
+"_Bien_--_c'est une très jolie jeune personne_!" returned the
+governess, taking a glance from the spot Eve had just quitted. "_Sur
+le rapport de la personne, ma chere, vous devriez être contente, au
+moins_."
+
+"If you will excuse me, Mademoiselle, I will go down alone--I think I
+should prefer to meet Grace without witnesses in the first
+interview."
+
+"_Très volontiers. Elle est parente, et c'est bien naturel."_
+
+Eve, on this expressed approbation, met her maid at the door, as she
+came to announce that _Mademoiselle de Cortlandt_ was in the library,
+and descended slowly to meet her. The library was lighted from above
+by means of a small dome, and Grace had unconsciously placed herself
+in the very position that a painter would have chosen, had she been
+about to sit for her portrait. A strong, full, rich light fell
+obliquely on her as Eve entered, displaying her fine person and
+beautiful features to the very best advantage, and they were features
+and a person that are not seen every day even in a country where
+female beauty is so common. She was in a carriage dress, and her
+toilette was rather more elaborate than Eve had been accustomed to
+see, at that hour, but still Eve thought she had seldom seen a more
+lovely young creature. Some such thoughts, also, passed through the
+mind of Grace herself, who, though struck, with a woman's readiness
+in such matters, with the severe simplicity of Eve's attire, as well
+as with its entire elegance, was more struck with the charms of her
+countenance and figure. There was, in truth, a strong resemblance
+between them, though each was distinguished by an expression suited
+to her character, and to the habits of her mind.
+
+"Miss Effingham!" said Grace, advancing a step to meet the lady who
+entered, while her voice was scarcely audible and her limbs trembled.
+
+"Miss Van Cortlandt!" said Eve, in the same low, smothered tone.
+
+This formality caused a chill in both, and each unconsciously stopped
+and curtsied. Eve had been so much struck with the coldness of the
+American manner, during the week she had been at home, and Grace was
+so sensitive on the subject of the opinion of one who had seen so
+much of Europe, that there was great danger, at that critical moment,
+the meeting would terminate unpropitiously.
+
+Thus far, however, all had been rigidly decorous, though the strong
+feelings that were glowing in the bosoms of both, had been so
+completely suppressed. But the smile, cold and embarrassed as it was,
+that each gave as she curtsied, had the sweet character of her
+childhood in it, and recalled to both the girlish and affectionate
+intercourse of their younger days.
+
+"Grace!" said Eve, eagerly, advancing a step or two impetuously, and
+blushing like the dawn.
+
+"Eve!"
+
+Each opened her arms, and in a moment they were locked in a long and
+fervent embrace. This was the commencement of their former intimacy,
+and before night Grace was domesticated in her uncle's house. It is
+true that Miss Effingham perceived certain peculiarities about Miss
+Van Cortlandt, that she had rather were absent; and Miss Van
+Cortlandt would have felt more at her ease, had Miss Effingham a
+little less reserve of manner, on certain subjects that the latter
+had been taught to think interdicted. Notwithstanding these slight
+separating shades in character, however, the natural affection was
+warm and sincere; and if Eve, according to Grace's notions, was a
+little stately and formal, she was polished and courteous, and if
+Grace, according to Eve's notions, was a little too easy and
+unreserved, she was feminine and delicate.
+
+We pass over the three or four days that succeeded, during which Eve
+had got to understand something of her new position, and we will come
+at once to a conversation between the cousins, that will serve to let
+the reader more intimately into the opinions, habits and feelings of
+both, as well as to open the real subject of our narrative. This
+conversation took place in that very library which had witnessed
+their first interview, soon after breakfast, and while the young
+ladies were still alone.
+
+"I suppose, Eve, you will have to visit the Green's.--They are
+Hajjis, and were much in society last winter."
+
+"Hajjis!--You surely do not mean, Grace, that they have been to
+Mecca?"
+
+"Not at all: only to Paris, my dear; that makes a Hajji in New-York."
+
+"And does it entitle the pilgrim to wear the green turban?" asked
+Eve, laughing.
+
+"To wear any thing, Miss Effingham; green, blue, or yellow, and to
+cause it to pass for elegance."
+
+"And which is the favourite colour with the family you have
+mentioned?"
+
+"It ought to be the first, in compliment to the name, but, if truth
+must be said, I think they betray an affection for all, with not a
+few of the half-tints in addition."
+
+"I am afraid they are too _prononcées_ for us, by this description. I
+am no great admirer, Grace, of walking rainbows."
+
+"_Too_ Green, you would have said, had you dared; but you are a Hajji
+too, and even the Greens know that a Hajji never puns, unless,
+indeed, it might be one from Philadelphia. But you will visit these
+people?"
+
+"Certainly, if they are in society and render it necessary by their
+own civilities."
+
+"They _are_ in society, in virtue of their rights as Hajjis; but, as
+they passed three months at Paris, you probably know something of
+them."
+
+"They may not have been there at the same time with ourselves,"
+returned Eve, quietly, "and Paris is a very large town. Hundreds of
+people come and go, that one never hears of. I do not remember those
+you have mentioned."
+
+"I wish you may escape them, for, in my untravelled judgment, they
+are anything but agreeable, notwithstanding all they have seen, or
+pretend to have seen."
+
+"It is very possible to have been all over christendom, and to remain
+exceedingly disagreeable; besides one may see a great deal, and yet
+see very little of a good quality."
+
+A pause of two or three minutes followed, during which Eve read a
+note, and her cousin played with the leaves of a book.
+
+"I wish I knew your real opinion of us, Eve," the last suddenly
+exclaimed. "Why not be frank with so near a relative; tell me
+honestly, now--are you reconciled to your country?"
+
+"You are the eleventh person who has asked me this question, which I
+find very extraordinary, as I have never quarrelled with my country."
+
+"Nay, I do not mean exactly that. I wish to hear how our society has
+struck one who has been educated abroad."
+
+"You wish, then, for opinions that can have no great value, since my
+experience at home, extends only to a fortnight. But you have many
+books on the country, and some written by very clever persons; why
+not consult them?"
+
+"Oh! you mean the travellers. None of them are worth a second
+thought, and we hold them, one and all, in great contempt."
+
+"Of that I can have no manner of doubt, as one and all, you are
+constantly protesting it, in the highways and bye-ways. There is no
+more certain sign of contempt, than to be incessantly dwelling on its
+intensity!"
+
+Grace had great quickness, as well as her cousin, and though provoked
+at Eve's quiet hit, she had the good sense and the good nature to
+laugh.
+
+"Perhaps we do protest and disdain a little too strenuously for good
+taste, if not to gain believers; but surely, Eve, you do not support
+these travellers in all that they have written of us?"
+
+"Not in half, I can assure you. My father and cousin Jack have
+discussed them too often in my presence to leave me in ignorance of
+the very many political blunders they have made in particular."
+
+"Political blunders!--I know nothing of them, and had rather thought
+them right, in most of what they said about our politics. But,
+surely, neither your father nor Mr. John Effingham corroborates what
+they say of our society!"
+
+"I cannot answer for either, on that point."
+
+"Speak then for yourself. Do _you_ think them right?"
+
+"You should remember, Grace, that I have not yet seen any society in
+New-York."
+
+"No society, dear!--Why you were at the Henderson's, and the
+Morgan's, and the Drewett's; three of the greatest _réunions_ that we
+have had in two winters!"'
+
+"I did not know that you meant those unpleasant crowds, by society."
+
+"Unpleasant crowds! Why, child, that _is_ society, is it not?'
+
+"Not what I have been taught to consider such; I rather think it
+would be better to call it company."
+
+"And is not this what is called society in Paris?"
+
+"As far from it as possible; it may be an excrescence of society; one
+of its forms; but, by no means, society itself. It would be as true
+to call cards, which are sometimes introduced in the world, society,
+as to call a ball given in two small and crowded rooms, society. They
+are merely two of the modes in which idlers endeavour to vary their
+amusements."
+
+"But we have little else than these balls, the morning visits, and an
+occasional evening, in which there is no dancing."
+
+"I am sorry to hear it; for, in that case, you can have no society."
+
+"And is it different at Paris--or Florence, or Rome?"
+
+"Very. In Paris there are many houses open every evening to which one
+can go, with little ceremony. Our sex appears in them, dressed
+according to what a gentleman I overheard conversing at Mrs.
+Henderson's would call their 'ulterior intentions,' for the night;
+some attired in the simplest manner, others dressed for concerts, for
+the opera, for court even; some on the way from a dinner, and others
+going to a late ball. All this matter of course variety, adds to the
+case and grace of the company, and coupled with perfect good manners,
+a certain knowledge of passing events, pretty modes of expression, an
+accurate and even utterance, the women usually find the means of
+making themselves agreeable. Their sentiment is sometimes a little
+heroic, but this one must overlook, and it is a taste, moreover, that
+is falling into disuse, as people read better books."
+
+"And you prefer this heartlessness, Eve, to the nature of your own
+country!"
+
+"I do not know that quiet, _retenue_, and a good tone, are a whit
+more heartless than flirting, giggling and childishness. There may be
+more nature in the latter, certainly, but it is scarcely as
+agreeable, after one has fairly got rid of the nursery."
+
+Grace looked vexed, but she loved her cousin too sincerely to be
+angry, A secret suspicion that Eve was right, too, came in aid of her
+affection, and while her little foot moved, she maintained her good-
+nature, a task not always attainable for those who believe that their
+own "superlatives" scarcely reach to other people's "positives." At
+this critical moment, when there was so much danger of a jar in the
+feelings of these two young females, the library door opened and
+Pierre, Mr. Effingham's own man, announced--
+
+"Monsieur Bragg."
+
+"Monsieur who?" asked Eve, in surprise.
+
+"Monsieur Bragg," returned Pierre, in French, "desires to see
+Mademoiselle."
+
+"You mean my father,--I know no such person."
+
+"He inquired first for Monsieur, but understanding Monsieur was out,
+he next asked to have the honour of seeing Mademoiselle."
+
+"Is it what they call a _person_ in England, Pierre?"
+
+Old Pierre smiled, as he answered--
+
+"He has the air, Mademoiselle, though he esteems himself a
+_personnage_, if I might take the liberty of judging."
+
+"Ask him for his card,--there must be a mistake, I think."
+
+While this short conversation took place, Grace Van Cortlandt was
+sketching a cottage with a pen, without attending to a word that was
+said. But, when Eve received the card from Pierre and read aloud,
+with the tone of surprise that the name would be apt to excite in a
+novice in the art of American nomenclature, the words "Aristabulus
+Bragg," her cousin began to laugh.
+
+"Who can this possibly be, Grace?--Did you ever hear of such a
+person, and what right can he have to wish to see me?"
+
+"Admit him, by all means; it is your father's land agent, and he may
+wish to leave some message for my uncle. You will be obliged to make
+his acquaintance, sooner or later, and it may as well be done now as
+at another time."
+
+"You have shown this gentleman into the front drawing-room, Pierre?"
+
+"Oui, Mademoiselle."
+
+"I will ring when you are wanted."
+
+Pierre withdrew, and Eve opened her secretary, out of which she took
+a small manuscript book, over the leaves of which she passed her
+fingers rapidly.
+
+"Here it is," she said, smiling, "Mr. Aristabulus Bragg, Attorney and
+Counsellor at Law, and the agent of the Templeton estate." This
+precious little work, you must understand, Grace, contains sketches
+of the characters of such persons as I shall be the most likely to
+see, by John Effingham, A.M. It is a sealed volume, of course, but
+there can be no harm in reading the part that treats of our present
+visiter, and, with your permission, we will have it in common.--'Mr.
+Aristabulus Bragg was born in one of the western counties of
+Massachusetts, and emigrated to New-York, after receiving his
+education, at the mature age of nineteen; at twenty-one he was
+admitted to the bar, and for the last seven years he has been a
+successful practitioner in all the courts of Otsego, from the
+justice's to the circuit. His talents are undeniable, as he commenced
+his education at fourteen and terminated it at twenty-one, the law-
+course included. This man is an epitome of all that is good and all
+that is bad, in a very large class of his fellow citizens. He is
+quick-witted, prompt in action, enterprising in all things in which
+he has nothing to lose, but wary and cautious in all things in which
+he has a real stake, and ready to turn not only his hand, but his
+heart and his principles to any thing that offers an advantage. With
+him, literally, "nothing is too high to be aspired to, nothing too
+low to be done." He will run for Governor, or for town-clerk, just as
+opportunities occur, is expert in all the _practices_ of his
+profession, has had a quarter's dancing, with three years in the
+classics, and turned his attention towards medicine and divinity,
+before he finally settled down into the law. Such a compound of
+shrewdness, impudence, common-sense, pretension, humility,
+cleverness, vulgarity, kind-heartedness, duplicity, selfishness, law-
+honesty, moral fraud and mother wit, mixed up with a smattering of
+learning and much penetration in practical things, can hardly be
+described, as any one of his prominent qualities is certain to be met
+by another quite as obvious that is almost its converse. Mr. Bragg,
+in short, is purely a creature of circumstances, his qualities
+pointing him out for either a member of congress or a deputy sheriff,
+offices that he is equally ready to fill. I have employed him to
+watch over the estate of your father, in the absence of the latter,
+on the principle that one practised in tricks is the best qualified
+to detect and expose them, and with the certainty that no man will
+trespass with impunity, so long as the courts continue to tax bills
+of costs with their present liberality.' You appear to know the
+gentleman, Grace; is this character of him faithful?"
+
+"I know nothing of bills of costs and deputy sheriffs, but I do know
+that Mr. Aristabulus Bragg is an amusing mixture of strut, humility,
+roguery and cleverness. He is waiting all this time in the drawing-
+room, and you had better see him, as he may, now, be almost
+considered part of the family. You know he has been living in the
+house at Templeton, ever since he was installed by Mr. John
+Effingham. It was there I had the honour first to meet him,"
+
+"First!--Surely you have never seen him any where else!"
+
+"Your pardon, my dear. He never comes to town without honouring me
+with a call. This is the price I pay for having had the honour of
+being an inmate of the same house with him for a week."
+
+Eve rang the bell, and Pierre made his appearance.
+
+"Desire Mr. Bragg to walk into the library."
+
+Grace looked demure while Pierre was gone to usher in their visiter,
+and Eve was thinking of the medley of qualities John Effingham had
+assembled in his description, as the door opened, and the subject of
+her contemplation entered.
+
+"_Monsieur Aristabule_" said Pierre, eyeing the card, but sticking at
+the first name.
+
+Mr. Aristabulus Bragg was advancing with an easy assurance to make
+his bow to the ladies, when the more finished air and quiet dignity
+of Miss Effingham, who was standing, so far disconcerted him, as
+completely to upset his self-possession. As Grace had expressed it,
+in consequence of having lived three years in the old residence at
+Templeton, he had begun to consider himself a part of the family, and
+at home he never spoke of the young lady without calling her "Eve,"
+or "Eve Effingham." But he found it a very different thing to affect
+familiarity among his associates, and to practise it in the very face
+of its subject; and, although seldom at a loss for words of some sort
+or another, he was now actually dumb-founded. Eve relieved his
+awkwardness by directing Pierre, with her eye, to hand a chair, and
+first speaking.
+
+"I regret that my father is not in," she said, by way of turning the
+visit from herself; "but he is to be expected every moment. Are you
+lately from Templeton?"
+
+Aristabulus drew his breath, and recovered enough of his ordinary
+tone of manner to reply with a decent regard to his character for
+self-command. The intimacy that he had intended to establish on the
+spot, was temporarily defeated, it is true, and without his exactly
+knowing how it had been effected; for it was merely the steadiness of
+the young lady, blended as it was with a polished reserve, that had
+thrown him to a distance he could not explain. He felt immediately,
+and with taste that did his sagacity credit, that his footing in this
+quarter was only to be obtained by unusually slow and cautious means.
+Still, Mr. Bragg was a man of great decision, and, in his way, of
+very far-sighted views; and, singular as it may seem, at that
+unpropitious moment, he mentally determined that, at no very distant
+day, he would make Miss Eve Effingham his wife.
+
+"I hope Mr. Effingham enjoys good health," he said, with some such
+caution as a rebuked school-girl enters on the recitation of her
+task--"he enjoyed bad health I hear, (Mr. Aristabulus Bragg, though
+so shrewd, was far from critical in his modes of speech) when he went
+to Europe, and after travelling so far in such bad company, it would
+be no more than fair that he should have a little respite as he
+approaches home and old age."
+
+Had Eve been told that the man who uttered this nice sentiment, and
+that too in accents as uncouth and provincial as the thought was
+finished and lucid, actually presumed to think of her as his bosom
+companion, it is not easy to say which would have predominated in her
+mind, mirth or resentment. But Mr. Bragg was not in the habit of
+letting his secrets escape him prematurely, and certainly this was
+one that none but a wizard could have discovered without the aid of a
+direct oral or written communication.
+
+"Are you lately from Templeton?" repeated Eve a little surprised that
+the gentleman did not see fit to answer the question, which was the
+only one that, as it seemed to her, could have a common interest with
+them both.
+
+"I left home the day before yesterday," Aristabulus now deigned to
+reply.
+
+"It is so long since I saw our beautiful mountains and I was then so
+young, that I feel a great impatience to revisit them, though the
+pleasure must be deferred until spring."
+
+"I conclude they are the handsomest mountains in the known world,
+Miss Effingham!"
+
+"That is much more than I shall venture to claim for them; but,
+according to my imperfect recollection, and, what I esteem of far
+more importance, according to the united testimony of Mr. John
+Effingham and my father, I think they must be very beautiful."
+
+Aristabulus looked up, as if he had a facetious thing to say, and he
+even ventured on a smile, while he made his answer.
+
+"I hope Mr. John Effingham has prepared you for a great change in the
+house?"
+
+"We know that it has been repaired and altered under his directions.
+That was done at my father's request."
+
+"We consider it denationalized, Miss Effingham, there being nothing
+like it, west of Albany at least."
+
+"I should be sorry to find that my cousin has subjected us to this
+imputation," said Eve smiling--perhaps a little equivocally; "the
+architecture of America being generally so simple and pure. Mr.
+Effingham laughs at his own improvements, however, in which, he says,
+he has only carried out the plans of the original _artiste_, who
+worked very much in what was called the composite order.
+
+"You allude to Mr. Hiram Doolittle, a gentleman I never saw; though I
+hear he has left behind him many traces of his progress in the newer
+states. _Ex pede Herculem_, as we say, in the classics, Miss
+Effingham I believe it is the general sentiment that Mr. Doolittle's
+designs have been improved on, though most people think that the
+Grecian or Roman architecture, which is so much in use in America,
+would be more republican. But every body knows that Mr. John
+Effingham is not much of a republican."
+
+Eve did not choose to discuss her kinsman's opinions with Mr.
+Aristabulus Bragg, and she quietly remarked that she "did not know
+that the imitations of the ancient architecture, of which there are
+so many in the country, were owing to attachment to republicanism."
+
+"To what else can it be owing, Miss Eve?"
+
+"Sure enough," said Grace Van Cortlandt; "it is unsuited to the
+materials, the climate, and the uses; and some very powerful motive,
+like that mentioned by Mr. Bragg, could alone overcome these
+obstacles."
+
+Aristabulus started from his seat, and making sundry apologies,
+declared his previous unconsciousness that Miss Van Cortlandt was
+present; all of which was true enough, as he had been so much
+occupied mentally, with her cousin, as not to have observed her,
+seated as she was partly behind a screen. Grace received the excuses
+favourably, and the conversation was resumed.
+
+"I am sorry that my cousin should offend the taste of the country,"
+said Eve, "but as we are to live in the house, the punishment will
+fall heaviest on the offenders."
+
+"Do not mistake me, Miss Eve," returned Aristabulus, in a little
+alarm, for he too well understood the influence and wealth of John
+Effingham, not to wish to be on good terms with him; "do not mistake
+me, I admire the house, and know it to be a perfect specimen of a
+pure architecture in its way, but then public opinion is not yet
+quite up to it. I see all its beauties, I would wish you to know, but
+then there are many, a majority perhaps, who do not, and these
+persons think they ought to be consulted about such matters."
+
+"I believe Mr. John Effingham thinks less of his own work than you
+seem to think of it yourself, sir, for I have frequently heard him
+laugh at it, as a mere enlargement of the merits of the composite
+order. He calls it a caprice, rather than a taste: nor do I see what
+concern a majority, as you term them, can have with a house that does
+not belong to them."
+
+Aristabulus was surprised that any one could disregard a majority;
+for, in this respect, he a good deal resembled Mr. Dodge, though
+running a different career; and the look of surprise he gave was
+natural and open.
+
+"I do not mean that the public has a legal right to control the
+tastes of the citizen," he said, "but in a _republican_ government,
+you undoubtedly understand, Miss Eve, it _will_ rule in all things."
+
+"I can understand that one would wish to see his neighbour use good
+taste, as it helps to embellish a country; but the man who should
+consult the whole neighbourhood before he built, would be very apt to
+cause a complicated house to be erected, if he paid much respect to
+the different opinions he received; or, what is quite as likely, apt
+to have no house at all."
+
+"I think you are mistaken, Miss Effingham, for the public sentiment,
+just now, runs almost exclusively and popularly into the Grecian
+school. We build little besides temples for our churches, our banks,
+our taverns, our court-houses, and our dwellings. A friend of mine
+has just built a brewery on the model of the Temple of the Winds."
+
+"Had it been a mill, one might understand the conceit," said Eve, who
+now began to perceive that her visiter had some latent humour, though
+he produced it in a manner to induce one to think him any thing but a
+droll. "The mountains must be doubly beautiful, if they are decorated
+in the way you mention. I sincerely hope, Grace, that I shall find
+the hills as pleasant as they now exist in my recollection!"
+
+"Should they not prove to be quite as lovely as you imagine, Miss
+Effingham," returned Aristabulus, who saw no impropriety in answering
+a remark made to Miss Van Cortlandt, or any one else, "I hope you
+will have the kindness to conceal the fact from the world."
+
+"I am afraid that would exceed my power, the disappointment would be
+so strong. May I ask why you show so much interest in my keeping so
+cruel a mortification to myself?"
+
+"Why, Miss Eve," said Aristabulus, looking grave, "I am afraid that
+_our_ people would hardly bear the expression of such an opinion from
+_you_"
+
+"From _me!_--and why not from _me_, in particular?"
+
+"Perhaps it is because they think you have travelled, and have seen
+other countries."
+
+"And is it only those who have _not_ travelled, and who have no means
+of knowing the value of what they say, that are privileged to
+criticise?"
+
+"I cannot exactly explain my own meaning, perhaps, but I think Miss
+Grace will understand me. Do you not agree with me, Miss Van
+Cortlandt, in thinking it would be safer for one who never saw any
+other mountains to complain of the tameness and monotony of our own,
+than for one who had passed a whole life among the Andes and the
+Alps?"
+
+Eve smiled, for she saw that Mr. Bragg was capable of detecting and
+laughing at provincial pride, even while he was so much under its
+influence; and Grace coloured, for she had the consciousness of
+having already betrayed some of this very silly sensitiveness, in her
+intercourse with her cousin, in connexion with other subjects. A
+reply was unnecessary, however, as the door just then opened, and
+John Effingham made his appearance. The meeting between the two
+gentlemen, for we suppose Aristabulus must be included in the
+category by courtesy, if not of right, was more cordial than Eve had
+expected to witness, for each really entertained a respect for the
+other, in reference to a merit of a particular sort; Mr. Bragg
+esteeming Mr. John Effingham as a wealthy and caustic cynic, and Mr.
+John Effingham regarding Mr. Bragg much as the owner of a dwelling
+regards a valuable house-dog. After a few moments of conversation,
+the two withdrew together, and just as the ladies were about to
+descend to the drawing-room, previously to dinner, Pierre announced
+that a plate had been ordered for the land agent.
+
+Chapter II.
+
+  "I know that Deformed; he has been a vile thief this seven year he
+  goes up and down like a gentleman."
+
+  MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.
+
+Eve, and her cousin, found Sir George Templemore and Captain Truck in
+the drawing-room, the former having lingered in New-York, with a
+desire to be near his friends, and the latter being on the point of
+sailing for Europe, in his regular turn. To these must be added Mr.
+Bragg and the ordinary inmates of the house, when the reader will get
+a view of the whole party.
+
+Aristabulus had never before sat down to as brilliant a table, and
+for the first time in his life, he saw candles lighted at a dinner;
+but he was not a man to be disconcerted at a novelty. Had he been a
+European of the same origin and habits, awkwardness would have
+betrayed him fifty times, before the dessert made its appearance;
+but, being the man he was, one who overlooked a certain prurient
+politeness that rather illustrated his deportment, might very well
+have permitted him to pass among the _oi polloi_ of the world, were
+it not for a peculiar management in the way of providing for himself.
+It is true, he asked every one near him to eat of every thing he
+could himself reach, and that he used his knife as a coal-heaver uses
+a shovel; but the company he was in, though fastidious in its own
+deportment, was altogether above the silver-forkisms, and this
+portion of his demeanour, if it did not escape undetected, passed
+away unnoticed. Not so, however, with the peculiarity already
+mentioned as an exception. This touch of deportment, (or management,
+perhaps, is the better word,) being characteristic of the man, it
+deserves to be mentioned a little in detail.
+
+The service at Mr. Effingham's table was made in the quiet, but
+thorough manner that distinguishes a French dinner. Every dish was
+removed, carved by the domestics, and handed in turn to each guest.
+But there were a delay and a finish in this arrangement that
+suited neither Aristabulus's go-a-head-ism, nor his organ of
+acquisitiveness. Instead of waiting, therefore, for the more
+graduated movements of the domestics, he began to take care of
+himself, an office that he performed with a certain dexterity that he
+had acquired by frequenting ordinaries--a school, by the way, in
+which he had obtained most of his notions of the proprieties of the
+table. One or two slices were obtained in the usual manner, or by
+means of the regular service; and, then, like one who had laid the
+foundation of a fortune, by some lucky windfall in the commencement
+of his career, he began to make accessions, right and left, as
+opportunity offered. Sundry _entremets_, or light dishes that had a
+peculiarly tempting appearance, came first under his grasp. Of these
+he soon accumulated all within his reach, by taxing his neighbours,
+when he ventured to send his plate, here and there, or wherever he
+saw a dish that promised to reward his trouble. By such means, which
+were resorted to, however, with a quiet and unobtrusive assiduity
+that escaped much observation, Mr. Bragg contrived to make his own
+plate a sample epitome of the first course. It contained in the
+centre, fish, beef, and ham; and around these staple articles, he had
+arranged _croquettes, rognons, râgouts_, vegetables, and other light
+things, until not only was the plate completely covered, but it was
+actually covered in double and triple layers; mustard, cold butter,
+salt, and even pepper, garnishing its edges. These different
+accumulations were the work of time and address, and most of the
+company had repeatedly changed their plates before Aristabulus had
+eaten a mouthful, the soup excepted. The happy moment when his
+ingenuity was to be rewarded, had now arrived, and the land agent was
+about to commence the process of mastication, or of deglutition
+rather, for he troubled himself very little with the first operation,
+when the report of a cork drew his attention towards the chaimpaigne.
+To Aristabulus this wine never came amiss, for, relishing its
+piquancy, he had never gone far enough into the science of the table
+to learn which were the proper moments for using it. As respected all
+the others at table, this moment had in truth arrived, though, as
+respected himself, he was no nearer to it, according to a regulated
+taste, than when he first took his seat. Perceiving that Pierre was
+serving it, however, he offered his own glass, and enjoyed a
+delicious instant, as he swallowed a beverage that much surpassed any
+thing he had ever known to issue out of the waxed and leaded nozles
+that, pointed like so many enemies' batteries, loaded with headaches
+and disordered stomachs, garnished sundry village bars of his
+acquaintance.
+
+Aristabulus finished his glass at a draught, and when he took breath,
+he fairly smacked his lips. That was an unlucky instant, his plate,
+burthened with all its treasures, being removed, at this unguarded
+moment; the man who performed the unkind office, fancying that a
+dislike to the dishes could alone have given rise to such an omnium-
+gatherum.
+
+It was necessary to commence _de novo_, but this could no longer be
+done with the first course, which was removed, and Aristabulus set-
+to, with zeal, forthwith, on the game. Necessity compelled him to
+eat, as the different dishes were offered; and, such was his ordinary
+assiduity with the knife and fork, that, at the end of the second
+remove, he had actually disposed of more food than any other person
+at table. He now began to converse, and we shall open the
+conversation at the precise point in the dinner, when it was in the
+power of Aristabulus to make one of the interlocutors.
+
+Unlike Mr. Dodge, he had betrayed no peculiar interest in the
+baronet, being a man too shrewd and worldly to set his heart on
+trifles of any sort; and Mr. Bragg no more hesitated about replying
+to Sir George Templemore, or Mr. Effingham, than he would have
+hesitated about answering one of his own nearest associates. With him
+age and experience formed no particular claims to be heard, and, as
+to rank, it is true he had some vague ideas about there being such a
+thing in the militia, but as it was unsalaried rank, he attached no
+great importance to it. Sir George Templemore was inquiring
+concerning the recording of deeds, a regulation that had recently
+attracted attention in England; and one of Mr. Effingham's replies
+contained some immaterial inaccuracy, which Aristabulus took occasion
+to correct, as his first appearance in the general discourse.
+
+"I ask pardon, sir," he concluded his explanations by saying, "but I
+ought to know these little niceties, having served a short part of a
+term as a county clerk, to fill a vacancy occasioned by a death."
+
+"You mean, Mr. Bragg, that you were employed to _write_ in a county
+clerk's office," observed John Effingham, who so much disliked
+untruth, that he did not hesitate much about refuting it; or what he
+now fancied to be an untruth.
+
+"As county clerk, sir. Major Pippin died a year before his time was
+out, and I got the appointment. As regular a county clerk, sir, as
+there is in the fifty-six counties of New-York."
+
+"When I had the honour to engage you as Mr. Effingham's agent, sir,"
+returned the other, a little sternly, for he felt his own character
+for veracity involved in that of the subject of his selection, "I
+believe, indeed, that you were writing in the office, but I did not
+understand it was as _the_ clerk."
+
+"Very true, Mr. John," returned Aristabulus, without discovering the
+least concern, "I was _then_ engaged by my successor as _a_ clerk;
+but a few months earlier, I filled the office myself."
+
+"Had you gone on, in the regular line of promotion, my dear sir,"
+pithily inquired Captain Truck, "to what preferment would you have
+risen by this time?"
+
+"I believe I understand you, gentlemen," returned the unmoved
+Aristabulus, who perceived a general smile. "I know that some people
+are particular about keeping pretty much on the same level, as to
+office: but I hold to no such doctrine. If one good thing cannot be
+had, I do not see that it is a reason for rejecting another. I ran
+that year for sheriff, and finding I was not strong enough to carry
+the county, I accepted my successor's offer to write in the office,
+until something better might turn up."
+
+"You practised all this time, I believe, Mr. Bragg," observed John
+Effingham.
+
+"I did a little in that way, too, sir; or as much as I could. Law is
+flat with us, of late, and many of the attorneys are turning their
+attention to other callings."
+
+"And pray, sir," asked Sir George, "what is the favourite pursuit
+with most of them, just now?"
+
+"Some our way have gone into the horse-line; but much the greater
+portion are, just now, dealing in western cities.
+
+"In western cities!" exclaimed the baronet, looking as if he
+distrusted a mystification.
+
+"In such articles, and in mill-seats, and rail-road lines, and other
+expectations."
+
+"Mr. Bragg means that they are buying and selling lands on which it
+is hoped all these conveniences may exist, a century hence,"
+explained John Effingham.
+
+"The _hope_ is for next year, or next week, even, Mr. John," returned
+Aristabulus, with a sly look, "though you may be very right as to the
+_reality_. Great fortunes have been made on a capital of hopes,
+lately, in this country."
+
+"And have you been able, yourself, to resist these temptations?"
+asked Mr. Effingham. "I feel doubly indebted to you, sir, that you
+should have continued to devote your time to my interests, while so
+many better things were offering."
+
+"It was my duty, sir," said Aristabulus, bowing so much the lower,
+from the consciousness that he had actually deserted his post for
+some months, to embark in the western speculations that were then so
+active in the country, "not to say my pleasure. There are many
+profitable occupations in this country, Sir George, that have been
+overlooked in the eagerness to embark in the town-trade--"
+
+"Mr. Bragg does not mean trade in town, but trade in towns,"
+explained John Effingham.
+
+"Yes, sir, the traffic in cities. I never come this way, without
+casting an eye about me, in order to see if there is any thing to be
+done that is useful; and I confess that several available
+opportunities have offered, if one had capital. Milk is a good
+business."
+
+"_Le lait!_" exclaimed Mademoiselle Viefville, involuntarily.
+
+"Yes, ma'am, for ladies as well as gentlemen. Sweet potatoes I have
+heard well spoken of, and peaches are really making some rich men's
+fortunes."
+
+"All of which are honester and better occupations than the traffic in
+cities, that you have mentioned," quietly observed Mr. Effingham.
+
+Aristabulus looked up in a little surprise, for with him every thing
+was eligible that returned a good profit, and all things honest that
+the law did not actually punish. Perceiving, however, that the
+company was disposed to listen, and having, by this time, recovered
+the lost ground, in the way of food, he cheerfully resumed his theme.
+
+"Many families have left Otsego, this and the last summer, Mr.
+Effingham, as emigrants for the west. The fever has spread far and
+wide."
+
+"The fever! Is _old_ Otsego," for so its inhabitants loved to call a
+county of half a century's existence, it being venerable by
+comparison, "is _old_ Otsego losing its well established character
+for salubrity?"
+
+"I do not allude to an animal fever, but to the western fever."
+
+"_Ce pays de l'ouest, est-il bien malsain_?" whispered Mademoiselle
+Viefville.
+
+"_Apparemment, Mademoiselle, sur plusieurs rapports."_
+
+"The western fever has seized old and young, and it has carried off
+many active families from our part of the world," continued
+Aristabulus, who did not understand the little aside just mentioned,
+and who, of course, did not heed it; "most of the counties adjoining
+our own have lost a considerable portion of their population."
+
+"And they who have gone, do they belong to the permanent families, or
+are they merely the floating inhabitants?" inquired Mr. Effingham.
+
+"Most of them belong to the regular movers."
+
+"Movers!" again exclaimed Sir George--"is there any material part of
+your population who actually deserve this name?"
+
+"As much so as the man who shoes a horse ought to be called a smith,
+or the man who frames a house a carpenter," answered John Effingham.
+
+"To be sure," continued Mr. Bragg, "we have a pretty considerable
+leaven of them in our political dough, as well as in our active
+business. I believe, Sir George, that in England, men are tolerably
+stationary."
+
+"We love to continue for generations on the same spot. We love the
+tree that our forefathers planted, the roof that they built, the
+fire-side by which they sat, the sods that cover their remains."
+
+"Very poetical, and I dare say there are situations in life, in which
+such feelings come in without much effort. It must be a great check
+to business operations, however, in your part of the world, sir!"
+
+"Business operations!--what is business, as you term it, sir, to the
+affections, to the recollections of ancestry, and to the solemn
+feelings connected with history and tradition?"
+
+"Why, sir, in the way of history, one meets with but few incumbrances
+in this country, but he may do very much as interest dictates, so far
+as that is concerned, at least. A nation is much to be pitied that is
+weighed down by the past, in this manner, since its industry and
+enterprize are constantly impeded by obstacles that grow out of its
+recollections. America may, indeed, be termed a happy and a free
+country, Mr. John Effingham, in this, as well as in all other
+things!"
+
+Sir George Templemore was too well-bred to utter all he felt at that
+moment, as it would unavoidably wound the feelings of his hosts, but
+he was rewarded for his forbearance by intelligent smiles from Eve
+and Grace, the latter of whom the young baronet fancied, just at that
+moment, was quite as beautiful as her cousin, and if less finished in
+manners, she had the most interesting _naiveté_.
+
+"I have been told that most old nations have to struggle with
+difficulties that we escape," returned John Effingham, "though I
+confess this is a superiority on our part, that never before
+presented itself to my mind."
+
+"The political economists, and even the geographers have overlooked
+it, but practical men see and feel its advantages, every hour in the
+day. I have been told, Sir George Templemore, that in England, there
+are difficulties in running highways and streets through homesteads
+and dwellings; and that even a rail-road, or a canal, is obliged to
+make a curve to avoid a church-yard or a tomb-stone?"
+
+"I confess to the sin, sir."
+
+"Our friend Mr. Bragg," put in John Effingham, "considers life as all
+_means_ and no _end_."
+
+"An end cannot be got at without the means, Mr. John Effingham, as I
+trust you will, yourself, admit. I am for the end of the road, at
+least, and must say that I rejoice in being a native of a country in
+which as few impediments as possible exist to onward impulses. The
+man who should resist an improvement, in our part of the country, on
+account of his forefathers, would fare badly among his contemporaries."
+
+"Will you permit me to ask, Mr. Bragg, if you feel no local
+attachments yourself," enquired the baronet, throwing as much
+delicacy into the tones of his voice, as a question that he felt
+ought to be an insult to a man's heart, would allow--"if one tree is
+not more pleasant than another; the house you were born in more
+beautiful than a house into which you never entered; or the altar at
+which you have long worshipped, more sacred than another at which you
+never knelt?"
+
+"Nothing gives me greater satisfaction than to answer the questions
+of gentlemen that travel through our country," returned Aristabulus,
+"for I think, in making nations acquainted with each other, we
+encourage trade and render business more secure. To reply to your
+inquiry, a human being is not a cat, to love a locality rather than
+its own interests. I have found some trees much pleasanter than
+others, and the pleasantest tree I can remember was one of my own,
+out of which the sawyers made a thousand feet of clear stuff, to say
+nothing of middlings. The house I was born in was pulled down,
+shortly after my birth, as indeed has been its successor, so I can
+tell you nothing on that head; and as for altars, there are none in
+my persuasion."
+
+"The church of Mr. Bragg has stripped itself as naked as he would
+strip every thing else, if he could," said John Effingham. "I much
+question if he ever knelt even; much less before an altar."
+
+"We are of the standing order, certainly," returned Aristabulus,
+glancing towards the ladies to discover how they took his wit, "and
+Mr. John Effingham is as near right as a man need be, in a matter of
+faith. In the way of houses, Mr. Effingham, I believe it is the
+general opinion you might have done better with your own, than to
+have repaired it. Had the materials been disposed of, they would have
+sold well, and by running a street through the property, a pretty sum
+might have been realized."
+
+"In which case I should have been without a home, Mr. Bragg."
+
+"It would have been no great matter to get another on cheaper land.
+The old residence would have made a good factory, or an inn."
+
+"Sir, I _am_ a cat, and like the places I have long frequented."
+
+Aristabulus, though not easily daunted, was awed by Mr. Effingham's
+manner, and Eve saw that her father's fine face had flushed. This
+interruption, therefore, suddenly changed the discourse, which has
+been recreated at some length, as likely to give the reader a better
+insight into a character that will fill some space in our narrative,
+than a more laboured description.
+
+"I trust your owners, Captain Truck," said John Effingham, by way of
+turning the conversation into another channel, "are fully satisfied
+with the manner in which you saved their property from the hands of
+the Arabs?"
+
+"Men, when money is concerned, are more disposed to remember how it
+was lost than how it was recovered, religion and trade being the two
+poles, on such a point," returned the old seaman, with a serious
+face. "On the whole, my dear sir, I have reason to be satisfied,
+however; and so long as you, my passengers and my friends, are not
+inclined to blame me, I shall feel as if I had done at least a part
+of my duty."
+
+Eve rose from table, went to a side-board and returned, when she
+gracefully placed before the master of the Montauk a rich and
+beautifully chased punch-bowl, in silver. Almost at the same moment,
+Pierre offered a salver that contained a capital watch, a pair of
+small silver tongs to hold a coal, and a deck trumpet, in solid
+silver.
+
+"These are so many faint testimonials of our feelings," said
+Eve--"and you will do us the favour to retain them, as evidences of
+the esteem created by skill, kindness, and courage."
+
+"My dear young lady!" cried the old tar, touched to the soul by the
+feeling with which Eve acquitted herself of this little duty, "my
+dear young lady--well, God bless you--God bless you all--you too, Mr.
+John Effingham, for that matter--and Sir George--that I should ever
+have taken that runaway for a gentleman and a baronet--though I
+suppose there are some silly baronets, as well as silly lords--retain
+them?"--glancing furiously at Mr. Aristabulus Bragg, "may the Lord
+forget me, in the heaviest hurricane, if I ever forget whence these
+things came, and why they were given."
+
+Here the worthy captain was obliged to swallow some wine, by way of
+relieving his emotions, and Aristabulus, profiting by the
+opportunity, coolly took the bowl, which, to use a word of his own,
+he _hefted_ in his hand, with a view to form some tolerably accurate
+notion of its intrinsic value. Captain Truck's eye caught the action,
+and he reclaimed his property quite as unceremoniously as it had been
+taken away, nothing but the presence of the ladies preventing an
+outbreaking that would have amounted to a declaration of war.
+
+"With your permission, sir," said the captain, drily, after he had
+recovered the bowl, not only without the other's consent, but, in
+some degree, against his will; "this bowl is as precious in my eyes
+as if it were made of my father's bones."
+
+"You may indeed think so," returned the land-agent, "for its cost
+could not be less than a hundred dollars."
+
+"Cost, sir!--But, my dear young lady, let us talk of the real value.
+For what part of these things am I indebted to you?"
+
+"The bowl is my offering," Eve answered, smilingly, though a tear
+glistened in her eye, as she witnessed the strong unsophisticated
+feeling of the old tar. "I thought it might serve sometimes to bring
+me to your recollection, when it was well filled in honour of
+'sweethearts and wives.'"
+
+"It shall--it shall, by the Lord; and Mr. Saunders needs look to it,
+if he do not keep this work as bright as a cruising frigate's bottom.
+To whom do I owe the coal-tongs?"
+
+"Those are from Mr. John Effingham, who insists that he will come
+nearer to your heart than any of us, though the gift be of so little
+cost."
+
+"He does not know me, my dear young lady--nobody ever got as near my
+heart as you; no, not even my own dear pious old mother. But I thank
+Mr. John Effingham from my inmost spirit, and shall seldom smoke
+without thinking of him. The watch I know is Mr. Effingham's, and I
+ascribe the trumpet to Sir George."
+
+The bows of the several gentlemen assured the captain he was right,
+and he shook each of them cordially by the hand, protesting, in the
+fulness of his heart, that nothing would give him greater pleasure
+than to be able to go through the same perilous scenes as those from
+which they had so lately escaped, in their good company again.
+
+While this was going on, Aristabulus, notwithstanding the rebuke he
+had received, contrived to get each article, in succession, into his
+hands, and by dint of poising it on a finger, or by examining it, to
+form some approximative notion of its inherent value. The watch he
+actually opened, taking as good a survey of its works as the
+circumstances of the case would very well allow.
+
+"I respect these things, sir, more than you respect your father's
+grave," said Captain Truck sternly, as he rescued the last article
+from what he thought the impious grasp of Aristabulus again, "and cat
+or no cat, they sink or swim with me for the remainder of the cruise.
+If there is any virtue in a will, which I am sorry to say I hear
+there is not any longer, they shall share my last bed with me, be it
+ashore or be it afloat. My dear young lady, fancy all the rest, but
+depend on it, punch will be sweeter than ever taken from this bowl,
+and 'sweethearts and wives' will never be so honoured again."
+
+"We are going to a ball this evening, at the house of one with whom I
+am sufficiently intimate to take the liberty of introducing a
+stranger, and I wish, gentlemen," said Mr. Effingham, bowing to
+Aristabulus and the captain, by way of changing the conversation,
+"you would do me the favour to be of our party."
+
+Mr. Bragg acquiesced very cheerfully, and quite as a matter of
+course; while Captain Truck, after protesting his unfitness for such
+scenes, was finally prevailed on by John Effingham, to comply with
+the request also. The ladies remained at table but a few minutes
+longer, when they retired, Mr. Effingham having dropped into the old
+custom of sitting at the bottle, until summoned to the drawing-room,
+a usage that continues to exist in America, for a reason no better
+than the fact that it continues to exist in England;--it being almost
+certain that it will cease in New-York, the season after it is known
+to have ceased in London.
+
+Chapter III.
+
+  "Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful!"
+
+  SHAKSPEARE.
+
+As Captain Truck asked permission to initiate the new coal-tongs by
+lighting a cigar, Sir George Templemore contrived to ask Pierre, in
+an aside, if the ladies would allow him to join them. The desired
+consent having been obtained, the baronet quietly stole from table,
+and was soon beyond the odours of the dining-room.
+
+"You miss the censer and the frankincense," said Eve, laughing, as
+Sir George entered the drawing-room; "but you will remember we have
+no church establishment, and dare not take such liberties with the
+ceremonials of the altar."
+
+"That is a short-lived custom with us, I fancy, though far from an
+unpleasant one. But you do me injustice in supposing I am merely
+running away from the fumes of the dinner."
+
+"No, no; we understand perfectly well that you have something to do
+with the fumes of flattery, and we will at once fancy all has been
+said that the occasion requires. Is not our honest old captain a
+jewel in his way?"
+
+"Upon my word, since you allow me to speak of your father's guests, I
+do not think it possible to have brought together two men who are so
+completely the opposites of each other, as Captain Truck and this Mr
+Aristabulus Bragg. The latter is quite the most extraordinary person
+in his way, it was ever my good fortune to meet with."
+
+"You call him a _person_, while Pierre calls him a _personnage;_ I
+fancy he considers it very much as a matter of accident, whether he
+is to pass his days in the one character or in the other. Cousin Jack
+assures me, that, while this man accepts almost any duty that he
+chooses to assign him, he would not deem it at all a violation of the
+_convenances_ to aim at the throne in the White House."
+
+"Certainly with no hopes of ever attaining it!"
+
+"One cannot answer for that. The man must undergo many essential
+changes, and much radical improvement, before such a climax to his
+fortunes can ever occur; but the instant you do away with the claims
+of hereditary power, the door is opened to a new chapter of
+accidents. Alexander of Russia styled himself _un heureux accident_;
+and should it ever be our fortune to receive Mr. Bragg as President,
+we shall only have to term him _un malheureux accident_. I believe
+that will contain all the difference."
+
+"Your republicanism is indomitable, Miss Effingham, and I shall
+abandon the attempt to convert you to safer principles, more
+especially as I find you supported by both the Mr. Effinghams, who,
+while they condemn so much at home, seem singularly attached to their
+own system at the bottom."
+
+"They condemn, Sir George Templemore, because they know that
+perfection is hopeless, and because they feel it to be unsafe and
+unwise to eulogize defects, and they are attached, because near views
+of other countries have convinced them that, comparatively at last,
+bad as we are, we are still better than most of our neighbours."
+
+"I can assure you," said Grace, "that many of the opinions of Mr John
+Effingham, in particular, are not at all the opinions that are most
+in vogue here; he rather censures what we like, and likes what we
+censure. Even my dear uncle is thought to be a little heterodox on
+such subjects."
+
+"I can readily believe it," returned Eve, steadily. "These gentlemen,
+having become familiar with better things, in the way of the tastes,
+and of the purely agreeable, cannot discredit their own knowledge so
+much as to extol that which their own experience tells them is
+faulty, or condemn that which their own experience tells them is
+relatively good. Now, Grace, if you will reflect a moment, you will
+perceive that people necessarily like the best of their own tastes,
+until they come to a knowledge of better; and that they as
+necessarily quarrel with the unpleasant facts that surround them;
+although these facts, as consequences of a political system, may be
+much less painful than those of other systems of which they have no
+knowledge. In the one case, they like their own best, simply because
+it is their own best; and they dislike their own worst, because it is
+their own worst. We cherish a taste, in the nature of things, without
+entering into any comparisons, for when the means of comparison
+offer, and we find improvements, it ceases to be a taste at all;
+while to complain of any positive grievance, is the nature of man, I
+fear!"
+
+"I think a republic odious!"
+
+"_Le republique est une horreur!_"
+
+Grace thought a republic odious, without knowing any thing of any
+other state of society, and because it contained odious things; and
+Mademoiselle Viefville called a republic _une horreur_, because heads
+fell and anarchy prevailed in her own country, during its early
+struggles for liberty. Though Eve seldom spoke more sensibly, and
+never more temperately, than while delivering the foregoing opinions,
+Sir George Templemore doubted whether she had all that exquisite
+_finesse_ and delicacy of features, that he had so much admired; and
+when Grace burst out in the sudden and senseless exclamation we have
+recorded, he turned towards her sweet and animated countenance,
+which, for the moment, he fancied the loveliest of the two.
+
+Eve Effingham had yet to learn that she had just entered into the
+most intolerant society, meaning purely as society, and in connexion
+with what are usually called liberal sentiments, in Christendom. We
+do not mean by this, that it would be less safe to utter a generous
+opinion in favour of human rights in America than in any other
+country, for the laws and the institutions become active in this
+respect, but simply, that the resistance of the more refined to the
+encroachments of the unrefined, has brought about a state of
+feeling--a feeling that is seldom just and never philosophical--which
+has created a silent, but almost unanimous bias against the effects
+of the institutions, in what is called the world. In Europe, one
+rarely utters a sentiment of this nature, under circumstances in
+which it is safe to do so at all, without finding a very general
+sympathy in the auditors; but in the circle into which Eve had now
+fallen, it was almost considered a violation of the proprieties. We
+do not wish to be understood as saying more than we mean, however,
+for we have no manner of doubt that a large portion of the
+dissentients even, are so idly, and without reflection; or for the
+very natural reasons already given by our heroine; but we do wish to
+be understood as meaning that such is the outward appearance which
+American society presents to every stranger, and to every native of
+the country too, on his return from a residence among other people.
+Of its taste, wisdom and safety we shall not now speak, but content
+ourselves with merely saying that the effect of Grace's exclamation
+on Eve was unpleasant, and that, unlike the baronet, she thought her
+cousin was never less handsome than while her pretty face was covered
+with the pettish frown it had assumed for the occasion.
+
+Sir George Templemore had tact enough to perceive there had been a
+slight jar in the feelings of these two young women, and he adroitly
+changed the conversation. With Eve he had entire confidence on the
+score of provincialisms, and, without exactly anticipating the part
+Grace would be likely to take in such a discussion, he introduced the
+subject of general society in New-York.
+
+"I am desirous to know," he said, "if you have your sets, as we have
+them in London and Paris. Whether you have your _Faubourg St.
+Germain_ and your _Chaussée d'Antin;_ your Piccadilly, Grosvenor and
+Russel Squares."
+
+"I must refer you to Miss Van Cortlandt for an answer to that
+question," said Eve.
+
+Grace looked up blushing, for there were both novelty and excitement
+in having an intelligent foreigner question her on such a subject.
+
+"I do not know that I rightly understand the allusion," she said,
+"although I am afraid Sir George Templemore means to ask if we have
+distinctions in society?"
+
+"And why _afraid_, Miss Van Cortlandt?"
+
+"Because it strikes me such a question would imply a doubt of our
+civilization."
+
+"There are frequently distinctions made, when the differences are not
+obvious," observed Eve. "Even London and Paris are not above the
+imputation of this folly. Sir George Templemore, if I understand him,
+wishes to know if we estimate gentility by streets, and quality by
+squares."
+
+"Not exactly that either, Miss Effingham--but, whether among those,
+who may very well pass for gentlemen and ladies, you enter into the
+minute distinctions that are elsewhere found. Whether you have your
+exclusive, and your _élégants_ and _élegantes_; or whether you deem
+all within the pale as on an equality."
+
+"_Les femmes Americaines sont bien jolies!_" exclaimed Mademoiselle
+Viefville.
+
+"It is quite impossible that _coteries_ should not form in a town of
+three hundred thousand souls."
+
+"I do not mean exactly even that. Is there no distinction between
+_coteries;_ is not one placed by opinion, by a silent consent, if not
+by positive ordinances, above another?"
+
+"Certainly, that to which Sir George Templemore alludes, is to be
+found," said Grace, who gained courage to speak, as she found the
+subject getting to be more clearly within her comprehension. "All the
+old families, for instance, keep more together than the others;
+though it is the subject of regret that they are not more particular
+than they are."
+
+"Old families!" exclaimed Sir George Templemore, with quite as much
+stress as a well-bred man could very well lay on the words, in such
+circumstances.
+
+"Old families," repeated Eve, with all that emphasis which the
+baronet himself had hesitated about giving. "As old, at least, as two
+centuries can make them; and this, too, with origins beyond that
+period, like those of the rest of the world. Indeed, the American has
+a better gentility than common, as, besides his own, he may take root
+in that of Europe."
+
+"Do not misconceive me, Miss Effingham; I am fully aware that the
+people of this country are exactly like the people of all other
+civilized countries, in this respect; but my surprise is that, in a
+republic, you should have such a term even as that of 'old
+families.'"
+
+"The surprise has arisen, I must be permitted to say, from not having
+sufficiently reflected on the real state of the country. There are
+two great causes of distinction every where, wealth and merit. Now,
+if a race of Americans continue conspicuous in their own society,
+through either or both of these causes, for a succession of
+generations, why have they not the same claims to be considered
+members of old families, as Europeans under the same circumstances? A
+republican history is as much history as a monarchical history; and a
+historical name in one, is quite as much entitled to consideration,
+as a historical name in another. Nay, you admit this in your European
+republics, while you wish to deny it in ours."
+
+"I must insist on having proofs; if we permit these charges to be
+brought against us without evidence, Mademoiselle Viefville, we shall
+finally be defeated through our own neglect."
+
+"_C'est une belle illustration, celle de l'antiquité_" observed the
+governess, in a matter of course tone.
+
+"If you insist on proof, what answer can you urge to the _Capponi_?
+'_Sonnez vos trompettes, et je vais faire sonner mes cloches_,'--or
+to the _Von Erlachs_, a family that has headed so many resistances to
+oppression and invasion, for five centuries?"
+
+"All this is very true," returned Sir George, "and yet I confess it
+is not the way in which it is usual with us to consider American
+society."
+
+"A descent from Washington, with a character and a social position to
+correspond, would not be absolutely vulgar, notwithstanding!"
+
+"Nay, if you press me so hard, I must appeal to Miss Van Cortlandt
+for succour."
+
+"On this point you will find no support in that quarter. Miss Van
+Cortlandt has an historical name herself, and will not forego an
+honest pride, in order to relieve one of the hostile powers from a
+dilemma."
+
+"While I admit that time and merit must, in a certain sense, place
+families in America in the same situation with families in Europe, I
+cannot see that it is in conformity with your institutions to lay the
+same stress on the circumstance."
+
+"In that we are perfectly of a mind, as I think the American has much
+the best reason to be proud of his family," said Eve, quietly.
+
+"You delight in paradoxes, apparently, this evening, Miss Effingham,
+for I now feel very certain you can hardly make out a plausible
+defence of this new position."
+
+"If I had my old ally, Mr. Powis, here," said Eve touching the fender
+unconsciously with her little foot, and perceptibly losing the
+animation and pleasantry of her voice, in tones that were gentler, if
+not melancholy, "I should ask him to explain this matter to you, for
+he was singularly ready in such replies. As he is absent, however, I
+will attempt the duty myself. In Europe, office, power, and
+consequently, consideration, are all hereditary; whereas, in this
+country, they are not, but they depend on selection. Now, surely, one
+has more reason to be proud of ancestors who have been chosen to fill
+responsible stations, than of ancestors who have filled them through
+the accidents, _heureux ou malkeureux_, of birth. The only difference
+between England and America, as respects family, is that you add
+positive rank to that to which we only give consideration. Sentiment
+is at the bottom of our nobility, and the great seal at the bottom of
+yours. And now, having established the fact that there are families
+in America, let us return whence we started, and enquire how far they
+have an influence in every-day society."
+
+"To ascertain which, we must apply to Miss Van Cortlandt."
+
+"Much less than they ought, if my opinion is to be taken," said
+Grace, laughing, "for the great inroad of strangers has completely
+deranged all the suitablenesses, in that respect."
+
+"And yet, I dare say, these very strangers do good," rejoined Eve.
+"Many of them must have been respectable in their native places, and
+ought to be an acquisition to a society that, in its nature, must be,
+Grace, _tant soit peu_, provincial."
+
+"Oh!" cried Grace, "I can tolerate any thing but the Hajjis!"
+
+"The what?" asked Sir George, eagerly--"will you suffer me to ask an
+explanation, Miss Van Cortlandt."
+
+"The Hajjis," repeated Grace laughing, though she blushed to the
+eyes.
+
+The baronet looked from one cousin to the other, and then turned an
+inquiring glance on Mademoiselle Viefville. The latter gave a slight
+shrug, and seemed to ask an explanation of the young lady's meaning
+herself.
+
+"A Hajji is one of a class, Sir George Templemore," Eve at length
+said, "to which you and I have both the honour of belonging."
+
+"No, not Sir George Templemore," interrupted Grace, with a
+precipitation that she instantly regretted; "he is not an American."
+
+"Then I, alone, of all present, have that honour. It means the
+pilgrimage to Paris, instead of Mecca; and the Pilgrim must be an
+American, instead of a Mahommedan."
+
+"Nay, Eve, _you_ are not a Hajji, neither."
+
+"Then there is some qualification with which I am not yet acquainted.
+Will you relieve our doubts, Grace, and let us know the precise
+character of the animal."
+
+"_You_ stayed too long to be a Hajji--- one must get innoculated
+merely; not take the disease and become cured, to be a true Hajji."
+
+"I thank you, Miss Van Cortlandt, for this description," returned Eve
+in her quiet way. "I hope, as I have gone through the malady, it has
+not left me pitted."
+
+"I should like to see one of these Hajjis," cried Sir George.--"Are
+they of both sexes?"
+
+Grace laughed and nodded her head.
+
+"Will you point it out to me, should we be so fortunate as to
+encounter one this evening?"
+
+Again Grace laughed and nodded her head.
+
+"I have been thinking, Grace," said Eve, after a short pause, "that
+we may give Sir George Templemore a better idea of the sets about
+which he is so curious, by doing what is no more than a duty of our
+own, and by letting him profit by the opportunity. Mrs. Hawker
+receives this evening without ceremony; we have not yet sent our
+answer to Mrs. Jarvis, and might very well look in upon her for half
+an hour, after which we shall be in very good season for Mrs.
+Houston's ball."
+
+"Surely, Eve, you would not wish to take Sir George Templemore to
+such a house as that of Mrs. Jarvis!"
+
+"_I_ do not wish to take Sir George Templemore any where, for your
+Hajjis have opinions of their own on such subjects. But, as cousin
+Jack will accompany us, _he_ may very well confer that important
+favour. I dare say, Mrs. Jarvis will not look upon it as too great a
+liberty."
+
+"I will answer for it, that nothing Mr. John Effingham can do will be
+thought _mal à propos_ by Mrs. Jared Jarvis. His position in society
+is too well established, and hers is too equivocal, to leave any
+doubt on that head."
+
+"This, you perceive, settles the point of _côteries,_" said Eve to
+the baronet. "Volumes might be written to establish principles; but
+when one can do any thing he or she pleases, any where that he or she
+likes, it is pretty safe to say that he or she is privileged."
+
+"All very true, as to the fact, Miss Effingham; but I should like
+exceedingly to know the reason."
+
+"Half the time, such things are decided without a reason at all. You
+are a little exacting in requiring a reason in New-York for that
+which is done in London without even the pretence of such a thing. It
+is sufficient that Mrs. Jarvis will be delighted to see you without
+an invitation, and that Mrs. Houston would, at least, think it odd,
+were you to take the same liberty with her."
+
+"It follows," said Sir George, smiling, "that Mrs. Jarvis is much the
+most hospitable person of the two."
+
+"But, Eve, what shall be done with Captain Truck and Mr. Bragg?"
+asked Grace. "We cannot take _them_ to Mrs. Hawker's!"
+
+"Aristabulus would, indeed, be a little out of place in such a house,
+but as for our excellent, brave, straight-forward, old captain, he is
+worthy to go any where. I shall be delighted to present _him_ to Mrs.
+Hawker, myself."
+
+After a little consultation between the ladies, it was settled that
+nothing should be said of the two first visits to Mr. Bragg, but that
+Mr. Effingham should be requested to bring him to the ball, at the
+proper hour, and that the rest of the party should go quietly off to
+the other places, without mentioning their projects. As soon as this
+was arranged the ladies retired to dress, Sir George Templemore
+passing into the library to amuse himself with a book the while;
+where, however, he was soon joined by John Effingham. Here the former
+revived the conversation on distinctions in society, with the
+confusion of thought that usually marks a European's notions of such
+matters.
+
+Chapter IV.
+
+  "Ready." "And I." "And I." "Where shall we go?"
+
+  MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.
+
+Grace Van Cortlant was the first to make her appearance after the
+retreat from the drawing-room. It has often been said that, pretty as
+the American females incontestably are, as a whole they appear better
+in _demi-toilette,_ than when attired for a ball. With what would be
+termed high dress in other parts of the world, they are little
+acquainted; but reversing the rule of Europe, where the married
+bestow the most care on their personal appearance, and the single are
+taught to observe a rigid simplicity, Grace now seemed sufficiently
+ornamented in the eyes of the fastidious baronet, while, at the same
+time, he thought her less obnoxious to the criticism just mentioned,
+than most of her young countrywomen, in general.
+
+An _embonpoint_ that was just sufficient to distinguish her from most
+of her companions, a fine colour, brilliant eyes, a sweet smile, rich
+hair, and such feet and hands as Sir George Templemore had, somehow--
+he scarcely knew how, himself--fancied could only belong to the
+daughters of peers and princes, rendered Grace so strikingly
+attractive this evening, that the young baronet began to think her
+even handsomer than her cousin. There was also a charm in the
+unsophisticated simplicity of Grace, that was particularly alluring
+to a man educated amidst the coldness and mannerism of the higher
+classes of England. In Grace, too, this simplicity was chastened by
+perfect decorum and _retenue_ of deportment; the exuberance of the
+new school of manners not having helped to impair the dignity of her
+character, or to weaken the charm of diffidence. She was less
+finished in her manners than Eve, certainly; a circumstance, perhaps,
+that induced Sir George Templemore to fancy her a shade more simple,
+but she was never unfeminine or unladylike; and the term vulgar, in
+despite of all the capricious and arbitrary rules of fashion, under
+no circumstances, could ever be applied to Grace Van Cortlandt. In
+this respect, nature seemed to have aided her; for had not her
+associations raised her above such an imputation, no one could
+believe that she would be obnoxious to the charge, had her lot in
+life been cast even many degrees lower than it actually was.
+
+It is well known that, after a sufficient similarity has been created
+by education to prevent any violent shocks to our habits or
+principles, we most affect those whose characters and dispositions
+the least resemble our own. This was probably one of the reasons why
+Sir George Templemore, who, for some time, had been well assured of
+the hopelessness of his suit with Eve, began to regard her scarcely
+less lovely cousin, with an interest of a novel and lively nature.
+Quick-sighted and deeply interested in Grace's happiness, Miss
+Effingham had already detected this change in the young baronet's
+inclinations, and though sincerely rejoiced on her own account, she
+did not observe it without concern; for she understood better than
+most of her countrywomen, the great hazards of destroying her peace
+of mind, that are incurred by transplanting an American woman into
+the more artificial circles of the old world.
+
+"I shall rely on your kind offices, in particular, Miss Van
+Cortlandt, to reconcile Mrs. Jarvis and Mrs. Hawker to the liberty I
+am about to take," cried Sir George, as Grace burst upon them in the
+library, in a blaze of beauty that, in her case, was aided by her
+attire; "and cold-hearted and unchristian-like women they must be,
+indeed, to resist such a mediator!"
+
+Grace was unaccustomed to adulation of this sort; for though the
+baronet spoke gaily, and like one half trifling, his look of
+admiration was too honest to escape the intuitive perception of
+woman. She blushed deeply, and then recovering herself instantly,
+said with a _naiveté_ that had a thousand charms with her listener--
+
+"I do not see why Miss Effingham and myself should hesitate about
+introducing you at either place. Mrs. Hawker is a relative and an
+intimate--an intimate of mine, at least--and as for poor Mrs. Jarvis,
+she is the daughter of an old neighbour, and will be too glad to see
+us, to raise objections. I fancy any one of a certain--" Grace
+hesitated and laughed.
+
+"Any one of a certain--?" said Sir George inquiringly.
+
+"Any one from this house," resumed the young lady, correcting the
+intended expression, "will be welcome in Spring street."
+
+"Pure, native aristocracy!" exclaimed the baronet with an air of
+affected triumph. "This you see, Mr. John Effingham, is in aid of my
+argument."
+
+"I am quite of your opinion," returned the gentleman addressed--"as
+much native aristocracy as you please, but no hereditary."
+
+The entrance of Eve and Mademoiselle Viefville interrupted this
+pleasantry, and the carriages being just then announced, John
+Effingham went in quest of Captain Truck, who was in the drawing-room
+with Mr. Effingham and Aristabulus.
+
+"I have left Ned to discuss trespass suits and leases with his land-
+agent," said John Effingham, as he followed Eve to the street-door.
+"By ten o'clock, they will have taxed a pretty bill of costs between
+them!"
+
+Mademoiselle Viefville followed John Effingham; Grace came next, and
+Sir George Templemore and the Captain brought up the rear. Grace
+wondered the young baronet did not offer her his arm, for she had
+been accustomed to receive this attention from the other sex, in a
+hundred situations in which it was rather an incumbrance than a
+service; while on the other hand, Sir George himself would have
+hesitated about offering such assistance, as an act of uncalled-for
+familiarity.
+
+Miss Van Cortlandt, being much in society, kept a chariot for her own
+use, and the three ladies took their seats in it, while the gentlemen
+took possession of Mr. Effingham's coach. The order was given to
+drive to Spring street, and the whole party proceeded.
+
+The acquaintance between the Effinghams and Mr. Jarvis had arisen
+from the fact of their having been near, and, in a certain sense,
+sociable neighbours in the country. Their town associations, however,
+were as distinct as if they dwelt in different hemispheres, with the
+exception of an occasional morning call, and, now and then, a family
+dinner given by Mr. Effingham. Such had been the nature of the
+intercourse previously to the family of the latter's having gone
+abroad, and there were symptoms of its being renewed on the same
+quiet and friendly footing as formerly. But no two beings could be
+less alike, in certain essentials, than Mr. Jarvis and his wife. The
+former was a plain pains-taking, sensible man of business, while the
+latter had an itching desire to figure in the world of fashion. The
+first was perfectly aware that Mr. Effingham, in education, habits,
+associations and manners, was, at least, of a class entirely distinct
+from his own; and without troubling himself to analyze causes, and
+without a feeling of envy, or unkindness of any sort, while totally
+exempt from any undue deference or unmanly cringing, he quietly
+submitted to let things take their course. His wife expressed her
+surprise that any one in New-York should presume to be _better_ than
+themselves; and the remark gave rise to the following short
+conversation, on the very morning of the day she gave the party, to
+which we are now conducting the reader.
+
+"How do you know, my dear, that any one does think himself our
+_better_?" demanded the husband.
+
+"Why do they not all visit us then!"
+
+"Why do you not visit everybody yourself? A pretty household we
+should have, if you did nothing but visit every one who lives even in
+this street!"
+
+"You surely would not have _me_ visiting the grocers' wives at the
+corners, and all the other rubbish of the neighbourhood. What I mean
+is that all the people of a certain sort ought to visit all the other
+people of a certain sort, in the same town."
+
+"You surely will make an exception, at least on account of numbers. I
+saw number three thousand six hundred and fifty this very day on a
+cart, and if the wives of all these carmen should visit one another,
+each would have to make ten visits daily in order to get through with
+the list in a twelvemonth."
+
+"I have always bad luck in making you comprehend these things, Mr.
+Jarvis."
+
+"I am afraid, my dear, it is because you do not very clearly
+comprehend them yourself. You first say that everybody ought to visit
+everybody, and then you insist on it, _you_ will visit none but those
+you think good enough to be visited by Mrs. Jared Jarvis."
+
+"What I mean is, that no one in New-York has a right to think
+himself, or herself, better than ourselves."
+
+"Better?--In what sense better?"
+
+"In such a sense as to induce them to think themselves too good to
+visit us."
+
+"That may be your opinion, my dear, but others may judge differently.
+You clearly think yourself too good to visit Mrs. Onion, the grocer's
+wife, who is a capital woman in her way; and how do we know that
+certain people may not fancy we are not quite refined enough for
+them? Refinement is a positive thing, Mrs. Jarvis, and one that has
+much more influence on the pleasures of association than money. We
+may want a hundred little perfections that escape our ignorance, and
+which those who are trained to such matters deem essentials."
+
+"I never met with a man of so little social spirit, Mr. Jarvis!
+Really, you are quite unsuited to be a citizen of a republican
+country."
+
+"Republican!--I do not really see what republican has to do with the
+question. In the first place, it is a droll word for _you_ to use in
+this sense at least; for, taking your own meaning of the term, you
+are as anti-republican as any woman I know. But a republic does not
+necessarily infer equality of condition, or even equality of
+rights,--it meaning merely the substitution of the right of the
+commonwealth for the right of a prince. Had you said a democracy
+there would have been some plausibility in using the word, though
+even then its application would have been illogical. If I am a
+freeman and a democrat, I hope I have the justice to allow others to
+be just as free and democratic as I am myself."
+
+"And who wishes the contrary?--all I ask is a claim to be considered
+a fit associate for anybody in this country--in these United States
+of America."
+
+"I would quit these United States of America next week, if I thought
+there existed any necessity for such an intolerable state of things."
+
+"Mr. Jarvis!--and you, too, one of the Committee of Tammany Hall!"
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Jarvis, and I one of the Committee of Tammany Hall! What,
+do you think I want the three thousand six hundred and fifty carmen
+running in and out of my house, with their tobacco saliva and pipes,
+all day long?"
+
+"Who is thinking of your carmen and grocers!--I speak now only of
+genteel people."
+
+"In other words, my dear, you are thinking only of those whom you
+fancy to have the advantage of you, and keep those who think of you
+in the same way, quite out of sight This is not my democracy and
+freedom. I believe that it requires two people to make a bargain, and
+although I may consent to dine with A----, if A---- will not consent
+to dine with me, there is an end of the matter."
+
+"Now, you have come to a case in point. You often dined with Mr.
+Effingham before he went abroad, and yet you would never allow me to
+ask Mr. Effingham to dine with us. That is what I call meanness."
+
+"It might be so, indeed, if it were done to save my money. I dined
+with Mr. Effingham because I like him; because he was an old
+neighbour; because he asked me, and because I found a pleasure in the
+quiet elegance of his table and society; and I did not ask him to
+dine with me, because I was satisfied he would be better pleased with
+such a tacit acknowledgement of his superiority in this respect, than
+by any bustling and ungraceful efforts to pay him in kind. Edward
+Effingham has dinners enough, without keeping a debtor and credit
+account with his guests, which is rather too New-Yorkish, even for
+me."
+
+"Bustling and ungraceful!" repeated Mrs. Jarvis, bitterly; "I do not
+know that you are at all more bustling and ungraceful than Mr.
+Effingham himself."
+
+"No, my dear, I am a quiet, unpretending man, like the great majority
+of my countrymen, thank God."
+
+"Then why talk of these sorts of differences in a country in which
+the law establishes none?"
+
+"For precisely the reason that I talk of the river at the foot of
+this street, or because there is a river. A thing may exist without
+there being a law for it. There is no law for building this house,
+and yet it is built. There is no law for making Dr. Verse a better
+preacher than Dr. Prolix, and yet he is a much better preacher;
+neither is there any law for making Mr. Effingham a more finished
+gentleman than I happen to be, and yet I am not fool enough to deny
+the fact. In the way of making out a bill of parcels, I will not turn
+my back to him, I can promise you."
+
+"All this strikes me as being very spiritless, and as particularly
+anti-republican," said Mrs. Jarvis, rising to quit the room; "and if
+the Effinghams do not come this evening, I shall not enter their
+house this winter. I am sure they have no right to pretend to be our
+betters, and I feel no disposition to admit the impudent claim."
+
+"Before you go, Jane, let me say a parting word," rejoined the
+husband, looking for his hat, "which is just this. If you wish the
+world to believe you the equal of any one, no matter whom, do not be
+always talking about it, lest they see you distrust the fact
+yourself. A positive thing will surely be seen, and they who have the
+highest claims are the least disposed to be always pressing them on
+the attention of the world. An outrage may certainly be done those
+social rights which have been established by common consent, and then
+it may be proper to resent it; but beware betraying a consciousness
+of your own inferiority, by letting every one see you are jealous of
+your station. 'Now, kiss me; here is the money to pay for your finery
+this evening, and let me see you as happy to receive Mrs. Jewett from
+Albion Place, as you would be to receive Mrs. Hawker herself."
+
+"Mrs. Hawker!" cried the wife, with a toss of her head, "I would not
+cross the street to invite Mrs. Hawker and all her clan." Which was
+very true, as Mrs. Jarvis was thoroughly convinced the trouble would
+be unavailing, the lady in question being as near the head of fashion
+in New-York, as it was possible to be in a town that, in a moral
+sense, resembles an encampment, quite as much as it resembles a
+permanent and a long-existing capital.
+
+Notwithstanding a great deal of management on the part of Mrs. Jarvis
+to get showy personages to attend her entertainment, the simple
+elegance of the two carriages that bore the Effingham party, threw
+all the other equipages into the shade. The arrival, indeed, was
+deemed a matter of so much moment, that intelligence was conveyed to
+the lady, who was still at her post in the inner drawing-room, of the
+arrival of a party altogether superior to any thing that had yet
+appeared in her rooms. It is true, this was not expressed in words,
+but it was made sufficiently obvious by the breathless haste and the
+air of importance of Mrs. Jarvis' sister, who had received the news
+from a servant, and who communicated it _propriâ personâ_ to the
+mistress of the house.
+
+The simple, useful, graceful, almost indispensable usage of
+announcing at the door, indispensable to those who receive much, and
+where there is the risk of meeting people known to us by name and not
+in person, is but little practised in America. Mrs. Jarvis would have
+shrunk from such an innovation, had she known that elsewhere the
+custom prevailed, but she was in happy ignorance on this point, as on
+many others that were more essential to the much-coveted social
+_éclat_ at which she aimed. When Mademoiselle Viefville appeared,
+therefore, walking unsupported, as if she were out of leading-
+strings, followed by Eve and Grace and the gentlemen of their party,
+she at first supposed there was some mistake, and that her visitors
+had got into the wrong house; there being an opposition party in the
+neighbourhood.
+
+"What brazen people!" whispered Mrs. Abijah Gross, who having removed
+from an interior New-England village, fully two years previously,
+fancied herself _an fait_ of all the niceties of breeding and social
+tact. "There are positively two young ladies actually walking about
+without gentlemen!"
+
+But it was not in the power of Mrs. Abijah Gross, with her audible
+whisper and obvious sneer and laugh, to put down two such lovely
+creatures as Eve and her cousin. The simple elegance of their attire,
+the indescribable air of polish, particularly in the former, and the
+surpassing beauty and modesty of mien of both, effectually silenced
+criticism, after this solitary outbreaking of vulgarity. Mrs. Jarvis
+recognized Eve and John Effingham, and her hurried compliments and
+obvious delight proclaimed to all near her, the importance she
+attached to their visit. Mademoiselle Viefville she had not
+recollected in her present dress, and even she was covered with
+expressions of delight and satisfaction.
+
+"I wish particularly to present to you a friend that we all prize
+exceedingly," said Eve, as soon as there was an opportunity of
+speaking. "This is Captain Truck, the gentleman who commands the
+Montauk, the ship of which you have heard so much. Ah! Mr. Jarvis,"
+offering a hand to him with sincere cordiality, for Eve had known him
+from childhood, and always sincerely respected him--"_you_ will
+receive my friend with a cordial welcome, I am certain."
+
+She then explained to Mr. Jarvis who the honest captain was, when the
+former, first paying the proper respect to his other guests, led the
+old sailor aside, and began an earnest conversation on the subject of
+the recent passage.
+
+John Effingham presented the baronet, whom Mrs. Jarvis, out of pure
+ignorance of his rank in his own country, received with perfect
+propriety and self-respect.
+
+"We have very few people of note in town at present, I believe," said
+Mrs. Jarvis to John Effingham. "A great traveller, a most interesting
+man, is the only person of that sort I could obtain for this evening,
+and I shall have great pleasure in introducing you. He is there in
+that crowd, for he is in the greatest possible demand; he has seen so
+much.--Mrs. Snow, with your permission--really the ladies are
+thronging about him as if he were a Pawnee,--have the goodness to
+step a little this way, Mr. Effingham--Miss Effingham--Mrs. Snow,
+just touch his arm and let him know I wish to introduce a couple of
+friends.--Mr. Dodge, Mr. John Effingham, Miss Effingham, Miss Van
+Cortlandt. I hope you may succeed in getting him a little to
+yourselves, ladies, for he can tell you all about Europe--saw the
+king of France riding out to Nully, and has a prodigious knowledge of
+things on the other side of the water."
+
+It required a good deal of Eve's habitual self-command to prevent a
+smile, but she had the tact and discretion to receive Steadfast as an
+utter stranger. John Effingham bowed as haughtily as man can bow, and
+then it was whispered that he and Mr. Dodge were rival travellers.
+The distance of the former, coupled with an expression of countenance
+that did not invite familiarity, drove nearly all the company over to
+the side of Steadfast, who, it was soon settled, had seen much the
+most of the world, understood society the best, and had moreover
+travelled as far as Timbuctoo in Africa. The _clientèle_ of Mr. Dodge
+increased rapidly, as these reports spread in the rooms, and those
+who had not read the "delightful letters published in the Active
+Inquirer," furiously envied those who had enjoyed that high
+advantage.
+
+"It is Mr. Dodge, the great traveller," said one young lady, who had
+extricated herself from the crowd around the 'lion,' and taken a
+station near Eve and Grace, and who, moreover, was a 'blue' in her
+own set; "his beautiful and accurate descriptions have attracted
+great attention in England, and it is said they have actually been
+republished!"
+
+"Have you read them, Miss Brackett?"
+
+"Not the letters themselves, absolutely; but all the remarks on them
+in the last week's Hebdomad. Most delightful letters, judging from
+those remarks; full of nature and point, and singularly accurate in
+all their facts. In this respect they are invaluable, travellers do
+fall into such extraordinary errors!"
+
+"I hope, ma'am," said John Effingham, gravely, "that the gentleman
+has avoided the capital mistake of commenting on things that actually
+exist. Comments on its facts are generally esteemed by the people of
+a country, impertinent and unjust; and your true way to succeed, is
+to treat as freely as possible its imaginary peculiarities."
+
+Miss Brackett had nothing to answer to this observation, the Hebdomad
+having, among its other profundities, never seen proper to touch on
+the subject. She went on praising the "Letters," however, not one of
+which had she read, or would she read; for this young lady had
+contrived to gain a high reputation in her own _coterie_ for taste
+and knowledge in books, by merely skimming the strictures of those
+who do not even skim the works they pretend to analyze.
+
+Eve had never before been in so close contact with so much flippant
+ignorance, and she could not but wonder at seeing a man like her
+kinsman overlooked, in order that a man like Mr. Dodge should be
+preferred. All this gave John Effingham himself no concern, but
+retiring a little from the crowd, he entered into a short
+conversation with the young baronet.
+
+"I should like to know your real opinions of this set," he said; "not
+that I plead guilty to the childish sensibility that is so common in
+all provincial circles to the judgments of strangers, but with a view
+to aid you in forming a just estimate of the real state of the
+country."
+
+"As I know the precise connexion between you and our host, there can
+be no objection to giving a perfectly frank reply. The women strike
+me as being singularly delicate and pretty; well dressed, too, I
+might add; but, while there is a great air of decency, there is very
+little high finish; and what strikes me as being quite odd, under
+such circumstances, scarcely any downright vulgarity, or coarseness."
+
+"A Daniel come to judgment! One who had passed a life here, would not
+have come so near the truth, simply because he would not have
+observed peculiarities, that require the means of comparison to be
+detected. You are a little too indulgent in saying there is no
+downright vulgarity; for some there is; though surprisingly little
+for the circumstances. But of the coarseness that would be so
+prominent elsewhere, there is hardly any. True, so great is the
+equality in all things, in this country, so direct the tendency to
+this respectable mediocrity, that what you now see here, to-night,
+may be seen in almost every village in the land, with a few
+immaterial exceptions in the way of furniture and other city
+appliances, and not much even in these."
+
+"Certainly, as a mediocrity, this is respectable though a fastidious
+taste might see a multitude of faults."
+
+"I shall not say that the taste would be merely fastidious, for much
+is wanting that would add to the grace and beauty of society, while
+much that is wanting would be missed only by the over-sophisticated.
+Those young-men, who are sniggering over some bad joke in the corner,
+for instance, are positively vulgar, as is that young lady who is
+indulging in practical coquetry; but, on the whole, there is little
+of this; and, even our hostess, a silly woman, devoured with the
+desire of being what neither her social position, education, habits
+nor notions fit her to be, is less obtrusive, bustling, and
+offensive, than a similar person, elsewhere."
+
+"I am quite of your way of thinking, and intended to ask you to
+account for it."
+
+"The Americans are an imitative people of necessity, and they are apt
+at this part of imitation, in particular. Then they are less
+artificial in all their practices, than older and more sophisticated
+nations; and this company has got that essential part of good
+breeding, simplicity, as it were _per force_. A step higher in the
+social scale, you will see less of it; for greater daring and bad
+models lead to blunders in matters that require to be exceedingly
+well done, if done at all. The faults here would be more apparent, by
+an approach near enough to get into the tone of mind, the forms of
+speech, and the attempts at wit."
+
+"Which I think we shall escape to-night, as I see the ladies are
+already making their apologies and taking leave. We must defer this
+investigation to another time."
+
+"It may be indefinitely postponed, as it would scarcely reward the
+trouble of an inquiry."
+
+The gentlemen now approached Mrs. Jarvis, paid their parting
+compliments, hunted up Captain Truck, whom they tore by violence from
+the good-natured hospitality of the master of the house, and then saw
+the ladies into their carriage. As they drove off, the worthy mariner
+protested that Mr. Jarvis was one of the honestest men he had ever
+met, and announced that he intended giving him a dinner on board the
+Montauk, the very next day.
+
+The dwelling of Mrs. Hawker was in Hudson Square; or in a portion of
+the city that the lovers of the grandiose are endeavouring to call
+St. John's Park; for it is rather an amusing peculiarity among a
+certain portion of the emigrants who have flocked into the Middle
+States, within the last thirty years, that they are not satisfied
+with permitting any family, or thing, to possess the name it
+originally enjoyed, if there exists the least opportunity to change
+it. There was but a carriage or two before the door, though the
+strong lights in the house showed that company had collected.
+
+"Mrs. Hawker is the widow and the daughter of men of long established
+New-York families; she is childless, affluent, and universally
+respected where known, for her breeding, benevolence, good sense, and
+heart," said John Effingham, while the party was driving from one
+house to the other. "Were you to go into most of the sets of this
+town, and mention Mrs. Hawker's name, not one person in ten would
+know there is such a being in their vicinity; the _pêle mêle_ of a
+migratory population keeping persons of her character and condition
+in life, quite out of view. The very persons who will prattle by the
+hour, of the establishments of Mrs. Peleg Pond, and Mrs. Jonah Twist,
+and Mrs. Abiram Wattles, people who first appeared on this island
+five or six years since, and, who having accumulated what to them are
+relatively large fortunes, have launched out into vulgar and
+uninstructed finery, would look with surprise at hearing Mrs. Hawker
+mentioned as one having any claims to social distinction. Her
+historical names are overshadowed in their minds by the parochial
+glories of certain local prodigies in the townships whence they
+emigrated; her manners would puzzle the comprehension of people whose
+imitation has not gone beyond the surface, and her polished and
+simple mind would find little sympathy among a class who seldom rise
+above a common-place sentiment without getting upon stilts."
+
+"Mrs. Hawker, then, is a lady," observed Sir George Templemore.
+
+"Mrs. Hawker is a lady, in every sense of the word; by position,
+education, manners, association, mind, fortune and birth. I do not
+know that we ever had more of her class than exist to-day, but
+certainly we once had them more prominent in society."
+
+"I suppose, sir," said Captain Truck, "that this Mrs. Hawker is of
+what is called the old school?"
+
+"Of a very ancient school, and one that is likely to continue, though
+it may not be generally attended."
+
+"I am afraid, Mr. John Effingham, that I shall be like a fish out of
+water in such a house. I can get along very well with your Mrs.
+Jarvis, and with the dear young lady in the other carriage; but the
+sort of woman you have described, will be apt to jam a plain mariner
+like myself. What in nature should I do, now, if she should ask me to
+dance a minuet?"
+
+"Dance it agreeably to the laws of nature," returned John Effingham,
+as the carriages stopped.
+
+A respectable, quiet, and an aged black admitted the party, though
+even he did not announce the visiters, while he held the door of the
+drawing-room open for them, with respectful attention. Mrs. Hawker
+arose, and advanced to meet Eve and her companions, and though she
+kissed the cousins affectionately, her reception of Mademoiselle
+Viefville was so simply polite as to convince the latter she was
+valued on account of her services. John Effingham, who was ten or
+fifteen years the junior of the old lady, gallantly kissed her hand,
+when he presented his two male companions. After paying the proper
+attention to the greatest stranger, Mrs. Hawker turned to Captain
+Truck and said--
+
+"This, then, is the gentleman to whose skill and courage you all owe
+so much--_we_ all owe so much, I might better have said--the
+commander of the Montauk?"
+
+"I have the honour of commanding that vessel, ma'am," returned
+Captain Truck, who was singularly awed by the dignified simplicity of
+his hostess, although her quiet, natural, and yet finished manner,
+which extended even to the intonation of the voice, and the smallest
+movement, were as unlike what he had expected as possible; "and with
+such passengers as she had last voyage I can only say, it is a pity
+that she is not better off for one to take care of her."
+
+"Your passengers give a different account of the matter, but, in
+order that I may judge impartially, do me the favour to take this
+chair, and let me learn a few of the particulars from yourself."
+
+Observing that Sir George Templemore had followed Eve to the other
+side of the room, Mrs. Hawker now resumed her seat, and, without
+neglecting any to attend to one in particular, or attending to one in
+a way to make him feel oppressed, she contrived, in a few minutes, to
+make the captain forget all about the minuet, and to feel much more
+at his ease than would have been the case with Mrs. Jarvis, in a
+month's intercourse.
+
+In the mean time, Eve had crossed the room to join a lady whose smile
+invited her to her side. This was a young, slightly framed female, of
+a pleasing countenance, but who would not have been particularly
+distinguished, in such a place, for personal charms. Still, her smile
+was sweet, her eyes were soft, and the expression of her face was
+what might almost be called illuminated As Sir George Templemore
+followed her, Eve mentioned his name to her acquaintance, whom she
+addressed as Mrs. Bloomfield.
+
+"You are bent on perpetrating further gaiety to-night," said the
+latter, glancing at the ball-dresses of the two cousins; "are you in
+the colours of the Houston faction, or in those of the Peabody."
+
+"Not in pea-green, certainly," returned Eve, laughing--"as you may
+see; but in simple white."
+
+"You intend then to be 'led a measure' at Mrs. Houston's. It were
+more suitable than among the other faction."
+
+"Is fashion, then, faction, in New-York?" inquired Sir George.
+
+"Fractions would be a better word, perhaps. But we have parties in
+almost every thing, in America; in politics, religion, temperance,
+speculations, and taste; why not in fashion?"
+
+"I fear we are not quite independent enough to form parties on such a
+subject," said Eve.
+
+"Perfectly well said, Miss Effingham; one must think a little
+originally, let it be ever so falsely, in order to get up a fashion.
+I fear we shall have to admit our insignificance on this point. You
+are a late arrival, Sir George Templemore?"
+
+"As lately as the commencement of this month; I had the honour of
+being a fellow-passenger with Mr. Effingham and his family."
+
+"In which voyage you suffered shipwreck, captivity, and famine, if
+half we hear be true."
+
+"Report has a little magnified our risks; we encountered some serious
+dangers, but nothing amounting to the sufferings you have mentioned."
+
+"Being a married woman, and having passed the crisis in which
+deception is not practised, I expect to hear truth again," said Mrs.
+Bloomfield, smiling. "I trust, however, you underwent enough to
+qualify you all for heroes and heroines, and shall content myself
+with knowing that you are here, safe and happy--if," she added,
+looking inquiringly at Eve, "one who has been educated abroad _can_
+be happy at home."
+
+"One educated abroad _may_ be happy at home, though possibly not in
+the modes most practised by the world," said Eve firmly.
+
+"Without an opera, without a court, almost without society!"
+
+"An opera would be desirable, I confess; of courts I know nothing,
+unmarried females being cyphers in Europe; and I hope better things
+than to think I shall be without society."
+
+"Unmarried females are considered cyphers too, here, provided there
+be enough of them with a good respectable digit at their head. I
+assure you no one quarrels with the cyphers under such circumstances.
+I think, Sir George Templemore, a town like this must be something of
+a paradox to you."
+
+"Might I venture to inquire the reason for this opinion!"
+
+"Merely because it is neither one thing nor another. Not a capital,
+nor yet merely a provincial place; with something more than commerce
+in its bosom, and yet with that something hidden under a bushel. A
+good deal more than Liverpool, and a good deal less than London.
+Better even than Edinburgh, in many respects, and worse than Wapping,
+in others."
+
+"You have been abroad, Mrs. Bloomfield?"
+
+"Not a foot out of my own country; scarcely a foot out of my own
+state. I have been at Lake George, the Falls, and the Mountain House;
+and, as one does not travel in a balloon, I saw some of the
+intermediate places. As for all else, I am obliged to go by report."
+
+"It is a pity Mrs. Bloomfield was not with us, this evening, at Mrs.
+Jarvis's," said Eve, laughing. "She might then have increased her
+knowledge, by listening to a few cantos from the epic of Mr. Dodge."
+
+"I have glanced at some of that author's wisdom," returned Mrs.
+Bloomfield, "but I soon found it was learning backwards. There is a
+never-failing rule, by which it is easy to arrive at a traveller's
+worth, in a negative sense, at least."
+
+"That is a rule which may be worth knowing," said the baronet, "as it
+would save much useless wear of the eyes."
+
+"When one betrays a profound ignorance of his own country, it is a
+fair presumption that he cannot be very acute in his observation of
+strangers. Mr. Dodge is one of these writers, and a single letter
+fully satisfied my curiosity. I fear, Miss Effingham, very inferior
+wares, in the way of manners, have been lately imported, in large
+quantities, into this country, as having the Tower mark on them."
+
+Eve laughed, but declared that Sir George Templemore was better
+qualified than herself to answer such a question.
+
+"We are said to be a people of facts, rather than a people of
+theories," continued Mrs. Bloomfield, without attending to the
+reference of the young lady, "and any coin that offers passes, until
+another that is better, arrives. It is a singular, but a very general
+mistake, I believe, of the people of this country, in supposing that
+they can exist under the present régime, when others would fail,
+because their opinions keep even pace with, or precede the actual
+condition of society; whereas, those who have thought and observed
+most on such subjects, agree in thinking the very reverse to be the
+case."
+
+"This would be a curious condition for a government so purely
+conventional," observed Sir George, with interest, "and it certainly
+is entirely opposed to the state of things all over Europe."
+
+"It is so, and yet there is no great mystery in it after all.
+Accident has liberated us from trammels that still fetter you. We are
+like a vehicle on the top of a hill, which, the moment it is pushed
+beyond the point of resistance, rolls down of itself, without the aid
+of horses. One may follow with the team, and hook on when it gets to
+the bottom, but there is no such thing as keeping company with it
+until it arrives there."
+
+"You will allow, then, that there is a bottom?'
+
+"There is a bottom to every thing--to good and bad; happiness and
+misery; hope, fear, faith and charity; even to a woman's mind, which
+I have sometimes fancied the most bottomless thing in nature. There
+may, therefore, well be a bottom even to the institutions of
+America."
+
+Sir George listened with the interest with which an Englishman of his
+class always endeavours to catch a concession that he fancies is
+about to favour his own political predilections, and he felt
+encouraged to push the subject further.
+
+"And you think the political machine is rolling downwards towards
+this bottom?" he said, with an interest in the answer that, living in
+the quiet and forgetfulness of his own home, he would have laughed at
+himself for entertaining. But our sensibilities become quickened by
+collision, and opposition is known even to create love.
+
+Mrs. Bloomfield was quick-witted, intelligent, cultivated and shrewd.
+She saw the motive at a glance, and, notwithstanding she saw and felt
+all its abuses, strongly attached to the governing principle of her
+country's social organization, as is almost universally the case with
+the strongest minds and most generous hearts of the nation, she was
+not disposed to let a stranger carry away a false impression of her
+sentiments on such a point.
+
+"Did you ever study logic, Sir George Templemore?" she asked, archly.
+
+"A little, though not enough I fear to influence my mode of
+reasoning, or even to leave me familiar with the terms."
+
+"Oh! I am not about to assail you with _sequiturs_ and _non
+sequiturs_ dialectics and all the mysteries of _Denk-Lehre,_ but
+simply to remind you there is such a thing as the bottom of a
+subject. When I tell you we are flying towards the bottom of our
+institutions, it is in the intellectual sense, and not, as you have
+erroneously imagined, in an unintellectual sense. I mean that we are
+getting to understand them, which, I fear, we did not absolutely do
+at the commencement of the 'experiment.'"
+
+"But I think you will admit, that as the civilization of the country
+advances, some material changes must occur; your people cannot always
+remain stationary; they must either go backwards or forward."
+
+"Up or down, if you will allow me to correct your phraseology. The
+civilization of the country, in one sense at least, is retrogressive,
+and the people, as they cannot go 'up,' betray a disposition to go
+'down.'"
+
+"You deal in enigmas, and I am afraid to think I understand you."
+
+"I mean, merely, that gallowses are fast disappearing, and that the
+people--_le peuple_ you will understand--begin to accept money. In
+both particulars, I think there is a sensible change for the worse,
+within my own recollection."
+
+Mrs. Bloomfield then changed her manner, and from using that light-
+hearted gaiety with which she often rendered her conversation
+_piquante_, and even occasionally brilliant, she became more grave
+and explicit. The subject soon turned to that of punishments, and few
+men could have reasoned more sensibly, justly or forcibly, on such a
+subject, than this slight and fragile-looking young woman. Without
+the least pedantry, with a beauty of language that the other sex
+seldom attains, and with a delicacy of discrimination, and a
+sentiment that were strictly feminine, she rendered a theme
+interesting, that, however important in itself, is forbidding,
+veiling all its odious and revolting features in the refinement and
+finesse of her own polished mind.
+
+Eve could have listened all night, and, at every syllable that fell
+from the lips of her friend, she felt a glow of triumph; for she was
+proud of letting an intelligent foreigner see that America did
+contain women worthy to be ranked with the best of other countries, a
+circumstance that they who merely frequented what is called the
+world, she thought might be reasonably justified in distrusting. In
+one respect, she even fancied Mrs. Bloomfield's knowledge and
+cleverness superior to those which she had so often admired in her
+own sex abroad. It was untrammelled, equally by the prejudices
+incident to a factitious condition of society, or by their reaction;
+two circumstances that often obscured the sense and candour of those
+to whom she had so often listened with pleasure in other countries.
+The singularly feminine tone, too, of all that Mrs. Bloomfield said
+or thought, while it lacked nothing in strength, added to the charm
+of her conversation, and increased the pleasure of those that
+listened.
+
+"Is the circle large to which Mrs. Hawker and her friends belong?"
+asked Sir George, as he assisted Eve and Grace to cloak, when they
+had taken leave. "A town which can boast of half-a-dozen such houses
+need not accuse itself of wanting society."
+
+"Ah! there is but one Mrs. Hawker in New-York," answered Grace, "and
+not many Mrs. Bloomfields in the world. It would be too much to say,
+we have even half-a-dozen such houses."
+
+"Have you not been struck with the admirable tone of this drawing-
+room," half whispered Eve. "It may want a little of that lofty ease
+that one sees among the better portion of the old _Princesses et
+Duchesses_, which is a relic of a school that, it is to be feared, is
+going out; but in its place there is a winning nature, with as much
+dignity as is necessary, and a truth that gives us confidence in the
+sincerity of those around us."
+
+"Upon my word, I think Mrs. Hawker quite fit for a Duchess."
+
+"You mean a _Duchesse_" said Eve, "and yet she is without the manner
+that we understand by such a word. Mrs. Hawker is a lady, and there
+can be no higher term."
+
+"She is a delightful old woman," cried John Effingham, "and if twenty
+years younger and disposed to change her condition, I should really
+be afraid to enter the house."
+
+"My dear sir," put in the captain, "I will make her Mrs. Truck to-
+morrow, and say nothing of years, if she could be content to take up
+with such an offer. Why, sir, she is no woman, but a saint in
+petticoats! I felt the whole time as if talking to my own mother, and
+as for ships, she knows more about them than I do!"
+
+The whole party laughed at the strength of the captain's admiration,
+and getting into the carriages proceeded to the last of the houses
+they intended visiting that night.
+
+Chapter V.
+
+  "So turns she every man the wrong side out; And never gives to
+  truth and virtue, that Which simpleness and merit purchaseth."
+
+  MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.
+
+Mrs. Houston was what is termed a fashionable woman in New-York. She,
+too, was of a family of local note, though of one much less elevated
+in the olden time than that of Mrs. Hawker. Still her claims were
+admitted by the most fastidious on such points, for a few do remain
+who think descent indisputable to gentility; and as her means were
+ample, and her tastes perhaps superior to those of most around her,
+she kept what was thought a house of better tone than common, even in
+the highest circle. Eve had but a slight acquaintance with her; but
+in Grace's eyes, Mrs. Houston's was the place of all others that she
+thought might make a favourable impression on her cousin. Her wish
+that this should prove to be the case was so strong, that, as they
+drove towards the door, she could not forbear from making an attempt
+to prepare Eve for what she was to meet.
+
+"Although Mrs. Houston has a very large house for New-York, and lives
+in a uniform style, you are not to expect ante-chambers, and vast
+suites of rooms, Eve," said Grace; "such as you have been accustomed
+to see abroad."
+
+"It is not necessary, my dear cousin, to enter a house of four or
+five windows in front, to see it is not a house of twenty or thirty.
+I should be very unreasonable to expect an Italian palazzo, or a
+Parisian hotel, in this good town."
+
+"We are not old enough for that yet, Eve; a hundred years hence,
+Mademoiselle Viefville, such things may exist here."
+
+"_Bien sûr. C'est naturel._"
+
+"A hundred years hence, as the world tends, Grace, they are not
+likely to exist any where, except as taverns, or hospitals, or
+manufactories. But what have we to do, coz, with a century ahead of
+us? young as we both are, we cannot hope to live that time."
+
+Grace would have been puzzled to account satisfactorily to herself,
+for the strong desire she felt that neither of her companions should
+expect to see such a house as their senses so plainly told them did
+not exist in the place; but her foot moved in the bottom of the
+carriage, for she was not half satisfied with her cousin's answer.
+
+"All I mean. Eve," she said, after a pause, "is, that one ought not
+to expect in a town as new as this, the improvements that one sees in
+an older state of society."
+
+"And have Mademoiselle Viefville, or I, ever been so weak as to
+suppose, that New-York is Paris, or Rome, or Vienna?"
+
+Grace was still less satisfied, for, unknown to herself, she _had_
+hoped that Mrs. Houston's ball might be quite equal to a ball in
+either of those ancient capitals; and she was now vexed that her
+cousin considered it so much a matter of course that it should not
+be. But there was no time for explanations, as the carriage now
+stopped.
+
+The noise, confusion, calling out, swearing, and rude clamour before
+the house of Mrs. Houston, said little for the out-door part of the
+arrangements. Coachmen are nowhere a particularly silent and civil
+class; but the uncouth European peasants, who have been preferred to
+the honours of the whip in New-York, to the usual feelings of
+competition and contention, added that particular feature of humility
+which is known to distinguish "the beggar on horseback." The imposing
+equipages of our party, however, had that effect on most of these
+rude brawlers, which a display of wealth is known to produce on the
+vulgar-minded; and the ladies got into the house, through a lane of
+coachmen, by yielding a little to a _chevau de frise_ of whips,
+without any serious calamity.
+
+"One hardly knows which is the most terrific," said Eve,
+involuntarily, as soon as the door closed on them--"the noise within,
+or the noise without!"
+
+This was spoken rapidly, and in French, to Mademoiselle Viefville,
+but Grace heard and understood it, and for the first time in her
+life, she perceived that Mrs. Houston's company was not composed of
+nightingales. The surprise is that the discovery should have come so
+late.
+
+"I am delighted at having got into this house," said Sir George, who,
+having thrown his cloak to his own servant, stood with the two other
+gentlemen waiting the descent of the ladies from the upper room,
+where the bad arrangements of the house compelled them to uncloak and
+to put aside their shawls, "as I am told it is the best house in town
+to see the other sex."
+
+"To _hear them_, would be nearer the truth, perhaps," returned John
+Effingham. "As for pretty women, one can hardly go amiss in New-York;
+and your ears now tell you, that they do not come into the world to
+be seen only."
+
+The baronet smiled, but he was too well bred to contradict or to
+assent. Mademoiselle Viefville, unconscious that she was violating
+the proprieties, walked into the rooms by herself, as soon as she
+descended, followed by Eve; but Grace shrank to the side of John
+Effingham, whose arm she took as a step necessary even to decorum.
+
+Mrs. Houston received her guests with ease and dignity. She was one
+of those females that the American world calls gay; in other words,
+she opened her own house to a very promiscuous society, ten or a
+dozen times in a winter, and accepted the greater part of the
+invitations she got to other people's. Still, in most other
+countries, as a fashionable woman, she would have been esteemed a
+model of devotion to the duties of a wife and a mother, for she paid
+a personal attention to her household, and had actually taught all
+her children the Lord's prayer, the creed, and the ten commandments.
+She attended church twice every Sunday, and only staid at home from
+the evening lectures, that the domestics might have the opportunity
+of going (which, by the way, they never did) in her stead. Feminine,
+well-mannered, rich, pretty, of a very positive social condition, and
+naturally kind-hearted and disposed to sociability, Mrs. Houston,
+supported by an indulgent husband, who so much loved to see people
+with the appearance of happiness, that he was not particular as to
+the means, had found no difficulty in rising to the pinnacle of
+fashion, and of having her name in the mouths of all those who find
+it necessary to talk of somebodies, in order that they may seem to be
+somebodies themselves. All this contributed to Mrs. Houston's
+happiness, or she fancied it did; and as every passion is known to
+increase by indulgence, she had insensibly gone on in her much-envied
+career until, as has just been said, she reached the summit.
+
+"These rooms are very crowded," said Sir George, glancing his eyes
+around two very pretty little narrow drawing-rooms, that were
+beautifully, not to say richly, furnished; "one wonders that the same
+contracted style of building should be so very general, in a town
+that increases as rapidly as this, and where fashion has no fixed
+abode, and land is so abundant."
+
+"Mrs. Bloomfield would tell you," said Eve, "that these houses are
+types of the social state of the country, in which no one is
+permitted to occupy more than his share of ground."
+
+"But there are reasonably large dwellings in the place. Mrs. Hawker
+has a good house, and your father's for instance, would be thought
+so, too, in London even; and yet I fancy you will agree with me in
+thinking that a good room is almost unknown in New-York."
+
+"I do agree with you, in this particular, certainly, for to meet with
+a good room, one must go into the houses built thirty years ago. We
+have inherited these snuggeries, however, England not having much to
+boast of in the way of houses."
+
+"In the way of town residences, I agree with you entirely, as a
+whole, though we have some capital exceptions. Still, I do not think
+we are quite as compact as this--do you not fancy the noise increased
+in consequence of its being so confined?"
+
+Eve laughed and shook her head quite positively.
+
+"What would it be if fairly let out!" she said. "But we will not
+waste the precious moments, but turn our eyes about us in quest of
+the _belles_. Grace, you who are so much at home, must be our
+cicerone, and tell us which are the idols we are to worship."
+
+"_Dîtes moi premierement; que veut dire une belle à New-York?_"
+demanded Mademoiselle Viefville. "_Apparemment, tout le monde est
+joli._"
+
+"A _belle_, Mademoiselle," returned John Effingham, "is not
+necessarily beautiful, the qualifications for the character, being
+various and a little contradictory. One may be a _belle_ by means of
+money, a tongue, an eye, a foot, teeth, a laugh, or any other
+separate feature, or grace; though no woman was ever yet a _belle_, I
+believe, by means of the head, considered collectively. But why deal
+in description, when the thing itself confronts us? The young lady
+standing directly before us, is a _belle_ of the most approved stamp
+and silvery tone. Is it not Miss Ring, Grace?"
+
+The answer was in the affirmative, and the eyes of the whole party
+turned towards the subject of this remark. The young lady in question
+was about twenty, rather tall for an American woman, not
+conspicuously handsome, but like most around her of delicate features
+and frame, and with such a _physique_, as, under proper training,
+would have rendered her the _beau idéal_ of feminine delicacy and
+gentleness. She had natural spirit, likewise, as appeared in her
+clear blue eye, and moreover she had the spirit to be a _belle_.
+
+Around this young creature were clustered no less than five young
+men, dressed in the height of the fashion, all of whom seemed to be
+entranced with the words that fell from her lips, and each of whom
+appeared anxious to say something clever in return. They all laughed,
+the lady most, and sometimes all spoke at once. Notwithstanding these
+outbreakings, Miss Ring did most of the talking, and once or twice,
+as a young man would gape after a most exhilarating show of
+merriment, and discover an inclination to retreat, she managed to
+recall him to his allegiance, by some remark particularly pertinent
+to himself, or his feelings.
+
+"_Qui est cette dame?_" asked Mademoiselle Viefville, very much as
+one would put a similar question, on seeing a man enter a church
+during service with his hat on.
+
+"_Elle est demoiselle_," returned Eve.
+
+"_Quelle horreur!_"
+
+"Nay, nay, Mademoiselle, I shall not allow you to set up France as
+immaculate on this point, neither--" said John Effingham, looking at
+the last speaker with an affected frown--"A young lady may have a
+tongue, and she may even speak to a young gentleman, and not be
+guilty of felony; although I will admit that five tongues are
+unnecessary, and that five listeners are more than sufficient, for
+the wisdom of twenty in petticoats."
+
+"_C'est une horreur!_"
+
+"I dare say Miss Ring would think it a greater horror to be obliged
+to pass an evening in a row of girls, unspoken to, except to be asked
+to dance, and admired only in the distance. But let us take seats on
+that sofa, and then we may go beyond the pantomime, and become
+partakers in the sentiment of the scene."
+
+Grace and Eve were now led off to dance, and the others did as John
+Effingham had suggested. In the eyes of the _belle_ and her admirers,
+they who had passed thirty were of no account, and our listeners
+succeeded in establishing themselves quietly within ear-shot--this
+was almost at duelling distance, too,--without at all interrupting
+the regular action of the piece. We extract a little of the dialogue,
+by way of giving a more dramatic representation of the scene.
+
+"Do you think the youngest Miss Danvers beautiful?" asked the
+_belle_, while her eye wandered in quest of a sixth gentleman to
+"entertain," as the phrase is. "In my opinion, she is absolutely the
+prettiest female in Mrs. Houston's rooms this night."
+
+The young men, one and all, protested against this judgment, and with
+perfect truth, for Miss Ring was too original to point out charms
+that every one could see.
+
+"They say it will not be a match between her and Mr. Egbert, after
+every body has supposed it settled so long. What is your opinion, Mr.
+Edson?"
+
+This timely question prevented Mr. Edson's retreat, for he had
+actually got so far in this important evolution, as to have gaped and
+turned his back. Recalled, as it were by the sound of the bugle, Mr.
+Edson was compelled to say something, a sore affliction to him
+always.
+
+"Oh! I'm quite of your way of thinking; they have certainly courted
+too long to think of marrying."
+
+"I detest long courtships; they must be perfect antidotes to love;
+are they not, Mr. Moreland?"
+
+A truant glance of Mr. Moreland's eye was rebuked by this appeal, and
+instead of looking for a place of refuge, he now merely looked
+sheepish. He, however, entirely agreed with the young lady, as the
+surer way of getting out of the difficulty.
+
+"Pray, Mr. Summerfield, how do you like the last Hajji--Miss Eve
+Effingham? To my notion, she is prettyish, though by no means as well
+as her cousin, Miss Van Cortlandt, who is really rather good-
+looking."
+
+As Eve and Grace were the two most truly lovely young women in the
+rooms, this opinion, as well as the loud tone in which it was given,
+startled Mademoiselle Viefville quite as much as the subjects that
+the belle had selected for discussion. She would have moved, as
+listening to a conversation that was not meant for their ears; but
+John Effingham quietly assured her that Miss Ring seldom spoke in
+company without intending as many persons as possible to hear her.
+
+"Miss Effingham is very plainly dressed for an only daughter"
+continued the young lady, "though that lace of her cousin's is real
+point! I'll engage it cost every cent of ten dollars a yard! They are
+both engaged to be married, I hear."
+
+"_Ciel!_" exclaimed Mademoiselle Viefville.
+
+"Oh! That is nothing," observed John Effingham coolly. "Wait a
+moment, and you'll hear that they have been privately married these
+six months, if, indeed, you hear no more."
+
+"Of course this is but an idle tale?" said Sir George Templemore with
+a concern, which, in despite of his good breeding, compelled him to
+put a question that, under other circumstances, would scarcely have
+been permissible.
+
+"As true as the gospel. But listen to the _bell_, it is _ringing_ for
+the good of the whole parish."
+
+"The affair between Miss Effingham and Mr. Morpeth, who knew her
+abroad, I understand is entirely broken off; some say the father
+objected to Mr. Morpeth's want of fortune; others that the lady was
+fickle, while some accuse the gentleman of the same vice. Don't you
+think it shocking to jilt, in either sex, Mr. Mosely?"
+
+The _retiring_ Mr. Mosely was drawn again within the circle, and was
+obliged to confess that he thought it was very shocking, in either
+sex, to jilt.
+
+"If I were a man," continued the _belle_, "I would never think of a
+young woman who had once jilted a lover. To my mind, it bespeaks a
+bad heart, and a woman with a bad heart cannot make a very amiable
+wife."
+
+"What an exceedingly clever creature she is," whispered Mr. Mosely to
+Mr. Moreland, and he now made up his mind to remain and be
+'entertained' some time longer.
+
+"I think poor Mr. Morpeth greatly to be pitied; for no man would be
+so silly as to be attentive seriously to a lady without
+encouragement. Encouragement is the _ne plus ultra_ of courtship; are
+you not of my opinion, Mr. Walworth?"
+
+Mr. Walworth was number five of the entertainees, and he did
+understand Latin, of which the young lady, though fond of using
+scraps, knew literally nothing. He smiled an assent, therefore, and
+the _belle_ felicitated herself in having 'entertained' _him_
+effectually; nor was she mistaken.
+
+"Indeed, they say Miss Effingham had several affairs of the heart,
+while in Europe, but it seems she was unfortunate in them all."
+
+"_Mais, ceci est trop fort! Je ne peux plus écouter._"
+
+"My dear Mademoiselle, compose yourself. The crisis is not yet
+arrived, by any means."
+
+"I understand she still corresponds with a German Baron, and an
+Italian Marquis, though both engagements are absolutely broken off.
+Some people say she walks into company alone, unsupported by any
+gentleman, by way of announcing a firm determination to remain single
+for life."
+
+A common exclamation from the young men proclaimed their
+disapprobation; and that night three of them actually repeated the
+thing, as a well established truth, and two of the three, failing of
+something better to talk about, also announced that Eve was actually
+engaged to be married.
+
+"There is something excessively indelicate in a young lady's moving
+about a room without having a gentleman's arm to lean on! I always
+feel as if such a person was out of her place, and ought to be in the
+kitchen."
+
+"But, Miss Ring, what well-bred person does it?" sputtered Mr.
+Moreland. "No one ever heard of such a thing in good society. 'Tis
+quite shocking! Altogether unprecedented."
+
+"It strikes me as being excessively coarse!"
+
+"Oh! manifestly; quite rustic!" exclaimed Mr. Edson.
+
+"What can possibly be more vulgar?" added Mr. Walworth.
+
+"I never heard of such a thing among the right sort!" said Mr.
+Mosely.
+
+"A young lady who can be so brazen as to come into a room without a
+gentleman's arm to lean on, is, in my judgment at least, but
+indifferently educated, Hajji or no Hajji. Mr. Edson, have you ever
+felt the tender passion? I know you have been desperately in love,
+once, at least; do describe to me some of the symptoms, in order that
+I may know when I am seriously attacked myself by the disease."
+
+"_Mais, ceci est ridicule! L'enfant s'est sauvée du Charenton de New-
+York._"
+
+"From the nursery rather, Mademoiselle; you perceive she does not yet
+know how to walk alone."
+
+Mr. Edson now protested that he was too stupid to feel a passion as
+intellectual as love, and that he was afraid he was destined by
+nature to remain as insensible as a block.
+
+"One never knows, Mr. Edson," said the young lady, encouragingly.
+"Several of my acquaintances, who thought themselves quite safe, have
+been seized suddenly, and, though none have actually died, more than
+one has been roughly treated, I assure you."
+
+Here the young men, one and all, protested that she was excessively
+clever. Then succeeded a pause, for Miss Ring was inviting, with her
+eyes, a number six to join the circle, her ambition being
+dissatisfied with five entertainees, as she saw that Miss Trumpet, a
+rival belle, had managed to get exactly that number, also, in the
+other room. All the gentlemen availed themselves of the cessation in
+wit to gape, and Mr. Edson took the occasion to remark to Mr.
+Summerfield that he understood "lots had been sold in seven hundredth
+street that morning, as high as two hundred dollars a lot."
+
+The _quadrille_ now ended, and Eve returned towards her friends. As
+she approached, the whole party compared her quiet, simple, feminine,
+and yet dignified air, with the restless, beau-catching, and worldly
+look of the belle, and wondered by what law of nature, or of fashion,
+the one could possibly become the subject of the other's comments.
+Eve never appeared better than that evening. Her dress had all the
+accuracy and finish of a Parisian toilette, being equally removed
+from exaggeration and neglect; and it was worn with the ease of one
+accustomed to be elegantly attired, and yet never decked with finery.
+Her step even was that of a lady, having neither the mincing tread of
+a Paris grisette, a manner that sometimes ascends even to the
+_bourgeoise_ the march of a cockneyess, nor the tiptoe swing of a
+_belle_; but it was the natural though regulated step, of a trained
+and delicate woman. Walk alone she could certainly, and always did,
+except on those occasions of ceremony that demanded a partner. Her
+countenance, across which an unworthy thought had never left a trace,
+was an index, too, to the purity, high principles and womanly self-
+respect that controlled all her acts, and, in these particulars was
+the very reverse of the feverish, half-hoydenish half-affected
+expression of that of Miss Ring.
+
+"They may say what they please," muttered Captain Truck, who had been
+a silent but wondering listener of all that passed; "she is worth as
+many of them as could be stowed in the Montauk's lower hold."
+
+Miss Ring perceiving Eve approach, was desirous of saying something
+to her, for there was an _éclat_ about a Hajji, after all, that
+rendered an acquaintance, or even an intimacy desirable, and she
+smiled and curtsied. Eve returned the salutation, but as she did not
+care to approach a group of six, of which no less than five were men,
+she continued to move towards her own party. This reserve compelled
+Miss Ring to advance a step or two, when Eve was obliged to stop
+Curtsying to her partner, she thanked him for his attention,
+relinquished his arm, and turned to meet the lady. At the same
+instant the five 'entertainees' escaped in a body, equally rejoiced
+at their release, and proud of their captivity.
+
+"I have been dying to come and speak to you, Miss Effingham,"
+commenced Miss Ring, "but these _five_ giants (she emphasized the
+word we have put in italics) so beset me, that escape was quite
+impossible. There ought to be a law that but one gentleman should
+speak to a lady at a time."
+
+"I thought there was such a law already;" said Eve, quietly.
+
+"You mean in good breeding; but no one thinks of those antiquated
+laws now-a-days. Are you beginning to be reconciled, a little, to
+your own country?"
+
+"It is not easy to effect a reconciliation where there has been no
+misunderstanding. I hope I have never quarrelled with my country, or
+my country with me."
+
+"Oh! it is not exactly that I mean. Cannot one need a reconciliation
+without a quarrel? What do you say to this, Mr. Edson?"
+
+Miss Ring having detected some symptoms of desertion in the gentleman
+addressed, had thrown in this question by way of recal; when turning
+to note its effect, she perceived that all of her _clientelle_ had
+escaped. A look of surprise and mortification and vexation it was not
+in her power to suppress, and then came one of horror.
+
+"How conspicuous we have made ourselves, and it is all my fault!" she
+said, for the first time that evening permitting her voice to fall to
+a becoming tone. 'Why, here we actually are, two ladies conversing
+together, and no gentleman near us!"
+
+"Is that being conspicuous?" asked Eve, with a simplicity that was
+entirely natural.
+
+"I am sure, Miss Effingham, one who has seen as much of society as
+you, can scarcely ask that question seriously. I do not think I have
+done so improper a thing, since I was fifteen; and, dear me! dear me!
+how to escape is the question. You have permitted your partner to go,
+and I do not see a gentleman of my acquaintance near us, to give me
+his arm!"
+
+"As your distress is occasioned by my company," said Eve, "it is
+fortunately in my power to relieve it." Thus saying, she quietly
+walked across the room, and took her seat next to Mademoiselle
+Viefville.
+
+Miss Ring held up her hands in amazement, and then fortunately
+perceiving one of the truants gaping at no great distance, she
+beckoned him to her side.
+
+"Have the goodness to give me your arm, Mr. Summerfield," she said,
+"I am dying to get out of this unpleasantly conspicuous situation;
+but you are the first gentleman that has approached me this
+twelvemonth. I would not for the world do so brazen a thing as Miss
+Effingham has just achieved; would you believe it, she positively
+went from this spot to her seat, quite alone!"
+
+"The Hajjis are privileged."
+
+"They make themselves so. But every body knows how bold and unwomanly
+the French females are. One could wish, notwithstanding, that our own
+people would not import their audacious usages into this country."
+
+"It is a thousand pities that Mr. Clay, in his compromise, neglected
+to make an exception against that article. A tariff on impudence
+would not be at all sectional."
+
+"It might interfere with the manufacture at home, notwithstanding,"
+said John Effingham; for the lungs were strong, and the rooms of Mrs.
+Houston so small, that little was said that evening, which was not
+heard by any who chose to listen. But Miss Ring never listened, it
+being no part of the vocation of a _belle_ to perform that inferior
+office, and sustained by the protecting arm of Mr. Summerfield, she
+advanced more boldly into the crowd, where she soon contrived to
+catch another group of even six "entertainees." As for Mr.
+Summerfield, he lived a twelvemonth on the reputation of the
+exceedingly clever thing he had just uttered.
+
+"There come Ned and Aristabulus," said John Effingham, as soon as the
+tones of Miss Ring's voice were lost in the din of fifty others,
+pitched to the same key. "_A present, Mademoiselle, je vais nous
+venger_."
+
+As John Effingham uttered this, he took Captain Truck by the arm, and
+went to meet his cousin and the land agent. The latter he soon
+separated from Mr. Effingham, and with this new recruit, he managed
+to get so near to Miss Ring as to attract her attention. Although
+fifty, John Effingham was known to be a bachelor, well connected, and
+to have twenty thousand a year. In addition, he was well preserved
+and singularly handsome, besides having an air that set all
+pretending gentility at defiance. These were qualities that no
+_belle_ despised, and ill-assorted matches were, moreover, just
+coming into fashion in New-York. Miss Ring had an intuitive knowledge
+that he wished to speak to her, and she was not slow in offering the
+opportunity. The superior tone of John Effingham, his caustic wit and
+knowledge of the world, dispersed the five _beaux_, incontinently;
+these persons having a natural antipathy to every one of the
+qualities named.
+
+"I hope you will permit me to presume on an acquaintance that extends
+back as far as your grandfather, Miss Ring," he said, "to present two
+very intimate friends; Mr. Bragg and Mr. Truck; gentlemen who will
+well reward the acquaintance."
+
+The lady bowed graciously, for it was a matter of conscience with her
+to receive every man with a smile. She was still too much in awe of
+the master of ceremonies to open her batteries of attack, but John
+Effingham soon relieved her, by affecting a desire to speak to
+another lady. The _belle_ had now the two strangers to herself, and
+having heard that the Effinghams had an Englishman of condition as a
+companion, who was travelling under a false name, she fancied herself
+very clever in detecting him at once in the person of Aristabulus;
+while by the aid of a lively imagination, she thought Mr. Truck was
+his travelling Mentor, and a divine of the church of England. The
+incognito she was too well bred to hint at, though she wished both
+the gentlemen to perceive that a _belle_ was not to be mystified in
+this easy manner. Indeed, she was rather sensitive on the subject of
+her readiness in recognizing a man of fashion under any
+circumstances, and to let this be known was her very first object, as
+soon as she was relieved from the presence of John Effingham.
+
+"You must be struck with the unsophisticated nature and the extreme
+simplicity of our society, Mr. Bragg," she said, looking at him
+significantly; "we are very conscious it is not what it might be, but
+do you not think it pretty well for beginners?"
+
+Now, Mr. Bragg had an entire consciousness that he had never seen any
+society that deserved the name before this very night, but he was
+supported in giving his opinions by that secret sense of his
+qualifications to fill any station, which formed so conspicuous a
+trait in his character, and his answer was given with an _àplomb_
+that would have added weight to the opinion of the veriest _élégant_
+of the _Chaussée d'Antin._
+
+"It is indeed a good deal unsophisticated," he said, "and so simple
+that any body can understand it. I find but a single fault with this
+entertainment, which is, in all else, the perfection of elegance in
+my eyes, and that is, that there is too little room to swing the legs
+in dancing."
+
+"Indeed!--I did not expect that--is it not the best usage of Europe,
+now, to bring a quadrille into the very minimum of space?"
+
+"Quite the contrary, Miss. All good dancing requires evolutions. The
+dancing Dervishes, for instance would occupy quite as much space as
+both of these sets that are walking before us, and I believe it is
+now generally admitted that all good dancing needs room for the
+legs."
+
+"We necessarily get a little behind the fashions, in this distant
+country. Pray, sir, is it usual for ladies to walk alone in society?"
+
+"Woman was not made to move through life alone, Miss," returned
+Aristabulus with a sentimental glance of the eye, for he never let a
+good opportunity for preferment slip through his fingers, and,
+failing of Miss Effingham, or Miss Van Cortlandt, of whose estates
+and connections he had some pretty accurate notions, it struck him
+Miss Ring might, possibly, be a very eligible connection, as all was
+grist that came to his mill; "this I believe, is an admitted truth."
+
+"By life you mean matrimony, I suppose."
+
+"Yes, Miss, a man always means matrimony, when he speaks to a young
+lady."
+
+This rather disconcerted Miss Ring, who picked her nosegay, for she
+was not accustomed to hear gentlemen talk to ladies of matrimony, but
+ladies to talk to gentlemen. Recovering her self-possession, however,
+she said with a promptitude that, did the school to which she
+belonged infinite credit,--
+
+"You speak, sir, like one having experience."
+
+"Certainly, Miss; I have been in love ever since I was ten years old;
+I may say I was born in love, and hope to die in love."
+
+This a little out-Heroded Herod, but the _belle_ was not a person to
+be easily daunted on such a subject. She smiled graciously,
+therefore, and continued the conversation with renewed spirit.
+
+"You travelled gentleman get odd notions," she said, "and more
+particularly on such subjects. I always feel afraid to discuss them
+with foreigners, though with my own countrymen I have few reserves.
+Pray, Mr. Truck, are you satisfied with America?--Do you find it the
+country you expected to see?"
+
+"Certainly, marm;" for so they pronounced this word in the river, and
+the captain cherished his first impressions; "when we sailed from
+Portsmouth. I expected that the first land we should make would be
+the Highlands of Navesink; and, although a little disappointed, I
+have had the satisfaction of laying eyes on it at last."
+
+"Disappointment, I fear, is the usual fate of those who come from the
+other side. Is this dwelling of Mrs. Houston's equal to the residence
+of an English nobleman, Mr. Bragg?"
+
+"Considerably better, Miss, especially in the way of republican
+comfort."
+
+Miss Ring, like all _belles_, detested the word republican, their
+vocation being clearly to exclusion, and she pouted a little
+affectedly.
+
+"I should distrust the quality of such comfort, sir," she said, with
+point; "but, are the rooms at all comparable with the rooms in Apsley
+House, for instance?"
+
+"My dear Miss, Apsley House is a toll-gate lodge, compared to this
+mansion! I doubt if there be a dwelling in all England half as
+magnificent--indeed, I cannot imagine any thing more brilliant and
+rich."
+
+Aristabulus was not a man to do things by halves, and it was a point
+of honour with him to know something of every thing. It is true he no
+more could tell where Apsley House is, or whether it was a tavern or
+a gaol, than he knew half the other things on which he delivered
+oracular opinions; but when it became necessary to speak, he was not
+apt to balk conversation from any ignorance, real or affected. The
+opinion he had just given, it is true, had a little surpassed Miss
+Ring's hopes; for the next thing, in her ambition to being a _belle_,
+and of "entertaining" gentlemen, was to fancy she was running her
+brilliant career in an orbit of fashion that lay parallel to that of
+the "nobility and gentry" of Great Britain.
+
+"Well, this surpasses my hopes," she said, "although I was aware we
+are nearly on a level with the more improved tastes of Europe: still,
+I thought we were a little inferior to that part of the world, yet."
+
+"Inferior, Miss! That is a word that should never pass your lips; you
+are inferior to nothing, whether in Europe or America, Asia or
+Africa."
+
+As Miss Ring had been accustomed to do most of the flattering
+herself, as behoveth a _belle_, she began to be disconcerted with the
+directness of the compliments of Aristabulus, who was disposed to
+'make hay while the sun shines;' and she turned, in a little
+confusion, to the captain, by way of relief; we say confusion, for
+the young lady, although so liable to be misunderstood, was not
+actually impudent, but merely deceived in the relations of things;
+or, in other words, by some confusion in usages, she had hitherto
+permitted herself to do that in society, which female performers
+sometimes do on the stage; enact the part of a man.
+
+"You should tell Mr. Bragg, sir," she said, with an appealing look at
+the captain, "that flattery is a dangerous vice, and one altogether
+unsuited to a Christian."
+
+"It is, indeed, marm, and one that I never indulge in. No one under
+my orders, can accuse me of flattery."
+
+By 'under orders,' Miss Ring understood curates and deacons; for she
+was aware the church of England had clerical distinctions of this
+sort, that are unknown in America.
+
+"I hope, sir, you do not intend to quit this country without
+favouring us with a discourse."
+
+"Not I, marm--I am discoursing pretty much from morning till night,
+when among my own people, though I own that this conversing rather
+puts me out of my reckoning. Let me get my foot on the planks I love,
+with an attentive audience, and a good cigar in my mouth, and I'll
+hold forth with any bishop in the universe."
+
+"A cigar!" exclaimed Miss Ring, in surprise. "Do gentlemen of your
+profession use cigars when on duty!"
+
+"Does a parson take his fees? Why, Miss, there is not a man among us,
+who does not smoke from morning till night."
+
+"Surely not on Sundays!"
+
+"Two for one, on those days, more than on any other."
+
+"And your people, sir, what do they do, all this time?'
+
+"Why, marm, most of them chew; and those that don't, if they cannot
+find a pipe, have a dull time of it. For my part, I shall hardly
+relish the good place itself, if cigars are prohibited."
+
+Miss Ring was surprised; but she had heard that the English clergy
+were more free than our own, and then she had been accustomed to
+think every thing English of the purest water. A little reflection
+reconciled her to the innovation; and the next day, at a dinner
+party, she was heard defending the usage as a practice that had a
+precedent in the ancient incense of the altar. At the moment,
+however, she was dying to impart her discoveries to others; and she
+kindly proposed to the captain and Aristabulus to introduce them to
+some of her acquaintances, as they must find it dull, being
+strangers, to know no one. Introductions and cigars were the
+captain's hobbies, and he accepted the offer with joy, Aristabulus
+uniting cordially in the proposition, as, he fancied he had a right,
+under the Constitution of the United States of America, to be
+introduced to every human being with whom he came in contact.
+
+It is scarcely necessary to say how much the party with whom the two
+neophytes in fashion had come, enjoyed all this, though they
+concealed their amusement under the calm exterior of people of the
+world. From Mr. Effingham the mystification was carefully concealed
+by his cousin, as the former would have felt it due to Mrs. Houston,
+a well-meaning, but silly woman, to put an end to it. Eve and Grace
+laughed, as merry girls would be apt to laugh, at such an occurrence,
+and they danced the remainder of the evening with lighter hearts than
+ever. At one, the company retired in the same informal manner, as
+respects announcements and the calling of carriages, as that in which
+they had entered; most to lay their drowsy heads on their pillows,
+and Miss Ring to ponder over the superior manners of a polished young
+Englishman, and to dream of the fragrance of a sermon that was
+preserved in tobacco.
+
+Chapter VI.
+
+  "Marry, our play is the most lamentable Comedy, and most cruel
+  death of Pyramus and Thisby."
+
+  PETER QUINCE.
+
+Our task in the way of describing town society will soon be ended.
+The gentlemen of the Effingham family had been invited to meet Sir
+George Templemore at one or two dinners, to which the latter had been
+invited in consequence of his letters, most of which were connected
+with his pecuniary arrangements. As one of these entertainments was
+like all the rest of the same character, a very brief account of it
+will suffice to let the reader into the secret of the excellence of
+the genus.
+
+A well-spread board, excellent viands, highly respectable cookery,
+and delicious wines, were every where met. Two rows of men clad in
+dark dresses, a solitary female at the head of the table, or, if
+fortunate, with a supporter of the same sex near her, invariably
+composed the _convives_. The exaggerations of a province were seen
+ludicrously in one particular custom. The host, or perhaps it might
+have been the hostess, had been told there should be a contrast
+between the duller light of the reception-room, and the brilliancy of
+the table, and John Effingham actually hit his legs against a stool,
+in floundering through the obscurity of the first drawing-room he
+entered on one of the occasions in question.
+
+When seated at table, the first great duty of restauration performed,
+the conversation turned on the prices of lots, speculations in towns,
+or the currency. After this came the regular assay of wines, during
+which it was easy to fancy the master of the house a dealer, for he
+usually sat either sucking a syphon or flourishing a cork-screw. The
+discourse would now have done credit to the annual meeting and dinner
+of the German exporters, assembled at Rudesheim to bid for the
+article.
+
+Sir George was certainly on the point of forming a very erroneous
+judgment concerning the country, when Mr. Effingham extricated him
+from this set, and introduced him properly into his own. Here,
+indeed, while there was much to strike a European as peculiar, and
+even provincial, the young baronet fared much better. He met with the
+same quality of table, relieved by an intelligence that was always
+respectable, and a manliness of tone which, if not unmixed, had the
+great merit of a simplicity and nature that are not always found in
+more sophisticated circles. The occasional incongruities struck them
+all, more than the positive general faults and Sir George Templemore
+did justice to the truth, by admitting frankly, the danger he had
+been in of forming a too hasty opinion.
+
+All this time, which occupied a month, the young baronet got to be
+more and more intimate in Hudson Square, Eve gradually becoming more
+frank and unreserved with him, as she grew sensible that he had
+abandoned his hopes of success with herself, and Grace gradually more
+cautious and timid, as she became conscious of his power to please,
+and the interest he took in herself.
+
+It might have been three days after the ball at Mrs. Houston's that
+most of the family was engaged to look in on a Mrs. Legend, a lady of
+what was called a literary turn, Sir George having been asked to make
+one of their party. Aristabulus was already returned to his duty in
+the country, where we shall shortly have occasion to join him, but an
+invitation had been sent to Mr. Truck, under the general, erroneous
+impression of his real character.
+
+Taste, whether in the arts, literature, or any thing else, is a
+natural impulse, like love. It is true both may be cultivated and
+heightened by circumstances, but the impulses must be voluntary, and
+the flow of feeling, or of soul, as it has become a law to style it,
+is not to be forced, or commanded to come and go at will. This is the
+reason that all premeditated enjoyments connected with the intellect,
+are apt to baffle expectations, and why academies, literary clubs,
+coteries and dinners are commonly dull. It is true that a body of
+clever people may be brought together, and, if left to their own
+impulses, the characters of their mind will show themselves; wit will
+flash, and thought will answer thought spontaneously; but every
+effort to make the stupid agreeable, by giving a direction of a
+pretending intellectual nature to their efforts, is only rendering
+dullness more conspicuous by exhibiting it in contrast with what it
+ought to be to be clever, as a bad picture is rendered the more
+conspicuous by an elaborate and gorgeous frame.
+
+The latter was the fate of most of Mrs. Legend's literary evenings,
+at which it was thought an illustration to understand even one
+foreign language. But, it was known that Eve was skilled in most of
+the European tongues, and, the good lady, not feeling that such
+accomplishments are chiefly useful as a means, looked about her in
+order to collect a set, among whom our heroine might find some one
+with whom to converse in each of her dialects. Little was said about
+it, it is true, but great efforts were made to cause this evening to
+be memorable in the annals of _conversazioni_.
+
+In carrying out this scheme, nearly all the wits, writers, artists
+and _literati_, as the most incorrigible members of the book clubs
+were styled, in New-York, were pressingly invited to be present.
+Aristabulus had contrived to earn such a reputation for the captain,
+on the night of the ball, that he was universally called a man of
+letters, and an article had actually appeared in one of the papers,
+speaking of the literary merits of the "Hon. and Rev. Mr. Truck, a
+gentleman travelling in our country, from whose liberality and just
+views, an account of our society was to be expected, that should, at
+last, do justice to our national character." With such expectations,
+then, every true American and Americaness, was expected to be at his
+or her post, for the solemn occasion. It was a rally of literature,
+in defence of the institutions--no, not of the institutions, for they
+were left to take care of themselves--but of the social character of
+the community.
+
+Alas! it is easier to feel high aspirations on such subjects, in a
+provincial town, than to succeed; for merely calling a place an
+Emporium, is very far from giving it the independence, high tone,
+condensed intelligence and tastes of a capital. Poor Mrs. Legend,
+desirous of having all the tongues duly represented, was obliged to
+invite certain dealers in gin from Holland, a German linen merchant
+from Saxony, an Italian _Cavaliero_, who amused himself in selling
+beads, and a Spanish master, who was born in Portugal, all of whom
+had just one requisite for conversation in their respective
+languages, and no more. But such assemblies were convened in Paris,
+and why not in New-York?
+
+We shall not stop to dwell on the awful sensations with which Mrs.
+Legend heard the first ring at her door, on the eventful night in
+question. It was the precursor of the entrance of Miss Annual, as
+regular a devotee of letters as ever conned a primer. The meeting was
+sentimental and affectionate. Before either had time, however, to
+disburthen her mind of one half of its prepared phrases, ring upon
+ring proclaimed more company, and the rooms were soon as much
+sprinkled with talent, as a modern novel with jests. Among those who
+came first, appeared all the foreign corps, for the refreshments
+entered as something into the account with them; every blue of the
+place, whose social position in the least entitled her to be seen in
+such a house, Mrs. Legend belonging quite positively to good society.
+
+The scene that succeeded was very characteristic. A professed genius
+does nothing like other people, except in cases that require a
+display of talents. In all minor matters he, or she, is _sui
+generis_; for sentiment is in constant ebullition in their souls;
+this being what is meant by the flow of that part of the human
+system.
+
+We might here very well adopt the Homeric method, and call the roll
+of heroes and heroines, in what the French would term a _catalogue
+raisonnée_; but our limits compel us to be less ambitions, and to
+adopt a simpler mode of communicating facts. Among the ladies who now
+figured in the drawing-room of Mrs. Legend, besides Miss Annual, were
+Miss Monthly, Mrs. Economy, S.R.P., Marion, Longinus, Julietta,
+Herodotus, D.O.V.E., and Mrs. Demonstration; besides many others of
+less note; together with at least a dozen female Hajjis, whose claims
+to appear in such society were pretty much dependent on the fact,
+that having seen pictures and statues abroad, they necessarily must
+have the means of talking of them at home. The list of men was still
+more formidable in numbers, if not in talents. At its head stood
+Steadfast Dodge, Esquire, whose fame as a male Hajji had so far
+swollen since Mrs Jarvis's _réunion_, that, for the first time in his
+life, he now entered one of the better houses of his own country.
+Then there were the authors of "Lapis Lazuli," "The Aunts," "The
+Reformed," "The Conformed," "The Transformed," and "The Deformed;"
+with the editors of "The Hebdomad," "The Night Cap," "The Chrysalis,"
+"The Real Maggot," and "The Seek no Further;" as also, "Junius,"
+"Junius Brutus," "Lucius Junius Brutus," "Captain Kant," "Florio,"
+the 'Author of the History of Billy Linkum Tweedle', the celebrated
+Pottawattamie Prophet, "Single Rhyme," a genius who had prudently
+rested his fame in verse, on a couplet composed of one line; besides
+divers _amateurs_ and _connoisseurs_, Hajjis, who _must_ be men of
+talents, as they had acquired all they knew, very much as American
+Eclipse gained his laurels on the turf; that is to say, by a free use
+of the whip and spur.
+
+As Mrs. Legend sailed about her rooms amid such a circle, her mind
+expanded, her thoughts diffused themselves among her guests on the
+principle of Animal Magnetism, and her heart was melting with the
+tender sympathies of congenial tastes. She felt herself to be at the
+head of American talents, and, in the secret recesses of her reason,
+she determined that, did even the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah menace
+her native town, as some evil disposed persons had dared to insinuate
+might one day be the case, here was enough to save it from
+destruction.
+
+It was just as the mistress of the mansion had come to this consoling
+conclusion, that the party from Hudson Square rang. As few of her
+guests came in carriages, Mrs. Legend, who heard the rolling of
+wheels, felt persuaded that the lion of the night was now indeed at
+hand; and with a view to a proper reception, she requested the
+company to divide itself into two lines, in order that he might
+enter, as it were, between lanes of genius.
+
+It may be necessary to explain, at this point of our narrative, that
+John Effingham was perfectly aware of the error which existed in
+relation to the real character of Captain Truck, wherein he thought
+great injustice had been done the honest seaman; and, the old man
+intending to sail for London next morning, had persuaded him to
+accept this invitation, in order that the public mind might be
+disabused in a matter of so much importance. With a view that this
+might be done naturally and without fuss, however, he did not explain
+the mistake to his nautical friend, believing it most probable that
+this could be better done incidentally, as it were, in the course of
+the evening; and feeling certain of the force of that wholesome
+apothegm, which says that "truth is powerful and must prevail" "If
+this be so," added John Effingham, in his explanations to Eve, "there
+can be no place where the sacred quality will be so likely to assert
+itself, as in a galaxy of geniuses, whose distinctive characteristic
+is 'an intuitive perception of things in their real colours."
+
+When the door of Mrs. Legend's drawing-room opened, in the usual
+noiseless manner, Mademoiselle Viefville, who led the way, was
+startled at finding herself in the precise situation of one who is
+condemned to run the gauntlet. Fortunately, she caught a glimpse of
+Mrs. Legend, posted at the other end of the proud array, inviting
+her, with smiles, to approach. The invitation had been to a
+"_literary fête_," and Mademoiselle Viefville was too much of a
+Frenchwoman to be totally disconcerted at a little scenic effect on
+the occasion of a _fête_ of any sort. Supposing she was now a witness
+of an American ceremony for the first time, for the want of
+_representation_ in the country had been rather a subject of
+animadversion with her, she advanced steadily towards the mistress of
+the house, bestowing smile for smile, this being a part of the
+_programme_ at which a _Parisienne_ was not easily outdone. Eve
+followed, as usual, _sola_; Grace came next; then Sir George; then
+John Effingham; the captain bringing up the rear. There had been a
+friendly contest, for the precedency, between the two last, each
+desiring to yield it to the other on the score of merit; but the
+captain prevailed, by declaring "that he was navigating an unknown
+sea, and that he could do nothing wiser than to sail in the wake of
+so good a pilot as Mr. John Effingham."
+
+As Hajjis of approved experience, the persons who led the advance in
+this little procession, were subjects of a proper attention and
+respect; but as the admiration of mere vulgar travelling would in
+itself be vulgar, care was taken to reserve the condensed feeling of
+the company for the celebrated English writer and wit, who was known
+to bring up the rear. This was not a common house, in which dollars
+had place, or _belles_ rioted, but the temple of genius; and every
+one felt an ardent desire to manifest a proper homage to the
+abilities of the established foreign writer, that should be in exact
+proportion to their indifference to the twenty thousand a year of
+John Effingham, and to the nearly equal amount of Eve's expectations.
+
+The personal appearance of the honest tar was well adapted to the
+character he was thus called on so unexpectedly to support. His hair
+had long been getting grey, but the intense anxiety of the chase, of
+the wreck, and of his other recent adventures, had rapidly, but
+effectually, increased this mark of time; and his head was now nearly
+as white as snow. The hale, fresh, red of his features, which was in
+truth the result of exposure, might very well pass for the tint of
+port, and his tread, which had always a little of the quarterdeck
+swing about it, might quite easily be mistaken by a tyro, for the
+human frame staggering under a load of learning. Unfortunately for
+those who dislike mystifications, the captain had consulted John
+Effingham on the subject of the toilette, and that kind and indulgent
+friend had suggested the propriety of appearing in black small-
+clothes for the occasion, a costume that he often wore himself of an
+evening. Reality, in this instance, then, did not disappoint
+expectation, and the burst of applause with which the captain was
+received, was accompanied by a general murmur in commendation of the
+admirable manner in which he "looked the character."
+
+"What a Byronic head," whispered the author of "The Transformed" to
+D.O.V.E.; "and was there ever such a curl of the lip, before, to
+mortal man!"
+
+The truth is, the captain had thrust his tobacco into "an aside," as
+a monkey is known to _empocher_ a spare nut, or a lump of sugar.
+
+"Do you think him Byronic?--To my eye, the cast of his head is
+Shaksperian, rather; though I confess there is a little of Milton
+about the forehead!"
+
+"Pray," said Miss Annual, to Lucius Junius Brutus, "which is commonly
+thought to be the best of his works; that on a--a--a,--or that on e--
+e--e?"
+
+Now, so it happened, that not a soul in the room, but the lion
+himself, had any idea what books he had written, and he knew only of
+some fifteen or twenty log-books. It was generally understood, that
+he was a great English writer, and this was more than sufficient.
+
+"I believe the world generally prefers the a--a--a," said Lucius
+Junius Brutus; "but the few give a decided preference to the e--e--
+e----"
+
+"Oh! out of all question preferable!" exclaimed half a dozen, in
+hearing.
+
+"With what a classical modesty he pays his compliments to Mrs.
+Legend," observed "S. R. P."--"One can always tell a man of real
+genius, by his _tenu_!"
+
+"He is so English!" cried Florio. "Ah! _they_ are the only people,
+after all!"
+
+This Florio was one of those geniuses who sigh most for the things
+that they least possess.
+
+By this time Captain Truck had got through with listening to the
+compliments of Mrs. Legend, when he, was seized upon by a circle of
+rabid literati, who badgered him with questions concerning his
+opinions, notions, inferences, experiences, associations, sensations,
+sentiments and intentions, in a way that soon threw the old man into
+a profuse perspiration. Fifty times did he wish, from the bottom of
+his soul, that soul which the crowd around him fancied dwelt so nigh
+in the clouds, that he was seated quietly by the side of Mrs. Hawker,
+who, he mentally swore, was worth all the _literati_ in Christendom.
+But fate had decreed otherwise, and we shall leave him to his
+fortune, for a time, and return to our heroine and her party.
+
+As soon as Mrs. Legend had got through with her introductory
+compliments to the captain, she sought Eve and Grace, with a
+consciousness that a few civilities were now their due.
+
+"I fear, Miss Effingham, after the elaborate _soirées_ of the
+literary circles in Paris, you will find our _réunions_ of the same
+sort, a little dull; and yet I flatter myself with having assembled
+most of the talents of New-York on this memorable occasion, to do
+honour to your friend. Are you acquainted with many of the company?"
+
+Now, Eve had never seen nor ever heard of a single being in the room,
+with the exception of Mr. Dodge and her own party, before this night,
+although most of them had been so laboriously employed in puffing
+each other into celebrity, for many weary years; and, as for
+elaborate _soirées_, she thought she had never seen one half as
+elaborate as this of Mrs. Legend's. As it would not very well do,
+however, to express all this in words, she civilly desired the lady
+to point out to her some of the most distinguished of the company.
+
+"With the greatest pleasure, Miss Effingham," Mrs. Legend taking
+pride in dwelling on the merits of her guests.--"This heavy, grand-
+looking personage, in whose air one sees refinement and modesty at a
+glance, is Captain Kant, the editor of one of our most decidedly
+pious newspapers. His mind is distinguished for its intuitive
+perception of all that is delicate, reserved and finished in the
+intellectual world, while, in opposition to this quality, which is
+almost feminine, his character is just as remarkable for its
+unflinching love of truth. He was never known to publish a falsehood,
+and of his foreign correspondence, in particular, he is so
+exceedingly careful, that he assures me he has every word of it
+written under his own eye."
+
+"On the subject of his religious scruples," added John Effingham, "he
+is so fastidiously exact, that I hear he 'says grace' over every
+thing that goes _from_ his press, and 'returns thanks' for every
+thing that comes _to_ it."
+
+"You know him, Mr. Effingham, by this remark? Is he not, truly, a man
+of a vocation?"
+
+"That, indeed, he is, ma'am. He may be succinctly said to have a
+newspaper mind, as he reduces every thing in nature or art to news,
+and commonly imparts to it so much of his own peculiar character,
+that it loses all identity with the subjects to which it originally
+belonged. One scarcely knows which to admire most about this man, the
+atmospheric transparency of his motives, for he is so disinterested
+as seldom even to think of paying for a dinner when travelling, and
+yet so conscientious as always to say something obliging of the
+tavern as soon as he gets home--his rigid regard to facts; or the
+exquisite refinement and delicacy that he imparts to every thing he
+touches. Over all this, too, he throws a beautiful halo of morality
+and religion, never even prevaricating in the hottest discussion,
+unless with the unction of a saint!"
+
+"Do you happen to know Florio?" asked Mrs. Legend, a little
+distrusting John Effingham's account of Captain Kant.
+
+"If I do, it must indeed be by accident. What are his chief
+characteristics, ma'am?"
+
+"Sentiment, pathos, delicacy, and all in rhyme, too. You no doubt,
+have heard of his triumph over Lord Byron, Miss Effingham?"
+
+Eve was obliged to confess that it was new to her.
+
+"Why, Byron wrote an ode to Greece, commencing with 'The Isles of
+Greece! the Isles of Greece!' a very feeble line, as any one will
+see, for it contained a useless and an unmeaning repetition."
+
+"And you might add vulgar, too, Mrs. Legend," said John Effingham,
+"since it made a palpable allusion to all those vulgar incidents that
+associate themselves in the mind, with these said common-place isles.
+The arts, philosophy, poetry, eloquence, and even old Homer, are
+brought unpleasantly to one's recollection, by such an indiscreet
+invocation."
+
+"So Florio thought, and, by way of letting the world perceive the
+essential difference between the base and the pure coin, _he_ wrote
+an ode on England, which commenced as such an ode _should_!"
+
+"Do you happen to recollect any of it, ma'am?"
+
+"Only the first line, which I greatly regret, as the rhyme is
+Florio's chief merit. But this line is, of itself, sufficient to
+immortalize a man."
+
+"Do not keep us in torment, dear Mrs. Legend, but let us have it, of
+heaven's sake!"
+
+"It began in this sublime strain, sir--'Beyond the wave!--Beyond the
+wave!' Now, Miss Effingham, that is what _I_ call poetry!"
+
+"And well you may, ma'am," returned the gentleman, who perceived Eve
+could scarce refrain from breaking out in a very unsentimental
+manner--"So much pathos."
+
+"And so sententious and flowing!"
+
+"Condensing a journey of three thousand miles, as it might be, into
+three words, and a note of admiration. I trust it was printed with a
+note of admiration, Mrs. Legend?"
+
+"Yes, sir, with two--one behind each wave--and such waves, Mr.
+Effingham!"
+
+"Indeed, ma'am, you may say so. One really gets a grand idea of them,
+England lying beyond each."
+
+"So much expressed in so few syllables!"
+
+"I think I see every shoal, current, ripple, rock, island, and whale,
+between Sandy Hook and the Land's End."
+
+"He hints at an epic."
+
+"Pray God he may execute one. Let him make haste, too, or he may get
+'behind the age,' 'behind the age.'"
+
+Here the lady was called away to receive a guest.
+
+"Cousin Jack!"
+
+"Eve Effingham?"
+
+"Do you not sometimes fear offending?"
+
+"Not a woman who begins with expressing her admiration of such a
+sublime thing as this. You are safe with such a person, any where
+short of a tweak of the nose."
+
+"_Mais, tout ceci est bien drôle!_"
+
+"You never were more mistaken in your life, Mademoiselle; every body
+here looks upon it as a matter of life and death."
+
+The new guest was Mr. Pindar, one of those careless, unsentimental
+fellows, that occasionally throw off an ode that passes through
+Christendom, as dollars are known to pass from China to Norway, and
+yet, who never fancied spectacles necessary to his appearance,
+solemnity to his face, nor _soirées_ to his renown. After quitting
+Mrs. Legend, he approached Eve, to whom he was slightly known, and
+accosted her.
+
+"This is the region of taste, Miss Effingham," he said, with a shrug
+of the jaw, if such a member can shrug; "and I do not wonder at
+finding you here."
+
+He then chatted pleasantly a moment, with the party, and passed on,
+giving an ominous gape, as he drew nearer to the _oi polloi_ of
+literature. A moment after appeared Mr. Gray, a man who needed
+nothing but taste in the public, and the encouragement that would
+follow such a taste, to stand at, or certainty near, the head of the
+poets of our own time. He, too, looked shily at the galaxy, and took
+refuge in a corner. Mr. Pith followed; a man whose caustic wit needs
+only a sphere for its exercise, manners to portray, and a society
+with strong points about it to illustrate, in order to enrol his name
+high on the catalogue of satirists. Another ring announced Mr. Fun, a
+writer of exquisite humour, and of finished periods, but who, having
+perpetrated a little too much sentiment, was instantly seized upon by
+all the ultra ladies who were addicted to the same taste in that way,
+in the room.
+
+These persons came late, like those who had already been too often
+dosed in the same way, to be impatient of repetitions. The three
+first soon got together in a corner, and Eve fancied they were
+laughing at the rest of the company; whereas, in fact, they were
+merely laughing at a bad joke of their own; their quick perception of
+the ludicrous having pointed out a hundred odd combinations and
+absurdities, that would have escaped duller minds.
+
+"Who, in the name of the twelve Caesars, has Mrs. Legend got to
+lionize, yonder, with the white summit and the dark base?' asked the
+writer of odes.
+
+"Some English pamphleteer, by what I can learn," answered he of
+satire; "some fellow who has achieved a pert review, or written a
+Minerva Pressism, and who now flourishes like a bay tree among us. A
+modern Horace, or a Juvenal on his travels."
+
+"Fun is well badgered," observed Mr. Gray.--"Do you not see that Miss
+Annual, Miss Monthly, and that young alphabet D.O.V.E., have got him
+within the circle of their petticoats, where he will be martyred on a
+sigh?"
+
+"He casts tanging looks this way; he wishes you to go to his rescue,
+Pith."
+
+"I!--Let him take his fill of sentiment! I am no homoepathist in such
+matters. Large doses in quick succession will soonest work a cure.
+Here comes the lion and he breaks loose from his cage, like a beast
+that has been poked up with sticks."
+
+"Good evening, gentlemen," said Captain Truck, wiping his face
+intensely, and who having made his escape from a throng of admirers,
+took refuge in the first port that offered. "You seem to be enjoying
+yourselves here in a rational and agreeable way. Quite cool and
+refreshing in this corner."
+
+"And yet we have no doubt that both our reason and our amusement will
+receive a large increase from the addition of your society, sir,"
+returned Mr. Pith.--"Do us the favour to take a seat, I beg of you,
+and rest yourself."
+
+"With all my heart, gentlemen; for, to own the truth, these ladies
+make warm work about a stranger. I have just got out of what I call a
+category."
+
+"You appear to have escaped with life, sir," observed Pindar, taking
+a cool survey of the other's person.
+
+"Yes, thank God, I have done that, and it is pretty much all,"
+answered the captain, wiping his face. "I served in the French war--
+Truxtun's war, as we call it--and I had a touch with the English in
+the privateer trade, between twelve and fifteen; and here, quite
+lately, I was in an encounter with the savage Arabs down on the coast
+of Africa; and I account them all as so much snow-balling, compared
+with the yard-arm and yard-arm work of this very night. I wonder if
+it is permitted to try a cigar at these conversation-onies,
+gentlemen?"
+
+"I believe it is, sir," returned Pindar, coolly. "Shall I help you to
+a light?"
+
+"Oh! Mr. Truck!" cried Mrs. Legend, following the chafed animal to
+his corner, as one would pursue any other runaway, "instinct has
+brought you into this good company. You are, now, in the very focus
+of American talents."
+
+"Having just escaped from the focus of American talons," whispered
+Pith.
+
+"I must be permitted to introduce you myself. Mr. Truck, Mr. Pindar--
+Mr. Pith--- Mr. Gray--gentlemen, you must be so happy to be
+acquainted, being, as it were, engaged in the same pursuits!"
+
+The captain rose and shook each of the gentlemen cordially by the
+hand, for he had, at least, the consolation of a great many
+introductions that night. Mrs. Legend disappeared to say something to
+some other prodigy.
+
+"Happy to meet you, gentlemen," said the captain "In what trade do
+you sail?"
+
+"By whatever name we may call it," answered Mr. Pindar--"we can
+scarcely be said to go before the wind."
+
+"Not in the Injee business, then, or the monsoons would keep the
+stun'sails set, at least."
+
+"No, sir.--But yonder is Mr. Moccasin, who has lately set up,
+_secundum artem_, in the Indian business, having written two novels
+in that way already, and begun a third."
+
+"Are you all regularly employed, gentlemen?"
+
+"As regularly as inspiration points," said Mr. Pith. "Men of our
+occupation must make fair weather of it, or we had better be doing
+nothing."
+
+"So I often tell my owners, but 'go ahead' is the order. When I was a
+youngster, a ship remained in port for a fair wind; but, now, she
+goes to work and makes one. The world seems to get young, as I get
+old."
+
+"This is a _rum litterateur_," Gray whispered to Pindar.
+
+"It is an obvious mystification," was the answer; "poor Mrs. Legend
+has picked up some straggling porpoise, and converted him, by a touch
+of her magical wand, into a Boanerges of literature. The thing is as
+clear as day, for the worthy fellow smells of tar and cigar smoke. I
+perceive that Mr. Effingham is laughing out of the corner of his
+eyes, and will step across the room, and get the truth, in a minute."
+
+The rogue was as good as his word, and was soon back again, and
+contrived to let his friends understand the real state of the case. A
+knowledge of the captain's true character encouraged this trio in the
+benevolent purpose of aiding the honest old seaman in his wish to
+smoke, and Pith managed to give him a lighted paper, without becoming
+an open accessary to the plot.
+
+"Will you take a cigar yourself, sir," said the captain, offering his
+box to Mr. Pindar.
+
+"I thank you, Mr. Truck, I never smoke, but am a profound admirer of
+the flavour. Let me entreat you to begin as soon as possible."
+
+Thus encouraged, Captain Truck drew two or three whiffs, when the
+rooms were immediately filled with the fragrance of a real Havana. At
+the first discovery, the whole literary pack went off on the scent.
+As for Mr. Fun, he managed to profit by the agitation that followed,
+in order to escape to the three wags in the corner, who were enjoying
+the scene, with the gravity of so many dervishes.
+
+"As I live," cried Lucius Junius Brutus, "there is the author of a--
+a--a--actually smoking a cigar!--How excessively _piquant!_"
+
+"Do my eyes deceive me, or is not that the writer of e--e--e--
+fumigating us all!" whispered Miss Annual.
+
+"Nay, this cannot certainly be right," put in Florio, with a
+dogmatical manner. "All the periodicals agree that smoking is
+ungenteel in England."
+
+"You never were more mistaken, dear Florio," replied D.O.V.E. in a
+cooing tone. "The very last novel of society has a chapter in which
+the hero and heroine smoke in the declaration scene."
+
+"Do they, indeed!--That alters the case. Really, one would not wish
+to get behind so great a nation, nor yet go much before it. Pray,
+Captain Kant, what do your friends in Canada say; is, or is not
+smoking permitted in good society there? the Canadians must, at
+least, be ahead of us."
+
+"Not at all, sir," returned the editor in his softest tones; "it is
+revolutionary and jacobinical."
+
+But the ladies prevailed, and, by a process that is rather peculiar
+to what may be called a "credulous" state of society, they carried
+the day. This process was simply to make one fiction authority for
+another. The fact that smoking was now carried so far in England,
+that the clergy actually used cigars in the pulpits, was affirmed on
+the authority of Mr. Truck himself, and, coupled with his present
+occupation, the point was deemed to be settled. Even Florio yielded,
+and his plastic mind soon saw a thousand beauties in the usage, that
+had hitherto escaped it. All the literati drew round the captain in a
+circle, to enjoy the spectacle, though the honest old mariner
+contrived to throw out such volumes of vapour as to keep them at a
+safe distance. His four demure-looking neighbours got behind the
+barrier of smoke, where they deemed themselves entrenched against the
+assaults of sentimental petticoats, for a time, at least.
+
+"Pray, Mr. Truck," inquired S.R.P., "is it commonly thought in the
+English literary circles, that Byron was a developement of
+Shakspeare, or Shakspeare a shadowing forth of Byron?"
+
+"Both, marm," said the captain, with a coolness that would have done
+credit to Aristabulus, for he had been fairly badgered into
+impudence, profiting by the occasion to knock the ashes off his
+cigar; "all incline to the first opinion, and most to the last."
+
+"What finesse!" murmured one. "How delicate!" whispered a second. "A
+dignified reserve!" ejaculated a third. "So English!" exclaimed
+Florio.
+
+"Do you think, Mr. Truck," asked D.O.V.E. "that the profane songs of
+Little have more pathos than the sacred songs of Moore; or that the
+sacred songs of Moore have more sentiment than the profane songs of
+Little?"
+
+"A good deal of both, marm, and something to spare. I think there is
+little in one, and more in the other."
+
+"Pray, sir," said J.R.P., "do you pronounce the name of Byron's lady-
+love, Guy-kee-oh-_ly_, or, Gwy-ky-o-_lee_?"
+
+"That depends on how the wind is. If on shore, I am apt to say 'oh-
+lee;' and if off shore, 'oh-lie.'"
+
+"That's capital!" cried Florio, in an extasy of admiration. "What man
+in this country could have said as crack a thing as that?"
+
+"Indeed it is very witty," added Miss Monthly--"what does it mean?"
+
+"Mean! More than is seen or felt by common minds. Ah! the English are
+truly a great nation!--How delightfully he smokes!"
+
+"I think he is much the most interesting man we have had out here,"
+observed Miss Annual, "since the last bust of Scott!"
+
+"Ask him, dear D.O.V.E.," whispered Julietta, who was timid, from the
+circumstance of never having published, "which he thinks the most
+ecstatic feeling, hope or despair?"
+
+The question was put by the more experienced lady, according to
+request, though she first said, in a hurried tone, to her youthful
+sister--"you can have felt but little, child, or you would know that
+it is despair, as a matter of course."
+
+The honest captain, however, did not treat the matter so lightly, for
+he improved the opportunity to light a fresh cigar, throwing the
+still smoking stump into Mrs. Legend's grate, through a lane of
+literati, as he afterwards boasted, as coolly as he could have thrown
+it overboard, under other circumstances. Luckily for his reputation
+for sentiment, he mistook "ecstatic," a word he had never heard
+before, for "erratic;" and recollecting sundry roving maniacs that he
+had seen, he answered promptly--
+
+"Despair, out and out."
+
+"I knew it," said one.
+
+"It's in nature," added a second.
+
+"All can feel its truth," rejoined a third.
+
+"This point may now be set down as established," cried Florio, "and I
+hope no more will be said about it."
+
+"This is encouragement to the searchers after truth," put in Captain
+Kant.
+
+"Pray, Hon. and Rev. Mr. Truck," asked Lucius Junius Brutus, at the
+joint suggestion of Junius Brutus and Brutus, "does the Princess
+Victoria smoke?"
+
+"If she did not, sir, where would be the use in being a princess. I
+suppose you know that all the tobacco seized in England, after a
+deduction to informers, goes to the crown."
+
+"I object to this usage," remarked Captain Kant, "as irreligious,
+French, and tending to _sans-culotteism_. I am willing to admit of
+this distinguished instance as an exception; but on all other
+grounds, I shall maintain that it savours of infidelity to smoke. The
+Prussian government, much the best of our times, never smokes."
+
+"This man thinks he has a monopoly of the puffing, himself," Pindar
+whispered into the captain's ear; "whiff away, my dear sir, and
+you'll soon throw him into the shade."
+
+The captain winked, drew out his box, lighted another cigar, and, by
+way of reply to the envious remark, he put one in each corner of his
+mouth, and soon had both in full blast, a state in which he kept them
+for near a minute.
+
+"This is the very picturesque of social enjoyment," exclaimed Florio,
+holding up both hands in a glow of rapture. "It is absolutely
+Homeric, in the way of usages! Ah! the English are a great nation!"
+
+"I should like to know excessively if there was really such a person
+as Baron Mun-chaw-sen?" said Julietta, gathering courage from the
+success of her last question.
+
+"There was, Miss," returned the captain, through his teeth, and
+nodding his head in the affirmative. "A regular traveller, that; and
+one who knew him well, swore to me that he hadn't related one half of
+what befel him."
+
+"How very delightful to learn this from the highest quarter!"
+exclaimed Miss Monthly.
+
+"Is Gatty (Goethe) really dead?" inquired Longinus, "or, is the
+account we have had to that effect, merely a metaphysical apotheosis
+of his mighty soul?"
+
+"Dead, marm--stone dead--dead as a door-nail," returned the captain,
+who saw a relief in killing as many as possible.
+
+"You have been in France, Mr. Truck, beyond question?" observed
+Lucius Junius Brutus, in the way one puts a question.
+
+"France!--I was in France before I was ten years old. I know every
+foot of the coast, from Havre de Grace to Marseilles."
+
+"Will you then have the goodness to explain to us whether the soul of
+Chat-_to_-bri-_ong_ is more expanded than his reason, or his reason
+more expanded than his soul?"
+
+Captain Truck had a very tolerable notion of Baron Munchausen and of
+his particular merits; but Chateaubriant was a writer of whom he knew
+nothing. After pondering a moment, and feeling persuaded that a
+confession of ignorance might undo him; for the old man had got to be
+influenced by the atmosphere of the place; he answered coolly--
+
+"Oh! Chat-_to_-bri-_ong_, is it you mean?--As whole-souled a fellow
+as I know. All soul, sir, and lots of reason, besides."
+
+"How simple and unaffected!"
+
+"Crack!" exclaimed Florio.
+
+"A thorough Jacobin!" growled Captain Kant, who was always offended
+when any one but himself took liberties with the truth.
+
+Here the four wags in the corner observed that head went to head in
+the crowd, and that the rear rank of the company began to disappear,
+while Mrs. Legend was in evident distress. In a few minutes, all the
+Romans were off; Florio soon after vanished, grating his teeth in a
+poetical frenzy; and even Captain Kant, albeit so used to look truth
+in the face, beat a retreat. The alphabet followed, and even the
+Annual and the Monthly retired, with leave-takings so solemn and
+precise, that poor Mrs. Legend was in total despair.
+
+Eve, foreseeing something unpleasant, had gone away first, and, in a
+few minutes, Mr. Dodge, who had been very active in the crowd,
+whispering and gesticulating, made his bow also. The envy of this man
+had, in fact, become so intolerable, that he had let the cat out of
+the bag. No one now remained but the party entrenched behind the
+smoke, and the mistress of the house. Pindar solemnly proposed to the
+captain that they should go and enjoy an oyster-supper, in company;
+and, the proposal being cordially accepted, they rose in a body, to
+take leave.
+
+"A most delightful evening, Mrs. Legend," said Pindar, with perfect
+truth, "much the pleasantest I ever passed in a house, where one
+passes so many that are agreeable."
+
+"I cannot properly express my thanks for the obligation you have
+conferred by making me acquainted with Mr. Truck," added Gray. "I
+shall cultivate it as far as in my power, for a more capital fellow
+never breathed."
+
+"Really, Mrs. Legend, this has been a Byronic night!" observed Pith,
+as he made his bow. "I shall long remember it, and I think it
+deserves to be commemorated in verse"
+
+Fun endeavoured to look sympathetic and sentimental, though the
+spirit within could scarcely refrain from grinning in Mrs. Legend's
+face. He stammered out a few compliments, however, and disappeared.
+
+"Well, good night, marm," said Captain Truck, offering his hand
+cordially. "This has been a pleasant evening, altogether, though it
+was warm work at first. If you like ships, I should be glad to show
+you the Montauk's cabins when we get back; and if you ever think of
+Europe, let me recommend the London line as none of the worst. We'll
+try to make you comfortable, and trust to me to choose a state-room,
+a thing I am experienced in."
+
+Not one of the wags laughed until they were fairly confronted with
+the oysters. Then, indeed, they burst out into a general and long fit
+of exuberant merriment, returning to it, between the courses from the
+kitchen, like the _refrain_ of a song. Captain Truck, who was
+uncommonly well satisfied with himself, did not understand the
+meaning of all this boyishness, but he has often declared since, that
+a heartier or a funnier set of fellows he never fell in with, than
+his four companions proved to be that night.
+
+As for the literary _soirée_, the most profound silence has been
+maintained concerning it, neither of the wits there assembled having
+seen fit to celebrate it in rhyme, and Florio having actually torn up
+an impromptu for the occasion, that he had been all the previous day
+writing.
+
+Chapter VII.
+
+  "There is a history in all men's lives, Figuring the nature of the
+  times deceased, The which observed, a man may prophesy With a near
+  aim, of the main chance of things, As yet not come to life."
+
+  KING HENRY VI
+
+The following morning the baronet breakfasted in Hudson Square. While
+at table, little was said concerning the events of the past night,
+though sundry smiles were exchanged, as eye met eye, and the
+recollection of the mystification returned. Grace alone looked grave,
+for she had been accustomed to consider Mrs. Legend a very
+discriminating person, and she had even hoped that most of those who
+usually figured in her rooms, were really the clever persons they
+laid claim to be.
+
+The morning was devoted to looking at the quarter of the town which
+is devoted to business, a party having been made for that express
+purpose under the auspices of John Effingham. As the weather was very
+cold, although the distances were not great, the carriages were
+ordered, and they all set off about noon.
+
+Grace had given up expecting a look of admiration from Eve in behalf
+of any of the lions of New-York, her cousin having found it necessary
+to tell her, that, in a comparative sense at least, little was to be
+said in behalf of these provincial wonders. Even Mademoiselle
+Viefville, now that the freshness, of her feelings were abated, had
+dropped quietly down into a natural way of speaking of these things;
+and Grace, who was quick-witted, soon discovered that when she did
+make any allusions to similar objects in Europe, it was always to
+those that existed in some country town. A silent convention existed,
+therefore, to speak no more on such subjects; or if any thing was
+said, it arose incidentally and as inseparable from the regular
+thread of the discourse.
+
+When in Wall street, the carriages stopped and the gentlemen
+alighted. The severity of the weather kept the ladies in the chariot,
+where Grace endeavoured to explain things as well as she could to her
+companions.
+
+"What are all these people running after, so intently?" inquired
+Mademoiselle Viefville, the conversation being in French, but which
+we shall render freely into English, for the sake of the general
+reader.
+
+"Dollars, I believe, Mademoiselle; am I right, Grace?"
+
+"I believe you are," returned Grace, laughing, "though I know little
+more of this part of the town than yourself."
+
+"_Quelle foule_! Is that building filled with dollars, into which the
+gentlemen are now entering? Its steps are crowded."
+
+"That is the _Bourse_, Mademoiselle, and it ought to be well lined,
+by the manner in which some who frequent it live. Cousin Jack and Sir
+George are going into the crowd, I see."
+
+We will leave the ladies in their seats, a few minutes, and accompany
+the gentlemen on their way into the Exchange.
+
+"I shall now show you, Sir George Templemore," said John Effingham,
+"what is peculiar to this country, and what, if properly improved, it
+is truly worth a journey across the ocean to see. You have been at
+the Royal Exchange in London, and at the _Bourse_ of Paris, but you
+have never witnessed a scene like that which I am about to introduce
+you to. In Paris, you have beheld the unpleasant spectacle of women
+gambling publicly in the funds; but it was in driblets, compared to
+what you will see here."
+
+While speaking, John Effingham led the way upstairs into the office
+of one of the most considerable auctioneers. The walls were lined
+with maps, some representing houses, some lots, some streets, some
+entire towns.
+
+"This is the focus of what Aristabulus Bragg calls the town trade,"
+said John Effingham, when fairly confronted with all these wonders.
+"Here, then, you may suit yourself with any species of real estate
+that heart can desire. If a villa is wanted, there are a dozen. Of
+farms, a hundred are in market; that is merely half-a-dozen streets;
+and here are towns, of dimensions and value to suit purchasers."
+
+"Explain this; it exceeds comprehension."
+
+"It is simply what it professes to be. Mr. Hammer, do us the favour
+to step this way. Are you selling to-day?"
+
+"Not much, sir. Only a hundred or two lots on this island, and some
+six or eight farms, with one western village."
+
+"Can you tell us the history of this particular piece of property,
+Mr. Hammer?"
+
+"With great pleasure, Mr. Effingham; we know you to have means, and
+hope you may be induced to purchase. This was the farm of old Volkert
+Van Brunt, five years since, off of which he and his family had made
+a livelihood for more than a century, by selling milk. Two years
+since, the sons sold it to Peter Feeler for a hundred an acre; or for
+the total sum of five thousand dollars. The next spring Mr. Feeler
+sold it to John Search, as keen a one as we have, for twenty-five
+thousand. Search sold it, at private sale, to Nathan Rise for fifty
+thousand, the next week, and Rise had parted with it, to a company,
+before the purchase, for a hundred and twelve thousand cash. The map
+ought to be taken down, for it is now eight months since we sold it
+out in lots, at auction, for the gross sum of three hundred thousand
+dollars. As we have received our commission, we look at that land as
+out of the market, for a time."
+
+"Have you other property, sir, that affords the same wonderful
+history of a rapid advance in value?" asked the baronet.
+
+"These walls are covered with maps of estates in the same
+predicament. Some have risen two or three thousand per cent. within
+five years, and some only a few hundred. There is no calculating in
+the matter, for it is all fancy."
+
+"And on what is this enormous increase in value founded?--Does the
+town extend to these fields?"
+
+"It goes much farther, sir; that is to say, on paper. In the way of
+houses, it is still some miles short of them. A good deal depends on
+what you _call_ a thing, in this market. Now, if old Volkert Van
+Brunt's property had been still called a farm, it would have brought
+a farm price; but, as soon as it was surveyed into lots and mapped--"
+
+"Mapped!"
+
+"Yes, sir; brought into visible lines, with feet and inches. As soon
+as it was properly mapped, it rose to its just value. We have a good
+deal of the bottom of the sea that brings fair prices in consequence
+of being well mapped."
+
+Here the gentlemen expressed their sense of the auctioneer's
+politeness, and retired.
+
+"We will now go into the sales-room," said John Effingham, "where you
+shall judge of the spirit, or _energy_, as it is termed, which, at
+this moment, actuates this great nation."
+
+Descending, they entered a crowd, where scores were eagerly bidding
+against each other, in the fearful delusion of growing rich by
+pushing a fancied value to a point still higher. One was purchasing
+ragged rocks, another the bottom of rivers, a third a bog, and all on
+the credit of maps. Our two observers remained some time silent
+spectators of the scene.
+
+"When I first entered that room," said John Effingham, as they left
+the place, "it appeared to me to be filled with maniacs. Now, that I
+have been in it several times, the impression is not much altered."
+
+"And all those persons are hazarding their means of subsistence on
+the imaginary estimate mentioned by the auctioneer?"
+
+"They are gambling as recklessly as he who places his substance on
+the cast of the die. So completely has the mania seized every one,
+that the obvious truth, a truth which is as apparent as any other law
+of nature, that nothing can be sustained without a foundation, is
+completely overlooked, and he who should now proclaim, in this
+building, principles that bitter experience will cause every man to
+feel, within the next few years, would be happy if he escaped being
+stoned. I have witnessed many similar excesses in the way of
+speculations; but never an instance as gross, as wide-spread, and as
+alarming as this."
+
+"You apprehend serious consequences, then, from the reaction?"
+
+"In that particular, we are better off than older nations, the youth
+and real stamina of the country averting much of the danger; but I
+anticipate a terrible blow, and that the day is not remote when this
+town will awake to a sense of its illusion. What you see here is but
+a small part of the extravagance that exists, for it pervades the
+whole community, in one shape or another. Extravagant issues of
+paper-money, inconsiderate credits that commence in Europe; and
+extend throughout the land, and false notions as to the value of
+their possessions, in men who five years since had nothing, has
+completely destroyed the usual balance of things, and money has got
+to be so completely the end of life, that few think of it as a means.
+The history of the world, probably, cannot furnish a parallel
+instance, of an extensive country that is so absolutely under this
+malign influence, as is the fact with our own at this present
+instant. All principles are swallowed up in the absorbing desire for
+gain; national honour, permanent security, the ordinary rules of
+society, law, the constitution, and every thing that is usually so
+dear to men, are forgotten, or are perverted, in order to sustain
+this unnatural condition of things."
+
+"This is not only extraordinary, but it is fearful!"
+
+"It is both. The entire community is in the situation of a man who is
+in the incipient stages of an exhilarating intoxication, and who
+keeps pouring down glass after glass, in the idle notion that he is
+merely sustaining nature in her ordinary functions. This wide-spread
+infatuation extends from the coast to the extremest frontiers of the
+west; for, while there is a justifiable foundation for a good deal of
+this fancied prosperity, the true is so interwoven with the false,
+that none but the most observant can draw the distinction, and, as
+usual, the false predominates."
+
+"By your account, sir, the tulip mania of Holland was trifling
+compared to this?"
+
+"That was the same in principle as our own, but insignificant in
+extent. Could I lead you through these streets, and let you into the
+secret of the interests, hopes, infatuations and follies that prevail
+in the human breast, you, as a calm spectator, would be astonished at
+the manner in which your own species can be deluded. But let us move,
+and something may still occur to offer an example."
+
+"Mr. Effingham--I beg pardon--Mr. Effingham," said a very
+gentlemanly-looking merchant, who was walking about the hall of the
+exchange, "what do you think now of our French quarrel?"
+
+"I have told you, Mr. Bale, all I have to say on that subject. When
+in France, I wrote you that it was not the intention of the French
+government to comply with the treaty; you have since seen this
+opinion justified in the result; you have the declaration of the
+French minister of state, that, without an apology from this
+government, the money will not be paid; and I have given it as my
+opinion, that the vane on yonder steeple will not turn more readily
+than all this policy will be abandoned, should any thing occur in
+Europe to render it necessary, or could the French ministry believe
+it possible for this country to fight for a principle. These are my
+opinions, in all their phases, and you may compare them with facts
+and judge for yourself."
+
+"It is all General Jackson, sir--all that monster's doings. But for
+his message, Mr. Effingham, we should have had the money long ago."
+
+"But for his message, or some equally decided step, Mr. Bale, you
+would never have it."
+
+"Ah, my dear sir, I know your intentions, but I fear you are
+prejudiced against that excellent man, the King of France! Prejudice,
+Mr. Effingham, is a sad innovator on justice."
+
+Here Mr. Bale shook his head, laughed, and disappeared in the crowd,
+perfectly satisfied that John Effingham was a prejudiced man, and
+that he, himself, was only liberal and just.
+
+"Now, that is a man who wants for neither abilities nor honesty, and
+yet he permits his interests, and the influence of this very
+speculating mania, to overshadow all his sense of right, facts plain
+as noon-day, and the only principles that can rule a country in
+safety."
+
+"He apprehends war, and has no desire to believe even facts, so long
+as they serve to increase the danger."
+
+"Precisely so; for even prudence gets to be a perverted quality, when
+men are living under an infatuation like that which now exists. These
+men live like the fool who says there is no death."
+
+Here the gentlemen rejoined the ladies, and the carriages drove
+through a succession of narrow and crooked streets, that were lined
+with warehouses filled with the products of the civilized world.
+
+"Very much of all this is a part of the same lamentable illusion,"
+said John Effingham, as the carriages made their way slowly through
+the encumbered streets. "The man who sells his inland lots at a
+profit, secured by credit, fancies himself enriched, and he extends
+his manner of living in proportion; the boy from the country becomes
+a merchant, or what is here called a merchant, and obtains a credit
+in Europe a hundred times exceeding his means, and caters to these
+fancied wants; and thus is every avenue of society thronged with
+adventurers, the ephemera of the same wide-spread spirit of reckless
+folly. Millions in value pass out of these streets, that go to feed
+the vanity of those who fancy themselves wealthy, because they hold
+some ideal pledges for the payment of advances in price like those
+mentioned by the auctioneer, and which have some such security for
+the eventual payment, as one can find in _calling_ a thing, that is
+really worth a dollar, worth a hundred."
+
+"Are the effects of this state of things apparent in your ordinary
+associations?"
+
+"In every thing. The desire to grow suddenly rich has seized on all
+classes. Even women and clergymen are infected, and we exist under
+the active control of the most corrupting of all influences--'the
+love of money.' I should despair of the country altogether, did I not
+feel certain that the disease is too violent to last, and entertain a
+hope that the season of calm reflection and of repentance, that is to
+follow, will be in proportion to its causes."
+
+After taking this view of the town, the party returned to Hudson
+Square, where the baronet dined, it being his intention to go to
+Washington on the following day. The leave-taking in the evening was
+kind and friendly; Mr. Effingham, who had a sincere regard for his
+late fellow-traveller, cordially inviting him to visit him in the
+mountains in June.
+
+As Sir George took his leave, the bells began to ring for a fire. In
+New-York one gets so accustomed to these alarms, that near an hour
+had passed before any of the Effingham family began to reflect on the
+long continuance of the cries. A servant was then sent out to
+ascertain the reason, and his report made the matter more serious
+than usual.
+
+We believe that, in the frequency of these calamities, the question
+lies between Constantinople and New-York. It is a common occurrence
+for twenty or thirty buildings to be burnt down, in the latter place,
+and for the residents of the same ward to remain in ignorance of the
+circumstance, until enlightened on the fact by the daily prints; the
+constant repetition of the alarms hardening the ear and the feelings
+against the appeal. A fire of greater extent than common, had
+occurred only a night or two previously to this; and a rumour now
+prevailed, that the severity of the weather, and the condition of the
+hoses and engines, rendered the present danger double. On hearing
+this intelligence, the Messrs. Effinghams wrapped themselves up in
+their over-coats, and went together into the streets.
+
+"This seems something more than usual, Ned," said John Effingham,
+glancing his eye upward at the lurid vault, athwart which gleams of
+fiery light began to shine; "the danger is not distant, and it seems
+serious."
+
+Following the direction of the current, they soon found the scene of
+the conflagration, which was in the very heart of those masses of
+warehouses, or stores, that John Effingham had commented on, so
+lately. A short street of high buildings was already completely in
+flames, and the danger of approaching the enemy, added to the frozen
+condition of the apparatus, the exhaustion of the firemen from their
+previous efforts, and the intense coldness of the night, conspired to
+make the aspect of things in the highest degree alarming.
+
+The firemen of New-York have that superiority over those of other
+places, that the veteran soldier obtains over the recruit. But the
+best troops can be appalled, and, on this memorable occasion, these
+celebrated firemen, from a variety of causes, became for a time,
+little more than passive spectators of the terrible scene.
+
+There was an hour or two when all attempts at checking the
+conflagration seemed really hopeless, and even the boldest and the
+most persevering scarcely knew which way to turn, to be useful. A
+failure of water, the numerous points that required resistance, the
+conflagration extending in all directions from a common centre, by
+means of numberless irregular and narrow streets, and the
+impossibility of withstanding the intense heat, in the choked
+passages, soon added despair to the other horrors of the scene.
+
+They who stood the fiery masses, were freezing on one side with the
+Greenland cold of the night, while their bodies were almost blistered
+with the fierce flames on the other. There was something frightful in
+this contest of the elements, nature appearing to condense the heat
+within its narrowest possible limits, as if purposely to increase its
+fierceness. The effects were awful; for entire buildings would seem
+to dissolve at their touch, as the forked flames enveloped them in
+sheets of fire.
+
+Every one being afoot, within sound of the alarm, though all the more
+vulgar cries had ceased, as men would deem it mockery to cry murder
+in a battle, Sir George Templemore met his friends, on the margin of
+this sea of fire. It was now drawing towards morning, and the
+conflagration was at its height, having already laid waste a nucleus
+of _blocks_, and it was extending by many lines, in every possible
+direction.
+
+"Here is a fearful admonition for those who set their hearts on
+riches," observed Sir George Templemore, recalling the conversation
+of the previous day. "What, indeed, are the designs of man, as
+compared with the will of Providence!"
+
+"I foresee that this is _le commencement de la fin_," returned John
+Effingham. "The destruction is already so great, as to threaten to
+bring down with it the usual safe-guards against such losses, and one
+pin knocked out of so frail and delicate a fabric, the whole will
+become loose, and fall to pieces."
+
+"Will nothing be done to arrest the flames?"
+
+"As men recover from the panic, their plans will improve and their
+energies will revive. The wider streets are already reducing the fire
+within more certain limits, and they speak of a favourable change of
+wind. It is thought five hundred buildings have already been
+consumed, in scarcely half a dozen hours."
+
+That Exchange, which had so lately resembled a bustling temple of
+Mammon, was already a dark and sheeted ruin, its marble walls being
+cracked, defaced, tottering, or fallen. It lay on the confines of the
+ruin, and our party was enabled to take their position near it, to
+observe the scene. All in their immediate vicinity was assuming the
+stillness of desolation, while the flushes of fierce light in the
+distance marked the progress of the conflagration. Those who knew the
+localities, now began to speak of the natural or accidental barriers,
+such as the water, the slips, and the broader streets, as the only
+probable means of arresting the destruction. The crackling of the
+flames grew distant fast, and the cries of the firemen were now
+scarcely audible.
+
+At this period in the frightful scene, a party of seamen arrived,
+bearing powder, in readiness to blow up various buildings, in the
+streets that possessed of themselves, no sufficient barriers to the
+advance of the flame. Led by their officers, these gallant fellows,
+carrying in their arms the means of destruction, moved up steadily to
+the verge of the torrents of fire, and planted their kegs; laying
+their trains with the hardy indifference that practice can alone
+create, and with an intelligence that did infinite credit to their
+coolness. This deliberate courage was rewarded with complete success,
+and house crumbled to pieces after house under the dull explosions,
+happily without an accident.
+
+From this time the flames became less ungovernable, though the day
+dawned and advanced, and another night succeeded, before they could
+be said to be got fairly under. Weeks, and even months passed,
+however, ere the smouldering ruins ceased to send up smoke, the
+fierce element continuing to burn, like a slumbering volcano, as it
+might be in the bowels of the earth.
+
+The day that succeeded this disaster, was memorable for the rebuke it
+gave the rapacious longing for wealth. Men who had set their hearts
+on gold, and who prided themselves on their possession, and on that
+only, were made to feel its insanity; and they who had walked abroad
+as gods, so lately, began to experience how utterly insignificant are
+the merely rich, when stripped of their possessions. Eight hundred
+buildings containing fabrics of every kind, and the raw material in
+various forms, had been destroyed, as it were in the twinkling of an
+eye.
+
+A faint voice was heard from the pulpit, and there was a moment when
+those who remembered a better state of things, began to fancy that
+principles would once more assert their ascendency, and that the
+community would, in a measure, be purified. But this expectation
+ended in disappointment, the infatuation being too wide-spread and
+corrupting, to be stopped by even this check, and the rebuke was
+reserved for a form that seems to depend on a law of nature, that of
+causing a vice to bring with it its own infallible punishment.
+
+Chapter VIII.
+
+  "First, tell me, have you ever been at Pisa."
+
+  SHAKSPEARE.
+
+The conflagration alluded to, rather than described, in the
+proceeding chapter, threw a gloom over the gaieties of New-York, if
+that ever could be properly called gay, which was little more than a
+strife in prodigality and parade, and leaves us little more to say of
+the events of the winter. Eve regretted very little the interruption
+to scenes in which she had found no pleasure, however much she
+lamented the cause; and she and Grace passed the remainder of the
+season quietly, cultivating the friendship of such women as Mrs.
+Hawker and Mrs. Bloomfield, and devoting hours to the improvement of
+their minds and tastes, without ever again venturing however, within
+the hallowed precincts of such rooms as those of Mrs. Legend.
+
+One consequence of a state of rapacious infatuation, like that which
+we have just related, is the intensity of selfishness which smothers
+all recollection of the past, and all just anticipations of the
+future, by condensing life, with its motives and enjoyments, into the
+present moment. Captain Truck, therefore, was soon forgotten, and the
+literati, as that worthy seaman had termed the associates of Mrs.
+Legend, remained just as vapid, as conceited, as ignorant, as
+imitative, as dependent, and as provincial as ever.
+
+As the season advanced, our heroine began to look with longings
+towards the country. The town life of an American offers little to
+one accustomed to a town life in older and more permanently regulated
+communities; and Eve was already heartily weary of crowded and noisy
+balls, (for a few were still given;) _belles_, the struggles of an
+uninstructed taste, and a representation in which extravagance was so
+seldom relieved by the elegance and convenience of a condition of
+society, in which more attention is paid to the fitness of things.
+
+The American spring is the least pleasant of its four seasons, its
+character being truly that of "winter lingering in the lap of May."
+Mr. Effingham, who the reader will probably suspect, by this time, to
+be a descendant of a family of the same name, that we have had
+occasion to introduce into another work, had sent orders to have his
+country residence prepared for the reception of our party; and it was
+with a feeling of delight that Eve stepped on board a steam-boat to
+escape from a town that, while it contains so much that is worthy of
+any capital, contains so much more that is unfit for any place, in
+order to breathe the pure air, and to enjoy the tranquil pleasare of
+the country. Sir George Templemore had returned from his southern
+journey, and made one of the party, by express arrangement.
+
+"Now, Eve," said Grace Van Cortlandt, as the boat glided along the
+wharves, "if it were any person but you, I should feel confident of
+having something to show that _would_ extort admiration."
+
+"You are safe enough, in that respect, for a more imposing object in
+its way, than this very vessel, eye of mine, never beheld. It is
+positively the only thing that deserves the name of magnificent I
+have yet seen, since our return,--unless, indeed, it may be
+magnificent projects."
+
+"I am glad, dear coz, there is this one magnificent object, then, to
+satisfy a taste so fastidious."
+
+As Grace's little foot moved, and her voice betrayed vexation, the
+whole party smiled; for the whole party, while it felt the justice of
+Eve's observation, saw the real feeling that was at the bottom of her
+cousin's remark. Sir George, however, though he could not conceal
+from himself the truth of what had been said by the one party, and
+the weakness betrayed by the other had too much sympathy for the
+provincial patriotism of one so young and beautiful, not to come to
+the rescue.
+
+"You should remember, Miss Van Cortlandt," he said, "that Miss
+Effingham has not had the advantage yet of seeing the Delaware,
+Philadelphia, the noble bays of the south, nor so much that is to be
+found out of the single town of New-York."
+
+"Very true, and I hope yet to see her a sincere penitent for all her
+unpatriotic admissions against her own country. _You_ have seen the
+Capitol, Sir George Templemore; is it not, truly, one of the finest
+edifices of the world?"
+
+"You will except St. Peter's, surely, my child," observed Mr.
+Effingham, smiling, for he saw that the baronet was embarrassed to
+give a ready answer.
+
+"And the Cathedral at Milan," said Eve, laughing.
+
+"_Et le Louvre_!" cried Mademoiselle Viefville, who had some such
+admiration for every thing Parisian, as Eve had for every thing
+American.
+
+"And, most especially, the north-east corner of the south-west end of
+the north-west wing of Versailles," said John Effingham, in his usual
+dry manner.
+
+"I see you are all against me," Grace rejoined, "but I hope, one day,
+to be able to ascertain for myself the comparative merits of things.
+As nature makes rivers, I hope the Hudson, at least, will not be
+found unworthy of your admiration, gentlemen and ladies."
+
+"You are safe enough, there, Grace," observed Mr Effingham; "for few
+rivers, perhaps no river, offers so great and so pleasing a variety,
+in so short a distance, as this."
+
+It was a lovely, bland morning, in the last week of May; and the
+atmosphere was already getting the soft hues of summer, or assuming
+the hazy and solemn calm that renders the season so quiet and soothing,
+after the fiercer strife of the elements. Under such a sky, the
+Palisadoes, in particular, appeared well; for, though wanting in the
+terrific grandeur of an Alpine nature, and perhaps disproportioned
+to the scenery they adorned, they were bold and peculiar.
+
+The great velocity of the boat added to the charm of the passage, the
+scene scarce finding time to pall on the eye; for, no sooner was one
+object examined in its outlines, than it was succeeded by another.
+
+"An extraordinary taste is afflicting this country, in the way of
+architecture," said Mr. Effingham, as they stood gazing at the
+eastern shore; "nothing but a Grecian temple being now deemed a
+suitable residence for a man, in these classical times. Yonder is a
+structure, for instance, of beautiful proportions, and, at this
+distance, apparently of a precious material, and yet it seems better
+suited to heathen worship than to domestic comfort."
+
+"The malady has infected, the whole nation," returned his cousin,
+"like the spirit of speculation. We are passing from one extreme to
+the other, in this, as in other things. One such temple, well placed
+in a wood, might be a pleasant object enough, but to see a river
+lined with them, with children trundling hoops before their doors,
+beef carried into their kitchens, and smoke issuing, moreover, from
+those unclassical objects chimnies, is too much even of a high taste;
+one might as well live in a fever. Mr. Aristabulus Bragg, who is a
+wag in his way, informs me that there is one town in the interior
+that has actually a market-house on the plan of the Parthenon!"
+
+"_Il Cupo di Bove_ would be a more suitable model for such a
+structure," said Eve, smiling. "But I think I have heard that the
+classical taste of our architects is any thing but rigid."
+
+"This _was_ the case, rather than _is_" returned John Effingham, "as
+witness all these temples. The country has made a quick and a great
+_pas, en avant_, in the way of the fine arts, and the fact shows what
+might be done with so ready a people, under a suitable direction. The
+stranger who comes among us is apt to hold the art of the nation
+cheap, but, as all things are comparative, let him inquire into its
+state ten years since, and look at it to-day. The fault just now, is
+perhaps to consult the books too rigidly, and to trust too little to
+invention; for no architecture, and especially no domestic
+architecture, can ever be above serious reproach, until climate, the
+uses of the edifice, and the situation, are respected as leading
+considerations. Nothing can be uglier, _per se_, than a Swiss
+cottage, or any thing more beautiful under its precise circumstances.
+As regards these mushroom temples, which are the offspring of Mammon,
+let them be dedicated to whom they may, I should exactly reverse the
+opinion, and say, that while nothing can be much more beautiful, _per
+se_, nothing can be in worse taste, than to put them where they are."
+
+"We shall have an opportunity of seeing what Mr. John Effingham can
+do in the way of architecture," said Grace, who loved to revenge some
+of her fancied wrongs, by turning the tables on her assailant, "for I
+understand he has been improving on the original labours of that
+notorious Palladio, Master Hiram Doolittle!"
+
+The whole party laughed, and every eye was turned on the gentleman
+alluded to, expecting his answer.
+
+"You will remember, good people," answered the accused by
+implication, "that my plans were handed over to me from my great
+predecessor, and that they were originally of the composite order.
+If, therefore, the house should turn out to be a little complex and
+mixed, you will do me the justice to remember this important fact. At
+all events, I have consulted comfort; and that I would maintain, in
+the face of Vitruvius himself, is a _sine quâ non_ in domestic
+architecture."
+
+"I took a run into Connecticut the other day," said Sir George
+Templemore, "and, at a place called New Haven, I saw the commencement
+of a taste that bids fair to make a most remarkable town. It is true,
+you cannot expect structures of much pretension in the way of cost
+and magnitude in this country, but, so far as fitness and forms are
+concerned, if what I hear be true, and the next fifty years do as
+much in proportion for that little city, as I understand has been
+done in the last five, it will be altogether a wonder in its way.
+There are some abortions, it is true, but there are also some little
+jewels."
+
+The baronet was rewarded for this opinion, by a smile from Grace, and
+the conversation changed. As the boat approached the mountains, Eve
+became excited, a very American state of the system by the way, and
+Grace still more anxious.
+
+"The view of that bluff is Italian;" said our heroine, pointing down
+the river at a noble headland of rock, that loomed grandly in the
+soft haze of the tranquil atmosphere. "One seldom sees a finer or a
+softer outline on the shores of the Mediterranean itself."
+
+"But the Highlands, Eve!" whispered the uneasy Grace. "We are
+entering the mountains."
+
+The river narrowed suddenly, and the scenery became bolder, but
+neither Eve nor her father expressed the rapture that Grace expected.
+
+"I must confess, Jack," said the mild, thoughtful Mr. Effingham,
+"that these rocks strike my eyes as much less imposing than formerly.
+The passage is fine, beyond question, but it is hardly grand
+scenery."
+
+"You never uttered a juster opinion, Ned, though after your eye loses
+some of the forms of the Swiss and Italian lakes, and of the shores
+of Italy, you will think better of these. The Highlands are
+remarkable for their surprises, rather than for their grandeur, as we
+shall presently see. As to the latter, it is an affair of feet and
+inches, and is capable of arithmetical demonstration. We have often
+been on lakes, beneath beetling cliffs of from three to six thousand
+feet in height; whereas, here, the greatest elevation is materially
+less than two. But, Sir George Templemore, and you, Miss Effingham,
+do me the favour to combine your cunning, and tell me whence this
+stream cometh, and whither we are to go?"
+
+The boat had now approached a point where the river was narrowed to a
+width not much exceeding a quarter of a mile, and in the direction in
+which it was steering, the water seemed to become still more
+contracted until they were lost in a sort of bay, that appeared to be
+closed by high hills, through which, however, there were traces of
+something like a passage.
+
+"The land in that direction looks as if it had a ravine-like
+entrance," said the baronet; "and yet it is scarcely possible that a
+stream like this can flow there!"
+
+"If the Hudson truly passes through those mountains," said Eve, "I
+will concede all in its favour that you can ask, Grace."
+
+"Where else can it pass?" demanded Grace, exultingly.
+
+"Sure enough--I see no other place, and that seems insufficient."
+
+The two strangers to the river now looked curiously around them, in
+every direction. Behind them was a broad and lake-like basin, through
+which they had just passed; on the left, a barrier of precipitous
+hills, the elevation of which was scarcely less than a thousand feet;
+on their right, a high but broken country, studded with villas, farm-
+houses, and hamlets; and in their front the deep but equivocal bay
+mentioned.
+
+"I see no escape!" cried the baronet, gaily, "unless indeed, it be by
+returning."
+
+A sudden and broad sheer of the boat caused him to turn to the left,
+and then they whirled round an angle of the precipice, and found
+themselves in a reach of the river, between steep declivities,
+running at right angles to their former course.
+
+"This is one of the surprises of which I spoke," said John Effingham,
+"and which render the highlands so _unique_; for, while the Rhine is
+very sinuous, it has nothing like this."
+
+The other travellers agreed in extolling this and many similar
+features of the scenery, and Grace was delighted; for, warm-hearted,
+affectionate, and true, Grace loved her country like a relative or a
+friend, and took an honest pride in hearing its praises. The
+patriotism of Eve, if a word of a meaning so lofty can be applied to
+feelings of this nature, was more discriminating from necessity, her
+tastes having been formed in a higher school, and her means of
+comparison being so much more ample. At West Point they stopped for
+the night, and here every body was in honest raptures; Grace, who had
+often visited the place before, being actually the least so of the
+whole party.
+
+"Now, Eve, I know that you _do_ love your country," she said, as she
+slipped an arm affectionately through that of her cousin. "This is
+feeling and speaking like an American girl, and as Eve Effingham
+should!"
+
+Eve laughed, but she had discovered that the provincial feeling was
+so strong in Grace, that its discussion would probably do no good.
+She dwelt, therefore, with sincere eloquence on the beauties of the
+place, and for the first time since they had met, her cousin felt as
+if there was no longer any point of dissension between them.
+
+The following morning was the first of June, and it was another of
+those drowsy, dreamy days, that so much aid a landscape. The party
+embarked in the first boat that came up, and as they entered Newburgh
+bay, the triumph of the river was established. This is a spot, in
+sooth, that has few equals in any region, though Eve still insisted
+that the excellence of the view was in its softness rather than in
+its grandeur. The country-houses, or boxes, for few could claim to be
+much more, were neat, well placed, and exceedingly numerous. The
+heights around the town of Newburgh, in particular, were fairly
+dotted with them, though Mr. Effingham shook his head as he saw one
+Grecian temple appear after another.
+
+"As we recede from the influence of the vulgar architects," he said,
+"we find imitation taking the place of instruction. Many of these
+buildings are obviously disproportioned, and then, like vulgar
+pretension of any sort, Grecian architecture produces less pleasure
+than even Dutch."
+
+"I am surprised at discovering how little of a Dutch character
+remains in this state," said the baronet; "I can scarcely trace that
+people in any thing, and yet, I believe, they had the moulding of
+your society, having carried the colony through its infancy."
+
+"When you know us better, you will be surprised at discovering how
+little of any thing remains a dozen years," returned John Effingham.
+"Our towns pass away in generations like their people, and even the
+names of a place undergo periodical mutations, as well as every thing
+else. It is getting to be a predominant feeling in the American
+nature, I fear, to love change."
+
+"But, cousin Jack, do you not overlook causes, in your censure. That
+a nation advancing as fast as this in wealth and numbers, should
+desire better structures than its fathers had either the means or the
+taste to build, and that names should change with persons, are both
+things quite in rule."
+
+"All very true, though it does not account for the peculiarity I
+mean. Take Templeton, for instance; this little place has not
+essentially increased in numbers, within my memory, and yet fully
+one-half its names are new. When he reaches his own home, your father
+will not know even the names of one-half his neighbours. Not only
+will he meet with new faces, but he will find new feelings, new
+opinions in the place of traditions that he may love, an indifference
+to every thing but the present moment, and even those who may have
+better feelings, and a wish to cherish all that belongs to the holier
+sentiments of man, afraid to utter them, lest they meet with no
+sympathy."
+
+"No cats, as Mr. Bragg would say."
+
+"Jack is one who never paints _en beau_," said Mr. Effingham. "I
+should be very sorry to believe that a dozen short years can have
+made all these essential changes in my neighbourhood."
+
+"A dozen years, Ned! You name an age. Speak of three or four, if you
+wish to find any thing in America where you left it! The whole
+country is in such a constant state of mutation, that I can only
+liken it to that game of children, in which as one quits his corner,
+another runs into it, and he that finds no corner to get into, is the
+laughing-stock of the others. Fancy that dwelling the residence of
+one man from childhood to old age; let him then quit it for a year or
+two, and on his return he would find another in possession, who would
+treat him as an impertinent intruder, because he had been absent two
+years. An American 'always,' in the way of usages, extends no further
+back than eighteen months. In short, every thing is condensed into
+the present moment; and services, character, for evil as well as good
+unhappily, and all other things, cease to have weight, except as they
+influence the interests of the day."
+
+"This is the colouring of a professed cynic," observed Mr. Effingham,
+smiling.
+
+"But the law, Mr. John Effingham," eagerly inquired the
+baronet--"surely the law would not permit a stranger to intrude in
+this manner on the rights of an owner."
+
+"The law-_books_ would do him that friendly office, perhaps, but what
+is a precept in the face of practices so ruthless. '_Les absents out
+toujours tort_,' is a maxim of peculiar application in America."
+
+"Property is as secure in this country as in any other, Sir George;
+and you will make allowances for the humours of the present
+annotator."
+
+"Well, well, Ned; I hope you will find every thing _couleur de rose_,
+as you appear to expect. You will get quiet possession of your house,
+it is true, for I have put a Cerberus in it, that is quite equal to
+his task, difficult as it may be, and who has quite as much relish
+for a bill of costs, as any squatter can have for a trespass; but
+without some such guardian of your rights, I would not answer for it,
+that you would not be compelled to sleep in the highway."
+
+"I trust Sir George Templemore knows how to make allowances for Mr.
+John Effingham's pictures," cried Grace, unable to refrain from
+expressing her discontent any longer.
+
+A laugh succeeded, and the beauties of the river again attracted
+their attention. As the boat continued to ascend, Mr. Effingham
+triumphantly affirmed that the appearance of things more than
+equalled his expectations, while both Eve and the baronet declared
+that a succession of lovelier landscapes could hardly be presented to
+the eye.
+
+"Whited sepulchres!" muttered John Effingham--"all outside. Wait
+until you get a view of the deformity within."
+
+As the boat approached Albany, Eve expressed her satisfaction in
+still stronger terms; and Grace was made perfectly happy, by hearing
+her and Sir George declare that the place entirely exceeded their
+expectations.
+
+"I am glad to find, Eve, that you are so fast recovering your
+American feelings," said her beautiful cousin, after one of those
+expressions of agreeable disappointment, as they were seated at a
+late dinner, in an inn. "You have at last found words to praise the
+exterior of Albany; and I hope, by the time we return, you will be
+disposed to see New-York with different eyes."
+
+"I expected to see a capital in New-York, Grace, and in this I have
+been grievously disappointed. Instead of finding the tastes, tone,
+conveniences, architecture, streets, churches, shops, and society of
+a capital, I found a huge expansion of common-place things, a
+commercial town, and the most mixed and the least regulated society,
+that I had ever met with. Expecting so much, where so little was
+found, disappointment was natural. But in Albany, although a
+political capital, I knew the nature of the government too well, to
+expect more than a provincial town; and in this respect, I have found
+one much above the level of similar places in other parts of the
+world. I acknowledge that Albany has as much exceeded my expectations
+in one sense, as New-York has fallen short of them in another."
+
+"In this simple fact, Sir George Templemore," said Mr. Effingham,
+"you may read the real condition of the country. In all that requires
+something more than usual, a deficiency; in all that is deemed an
+average, better than common. The tendency is to raise every thing
+that is elsewhere degraded to a respectable height, when there
+commences an attraction of gravitation that draws all towards the
+centre; a little closer too than could be wished perhaps."
+
+"Ay, ay, Ned; this is very pretty, with your attractions and
+gravitations; but wait and judge for yourself of this average, of
+which you now speak so complacently.
+
+"Nay, John, I borrowed the image from you; if it be not accurate, I
+shall hold you responsible for its defects."
+
+"They tell me," said Eve, "that all American villages are the towns
+in miniature; children dressed in hoops and wigs. Is this so, Grace?"
+
+"A little; there is too much desire to imitate the towns, perhaps,
+and possibly too little feeling for country life."
+
+"This is a very natural consequence, after all, of people's living
+entirely in such places," observed Sir George Templemore. "One sees
+much of this on the continent of Europe, because the country
+population is purely a country population; and less of it in England,
+perhaps, because those who are at the head of society, consider town
+and country as very distinct things."
+
+"_La campagne est vraiment délicieuse en Amérique_," exclaimed
+Mademoiselle Viefville, in whose eyes the whole country was little
+more than _campagne_.
+
+The next morning, our travellers proceeded by the way of Schenectady,
+whence they ascended the beautiful valley of the Mohawk, by means of
+a canal-boat, the cars that now rattle along its length not having
+commenced their active flights, at that time. With the scenery, every
+one was delighted; for while it differed essentially from that the
+party had passed through the previous day, it was scarcely less
+beautiful.
+
+At a point where the necessary route diverged from the direction of
+the canal, carriages of Mr. Effingham's were in readiness to receive
+the travellers, and here they were also favoured by the presence of
+Mr. Bragg, who fancied such an attention might be agreeable to the
+young ladies, as well as to his employer.
+
+Chapter IX.
+
+  "Tell me, where is fancy bred--
+  Or in the heart, or in the head?
+  How begot, how nourished?"
+
+  SONG IN SHAKSPEARE.
+
+The travellers were several hours ascending into the mountains, by a
+country road that could scarcely be surpassed by a French wheel-track
+of the same sort, for Mademoiselle Viefville protested, twenty times
+in the course of the morning, that it was a thousand pities Mr.
+Effingham had not the privilege of the _corvée_, that he might cause
+the approach to his _terres_ to be kept in better condition. At
+length they reached the summit, a point where the waters began to
+flow south, when the road became tolerably level. From this time
+their progress became more rapid, and they continued to advance two
+or three hours longer at a steady pace.
+
+Aristabulus now informed his companions that, in obedience to
+instructions from John Effingham, he had ordered the coachmen to take
+a road that led a little from the direct line of their journey, and
+that they had now been travelling for some time on the more ancient
+route to Templeton.
+
+"I was aware of this," said Mr. Effingham, "though ignorant of the
+reason. We are on the great western turnpike."
+
+"Certainly, sir, and all according to Mr. John's request. There would
+have been a great saving in distance, and agreeably to my notion, in
+horse-flesh, had we quietly gone down the banks of the lake."
+
+"Jack will explain his own meaning," returned Mr. Effingham, "and he
+has stopped the other carriage, and alighted with Sir George,--a
+hint, I fancy, that we are to follow their example."
+
+Sure enough, the second carriage was now stopped, and Sir George
+hastened to open its door.
+
+"Mr. John Effingham, who acts as cicerone," cried the baronet,
+"insists that every one shall put _pied á terre_ at this precise
+spot, keeping the important reason still a secret, in the recesses of
+his own bosom."
+
+The ladies complied, and the carriages were ordered to proceed with
+the domestics, leaving the rest of the travellers by themselves,
+apparently in the heart of a forest.
+
+"It is to be hoped, Mademoiselle, there are no banditti in America,"
+said Eve, as they looked around them at the novel situation in which
+they were placed, apparently by a pure caprice of her cousin.
+
+"_Ou des sauvages_," returned the governess, who, in spite of her
+ordinary intelligence and great good sense, had several times that
+day cast uneasy and stolen glances into the bits of dark wood they
+had occasionally passed.
+
+"I will ensure your purses and your scalps, _mesdames_," cried John
+Effingham gaily, "on condition that you will follow me implicitly;
+and by way of pledge for my faith, I solicit the honour of supporting
+Mademoiselle Viefville on this unworthy arm."
+
+The governess laughingly accepted the conditions, Eve took the arm of
+her father, and Sir George offered his to Grace; Aristabulus, to his
+surprise, being left to walk entirely alone. It struck him, however,
+as so singularly improper that a young lady should be supported on
+such an occasion by her own father, that he frankly and gallantly
+proposed to Mr. Effingham to relieve him of his burthen, an offer
+that was declined with quite as much distinctness as it was made.
+
+"I suppose cousin Jack has a meaning to his melodrama," said Eve, as
+they entered the forest, "and I dare say, dearest father, that you
+are behind the scenes, though I perceive determined secrecy in your
+face."
+
+"John may have a cave to show us, or some tree of extraordinary
+height; such things existing in the country."
+
+"We are very confiding, Mademoiselle, for I detect treachery in every
+face around us. Even Miss Van Cortlandt has the air of a conspirator,
+and seems to be in league with something or somebody. Pray Heaven, it
+be not with wolves."
+
+"_Des loups_!" exclaimed Mademoiselle Viefville, stopping short, with
+a mien so alarmed as to excite a general laugh--"_est ce qu'il y a
+des loups et des sangliers dans cette forêt_?"
+
+"No, Mademoiselle," returned her companion--"this is only barbarous
+America, and not civilized France. Were we in _le departement de la
+Seine_, we might apprehend some such dangers, but being merely in the
+mountains of Otsego, we are reasonably safe."
+
+"_Je l'espère_," murmured the governess, as she reluctantly and
+distrustfully proceeded, glancing her eyes incessantly to the right
+and left. The path now became steep and rather difficult; so much so,
+indeed, as to indispose them all to conversation. It led beneath the
+branches of lofty pines, though there existed, on every side of them,
+proofs of the ravages man had committed in that noble forest. At
+length they were compelled to stop for breath, after having ascended
+considerably above the road they had left.
+
+"I ought to have said that the spot where we entered on this path, is
+memorable in the family history," observed John Effingham, to
+Eve--"for it was the precise spot where one of our predecessors
+lodged a shot in the shoulder of another."
+
+"Then I know precisely where we are!" cried our heroine, "though I
+cannot yet imagine why we are led into this forest, unless it be to
+visit some spot hallowed by a deed of Natty Bumppo's!"
+
+"Time will solve this mystery, as well as all others. Let us
+proceed."
+
+Again they ascended, and, after a few more minutes of trial, they
+reached a sort of table-land, and drew near an opening in the trees,
+where a small circle had evidently been cleared of its wood, though
+it was quite small and untilled. Eve looked curiously about her, as
+did all the others to whom the place was novel, and she was lost in
+doubt.
+
+"There seems to be a void beyond us," said the baronet--- "I rather
+think Mr. John Effingham has led us to the verge of a view."
+
+At this suggestion the party moved on in a body, and were well
+rewarded for the toil of the ascent, by a _coup d'oeil_ that was
+almost Swiss in character and beauty.
+
+"Now do I know where we are," exclaimed Eve, clasping her hands in
+rapture--"this is the 'Vision,' and yonder, indeed, is our blessed
+home!"
+
+The whole artifice of the surprise was exposed, and after the first
+bursts of pleasure had subsided, all to whom the scene was novel
+felt, that they would not have missed this _piquante_ introduction to
+the valley of the Susquehannah, on any account. That the reader may
+understand the cause of so much delight, and why John Effingham had
+prepared this scene for his friends, we shall stop to give a short
+description of the objects that first met the eyes of the travellers.
+
+It is known that they were in a small open spot in a forest, and on
+the verge of a precipitous mountain. The trees encircled them on
+every side but one, and on that lay the panorama, although the tops
+of tall pines, that grew in lines almost parallel to the declivity,
+rose nearly to a level with the eye. Hundreds of feet beneath them,
+directly in front, and stretching leagues to the right, was a lake
+embedded in woods and hills. On the side next the travellers, a
+fringe of forest broke the line of water; tree tops that intercepted
+the view of the shores; and on the other, high broken hills, or low
+mountains rather, that were covered with farms, beautifully relieved
+by patches of wood, in a way to resemble the scenery of a vast park,
+or a royal pleasure ground, limited the landscape. High valleys lay
+among these uplands, and in every direction comfortable dwellings
+dotted the fields. The contrast between the dark hues of the
+evergreens, with which all the heights near the water were shaded,
+was in soft contrast to the livelier green of the other foliage,
+while the meadows and pastures were luxuriant with a verdure
+unsurpassed by that of England. Bays and points added to the
+exquisite outline of the glassy lake on this shore, while one of the
+former withdrew towards the north-west, in a way to leave the eye
+doubtful whether it was the termination of the transparent sheet or
+not. Towards the south, bold, varied, but cultivated hills, also
+bounded the view, all teeming with the fruits of human labour, and
+yet all relieved by pieces of wood, in the way already mentioned, so
+as to give the entire region the character of park scenery. A wide,
+deep, even valley, commenced at the southern end of the lake, or
+nearly opposite to the stand of our travellers, and stretched away
+south, until concealed by a curvature in the ranges of the mountains.
+Like all the mountain-tops, this valley was verdant, peopled, wooded
+in places, though less abundantly than the hills, and teeming with
+the signs of life. Roads wound through its peaceful retreats, and
+might be traced working their way along the glens, and up the weary
+ascents of the mountains, for miles, in every direction.
+
+At the northern termination of this lovely valley, and immediately on
+the margin of the lake, lay the village of Templeton, immediately
+under the eyes of the party. The distance, in an air line, from their
+stand to the centre of the dwellings, could not be much less than a
+mile, but the air was so pure, and the day so calm, that it did not
+seem so far. The children and even the dogs were seen running about
+the streets, while the shrill cries of boys at their gambols,
+ascended distinctly to the ear.
+
+As this was the Templeton of the Pioneers, and the progress of
+society during half a century is connected with the circumstance, we
+shall give the reader a more accurate notion of its present state,
+than can be obtained from incidental allusions. We undertake the
+office more readily because this is not one of those places that
+shoot up in a day, under the unnatural efforts of speculation, or
+which, favoured by peculiar advantages in the way of trade, becomes a
+precocious city, while the stumps still stand in its streets; but a
+sober county town, that has advanced steadily, _pari passu_ with the
+surrounding country, and offers a fair specimen of the more regular
+advancement of the whole nation, in its progress towards
+civilization.
+
+The appearance of Templeton, as seen from the height where it is now
+exhibited to the reader, was generally beautiful and map-like. There
+might be a dozen streets, principally crossing each other at right-
+angles, though sufficiently relieved from this precise delineation,
+to prevent a starched formality. Perhaps the greater part of the
+buildings were painted white, as is usual in the smaller American
+towns; though a better taste was growing in the place, and many of
+the dwellings had the graver and chaster hues of the grey stones of
+which they were built. A general air of neatness and comfort pervaded
+the place, it being as unlike a continental European town, south of
+the Rhine, in this respect, as possible, if indeed we except the
+picturesque bourgs of Switzerland. In England, Templeton would be
+termed a small market-town, so far as size was concerned; in France,
+a large _bourg_; while in America it was, in common parlance, and
+legal appellation, styled a village.
+
+Of the dwellings of the place, fully twenty were of a quality that
+denoted ease in the condition of their occupants, and bespoke the
+habits of those accustomed to live in a manner superior to the _oi
+polloi_ of the human race. Of these, some six or eight had small
+lawns, carriage sweeps, and the other similar appliances of houses
+that were not deemed unworthy of the honour of bearing names of their
+own. No less than five little steeples, towers, or belfries, for
+neither word is exactly suitable to the architectural prodigies we
+wish to describe, rose above the roofs, denoting the sites of the
+same number of places of worship; an American village usually
+exhibiting as many of these proofs of liberty of conscience--
+_caprices of conscience_ would perhaps be a better term--as dollars
+and cents will by any process render attainable. Several light
+carriages, such as were suitable to a mountainous country, were
+passing to and fro in the streets; and, here and there, a single-
+horse vehicle was fastened before the door of a shop, or a lawyer's
+office, denoting the presence of some customer, or client, from among
+the adjacent hills.
+
+Templeton was not sufficiently a thoroughfare to possess one of those
+monstrosities, a modern American tavern, or a structure whose roof
+should overtop that of all its neighbours. Still its inns were of
+respectable size, well piazzaed, to use a word of our own invention,
+and quite enough frequented.
+
+Near the centre of the place, in grounds of rather limited extent,
+still stood that model of the composite order, which owed its
+existence to the combined knowledge and taste, in the remoter ages of
+the region, of Mr. Richard Jones and Mr. Hiram Doolittle. We will not
+say that it had been modernized, for the very reverse was the effect,
+in appearance at least; but, it had since undergone material changes,
+under the more instructed intelligence of John Effingham.
+
+This building was so conspicuous by position and size, that as soon
+as they had taken in glimpses of the entire landscape, which was not
+done without constant murmurs of pleasure, every eye became fastened
+on it, as the focus of interest. A long and common silence denoted
+how general was this feeling, and the whole party took seats on
+stumps and fallen trees before a syllable was uttered, after the
+building had attracted their gaze. Aristabulus alone permitted his
+look to wander, and he was curiously examining the countenance of Mr.
+Effingham, near whom he sate, with a longing to discover whether the
+expression was that of approbation, or of disapprobation, of the
+fruits of his cousin's genius.
+
+"Mr. John Effingham has considerably regenerated and revivified, not
+to say transmogrified, the old dwelling," he said, cautiously using
+terms that might have his own opinion of the changes doubtful. "The
+work of his hand has excited some speculation, a good deal of
+inquiry, and a little conversation, throughout the country. It has
+almost produced an excitement!"
+
+"As my house came to me from my father," said Mr. Effingham, across
+whose mild and handsome face a smile was gradually stealing, "I knew
+its history, and when called on for an explanation of its
+singularities, could refer all to the composite order. But, you,
+Jack, have supplanted all this, by a style of your own, for which I
+shall be compelled to consult the authorities for explanations."
+
+"Do you dislike my taste, Ned?--To my eye, now, the structure has no
+bad appearance from this spot!"
+
+"Fitness and comfort are indispensable requisites for domestic
+architecture, to use your own argument. Are you quite sure that
+yonder castellated roof, for instance, is quite suited to the deep
+snows of these mountains?"
+
+John Effingham whistled, and endeavoured to look unconcerned, for he
+well knew that the very first winter had demonstrated the
+unsuitableness of his plans for such a climate. He had actually felt
+disposed to cause the whole to be altered privately, at his own
+expense; but, besides feeling certain his cousin would resent a
+liberty that inferred his indisposition to pay for his own buildings,
+he had a reluctance to admit, in the face of the whole country, that
+he had made so capital a mistake, in a branch of art in which he
+prided himself rather more than common; almost as much as his
+predecessor in the occupation, Mr. Richard Jones.
+
+"If you are not pleased with your own dwelling, Ned," he answered,
+"you can have, at least, the consolation of looking at some of your
+neighbours' houses, and of perceiving that they are a great deal
+worse off. Of all abortions of this sort, to my taste, a Grecian
+abortion is the worst--mine is only Gothic, and that too, in a style
+so modest, that I should think it might pass unmolested."
+
+It was so unusual to see John Effingham on the defensive, that the
+whole party smiled, while Aristabulus who stood in salutary fear of
+his caustic tongue, both smiled and wondered.
+
+"Nay, do not mistake me, John," returned the proprietor of the
+edifice under discussion--"it is not your _taste_ that I call in
+question, but your provision against the seasons. In the way of mere
+outward show, I really think you deserve high praise, for you have
+transformed a very ugly dwelling into one that is almost handsome, in
+despite of proportions and the necessity of regulating the
+alterations by prescribed limits. Still, I think, there is a little
+of the composite left about even the exterior."
+
+"I hope, cousin Jack, you have not innovated on the interior," cried
+Eve; "for I think I shall remember that, and nothing is more pleasant
+than the _cattism_ of seeing objects that you remember in childhood--
+pleasant, I mean, to those whom the mania of mutation has not
+affected."
+
+"Do not be alarmed, Miss Effingham," replied her kinsman, with a
+pettishness of manner that was altogether extraordinary, in a man
+whose mien, in common, was so singularly composed and masculine; "you
+will find all that you knew, when a kitten, in its proper place. I
+could not rake together, again, the ashes of Queen Dido, which were
+scattered to the four winds of Heaven, I fear; nor could I discover a
+reasonably good bust of Homer; but respectable substitutes are
+provided, and some of them have the great merit of puzzling all
+beholders to tell to whom they belong, which I believe was the great
+characteristic of most of Mr. Jones's invention."
+
+"I am glad to see, cousin Jack, that you have, at least, managed to
+give a very respectable 'cloud-colour' to the whole house."
+
+"Ay, it lay between that and an invisible green," the gentleman
+answered, losing his momentary spleen in his natural love of the
+ludicrous--"but finding that the latter would be only too conspicuous
+in the droughts that sometimes prevail in this climate, I settled
+down into the yellowish drab, that is, indeed, not unlike some of the
+richer volumes of the clouds."
+
+"On the whole, I think you are fairly entitled, as Steadfast Dodge,
+Esquire, would say, to 'the meed of our thanks.'"
+
+"What a lovely spot!" exclaimed Mr. Effingham, who had already ceased
+to think of his own dwelling, and whose eye was roaming over the soft
+landscape, athwart which the lustre of a June noontide was throwing
+its richest glories. "This is truly a place where one might fancy
+repose and content were to be found for the evening of a troubled
+life."
+
+"Indeed, I have seldom looked upon a more bewitching scene," answered
+the baronet. "The lakes of Cumberland will scarce compete with this!"
+
+"Or that of Brienz, or Lungeren, or Nemi," said Eve, smiling in a way
+that the other understood to be a hit at his nationality.
+
+"_C'est charmant!_" murmured Mademoiselle Viefville. "_On pense à
+l'éternité, dans une telle calme!_"
+
+"The farm you can see lying near yonder wood, Mr. Effingham," coolly
+observed Aristabulus, "sold last spring for thirty dollars the acre,
+and was bought for twenty, the summer-before!"
+
+"_Chacun à son gout!_" said Eve.
+
+"And yet, I fear, this glorious scene is marred by the envy,
+rapacity, uncharitableness, and all the other evil passions of man!"
+continued the more philosophical Mr. Effingham. "Perhaps, it were
+better as it was so lately, when it lay in the solitude and peace of
+the wilderness, the resort of birds and beasts."
+
+"Who prey on each other, dearest father, just as the worst of our own
+species prey on their fellows."
+
+"True, child--true. And yet, I never gaze on one of these scenes of
+holy calm, without wishing that the great tabernacle of nature might
+be tenanted only by those who have a feeling for its perfection."
+
+"Do you see the lady," said Aristabulus, "that is just coming out on
+the lawn, in front of the 'Wig-wam?'" for that was the name John
+Effingham had seen fit to give the altered and amended abode. "Here,
+Miss Effingham, more in a line with the top of the pine beneath us."
+
+"I see the person you mean; she seems to be looking in this
+direction."
+
+"You are quite right, miss; she knows that we are to stop on the
+Vision, and no doubt sees us. That lady is your father's cook, Miss
+Effingham, and is thinking of the late breakfast that has been
+ordered to be in readiness against our arrival."
+
+Eve concealed her amusement, for, by this time, she had discovered
+that Mr. Bragg had a way peculiar to himself, or at least to his
+class, of using many of the commoner words of the English language.
+It would perhaps be expecting too much of Sir George Templemore, not
+to expect him to smile, on such an occasion.
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Aristabulus, pointing towards the lake, across which
+several skiffs were stealing, some in one direction, and some in
+another, "there is a boat out, that I think must contain the poet."
+
+"Poet!" repeated John Effingham. "Have we reached that pass at
+Templeton?"
+
+"Lord, Mr. John Effingham, you must have very contracted notions of
+the place, if you think a poet a great novelty in it. Why, sir, we
+have caravans of wild beasts, nearly every summer!"
+
+"This is, indeed, a step in advance, of which I was ignorant. Here
+then, in a region, that so lately was tenanted by beasts of prey,
+beasts are already brought as curiosities. You perceive the state of
+the country in this fact, Sir George Templemore."
+
+"I do indeed; but I should like to hear from Mr Bragg, what sort of
+animals are in these caravans?"
+
+"All sorts, from monkeys to elephants. The last had a rhinoceros."
+
+"Rhinoceros!--Why there was but one, lately, in all Europe. Neither
+the Zoological Gardens, nor the _Jardin des Plantes_, had a
+rhinoceros! I never saw but one, and that was in a caravan at Rome,
+that travelled between St. Petersburgh and Naples."
+
+"Well, sir, we have rhinoceroses here;--and monkeys, and zebras, and
+poets, and painters, and congressmen, and bishops, and governors, and
+all other sorts of creatures."
+
+"And who may the particular poet be, Mr. Bragg," Eve asked, "who
+honours Templeton, with his presence just at this moment?"
+
+"That is more than I can tell you, miss, for, though some eight or
+ten of us have done little else than try to discover his name for the
+last week, we have not got even as far as that one fact. He and the
+gentleman who travels with him, are both uncommonly close on such
+matters, though I think we have some as good catechisers in
+Templeton, as can be found any where within fifty miles of us!"
+
+"There is another gentleman with him--do you suspect them both of
+being poets?"
+
+"Oh, no, Miss, the other is the waiter of the poet; that we know, as
+he serves him at dinner, and otherwise superintends his concerns;
+such as brushing his clothes, and keeping his room in order."
+
+"This is being in luck for a poet, for they are of a class that are a
+little apt to neglect the decencies. May I ask why you suspect the
+master of being a poet, if the man be so assiduous?"
+
+"Why, what else can he be? In the first place, Miss Effingham, he has
+no name."
+
+"That is a reason in point," said John Effingham "very few poets
+having names."
+
+"Then he is out on the lake half his time, gazing up at the 'Silent
+Pine,' or conversing with the 'Speaking Rocks,' or drinking at the
+'Fairy Spring.'"
+
+"All suspicious, certainly; especially the dialogue with the rocks;
+though not absolutely conclusive."
+
+"But, Mr. John Effingham, the man does not take his food like other
+people. He rises early, and is out on the water, or up in the forest,
+all the morning, and then returns to eat his breakfast in the middle
+of the forenoon; he goes into the woods again, or on the lake, and
+comes back to dinner, just as I take my tea."
+
+"This settles the matter. Any man who presumes to do all this, Mr.
+Bragg, deserves to be called by some harder name, even, than that of
+a poet. Pray, sir, how long has this eccentric person been a resident
+of Templeton?"
+
+"Hist--there he is, as I am a sinner; and it was not he and the other
+gentlemen that were in the boat."
+
+The rebuked manner of Aristabulus, and the dropping of his voice,
+induced the whole party to look in the direction of his eye, and,
+sure enough, a gentleman approached them, in the dress a man of the
+world is apt to assume in the country, an attire of itself that was
+sufficient to attract comment in a place where the general desire was
+to be as much like town as possible, though it was sufficiently neat
+and simple. He came from the forest, along the table-land that
+crowned the mountain for some distance, following one of the foot-
+paths that the admirers of the beautiful landscape have made all over
+that pleasant wood. As he came out into the cleared spot, seeing it
+already in possession of a party, he bowed, and was passing on, with
+a delicacy that Mr. Bragg would be apt to deem eccentric, when
+suddenly stopping, he gave a look of intense and eager interest at
+the whole party, smiled, advanced rapidly nearer, and discovered his
+entire person.
+
+"I ought not to be surprised," he said, as he advanced so near as to
+render doubt any longer impossible, "for I knew you were expected,
+and indeed waited for your arrival, and yet this meeting has been so
+unexpected as to leave me scarcely in possession of my faculties."
+
+It is needless to dwell upon the warmth and number of the greetings.
+To the surprise of Mr. Bragg, his poet was not only known, but
+evidently much esteemed by all the party, with the exception of Miss
+Van Cortlandt, to whom he was cordially presented by the name of Mr.
+Powis. Eve managed, by an effort of womanly pride, to suppress the
+violence of her emotions, and the meeting passed off as one of mutual
+surprise and pleasure, without any exhibition of unusual feeling to
+attract comment.
+
+"We ought to express our wonder at finding you here before us, my
+dear young friend," said Mr. Effingham, still holding Paul's hand
+affectionately between his own; "and, even now, that my own eyes
+assure me of the fact, I can hardly believe you would arrive at New-
+York, and quit it, without giving us the satisfaction of seeing you."
+
+"In that, sir, you are not wrong; certainly nothing could have
+deprived me of that pleasure, but the knowledge that it would not
+have been agreeable to yourselves. My sudden appearance here,
+however, will be without mystery, when I tell you that I returned
+from England, by the way of Quebec, the Great Lakes, and the Falls,
+having been induced by my friend Ducie to take that route, in
+consequence of his ship's being sent to the St. Lawrence. A desire
+for novelty, and particularly a desire to see the celebrated
+cataract, which is almost _the_ lion of America, did the rest."
+
+"We are glad to have you with us on any terms, and I take it as
+particularly kind, that you did not pass my door. You have been here
+some days?"
+
+"Quite a week. On reaching Utica I diverged from the great route to
+see this place, not anticipating the pleasure of meeting you here so
+early; but hearing you were expected, I determined to remain, with a
+hope, which I rejoice to find was not vain, that you would not be
+sorry to see an old fellow-traveller again."
+
+Mr. Effingham pressed his hands warmly again, before he relinquished
+them; an assurance of welcome that Paul received with thrilling
+satisfaction.
+
+"I have been in Templeton almost long enough," the young man resumed,
+laughing, "to set up as a candidate for the public favour, if I
+rightly understand the claims of a denizen. By what I can gather from
+casual remarks, the old proverb that 'the new broom sweeps clean'
+applies with singular fidelity throughout all this region.
+
+"Have you a copy of your last ode, or a spare epigram, in your
+pocket?" inquired John Effingham.
+
+Paul looked surprised, and Aristabulus, for a novelty, was a little
+dashed. Paul looked surprised, as a matter of course, for, although
+he had been a little annoyed by the curiosity that is apt to haunt a
+village imagination, since his arrival in Templeton, he did not in
+the least suspect that his love of a beautiful nature had been
+imputed to devotion to the muses. Perceiving, however, by the smiles
+of those around him, that there was more meant than was expressed, he
+had the tact to permit the explanation to come from the person who
+had put the question, if it were proper it should come at all.
+
+"We will defer the great pleasure that is in reserve," continued John
+Effingham, "to another time. At present, it strikes me that the lady
+of the lawn is getting to be impatient, and the _déjeuner à la
+fourchette_, that I have had the precaution to order, is probably
+waiting our appearance. It must be eaten, though under the penalty of
+being thought moon-struck rhymers by the whole State. Come, Ned; if
+you are sufficiently satisfied with looking at the Wigwam in a
+bird's-eye view, we will descend and put its beauties to the severer
+test of a close examination."
+
+This proposal was readily accepted, though all tore themselves from
+that lovely spot with reluctance, and not until they had paused to
+take another look.
+
+"Fancy the shores of this lake lined with villas." said Eve, "church-
+towers raising their dark heads among these hills; each mountain
+crowned with a castle, or a crumbling ruin, and all the other
+accessories of an old state of society, and what would then be the
+charms of the view!"
+
+"Less than they are to-day, Miss Effingham," said Paul Powis; "for
+though poetry requires--you all smile, is it forbidden to touch on
+such subjects?"
+
+"Not at all, so it be done in wholesome rhymes," returned the
+baronet. "You ought to know that you are expected even to speak in
+doggerel."
+
+Paul ceased, and the whole party walked away from the place, laughing
+and light-hearted.
+
+Chapter X.
+
+  "It is the spot, I came to seek, My father's ancient burial place--
+
+  "It is the spot--I know it well, Of which our old traditions tell."
+
+  BRYANT.
+
+From the day after their arrival in New-York, or that on which the
+account of the arrests by the English cruiser had appeared in the
+journals, little had been said by any of our party concerning Paul
+Powis, or of the extraordinary manner in which he had left the
+packet, at the very moment she was about to enter her haven. It is
+true that Mr. Dodge, arrived at Dodgeopolis, had dilated on the
+subject in his hebdomadal, with divers additions and conjectures of
+his own, and this, too, in a way to attract, a good deal of attention
+in the interior; but, it being a rule with those who are supposed to
+dwell at the fountain of foreign intelligence, not to receive any
+thing from those who ought not to be better informed than themselves,
+the Effinghams and their friends had never heard of his account of
+the matter.
+
+While all thought the incident of the sudden return extraordinary, no
+one felt disposed to judge the young man harshly. The gentlemen knew
+that military censure, however unpleasant, did not always imply moral
+unworthiness; and as for the ladies, they retained too lively a sense
+of his skill and gallantry, to wish to imagine evil on grounds so
+slight and vague. Still, it had been impossible altogether to prevent
+the obtrusion of disagreeable surmises, and all now sincerely
+rejoiced at seeing their late companion once more among them,
+seemingly in a state of mind that announced neither guilt nor
+degradation.
+
+On quitting the mountain, Mr. Effingham, who had a tender regard for
+Grace, offered her his arm as he would have given it to a second
+daughter, leaving Eve to the care of John Effingham. Sir George
+attended to Mademoiselle Viefville, and Paul walked by the side of
+our heroine and her cousin, leaving Aristabulus to be what he himself
+called a "miscellaneous companion;" or, in other words, to thrust
+himself into either set, as inclination or accident might induce. Of
+course the parties conversed as they walked, though those in advance
+would occasionally pause to say a word to those in the rear; and, as
+they descended, one or two changes occurred to which we may have
+occasion to allude.
+
+"I trust you have had pleasant passages," said John Effingham to
+Paul, as soon as they were separated in the manner just mentioned.
+"Three trips across the Atlantic in so short a time would be hard
+duty to a landsman, though you, as a sailor, will probably think less
+of it."
+
+"In this respect I have been fortunate; the Foam, as we know from
+experience, being a good traveller, and Ducie is altogether a fine
+fellow and an agreeable messmate. You know I had him for a companion
+both going and coming."
+
+This was said naturally; and, while it explained so little directly,
+it removed all unpleasant uncertainty, by assuring his listeners that
+he had been on good terms at least, with the person who had seemed to
+be his pursuer. John Effingham, too, well understood that no one
+messed with the commander of a vessel of war, in his own ship, who
+was, in any way, thought to be an unfit associate.
+
+"You have made a material circuit to reach us, the distance by Quebec
+being nearly a fourth more than the direct road."
+
+"Ducie desired it so strongly, that I did not like to deny him.
+Indeed, he made it a point, at first, to obtain permission to land me
+at New-York, where he had found me, as he said; but to this I would
+not listen, as I feared it might interfere with his promotion, of
+which he stood so good a chance, in consequence of his success in the
+affair of the money. By keeping constantly before the eyes of his
+superiors, on duty of interest, I thought his success would be more
+certain."
+
+"And has his government thought his perseverance in the chase worthy
+of such a reward?"
+
+"Indeed it has. He is now a post, and all owing to his good luck and
+judgment in that affair; though in his country, rank in private life
+does no harm to one in public life."
+
+Eve liked the emphasis that Paul laid on "his country," and she
+thought the whole remark was made in a spirit that an Englishman
+would not be apt to betray.
+
+"Has it ever occurred to you," continued John Effingham, "that our
+sudden and unexpected separation, has caused a grave neglect of duty
+in me, if not in both of us?"
+
+Paul looked surprised, and, by his manner, he demanded an
+explanation.
+
+"You may remember the sealed package of poor Mr. Monday, that we were
+to open together on our arrival in New-York, and on the contents of
+which, we were taught to believe depended the settling of some
+important private rights. I gave that package to you, at the moment
+it was received, and, in the hurry of leaving us, you overlooked the
+circumstance."
+
+"All very true, and to my shame I confess that, until this instant,
+the affair has been quite forgotten by me. I had so much to occupy my
+mind while in England, that it was not likely to be remembered, and
+then the packet itself has scarce been in my possession since the day
+I left you,"
+
+"It is not lost, I trust!" said John Effingham quickly.
+
+"Surely not--it is safe, beyond a question, in the writing-desk in
+which I deposited it. But the moment we got to Portsmouth, Ducie and
+myself proceeded to London together, and, as soon as he had got
+through at the Admiralty, we went into Yorkshire, where we remained,
+much occupied with private matters of great importance to us both,
+while his ship was docked; and then it became necessary to make
+sundry visits to our relations--"
+
+"Relations!" repeated Eve involuntarily, though she did not cease to
+reproach herself for the indiscretion, during the rest of the walk.
+
+"Relations--" returned Paul, smiling. "Captain Ducie and myself are
+cousins-german, and we made pilgrimages together, to sundry family
+shrines. This duty occupied us until a few days before we sailed for
+Quebec. On reaching our haven, I left the ship to visit the great
+lakes and Niagara, leaving most of my effects with Ducie, who has
+promised to bring them on with himself, when he followed on my track,
+as he expected soon to do, on his way to the West Indies, where he is
+to find a frigate. He owed me this attention, as he insisted, on
+account of having induced me to go so far out of my way, with so much
+luggage, to oblige him. The packet is, unluckily, left behind with
+the other things."
+
+"And do you expect Captain Ducie to arrive in this country soon?--The
+affair of the packet ought not to be neglected much longer, for a
+promise to a dying man is doubly binding, as it appeals to all our
+generosity. Rather than neglect the matter much longer, I would
+prefer sending a special messenger to Quebec."
+
+"That will be quite unnecessary, as, indeed, it would be useless.
+Ducie left Quebec yesterday, and has sent his and my effects direct
+to New-York, under the care of his own steward. The writing-case,
+containing other papers that are of interest to us both, he has
+promised not to lose sight of, but it will accompany him on the same
+tour, as that I have just made; for, he wishes to avail himself of
+this opportunity to see Niagara and the lakes, also: he is now on my
+track, and will notify me by letter of the day he will be in Utica,
+in order that we may meet on the line of the canal, near this place,
+and proceed to New-York, in company."
+
+His companions listened to this brief statement with an intense
+interest, with which the packet of poor Mr. Monday, however, had very
+little connection. John Effingham called to his cousin, and, in a few
+words, stated the circumstances as they had just been related to
+himself, without adverting to the papers of Mr. Monday, which was an
+affair that he had hitherto kept to himself.
+
+"It will be no more than a return of civility, if we invite Captain
+Ducie to diverge from his road, and pass a few days with us, in the
+mountains," he added. "At what precise time do you expect him to
+pass, Powis?"
+
+"Within the fortnight. I feel certain he would be glad to pay his
+respects to this party, for he often expressed his sincere regrets at
+having been employed on a service that exposed the ladies to so much
+peril and delay."
+
+"Captain Ducie is a near kinsman of Mr. Powis, dear father," added
+Eve, in a way to show her parent, that the invitation would be
+agreeable to herself, for Mr. Effingham was so attentive to the
+wishes of his daughter, as never to ask a guest to his house, that he
+thought would prove disagreeable to its mistress.
+
+"I shall do myself the pleasure to write to Captain Ducie, this
+evening, urging him to honour us with his company," returned Mr.
+Effingham. "We expect other friends in a few days, and I hope he will
+not find his time heavy on his hands, while in exile among us. Mr.
+Powis will enclose my note in one of his letters, and will, I trust,
+second the request by his own solicitations."
+
+Paul made his acknowledgments, and the whole party proceeded, though
+the interruption caused such a change in the _figure_ of the
+promenade, as to leave the young man the immediate escort of Eve. The
+party, by this time, had not only reached the highway, but it had
+again diverged from it, to follow the line of an old and abandoned
+wheel-track, that descended the mountain, along the side of the
+declivity, by a wilder and more perilous direction than suited a
+modern enterprise; it having been one of those little calculated and
+rude roads, that the first settlers of a country are apt to make,
+before there are time and means to investigate and finish to
+advantage. Although much more difficult and dangerous than its
+successor, as a highway, this relic of the infant condition of the
+country was by far the most retired and beautiful; and pedestrians
+continued to use it, as a common foot-path to the Vision. The seasons
+had narrowed its surface, and the second growth had nearly covered it
+with their branches, shading it like an arbour; and Eve expressed her
+delight with its wildness and boldness, mingled, as both were, with
+so pleasant a seclusion, as they descended along a path as safe and
+convenient as a French _allée_. Glimpses were constantly obtained of
+the lake and the village, while they proceeded; and altogether, they
+who were strangers to the scenery, were loud in its praises.
+
+"Most persons, who see this valley for the first time," observed
+Aristabulus, "find something to say in its favour; for my part, I
+consider it as rather curious myself."
+
+"Curious!" exclaimed Paul; "that gentleman is, at least, singular in
+the choice of his expressions."
+
+"You have met him before to-day," said Eve, laughing, for Eve was now
+in a humour to laugh at trifles. "This we know, since he had prepared
+us to meet a poet, where we only find an old friend."
+
+"Only, Miss Effingham!--Do you estimate poets so high, and old
+friends so low?"
+
+"This extraordinary person, Mr. Aristabulus Bragg, really deranges
+all one's notions and opinions in such a manner, as to destroy even
+the usual signification of words, I believe. He seems so much in, and
+yet so much out of his place; is both so _rusé_, and so unpractised;
+so unfit for what he is, and so ready at every thing, that I scarcely
+know how to apply terms in any matter with which he has the smallest
+connection. I fear he has persecuted you since your arrival in
+Templeton?"
+
+"Not at all; I am so much acquainted with men of his cast, that I
+have acquired a tact in managing them. Perceiving that he was
+disposed to suspect me of a disposition to 'poetize the lake,' to use
+his own term, I took care to drop a couple of lines, roughly written
+off, like a hasty and imperfect effusion, where I felt sure he would
+find them, and have been living for a whole week on the fame
+thereof."
+
+"You do indulge in such tastes, then?" said Eve smiling a little
+saucily.
+
+"I am as innocent of such an ambition, as of wishing to marry the
+heiress of the British throne, which, I believe, just now, is the
+goal of all the Icaruses of our own time. I am merely a rank
+plagiarist--for the rhyme, on the fame of which I have rioted for a
+glorious week, was two lines of Pope's, an author so effectually
+forgotten in these palmy days of literature, in which all knowledge
+seems so condensed into the productions of the last few years, that a
+man might almost pass off an entire classic for his own, without the
+fear of detection. It was merely the first couplet of the Essay on
+Man, which, fortunately, having an allusion to the 'pride of Kings,'
+would pass for original, as well as excellent, in nineteen villages
+in twenty in America, in these piping times of ultra-republicanism.
+No doubt Mr. Bragg thought a eulogy on the 'people' was to come next,
+to be succeeded by a glorious picture of Templeton and its environs."
+
+"I do not know that I ought to admit these hits at liberty from a
+foreigner," said Eve, pretending to look graver than she felt; for
+never before, in her life, had our heroine so strong a consciousness
+of happiness, as she had experienced that very morning.
+
+"Foreigner, Miss Effingham!--And why a foreigner?"
+
+"Nay, you know your own pretended cosmopolitism; and ought not the
+cousin of Captain Ducie to be an Englishman?"
+
+"I shall not answer for the _ought_, the simple fact being a
+sufficient reply to the question. The cousin of Captain Ducie is
+_not_ an Englishman; nor, as I see you suspect, has he ever served a
+day in the British navy, or in any other navy than that of his native
+land."
+
+"This is indeed taking us by surprise, and that most agreeably,"
+returned Eve, looking up at him with undisguised pleasure, while a
+bright glow crimsoned her face. "We could not but feel an interest in
+one who had so effectually served us; and both my father and Mr. John
+Effingham----"
+
+"Cousin Jack--" interrupted the smiling Paul.
+
+"Cousin Jack, then, if you dislike the formality I used; both my
+father and cousin Jack examined the American navy registers for your
+name, without success, as I understood, and the inference that
+followed was fair enough, I believe you will admit."
+
+"Had they looked at a register of a few years' date, they would have
+met with better luck. I have quitted the service, and am a sailor
+only in recollections. For the last few years, like yourselves, I
+have been a traveller by land as well as by water."
+
+Eve said no more, though every syllable that the young man uttered
+was received by attentive ears, and retained with a scrupulous
+fidelity of memory. They walked some distance in silence, until they
+reached the grounds of a house that was beautifully placed on the
+side of the mountain, near a lovely wood of pines. Crossing these
+grounds, until they reached a terrace in front of the dwelling, the
+village of Templeton lay directly in their front, perhaps a hundred
+feet beneath them, and yet so near, as to render the minutest object
+distinct. Here they all stopped to take a more distinct view of a
+place that had so much interest with most of the party.
+
+"I hope you are sufficiently acquainted with the localities to act as
+cicerone," said Mr. Effingham to Paul. "In a visit of a week to this
+village, you have scarcely overlooked the Wigwam."
+
+"Perhaps I ought to hesitate, or rather ought to blush to own it,"
+answered the young man, discharging the latter obligation by
+colouring to his temples; "but curiosity has proved so much stronger
+than manners, that I have been induced to trespass so far on the
+politeness of this gentleman, as to gain an admission to your
+dwelling, in and about which more of my time has been passed than has
+probably proved agreeable to its inmates."
+
+"I hope the gentleman will not speak of it," said Aristabulus. "In
+this country, we live pretty much in common, and with me it is a
+rule, when a gentleman drops in, whether stranger or neighbour, to
+show him the civility to ask him to take off his hat."
+
+"It appears to me," said Eve, willing to change the conversation,
+"that Templeton has an unusual number of steeples; for what purpose
+can so small a place possibly require so many buildings of that
+nature?"
+
+"All in behalf of orthodoxy, Miss Eve," returned Aristabulus, who
+conceived himself to be the proper person to answer such
+interrogatories. "There is a shade of opinion beneath every one of
+those steeples."
+
+"Do you mean, sir, that there are as many shades of faith in
+Templeton, as I now see buildings that have the appearance of being
+devoted to religious purposes?"
+
+"Double the number, Miss, and some to spare, in the bargain; for you
+see but five meeting-houses, and the county-buildings, and we reckon
+seven regular hostile denominations in the village, besides the
+diversities of sentiment on trifles. This edifice that you perceive
+here, in a line with the chimneys of the first house, is New St.
+Paul's, Mr. Grant's old church, as orthodox a house, in its way, as
+there is in the diocese, as you may see by the windows. This is a
+gaining concern, though there has been some falling off of late, in
+consequence of the clergyman's having caught a bad cold, which has
+made him a little hoarse; but I dare say he will get over it, and the
+church ought not to be abandoned on that account, serious as the
+matter undoubtedly is, for the moment. A few of us are determined to
+back up New St. Paul's in this crisis, and I make it a point to go
+there myself, quite half the time."
+
+"I am glad we have so much of your company," said Mr. Effingham "for
+that is our own church, and in it my daughter was baptized. But, do
+you divide your religious opinions in halves, Mr. Bragg?"
+
+"In as many parts, Mr. Effingham, as there are denominations in the
+neighbourhood, giving a decided preference to New St. Paul's,
+notwithstanding, under the peculiar circumstances, particularly to
+the windows. The dark, gloomy-looking building, Miss, off in the
+distance, yonder, is the Methodist affair, of which not much need be
+said; Methodism flourishing but little among us since the
+introduction of the New Lights, who have fairly managed to out-excite
+them, on every plan they can invent. I believe, however, they stick
+pretty much to the old doctrine, which, no doubt, is one great reason
+of their present apathetic state; for the people do love novelties."
+
+"Pray, sir, what building is this nearly in a line with New St.
+Paul's, and which resembles it a little, in colour and form?"
+
+"Windows excepted; it has two rows of regular square-topped windows,
+Miss, as you may observe. That is the First Presbyterian, or the old
+standard; a very good house, and a pretty good faith, too, as times
+go. I make it a point to attend there, at least once every fortnight;
+for change is agreeable to the nature of man. I will say, Miss, that
+my preference, so far as I have any, however, is for New St. Paul's,
+and I have experienced considerable regrets, that these Presbyterians
+have gained a material advantage over us, in a very essential point,
+lately."
+
+"I am sorry to hear this, Mr. Bragg; for, being an Episcopalian
+myself, and having great reliance on the antiquity and purity of my
+church, I should be sorry to find it put in the wrong by any other."
+
+"I fear we must give that point up, notwithstanding, for these
+Presbyterians have entirely outwitted the church people in that
+matter."
+
+"And what is the point in which we have been so signally worsted?"
+
+"Why, Miss, their new bell weighs quite a hundred more than that of
+New St. Paul's, and has altogether the best sound. I know very well
+that this advantage will not avail them any thing to boast of, in the
+last great account; but it makes a surprising difference in the state
+of probation. You see the yellowish looking building across the
+valley, with a heavy wall around it, and a belfry? That, in its
+regular character, is the county court-house, and gaol; but, in the
+way of religion, it is used pretty much miscellaneously."
+
+"Do you mean, really, sir, that divine service is ever actually
+performed in it, or that persons of all denominations are
+occasionally tried there?"
+
+"It would be truer to say that all denominations occasionally try the
+court-house," said Aristabulus, simpering; "for I believe it has been
+used in this way by every shade of religion short of the Jews. The
+Gothic tower in wood, is the building of the Universalists; and the
+Grecian edifice, that is not yet painted, the Baptists. The Quakers,
+I believe, worship chiefly at home, and the different shades of the
+Presbyterians meet, in different rooms, in private houses, about the
+place."
+
+"Are there then shades of difference in the denominations, as well as
+all these denominations?" asked Eve, in unfeigned surprise; "and
+this, too, in a population so small?"
+
+"This is a free county, Miss Eve, and freedom loves variety. 'Many
+men, many minds.'"
+
+"Quite true, sir," said Paul; "but here are many minds among few men.
+Nor is this all; agreeably to your own account, some of these men do
+not exactly know their own minds. But, can you explain to us what
+essential points are involved in all these shades of opinion?"
+
+"It would require a life, sir, to understand the half of them. Some
+say that excitement is religion, and others, that it is contentment.
+One set cries up practice, and another cries out against it. This man
+maintains that he will be saved if he does good, and that man affirms
+that if he only does good, he will be damned; a little evil is
+necessary to salvation, with one shade of opinion, while another
+thinks a man is never so near conversion as when he is deepest in
+sin."
+
+"Subdivision is the order of the day," added John Effingham; "every
+county is to be subdivided that there may be more county towns, and
+county offices; every religion decimated, that there may be a greater
+variety and a better quality of saints."
+
+Aristabulus nodded his head, and he would have winked, could he have
+presumed to take such a liberty with a man he held as much in
+habitual awe, as John Effingham.
+
+"_Monsieur_," inquired Mademoiselle Viefville, "is there no _église_,
+no _véritable église_, in Templeton?"
+
+"Oh, yes, Madame, several," returned Aristabulus, who would as soon
+think of admitting that he did not understand the meaning of
+_véritable église_, as one of the sects he had been describing would
+think of admitting that it was not infallible in its interpretation
+of Christianity--"several; but they are not be seen from this
+particular spot."
+
+"How much more picturesque would it be, and even christian-like in
+appearance, at least," said Paul, could these good people consent to
+unite in worshipping God!--and how much does it bring into strong
+relief, the feebleness and ignorance of man, when you see him
+splitting hairs about doctrines, under which he has been told, in
+terms as plain as language can make it, that he is simply required to
+believe in the goodness and power of a Being whose nature and
+agencies exceed his comprehension."
+
+"All very true," cried John Effingham, "but what would become of
+liberty of conscience in such a case? Most men, now-a-days,
+understand by faith, a firm reliance on their own opinions!"
+
+"In that case, too," put in Aristabulus, "we should want this
+handsome display of churches to adorn our village. There is good
+comes of it; for any man would be more likely to invest in a place
+that has five churches, than in a place with but one. As it is,
+Templeton has as beautiful a set of churches as any village I know."
+
+"Say, rather, sir, a set of castors; for a stronger resemblance to
+vinegar-cruets and mustard-pots, than is borne by these architectural
+prodigies, eye never beheld."
+
+"It is, nevertheless, a beautiful thing, to see the high pointed roof
+of the house of God, crowning an assemblage of houses, as one finds
+it in other countries," said Eve, "instead of a pile of tavern, as is
+too much the case in this dear home of ours."
+
+When this remark was uttered, they descended the step that led from
+the terrace, and proceeded towards the village. On reaching the gate
+of the Wigwam, the whole party stood confronted with that offspring
+of John Effingham's taste; for so great had been his improvements on
+the original production of Hiram Doolittle, that externally, at
+least, that distinguished architect could no longer have recognized
+the fruits of his own talents.
+
+"This is carrying out to the full, John, the conceits of the
+composite order," observed Mr. Effingham, drily.
+
+"I shall be sorry, Ned, if you dislike your house, as it is amended
+and corrected."
+
+"Dear cousin Jack," cried Eve, "it is an odd jumble of the Grecian
+and Gothic. One would like to know your authorities for such a
+liberty."
+
+"What do you think of the _façade_ of the cathedral of Milan, Miss,"
+laying emphasis on the last words, in imitation of the manner of Mr.
+Bragg. "Is it such a novelty to see the two styles blended; or is
+architecture so pure in America, that you think I have committed the
+unpardonable sin."
+
+"Nay, nothing that is out of rule ought to strike one, in a country
+where imitation governs in all things immaterial, and originality
+unsettles all things sacred and dear."
+
+"By way of punishment for that bold speech, I wish I had left the old
+rookery in the state I found it, that its beauties might have greeted
+your eyes, instead of this uncouth pile, which seems so much to
+offend them. Mademoiselle Viefville, permit me to ask how you like
+that house?"
+
+"_Mais, c'est un petit chateau_"
+
+"_Un château, Effinghamisé,_" said Eve, laughing.
+
+"_Effinghamisé si vous voulez, ma chère; pourtant c'est un château_."
+
+"The general opinion in this part of the country is," said
+Aristabulus, "that Mr. John Effingham has altered the building on the
+plan of some edifice of Europe, though I forget the name of the
+particular temple; it is not, however, the Parthenon, nor the temple
+of Minerva."
+
+"I hope, at least," said Mr. Effingham, leading the way up a little
+lawn, "it will not turn out to be the Temple of the Winds."
+
+Chapter XI.
+
+  "Nay, I'll come; if I lose a scruple of this sport, let me be oiled
+  to death with melancholy."--SHAKSPEARE.
+
+The progress of society in America, has been distinguished by several
+peculiarities that do not so properly belong to the more regular and
+methodical advances of civilization in other parts of the world. On
+the one hand, the arts of life, like Minerva, who was struck out of
+the intellectual being of her father at a blow, have started full-
+grown into existence, as the legitimate inheritance of the colonists,
+while, on the other, every thing tends towards settling down into a
+medium, as regards quality, a consequence of the community-character
+of the institutions. Every thing she had seen that day, had struck
+Eve as partaking of this mixed nature, in which, while nothing was
+vulgar, little even approached to that high standard, that her
+European education had taught her to esteem perfect. In the Wigwam,
+however, as her father's cousin had seen fit to name the family
+dwelling, there was more of keeping, and a closer attention to the
+many little things she had been accustomed to consider essential to
+comfort and elegance, and she was better satisfied with her future
+home, than with most she had seen since her return to America.
+
+As we have described the interior of this house, in another work,
+little remains to be said on the subject, at present; for, while John
+Effingham had completely altered its external appearance, its
+internal was not much changed. It is true, the cloud-coloured
+covering had disappeared, as had that stoop also, the columns of
+which were so nobly upheld by their super-structure; the former
+having given place to a less obtrusive roof, that was regularly
+embattled, and the latter having been swallowed up by a small
+entrance tower, that the new architect had contrived to attach to the
+building with quite as much advantage to it, in the way of comfort,
+as in the way of appearance. In truth, the Wigwam had none of the
+more familiar features of a modern American dwelling of its class.
+There was not a column about it, whether Grecian, Roman, or Egyptian;
+no Venetian blinds; no verandah or piazza; no outside paint, nor gay
+blending of colours. On the contrary, it was a plain old structure,
+built with great solidity, and of excellent materials, and in that
+style of respectable dignity and propriety, that was perhaps a little
+more peculiar to our fathers than it is peculiar to their successors,
+our worthy selves. In addition to the entrance tower, or porch, on
+its northern front, John Effingham had also placed a prettily devised
+conceit on the southern, by means of which the abrupt transition from
+an inner room to the open air was adroitly avoided. He had, moreover,
+removed the "firstly" of the edifice, and supplied its place with a
+more suitable addition that contained some of the offices, while it
+did not disfigure the building, a rare circumstance in an
+architectural after-thought.
+
+Internally, the Wigwam had gradually been undergoing improvements,
+ever since that period, which, in the way of the arts, if not in the
+way of chronology, might be termed the dark ages of Otsego. The great
+hall had long before lost its characteristic decoration of the
+severed arm of Wolf, a Gothic paper that was better adapted to the
+really respectable architecture of the room being its substitute; and
+even the urn that was thought to contain the ashes of Queen Dido,
+like the pitcher that goes often to the well, had been broken in a
+war of extermination that had been carried on against the cobwebs by
+a particularly notable housekeeper. Old Homer, too, had gone the way
+of all baked clay. Shakspeare, himself, had dissolved into dust,
+"leaving not a wreck behind;" and of Washington and Franklin, even,
+indigenous as they were, there remained no vestiges. Instead of these
+venerable memorials of the past, John Effingham, who retained a
+pleasing recollection of their beauties as they had presented
+themselves to his boyish eyes, had bought a few substitutes in a New-
+York shop, and _a_ Shakspeare, and _a_ Milton, and _a_ Cæsar, and _a_
+Dryden, and _a_ Locke, as the writers of heroic so beautifully
+express it, were now seated in tranquil dignity on the old medallions
+that had held their illustrious predecessors. Although time had, as
+yet, done little for this new collection in the way of colour, dust
+and neglect were already throwing around them the tint of antiquity.
+
+"The lady," to use the language of Mr. Bragg, who did the cooking of
+the Wigwam, having every thing in readiness, our party took their
+seats at the breakfast table, which was spread in the great hall, as
+soon as each had paid a little attention to the _toilette_. As the
+service was neither very scientific, nor sufficiently peculiar,
+either in the way of elegance or of its opposite quality, to be
+worthy of notice, we shall pass it over in silence.
+
+"One will not quite so much miss European architecture in this
+house," said Eve, as she took her seat at table, glancing an eye at
+the spacious and lofty room, in which they were assembled; "here is
+at least size and its comforts, if not elegance."
+
+"Had you lost all recollection of this building, my child?" inquired
+her father, kindly; "I was in hopes you would feel some of the
+happiness of returning home, when you again found yourself beneath
+its roof!"
+
+"I should greatly dislike to have all the antics I have been playing
+in my own dressing-room exposed," returned Eve, rewarding the
+parental solicitude of her father by a look of love, "though Grace,
+between her laughing and her tears, has threatened me with such a
+disgrace. Ann Sidley has also been weeping, and, as even Annette,
+always courteous and considerate, has shed a few tears in the way of
+sympathy, you ought not to imagine that I have been altogether so
+stoical as not to betray some feeling, dear father. But the paroxysm
+is past, and I am beginning to philosophize. I hope, cousin Jack, you
+have not forgotten that the drawing-room is a lady's empire!"
+
+"I have respected your rights, Miss Effingham, though, with a wish to
+prevent any violence to your tastes, I have caused sundry
+antediluvian paintings and engravings to be consigned to the--"
+
+"Garret?" inquired Eve, so quickly as to interrupt the speaker.
+
+"Fire," coolly returned her cousin. "The garret is now much too good
+for them; that part of the house being converted into sleeping-rooms
+for the maids. Mademoiselle Annette would go into hysterics, were she
+to see the works of art, that satisfied the past generation of
+masters in this country, in too close familiarity with her Louvre-
+ized eyes."
+
+"_Point du tout, monsieur_," said Mademoiselle Viefville, innocently;
+"_Annette a du gout dans son metier sans doute_, but she is too well
+bred to expect _impossibilités._ No doubt she would have conducted
+herself with decorum."
+
+Every body laughed, for much light-heartedness prevailed at that
+board, and the conversation continued.
+
+"I shall be satisfied if Annette escape convulsions," Eve added, "a
+refined taste being her weakness; and, to be frank, what I recollect
+of the works you mention, is not of the most flattering nature."
+
+"And yet," observed Sir George, "nothing has surprised me more than
+the respectable state of the arts of engraving and painting in this
+country. It was unlooked for, and the pleasure has probably been in
+proportion to the surprise."
+
+"In that you are very right, Sir George Templemore," John Effingham
+answered; "but the improvement is of very recent date. He who
+remembers an American town half a century ago, will see a very
+different thing in an American town of to-day; and this is equally
+true of the arts you mention, with the essential difference that the
+latter are taking a right direction under a proper instruction, while
+the former are taking a wrong direction, under the influence of
+money, that has no instruction. Had I left much of the old furniture,
+or any of the old pictures in the Wigwam, we should have had the
+bland features of Miss Effingham in frowns, instead of bewitching
+smiles, at this very moment."
+
+"And yet I have seen fine old furniture in this country, cousin
+Jack."
+
+"Very true; though not in this part of it. The means of conveyance
+were wanting half a century since, and few people risk finery of any
+sort on corduroys. This very house had some respectable old things,
+that were brought here by dint of money, and they still remain; but
+the eighteenth century in general, may be set down as a very dark
+antiquity in all this region."
+
+When the repast was over, Mr. Effingham led his guests and daughter
+through the principal apartments, sometimes commending, and sometimes
+laughing, at the conceits of his kinsman. The library was a good
+sized room; good sized at least for a country in which domestic
+architecture, as well as public architecture, is still in the
+chrysalis state. Its walls were hung with an exceedingly pretty
+gothic paper, in green, but over each window was a chasm in the upper
+border; and as this border supplied the arches, the unity of the
+entire design was broken in no less than four places, that being the
+precise number of the windows. The defect soon attracted the eye of
+Eve, and she was not slow in demanding an explanation.
+
+"The deficiency is owing to an American accident," returned her
+cousin; "one of those calamities of which you are fated to experience
+many, as the mistress of an American household. No more of the border
+was to be bought in the country, and this is a land of shops and not
+of _fabricants_. At Paris, Mademoiselle, one would send to the paper-
+maker for a supply; but, alas! he that has not enough of a thing with
+us, is as badly off as if he had none. We are consumers, and not
+producers of works of art. It is a long way to send to France for ten
+or fifteen feet of paper hangings, and yet this must be done, or my
+beautiful gothic arches will remain forever without their key-
+stones!"
+
+"One sees the inconvenience of this," observed Sir George--"we feel
+it, even in England, in all that relates to imported things."
+
+"And we, in nearly all things, but food."
+
+"And does not this show that America can never become a manufacturing
+country?" asked the baronet, with the interest an intelligent
+Englishman ever feels in that all-absorbing question. "If you cannot
+manufacture an article as simple as that of paper-hangings, would it
+not be well to turn your attention, altogether, to agriculture?"
+
+As the feeling of this interrogatory was much more apparent than its
+logic, smiles passed from one to the other, though John Effingham,
+who really had a regard for Sir George, was content to make an
+evasive reply, a singular proof of amity, in a man of his caustic
+temperament.
+
+The survey of the house, on the whole, proved satisfactory to its
+future mistress, who complained, however, that it was furnished too
+much like a town residence.
+
+"For," she added, "you will remember, cousin Jack, that our visits
+here will be something like a _villeggiatura_."
+
+"Yes, yes, my fair lady; it will not be long before your Parisian and
+Roman tastes will be ready to pronounce the whole country a
+_villeggiatura!_"
+
+"This is the penalty, Eve, one pays for being a Hajji," observed
+Grace, who had been closely watching the expression of the others'
+countenances; for, agreeably to her view of things, the Wigwam wanted
+nothing to render it a perfect abode. "The things that _we_ enjoy,
+_you_ despise."
+
+"That is an argument, my dear coz, that would apply equally well, as
+a reason for preferring brown sugar to white."
+
+"In coffee, certainly, Miss Eve," put in the attentive Aristabulus,
+who having acquired this taste, in virtue of an economical mother,
+really fancied it a pure one. "Every body, in these regions, prefers
+the brown in coffee."
+
+"_Oh, mon père et ma mère, comme je vous en veux,_" said Eve, without
+attending to the nice distinctions of Mr. Bragg, which savoured a
+little too much of the neophyte in cookery, to find favour in the
+present company, "_comme je vous en veux_ for having neglected so
+many beautiful sites, to place this building in the very spot it
+occupies."
+
+"In that respect, my child, we may rather be grateful at finding so
+comfortable a house, at all. Compared with the civilization that then
+surrounded it, this dwelling was a palace at the time of its
+erection; bearing some such relation to the humbler structures around
+it, as the _château_ bears to the cottage. Remember that brick had
+never before been piled on brick, in the walls of a house, in all
+this region, when the Wigwam was constructed. It is the Temple of
+Neptune of Otsego, if not of all the surrounding counties."
+
+Eve pressed to her lips the hand she was holding in both her own, and
+they all passed out of the library into another room. As they came in
+front of the hall windows, a party of apprentice-boys were seen
+coolly making their arrangements to amuse themselves with a game of
+ball, on the lawn directly in front of the house.
+
+"Surely, Mr. Bragg," said the owner of the Wigwam, with more
+displeasure in his voice than was usual for one of his regulated
+mind, "you do not countenance this liberty?"
+
+"Liberty, sir!--I am an advocate for liberty wherever I can find it.
+Do you refer to the young men on the lawn, Mr. Effingham?"
+
+"Certainly to them, sir; and permit me to say, I think they might
+have chosen a more suitable spot for their sports. They are mistaking
+_liberties_ for liberty I fear."
+
+"Why, sir, I believe they have _always_ played ball in that precise
+locality."
+
+"_Always_!--I can assure you this is a great mistake. What private
+family, placed as we are in the centre of a village, would allow of
+an invasion of its privacy in this rude manner? Well may the house be
+termed a Wigwam, if this whooping is to be tolerated before its
+door."
+
+"You forget, Ned," said John Effingham, with a sneer, "that an
+American _always_ means just eighteen months. _Antiquity_ is reached
+in five lustres, and the dark ages at the end of a human life. I dare
+say these amiable young gentlemen, who enliven their sports with so
+many agreeable oaths, would think you very unreasonable and
+encroaching to presume to tell them they are unwelcome."
+
+"To own the truth, Mr. John, it _would_ be downright unpopular."
+
+"As I cannot permit the ears of the ladies to be offended with these
+rude brawls, and shall never consent to have grounds that are so
+limited, and which so properly belong to the very privacy of my
+dwelling, invaded in this coarse manner, I beg, Mr. Bragg, that you
+will, at once, desire these young men to pursue their sports
+somewhere else."
+
+Aristabulus received this commission with a very ill grace; for,
+while his native sagacity told him that Mr. Effingham was right, he
+too well knew the loose habits that had been rapidly increasing in
+the country during the last ten years, not to foresee that the order
+would do violence to all the apprentices' preconceived notions of
+their immunities; for, as he had truly stated, things move at so
+quick a pace in America, and popular feeling is so arbitrary, that a
+custom of a twelve months' existence is deemed sacred, until the
+public, itself, sees fit to alter it. He was reluctantly quitting the
+party, on his unpleasant duty, when Mr. Effingham turned to a
+servant, who belonged to the place, and bade him go to the village
+barber, and desire him to come to the Wigwam to cut his hair; Pierre,
+who usually performed that office for him, being busied in unpacking
+trunks.
+
+"Never mind, Tom," said Aristabulus obligingly, as he took up his
+hat; "I am going into the street, and will give the message to Mr.
+Lather."
+
+"I cannot think, sir, of employing you on such a duty," hastily
+interposed Mr. Effingham, who felt a gentleman's reluctance to impose
+an unsuitable office on any of his dependants--"Tom, I am sure, will
+do me the favour."
+
+"Do not name it, my dear sir; nothing makes me happier than to do
+these little errands, and, another time, you can do as much for me."
+
+Aristabulus now went his way more cheerfully, for he determined to go
+first to the barber, hoping that some expedient might suggest itself,
+by means of which he could coax the apprentices from the lawn, and
+thus escape the injury to his popularity, that he so much dreaded. It
+is true, these apprentices were not voters, but then some of them
+speedily would be, and all of them, moreover, had _tongues_, an
+instrument Mr. Bragg held in quite as much awe as some men dread
+salt-petre. In passing the ball-players, he called out in a wheedling
+tone to their ringleader, a notorious street brawler--
+
+"A fine time for sport, Dickey; don't you think there would be more
+room in the broad street than on this crowded lawn, where you lose
+your ball so often in the shrubbery?"
+
+"This place will do, on a pinch," bawled Dickey--"though it might be
+better. If it warn't for that plagued house, we couldn't ask for a
+better ball-ground."
+
+"I don't see," put in another, "what folks built a house just in that
+spot for; it has spoilt the very best play-ground in the village."
+
+"Some people have their notions as well as others," returned
+Aristabulus; "but, gentlemen, if I were in your place, I would try
+the street; I feel satisfied you would find it much the most
+agreeable and convenient."
+
+The apprentices thought differently, however, or they were indisposed
+to the change; and so they recommenced their yells, their oaths, and
+their game. In the mean while, the party in the house continued their
+examination of John Effingham's improvements; and when this was
+completed, they separated, each to his or her own room.
+
+Aristabulus soon reappeared on the lawn; and, approaching the ball-
+players, he began to execute his commission, as he conceived, in good
+earnest. Instead of simply saying, however, that it was disagreeable
+to the owner of the property to have such an invasion on his privacy,
+and thus putting a stop to the intrusion for the future as well as at
+the present moment, he believed some address necessary to attain the
+desired end.
+
+"Well, Dickey," he said, "there is no accounting for tastes; but, in
+my opinion, the street would be a much better place to play ball in
+than this lawn. I wonder gentlemen of your observation should be
+satisfied with so cramped a play-ground!"
+
+"I tell you, Squire Bragg, this will do," roared Dickey; "we are in a
+hurry, and no way particular; the bosses will be after us in half an
+hour. Heave away, Sam."
+
+"There are so many fences hereabouts," continued Aristabulus, with an
+air of indifference; "it's true the village trustees say there _shall
+be no ball-playing in the street_, but I conclude you don't much mind
+what _they_ think or threaten."
+
+"Let them sue for that, if they like," bawled a particularly amiable
+blackguard, called Peter, who struck his ball as he spoke, quite into
+the principal street of the village. "Who's a trustee, that he should
+tell gentlemen where they are to play ball!"
+
+"Sure enough," said Aristabulus, "and, now, by following up that
+blow, you can bring matters to an issue. I think the law very
+oppressive, and you can never have so good an opportunity to bring
+things to a crisis. Besides, it is very aristocratic to play ball
+among roses and dahlias."
+
+The bait took; for what apprentice--American apprentice, in
+particular--can resist an opportunity of showing how much he
+considers himself superior to the law? Then it had never struck any
+of the party before, that it was vulgar and aristocratic to pursue
+the sport among roses, and one or two of them actually complained
+that they had pricked their fingers, in searching for the ball.
+
+"I know Mr. Effingham will be very sorry to have you go," continued
+Aristabulus, following up his advantage; "but gentlemen cannot always
+forego their pleasures for other folks."
+
+"Who's Mr. Effingham, I would like to know?" cried Joe Wart. "If he
+wants people to play ball on his premises, let him cut down his
+roses. Come, gentlemen, I conform to Squire Bragg, and invite you all
+to follow me into the street."
+
+As the lawn was now evacuated, _en masse_, Aristabulus proceeded with
+alacrity to the house, and went into the library, where Mr. Effingham
+was patiently waiting his return.
+
+"I am happy to inform you, sir," commenced the ambassador, "that the
+ball-players have adjourned; and as for Mr. Lather, he declines your
+proposition."
+
+"Declines my proposition!"
+
+"Yes, sir; he dislikes to come; for he thinks it will be altogether a
+poor operation. His notion is, that if it be worth his while to come
+up to the Wigwam to cut your hair, it may be worth your while to go
+down to the shop, to have it cut. Considering the matter in all its
+bearings, therefore, he concludes he would rather not engage in the
+transaction at all."
+
+"I regret, sir, to have consented to your taking so disagreeable a
+commission, and regret it the more, now I find that the barber is
+disposed to be troublesome."
+
+"Not at all, sir. Mr. Lather is a good man, in his way, and
+particularly neighbourly. By the way, Mr. Effingham, he asked me to
+propose to let him take down your garden fence, in order that he may
+haul some manure on his potato patch, which wants it dreadfully, he
+says."
+
+"Certainly, sir. I cannot possibly object to his hauling his manure,
+even through this house, should he wish it. He is so very valuable a
+citizen, and one who knows his own business so well, that I am only
+surprised at the moderation of his request."
+
+Here Mr. Effingham rose, rang the bell for Pierre, and went to his
+own room, doubting, in his own mind, from all that he had seen,
+whether this was really the Templeton he had known in his youth, and
+whether he was in his own house or not.
+
+As for Aristabulus, who saw nothing out of rule, or contrary to his
+own notions of propriety, in what had passed, he hurried off to tell
+the barber, who was so ignorant of the first duty of his trade, that
+he was at liberty to pull down Mr. Effingham's fence, in order to
+manure his own potato patch.
+
+Lest the reader should suppose we are drawing caricatures, instead of
+representing an actual condition of society, it may be necessary to
+explain that Mr. Bragg was a standing candidate for popular favour;
+that, like Mr. Dodge, he considered every thing that presented itself
+in the name of the public, as sacred and paramount, and that so
+general and positive was his deference for majorities, that it was
+the bias of his mind to think half-a-dozen always in the right, as
+opposed to one, although that one, agreeably to the great decision of
+the real majority of the entire community, had not only the law on
+his side, but all the abstract merits of the disputed question. In
+short, to such a pass of freedom had Mr. Bragg, in common with a
+large class of his countrymen, carried his notions, that he had
+really begun to imagine liberty was all means and no end.
+
+Chapter XII.
+
+  "In sooth, thou wast in very gracious fooling last night, when thou
+  spokest of Pigrogromotus, of the Vapians passing the equinoctial of
+  Queubus; 't was very good i' faith."--SIR ANDREW AGUE-CHEEK.
+
+The progress of society, it has just been said, in what is termed a
+"new country," is a little anomalous. At the commencement of a
+settlement, there is much of that sort of kind feeling and mutual
+interest, which men are apt to manifest towards each other, when they
+are embarked in an enterprise of common hazards. The distance that is
+unavoidably inseparable from education, habits and manners, is
+lessened by mutual wants and mutual efforts; and the gentleman, even
+while he may maintain his character and station, maintains them with
+that species of good-fellowship and familiarity, that marks the
+intercourse between the officer and the soldier, in an arduous
+campaign. Men, and even women, break bread together, and otherwise
+commingle, that, in different circumstances, would be strangers; the
+hardy adventures and rough living of the forest, apparently lowering
+the pretensions of the man of cultivation and mere mental resources,
+to something very near the level of those of the man of physical
+energy, and manual skill. In this rude intercourse, the parties meet,
+as it might be, on a sort of neutral ground, one yielding some of his
+superiority, and the other laying claims to an outward show of
+equality, that he secretly knows, however, is the result of the
+peculiar circumstances in which he is placed. In short, the state of
+society is favourable to the claims of mere animal force, and
+unfavourable to those of the higher qualities.
+
+This period may be termed, perhaps, the happiest of the first century
+of a settlement. The great cares of life are so engrossing and
+serious, that small vexations are overlooked, and the petty
+grievances that would make us seriously uncomfortable in a more
+regular state of society, are taken as matters of course, or laughed
+at as the regular and expected incidents of the day. Good-will
+abounds; neighbour comes cheerfully to the aid of neighbour; and life
+has much of the reckless gaiety, careless association, and buoyant
+merriment of childhood. It is found that they who have passed through
+this probation, usually look back to it with regret, and are fond of
+dwelling on the rude scenes and ridiculous events that distinguish
+the history of a new settlement, as the hunter is known to pine for
+the forest.
+
+To this period of fun, toil, neighbourly feeling and adventure,
+succeeds another, in which society begins to marshal itself, and the
+ordinary passions have sway. Now it is, that we see the struggles for
+place, the heart-burnings and jealousies of contending families, and
+the influence of mere money. Circumstances have probably established
+the local superiority of a few beyond all question, and the
+conditioese serves as a goal for the rest to aim at. The learned
+professions, the ministry included, or what, by courtesy, are so
+called, take precedence, as a matter of course, next to wealth,
+however, when wealth is at all supported by appearances. Then
+commence those gradations of social station, that set institutions at
+defiance, and which as necessarily follow civilization, as tastes and
+habits are a consequence of indulgence.
+
+This is, perhaps, the least inviting condition of society that
+belongs to any country that can claim to be free and removed from
+barbarism. The tastes are too uncultivated to exercise any essential
+influence; and when they do exist, it is usually with the pretension
+and effort that so commonly accompany infant knowledge. The struggle
+is only so much the more severe, in consequence of the late _pèle
+mèle_, while men lay claim to a consideration that would seem beyond
+their reach, in an older and more regulated community. It is during
+this period that manners suffer the most, since they want the nature
+and feeling of the first condition, while they are exposed to the
+rudest assaults of the coarse-minded and vulgar; for, as men usually
+defer to a superiority that is long established, there being a charm
+about antiquity that is sometimes able to repress the passions, in
+older communities the marshalling of time quietly regulates what is
+here the subject of strife.
+
+What has just been said, depends on a general and natural principle,
+perhaps; but the state of society we are describing has some features
+peculiar to itself. The civilization of America, even in its older
+districts, which supply the emigrants to the newer regions, is
+unequal; one state possessing a higher level than another. Coming as
+it does, from different parts of this vast country, the population of
+a new settlement, while it is singularly homogenous for the
+circumstances, necessarily brings with it its local peculiarities. If
+to these elements be added a sprinkling of Europeans of various
+nations and conditions, the effects of the commingling, and the
+temporary social struggles that follow, will occasion no surprise.
+
+The third and last condition of society in a "new country," is that
+in which the influence of the particular causes enumerated ceases,
+and men and things come within the control of more general and
+regular laws. The effect, of course, is to leave the community
+possession of a civilization that conforms to that of the whole
+region, be it higher or be it lower, and with the division into
+castes that are more or less rigidly maintained, according to
+circumstances.
+
+The periods, as the astronomers call the time taken in a celestial
+revolution, of the two first of these epochs in the history of a
+settlement, depend very much on its advancement in wealth and in
+numbers. In some places, the pastoral age, or that of good
+fellowship, continues for a whole life, to the obvious retrogression
+of the people, in most of the higher qualities, but to their manifest
+advantage, however, in the pleasures of the time being; while, in
+others, it passes away rapidly, like the buoyant animal joys, that
+live their time, between fourteen and twenty.
+
+The second period is usually of longer duration, the migratory habits
+of the American people keeping society more unsettled than might
+otherwise prove to be the case. It may be said never to cease
+entirely until the great majority of the living generation are
+natives of the region, knowing no other means of comparison than
+those under which they have passed their days. Even when this is the
+case, there is commonly so large an infusion of the birds of passage,
+men who are adventurers in quest of advancement, and who live without
+the charities of a neighbourhood, as they may be said almost to live
+without a home, that there is to be found, for a long time, a middle
+state of society, during which it may well be questioned whether a
+community belongs to the second or to the third of the periods named.
+
+Templeton was properly in this equivocal condition, for while the
+third generation of the old settlers were in active life, so many
+passers-by came and went, that the influence of the latter nearly
+neutralized that of time and the natural order of things. Its
+population was pretty equally divided between the descendants of the
+earlier inhabitants, and those who flitted like swallows and other
+migratory birds. All of those who had originally entered the region
+in the pride of manhood, and had been active in converting the
+wilderness into the abodes of civilized men, if they had not been
+literally gathered to their fathers, in a physical sense had been
+laid, the first of their several races, beneath those sods that were
+to cover the heads of so many of their descendants. A few still
+remained among those who entered the wilderness in young manhood, but
+the events of the first period we have designated, and which we have
+imperfectly recorded in another work, were already passing into
+tradition. Among these original settlers some portion of the feeling
+that had distinguished their earliest communion with their neighbours
+yet continued, and one of their greatest delights was to talk of the
+hardships and privations of their younger days, as the veteran loves
+to discourse of his marches, battles, scars, and sieges. It would be
+too much to say that these persons viewed the more ephemeral part of
+the population with distrust, for their familiarity with changes
+accustomed them to new faces; but they had a secret inclination for
+each other, preferred those who could enter the most sincerely into
+their own feelings, and naturally loved that communion best, where
+they found the most sympathy. To this fragment of the community
+belonged nearly all there was to be found of that sort of sentiment
+which is connected with locality; adventure, with them, supplying the
+place of time; while the natives of the spot, wanting in the
+recollections that had so many charms for their fathers, were not yet
+brought sufficiently within the influence of traditionary interest,
+to feel that hallowed sentiment in its proper force. As opposed in
+feeling to these relics of the olden time, were the birds of passage
+so often named, a numerous and restless class, that, of themselves,
+are almost sufficient to destroy whatever there is of poetry, or of
+local attachment, in any region where they resort.
+
+In Templeton and its adjacent district, however, the two hostile
+influences might be said to be nearly equal, the descendants of the
+fathers of the country beginning to make a manly stand against the
+looser sentiment, or the want of sentiment, that so singularly
+distinguishes the migratory bands. The first did begin to consider
+the temple in which their fathers had worshipped more hallowed than
+strange altars; the sods that covered their fathers' heads more
+sacred than the clods that were upturned by the plough; and the
+places of their childhood and childish sports dearer than the highway
+trodden by a nameless multitude.
+
+Such, then, were the elements of the society into which we have now
+ushered the reader, and with which it will be our duty to make him
+better acquainted, as we proceed in the regular narration of the
+incidents of our tale.
+
+The return of the Effinghams, after so long an absence, naturally
+produced a sensation in so small a place, and visiters began to
+appear in the Wigwam as soon as propriety would allow. Many false
+rumours prevailed, quite as a matter of course; and Eve, it was
+reported, was on the point of being married to no less than three of
+the inmates of her father's house, within the first ten days, viz:
+Sir George Templemore, Mr. Powis, and Mr. Bragg; the latter story
+taking its rise in some precocious hopes that had escaped the
+gentleman himself, in the "excitement" of helping to empty a bottle
+of bad Breton wine, that was dignified with the name of champagne.
+But these tales revived and died so often, in a state of society in
+which matrimony is so general a topic with the young of the gentler
+sex, that they brought with them their own refutation.
+
+The third day, in particular, after the arrival of our party, was a
+reception day at the Wigwam; the gentlemen and ladies making it a
+point to be at home and disengaged, after twelve o'clock, in order to
+do honour to their guests. One of the first who made his appearance
+was a Mr. Howel, a bachelor of about the same age as Mr. Effingham,
+and a man of easy fortune and quiet habits. Nature had done more
+towards making Mr. Howel a gentleman, than either cultivation or
+association; for he had passed his entire life, with very immaterial
+exceptions, in the valley of Templeton, where, without being what
+could be called a student, or a scholar, he had dreamed away his
+existence in an indolent communication with the current literature of
+the day. He was fond of reading, and being indisposed to contention,
+or activity of any sort, his mind had admitted the impressions of
+what he perused, as the stone receives a new form by the constant
+fall of drops of water. Unfortunately for Mr. Howel, he understood no
+language but his mother tongue; and, as all his reading was
+necessarily confined to English books, he had gradually, and unknown
+to himself, in his moral nature at least, got to be a mere reflection
+of those opinions, prejudices, and principles, if such a word can
+properly be used for such a state of the mind, that it had suited the
+interests or passions of England to promulgate by means of the press.
+A perfect _bonne foi_ prevailed in all his notions; and though a very
+modest man by nature, so very certain was he that his authority was
+always right, that he was a little apt to be dogmatical on such
+points as he thought his authors appeared to think settled. Between
+John Effingham and Mr. Howel, there were constant amicable skirmishes
+in the way of discussion; for, while the latter was so dependent,
+limited in knowledge by unavoidable circumstances, and disposed to an
+innocent credulity, the first was original in his views, accustomed
+to see and think for himself, and, moreover, a little apt to estimate
+his own advantages at their full value.
+
+"Here comes our good neighbour, and my old school-fellow, Tom Howel."
+said Mr. Effingham, looking out at a window, and perceiving the
+person mentioned crossing the little lawn in front of the house, by
+following a winding foot-path--"as kind-hearted a man, Sir George
+Templemore, as exists; one who is really American, for he has
+scarcely quitted the county half-a-dozen times in his life, and one
+of the honestest fellows of my acquaintance."
+
+"Ay," put in John Effingham, "as real an American as any man can be,
+who uses English spectacles for all he looks at, English opinions for
+all he says, English prejudices for all he condemns, and an English
+palate for all he tastes. American, quotha! The man is no more
+American than the Times' newspaper, or Charing Cross! He actually
+made a journey to New-York last war, to satisfy himself with his own
+eyes that a Yankee frigate had really brought an Englishman into
+port."
+
+"His English predilections will be no fault in my eyes," said the
+baronet, smiling--"and I dare say we shall be excellent friends."
+
+"I am sure Mr. Howel is a very agreeable man," added Grace--"of all
+in your Templeton _côterie_, he is my greatest favourite."
+
+"Oh! I foresee a tender intimacy between Templemore and Howel,"
+rejoined John Effingham; "and sundry wordy wars between the latter
+and Miss Effingham."
+
+"In this you do me injustice, cousin Jack. I remember Mr. Howel well,
+and kindly; for he was ever wont to indulge my childish whims, when a
+girl."
+
+"The man is a second Burchell, and, I dare say never came to the
+Wigwam when you were a child, without having his pockets stuffed with
+cakes, or _bonbons_."
+
+The meeting was cordial, Mr. Howel greeting the gentlemen like a warm
+friend, and expressing great delight at the personal improvements
+that had been made in Eve, between the ages of eight and twenty. John
+Effingham was no more backward than the others, for he, too, liked
+their simple-minded, kind-hearted, but credulous neighbour.
+
+"You are welcome back--you are welcome back," added Mr. Howel,
+blowing his nose, in order to conceal the tears that were gathering
+in his eyes. "I did think of going to New-York to meet you, but the
+distance at my time of life is very serious. Age, gentlemen, seems to
+be a stranger to you."
+
+"And yet we, who are both a few months older than yourself, Howel,"
+returned Mr. Effingham, kindly, "have managed to overcome the
+distance you have just mentioned, in order to come and see _you!_"
+
+"Ay, you are great travellers, gentlemen, very great travellers, and
+are accustomed to motion.--Been quite as far as Jerusalem, I hear!"
+
+"Into its very gates, my good friend; and I wish, with all my heart,
+we had had you in our company. Such a journey might cure you of the
+home-malady."
+
+"I am a fixture, and never expect to look upon the ocean, now. I did,
+at one period of my life, fancy such an event might happen, but I
+have finally abandoned all hope on that subject. Well, Miss Eve, of
+all the countries in which you have dwelt, to which do you give the
+preference?"
+
+"I think Italy is the general favourite," Eve answered, with a
+friendly smile; "although there are some agreeable things peculiar to
+almost every country."
+
+"Italy!--Well, that astonishes me a good deal! I never knew there was
+any thing particularly interesting about Italy! I should have
+expected _you_ to say, England."
+
+"England is a fine country, too, certainly; but it wants many things
+that Italy enjoys."
+
+"Well, now, what?" said Mr. Howel, shifting his legs from one knee to
+the other, in order to be more convenient to listen, or, if
+necessary, to object. "What _can_ Italy possess, that England does
+not enjoy in a still greater degree?"
+
+"Its recollections, for one thing, and all that interest which time
+and great events throw around a region."
+
+"And is England wanting in recollections and great events? Are there
+not the Conqueror? or, if you will, King Alfred? and Queen Elizabeth,
+and Shakspeare--think of Shakspeare, young lady--and Sir Walter
+Scott, and the Gun-Powder Plot; and Cromwell, Oliver Cromwell, my
+dear Miss Eve; and Westminster Abbey, and London Bridge, and George
+IV., the descendant of a line of real kings,--what, in the name of
+Heaven, can Italy possess, to equal the interest one feels in such
+things as these?'
+
+"They are very interesting no doubt;" said Eve, endeavouring not to
+smile--"but Italy has its relics of former ages too; you forget the
+Cæsars."
+
+"Very good sort of persons for barbarous times, I dare say, but what
+can they be to the English monarchs? I would rather look upon a _bonâ
+fide_ English king, than see all the Cæsars that ever lived. I never
+can think any man a real king but the king of England!"
+
+"Not King Solomon!" cried John Effingham.
+
+"Oh! he was a Bible king, and one never thinks of them. Italy! well,
+this I did not expect from your father's daughter! Your great-great-
+great-grandfather must have been an Englishman born, Mr, Effingham?"
+
+"I have reason to think he was, sir."
+
+"And Milton, and Dryden, and Newton, and Locke! These are prodigious
+names, and worth all the Cæsars put together. And Pope, too; what
+have they got in Italy to compare to Pope?"
+
+"They have at least _the_ Pope," said Eve, laughing.
+
+"And, then, there are the Boar's Head in East-Cheap; and the Tower;
+and Queen Anne, and all the wits of her reign; and--and--and Titus
+Oates; and Bosworth field; and Smithfield, where the martyrs were
+burned, and a thousand more spots and persons of intense interest in
+Old England!"
+
+"Quite true," said John Effingham, with an air of sympathy--"but,
+Howel, you have forgotten Peeping Tom of Coventry, and the climate!"
+
+"And Holyrood-House; and York-Minster; and St Paul's;" continued the
+worthy Mr. Howel, too much bent on a catalogue of excellencies, that
+to him were sacred, to heed the interruption, "and, above all,
+Windsor Castle. What is there in the world to equal Windsor Castle as
+a royal residence?"
+
+Want of breath now gave Eve an opportunity to reply, and she seized
+it with an eagerness that she was the first to laugh at herself,
+afterwards.
+
+"Caserta is no mean house, Mr. Howel; and, in my poor judgment, there
+is more real magnificence in its great stair-case, than in all
+Windsor Castle united, if you except the chapel."
+
+"But, St. Paul's!"
+
+"Why, St. Peter's may be set down, quite fairly, I think, for its
+_pendant_ at least."
+
+"True, the Catholics _do_ say so;" returned Mr. Howel, with the
+deliberation one uses when he greatly distrusts his own concession;
+"but I have always considered it one of their frauds. I don't think
+there _can_ be any thing finer than St. Paul's. Then there are the
+noble ruins of England! _They_, you must admit, are unrivalled."
+
+"The Temple of Neptune, at Pæstum, is commonly thought an interesting
+ruin, Mr. Howel."
+
+"Yes, yes, for a _temple_, I dare say; though I do not remember to
+have ever heard of it before. But no temple can ever compare to a
+ruined _abbey_ /"
+
+"Taste is an arbitrary thing, Tom Howel, as you and I know when as
+boys we quarrelled about the beauty of our ponies," said Mr.
+Effingham, willing to put an end to a discussion that he thought a
+little premature, after so long an absence. "Here are two young
+friends who shared the hazards of our late passage with us, and to
+whom, in a great degree, we owe our present happy security, and I am
+anxious to make you acquainted with them. This is our countryman, Mr.
+Powis, and this is an English friend, who, I am certain, will be
+happy to know so warm an admirer of his own country--Sir George
+Templemore."
+
+Mr. Howel had never before seen a titled Englishman, and he was taken
+so much by surprise that he made his salutations rather awkwardly. As
+both the young men, however, met him with the respectful ease that
+denotes familiarity with the world, he soon recovered his self-
+possession.
+
+"I hope you have brought back with you a sound American heart, Miss
+Eve," resumed the guest, as soon as this little interruption had
+ceased. "We have had sundry rumours of French Marquisses, and German
+Barons; but I have, all along, trusted too much to your patriotism to
+believe you would marry a foreigner."
+
+"I hope you except Englishmen," cried Sir George, gaily: "we are
+almost the same people."
+
+"I am proud to hear you say so, sir. Nothing flatters me more than to
+be thought English; and I certainly should not have accused Miss
+Effingham of a want of love of country, had----"
+
+"She married half-a-dozen Englishmen," interrupted John Effingham,
+who saw that the old theme was in danger of being revived. "But,
+Howel, you have paid me no compliments on the changes in the house. I
+hope they are to your taste."
+
+"A little too French, Mr. John."
+
+"French!--There is not a French feature in the whole animal. What has
+put such a notion into your head?"
+
+"It is the common opinion, and I confess I should like the building
+better were it less continental."
+
+"Why, my old friend, it is a nondescript--original--Effingham upon
+Doolittle, if you will; and, as for models, it is rather more
+_English_ than any thing else."
+
+"Well, Mr. John, I am glad to hear this, for I do confess to a
+disposition rather to like the house. I am dying to know, Miss Eve,
+if you saw all our distinguished contemporaries when in
+Europe?--_That_ to me, would be one of the greatest delights of
+travelling!"
+
+"To say that we saw them _all_, might be too much; though we
+certainly did meet with many."
+
+"Scott, of course."
+
+"Sir Walter we had the pleasure of meeting, a few times, in London."
+
+"And Southey, and Coleridge, and Wordsworth, and Moore, and Bulwer,
+and D'Israeli, and Rogers, and Campbell, and the grave of Byron, and
+Horace Smith, and Miss Landon, and Barry Cornwall, and--"
+
+"_Cum multis aliis_" put in John Effingham, again, by way of
+arresting the torrent of names. "Eve saw many of these, and, as Tubal
+told Shylock, 'we often came where we did hear' of the rest. But you
+say nothing, friend Tom, of Goethe, and Tieck, and Schlegel, and La
+Martine, Chateaubriant, Hugo, Delavigne, Mickiewicz, Nota, Manzoni,
+Niccolini, &c. &c. &c. &c. &c. &c."
+
+Honest, well-meaning Mr. Howel, listened to the catalogue that the
+other ran volubly over, in silent wonder; for, with the exception of
+one or two of these distinguished men, he had never even heard of
+them; and, in the simplicity of his heart, unconsciously to himself,
+he had got to believe that there was no great personage still living,
+of whom he did not know something.
+
+"Ah, here comes young Wenham, by way of preserving the equilibrium,"
+resumed John Effingham, looking out of a window--"I rather think you
+must have forgotten him, Ned, though you remember his father, beyond
+question."
+
+Mr. Effingham and his cousin went out into the hall to receive the
+new guest, with whom the latter had become acquainted while
+superintending the repairs of the Wigwam.
+
+Mr. Wenham was the son of a successful lawyer in the county, and,
+being an only child, he had also succeeded to an easy independence.
+His age, however, brought him rather into the generation to which Eve
+belonged, than into that of the father; and, if Mr. Howel was a
+reflection, or rather a continuation, of all the provincial notions
+that America entertained of England forty years ago, Mr. Wenham might
+almost be said to belong to the opposite school, and to be as ultra-
+American, as his neighbour was ultra-British.--If there is _lajeune
+France_, there is also _la jeune Amerique_, although the votaries of
+the latter march with less hardy steps than the votaries of the
+first. Mr. Wenham fancied himself a paragon of national independence,
+and was constantly talking of American excellencies, though the
+ancient impressions still lingered in his moral system, as men look
+askance for the ghosts which frightened their childhood on crossing a
+church-yard in the dark. John Effingham knew the _penchant_ of the
+young man, and when he said that he came happily to preserve the
+equilibrium, he alluded to this striking difference in the characters
+of their two friends.
+
+The introductions and salutations over, we shall resume the
+conversation that succeeded in the drawing-room.
+
+"You must be much gratified, Miss Effingham," observed Mr. Wenham,
+who, like a true American, being a young man himself, supposed it _de
+rigueur_ to address a young lady in preference to any other
+present,--"with the great progress made by _our_ country since you
+went abroad."
+
+Eve simply answered that her extreme youth, when she left home, had
+prevented her from retaining any precise notions on such subjects.
+
+"I dare say it is all very true," she added, "but one, like myself,
+who remembers only older countries, is, I think, a little more apt to
+be struck with the deficiencies, than with what may, in truth, be
+improvements, though they still fall short of excellence."
+
+Mr. Wenham looked vexed, or indignant would be a better word, but he
+succeeded in preserving his coolness--a thing that is not always easy
+to one of provincial habits and provincial education, when he finds
+his own _beau idéal_ lightly estimated by others.
+
+"Miss Effingham must discover a thousand imperfections." said Mr.
+Howel, "coming, as she does, directly from England. That music,
+now,"--alluding to the sounds of a flute that were heard through the
+open windows, coming from the adjacent village--"must be rude enough
+to her ear, after the music of London."
+
+"The _street_ music of London is certainly among the best, if not the
+very best, in Europe," returned Eve, with a glance of the eye at the
+baronet, that caused him to smile, "and I think this fairly belongs
+to the class, being so freely given to the neighbourhood."
+
+"Have you read the articles signed Minerva, in the Hebdomad, Miss
+Effingham," inquired Mr. Wenham, who was determined to try the young
+lady on a point of sentiment, having succeeded so ill in his first
+attempt to interest her--"they are generally thought to be a great
+acquisition to American literature."
+
+"Well, Wenham, you are a fortunate man," interposed Mr. Howel, "if
+you can find any literature in America, to add to, or to substract
+from. Beyond almanacs, reports of cases badly got up, and newspaper
+verses, I know nothing that deserves such a name."
+
+"We may not print on as fine paper, Mr. Howel, or do up the books in
+as handsome binding as other people," said Mr. Wenham, bridling and
+looking grave, "but so far as sentiments are concerned, or sound
+sense, American literature need turn its back on no literature of the
+day."
+
+"By the way, Mr. Effingham, you were in Russia; did you happen to see
+the Emperor?"
+
+"I had that pleasure, Mr. Howel."
+
+"And is he really the monster we have been taught to believe him?".
+
+"Monster!" exclaimed the upright Mr. Effingham, fairly recoiling a
+step in surprise. "In what sense a monster, my worthy friend? surely
+not in a physical?"
+
+"I do not know that. I have somehow got the notion he is any thing
+but handsome. A mean, butchering, bloody-minded looking little chap,
+I'll engage."
+
+"You are libelling one of the finest-looking men of the age."
+
+"I think I would submit it to a jury. I cannot believe, after what I
+have read of him in the English publications, that he is so very
+handsome."
+
+"But, my good neighbour, these English publications must be wrong;
+prejudiced perhaps, or even malignant."
+
+"Oh! I am not the man to be imposed on in that way. Besides, what
+motive could an English writer have for belying an Emperor of
+Russia?"
+
+"Sure enough, what motive!" exclaimed John Effingham.--"You have your
+answer, Ned!"
+
+"But you will remember, Mr. Howel," Eve interposed, "that we have
+_seen_ the Emperor Nicholas."
+
+"I dare say, Miss Eve, that your gentle nature was disposed to judge
+him as kindly as possible; and, then, I think most Americans, ever
+since the treaty of Ghent, have been disposed to view all Russians
+too favourably. No, no; I am satisfied with the account of the
+English; they live much nearer to St. Petersburg than we do, and they
+are more accustomed, too, to give accounts of such matters."
+
+"But living nearer, Tom Howel," cried Mr. Effingham, with unusual
+animation, "in such a case, is of no avail, unless one lives near
+enough to see with his own eyes."
+
+"Well--well--my good friend, we will talk of this another time. I
+know your disposition to look at every body with lenient eyes. I will
+now wish you all a good morning, and hope soon to see you again. Miss
+Eve, I have one word to say, if you dare trust yourself with a youth
+of fifty, for a minute, in the library."
+
+Eve rose cheerfully, and led the way to the room her father's visiter
+had named. When within it, Mr. Howel shut the door carefully, and
+then with a sort of eager delight, he exclaimed--
+
+"For heaven's sake, my dear young lady, tell me who are these two
+strange gentlemen in the other room."
+
+"Precisely the persons my father mentioned, Mr. Howel; Mr. Paul
+Powis, and Sir George Templemore."
+
+"Englishmen, of course!"
+
+"Sir George Templemore is, of course, as you say, but we may boast of
+Mr. Powis as a countryman."
+
+"Sir George Templemore!--What a superb-looking young fellow!"
+
+"Why, yes," returned Eve, laughing; "he, at least, you will admit is
+a handsome man."
+
+"He is wonderful!--The other, Mr.--a--a--a--I forget what you called
+him--he is pretty well too; but this Sir George is a princely youth."
+
+"I rather think a majority of observers would give the preference to
+the appearance of Mr. Powis," said Eve, struggling to be steady, but
+permitting a blush to heighten her colour, in despite of the effort.
+
+"What could have induced him to come up among these mountains--an
+English baronet!" resumed Mr. Howel, without thinking of Eve's
+confusion. "Is he a real lord?"
+
+"Only a little one, Mr. Howel. You heard what my father said of our
+having been fellow-travellers."
+
+"But what _does_ he think of us. I am dying to know what such a man
+_really_ thinks of us?"
+
+"It is not always easy to discover what such men _really_ think;
+although I am inclined to believe that he is disposed to think rather
+favourably of some of us."
+
+"Ay, of you, and your father, and Mr. John. You have travelled, and
+are more than half European; but what _can_ he think of those who
+have never left America?"
+
+"Even of some of those," returned Eve, smiling, "I suspect he thinks
+partially."
+
+"Well, I am glad of that. Do you happen to know his opinion of the
+Emperor Nicholas?"
+
+"Indeed. I do not remember to have heard him mention the Emperor's
+name; nor do I think he has ever seen him."
+
+"That is extraordinary! Such a man should have seen every thing, and
+know every thing; but I'll engage, at the bottom, he does know all
+about him. If you happen to have any old English newspapers, as
+wrappers, or by any other accident, let me beg them of you. I care
+not how old they are. An English journal fifty years old, is more
+interesting than one of ours wet from the press."
+
+Eve promised to send him a package, when they shook hands and parted.
+As she was crossing the hall, to rejoin the party, John Effingham
+stopped her.
+
+"Has Howel made proposals?" the gentleman inquired, in an affected
+whisper.
+
+"None, cousin Jack, beyond an offer to read the old English
+newspapers I can send him."
+
+"Yes, yes, Tom Howel will swallow all the nonsense that is _timbré à
+Londres_."
+
+"I confess a good deal of surprise at finding a respectable and
+intelligent man so weak-minded as to give credit to such authorities,
+or to form his serious opinions on information derived from such
+sources."
+
+"You may be surprised, Eve, at hearing so frank avowals of the
+weakness; but, as for the weakness itself, you are now in a country
+for which England does all the thinking, except on subjects that
+touch the current interests of the day."
+
+"Nay, I will not believe this! If it were true, how came we
+independent of her--where did we get spirit to war against her."
+
+"The man who has attained his majority is independent of his father's
+legal control, without being independent of the lessons he was taught
+when a child. The soldier sometimes mutinies, and after the contest
+is over, he is usually the most submissive man of the regiment."
+
+"All this to me is very astonishing! I confess that a great deal has
+struck me unpleasantly in this way, since our return; especially in
+ordinary society; but I never could have supposed it had reached to
+the pass in which I see it existing in our good neighbour Howel."
+
+"You have witnessed one of the effects, in a matter of no great
+moment to ourselves; but, as time and years afford the means of
+observation and comparison, you will perceive the effects in matters
+of the last moment, in a national point of view. It is in human
+nature to undervalue the things with which we are familiar, and to
+form false estimates of those which are remote, either by time, or by
+distance. But, go into the drawing-room, and, in young Wenham, you
+will find one who fancies himself a votary of a new school, although
+his prejudices and mental dependence are scarcely less obvious than
+those of poor Tom Howel."
+
+The arrival of more company, among whom were several ladies,
+compelled Eve to defer an examination of Mr. Wenham's peculiarities
+to another opportunity. She found many of her own sex, whom she had
+left children, grown into womanhood, and not a few of them at a
+period of life when they should be cultivating their physical and
+moral powers, already oppressed with the cares and feebleness that
+weigh so heavily on the young American wife.
+
+Chapter XIII.
+
+  "Nay we must longer kneel; I am a suitor."
+
+  QUEEN KATHERINE.
+
+The Effinghams were soon regularly domesticated, and the usual
+civilities had been exchanged. Many of their old friends resumed
+their ancient intercourse, and some new acquaintances were made. The
+few first visits were, as usual, rather labored and formal; but
+things soon took their natural course, and, as the ease of country
+life was the aim of the family, the temporary little bustle was
+quickly forgotten.
+
+The dressing-room of Eve overlooked the lake, and, about a week after
+her arrival, she was seated in it enjoying that peculiarly lady-like
+luxury, which is to be found in the process of having another gently
+disposing of the hair. Annette wielded the comb, as usual, while Ann
+Sidley, who was unconsciously jealous that any one should be employed
+about her darling, even in this manner, though so long accustomed to
+it, busied herself in preparing the different articles of attire that
+she fancied her young mistress might be disposed to wear that
+morning. Grace was also in the room, having escaped from the hands of
+her own maid, in order to look into one of those books which
+professed to give an account of the extraction and families of the
+higher classes of Great Britain, a copy of which Eve happened to
+possess, among a large collection of books, _Allmanachs de Gotha_,
+Court Guides, and other similar works that she had found it
+convenient to possess as a traveller.
+
+"Ah! here it is," said Grace, in the eagerness of one who is suddenly
+successful after a long and vexatious search.
+
+"Here is what, coz?"
+
+Grace coloured, and she could have bitten her tongue for its
+indiscretion, but, too ingenuous to deceive, she reluctantly told the
+truth.
+
+"I was merely looking for the account of Sir George Templemore's
+family; it is awkward to be domesticated with one, of whose family we
+are utterly ignorant."
+
+"Have you found the name?"
+
+"Yes; I see he has two sisters, both of whom are married, and a
+brother who is in the Guards. But--"
+
+"But what, dear?"
+
+"His title is not so _very_ old."
+
+"The title of no Baronet _can_ be very old, the order having been
+instituted in the reign of James I."
+
+"I did not know that. His ancestor was created a baronet in 1701, I
+see. Now, Eve--"
+
+"Now, what, Grace?"
+
+"We are both--" Grace would not confine the remark to herself--"we
+are both of older families than this! You have even a much higher
+English extraction; and I think I can claim for the Van Cortlandts
+more antiquity than one that dates from 1701!"
+
+"No one doubts it, Grace; but what do you wish me to understand by
+this? Are we to insist on preceding Sir George, in going through a
+door?"
+
+Grace blushed to the eyes, and yet she laughed, involuntarily.
+
+"What nonsense! No one thinks of such things in America."
+
+"Except at Washington, where, I am told, 'Senators' ladies' do give
+themselves airs. But you are quite right, Grace; women have no rank
+in America, beyond their general social rank, as ladies or no ladies,
+and we will not be the first to set an example of breaking the rule.
+I am afraid our blood will pass for nothing, and that we must give
+place to the baronet, unless, indeed, he recognizes the rights of the
+sex."
+
+"You know I mean nothing so silly. Sir George Templemore does not
+seem to think of rank at all; even Mr. Powis treats him, in all
+respects, as an equal, and Sir George seems to admit it to be right."
+
+Eve's maid, at the moment, was twisting her hair, with the intention
+to put it up; but the sudden manner in which her young mistress
+turned to look at Grace, caused Annette to relinquish her grasp, and
+the shoulders of the beautiful and blooming girl were instantly
+covered with the luxuriant tresses.
+
+"And why should _not_ Mr. Powis treat Sir George Templemore as one
+every way his equal, Grace?" she asked, with an impetuosity unusual
+in one so trained in the forms of the world.
+
+"Why, Eve, one is a baronet, and the other is but a simple
+gentleman."
+
+Eve Effingham sat silent for quite a minute. Her little foot moved,
+and she had been carefully taught, too, that a lady-like manner,
+required that even this beautiful portion of the female frame should
+be quiet and unobtrusive. But America did not contain two of the same
+sex, years, and social condition, less alike in their opinions, or it
+might be said their prejudices, than the two cousins. Grace Van
+Cortlandt, of the best blood of her native land, had unconsciouslv
+imbibed in childhood, the notions connected with hereditary rank,
+through the traditions of colonial manners, by means of novels, by
+hearing the vulgar reproached or condemned for their obtrusion and
+ignorance, and too often justly reproached and condemned, and by the
+aid of her imagination, which contributed to throw a gloss and
+brilliancy over a state of things that singularly gains by distance.
+On the other hand, with Eve, every thing connected with such subjects
+was a matter of fact. She had been thrown early into the highest
+associations of Europe; she had not only seen royalty on its days of
+gala and representation, a mere raree-show that is addressed to the
+senses, or purely an observance of forms that may possibly have their
+meaning, but which can scarcely be said to have their reasons, but
+she had lived long and intimately among the high-born and great, and
+this, too, in so many different countries, as to have destroyed the
+influence of the particular nation that has transmitted so many of
+its notions to America as heir-looms. By close observation, she knew
+that arbitrary and political distinctions made but little difference
+between men of themselves; and so far from having become the dupe of
+the glitter of life, by living so long within its immediate
+influence, she had learned to discriminate between the false and the
+real, and to perceive that which was truly respectable and useful,
+and to know it from that which was merely arbitrary and selfish. Eve
+actually fancied that the position of an American gentleman might
+readily become, nay that it _ought_ to be the highest of all human
+stations, short of that of sovereigns. Such a man had no social
+superior, with the exception of those who actually ruled, in her
+eyes, and this fact she conceived, rendered him more than noble, as
+nobility is usually graduated. She had been accustomed to see her
+father and John Effingham moving in the best circles of Europe,
+respected for their information and independence, undistinguished by
+their manners, admired for their personal appearance, manly,
+courteous, and of noble bearing and principles, if not set apart from
+the rest of mankind by an arbitrary rule connected with rank. Rich,
+and possessing all the habits that properly mark refinement, of
+gentle extraction, of liberal attainments, walking abroad in the
+dignity of manhood, and with none between them and the Deity, Eve had
+learned to regard the gentlemen of her race as the equals in station
+of any of their European associates, and as the superiors of most, in
+every thing that is essential to true distinction. With her, even
+titular princes and dukes had no estimation, merely as princes and
+dukes; and, as her quick mind glanced over the long catalogue of
+artificial social gradations and she found Grace actually attaching
+an importance to the equivocal and purely conventional condition of
+an English baronet, a strong sense of the ludicrous connected itself
+with the idea.
+
+"A simple gentleman, Grace!" she repeated slowly after her cousin;
+"and is not a simple gentleman, a simple _American_ gentleman, the
+equal of any gentleman on earth--of a poor baronet, in particular?"
+
+"Poor baronet, Eve!"
+
+"Yes, dear, _poor_ baronet; I know fully the extent and meaning of
+what I say. It is true, we do not know as much of Mr. Powis' family,"
+and here Eve's colour heightened, though she made a mighty effort to
+be steady and unmoved, "as we might; but we know he is an _American_;
+that, at least, is something; and we see he is a gentleman; and what
+American gentleman, a real American gentleman, _can_ be the inferior
+of an English baronet? Would your uncle, think you; would cousin
+Jack; proud, lofty-minded cousin Jack, think you, Grace, consent to
+receive so paltry a distinction as a baronetcy, were our institutions
+to be so far altered as to admit of such social classifications?"
+
+"Why, what would they be, Eve, if not baronets?"
+
+"Earls, Counts, Dukes, nay Princes! These are the designations of the
+higher classes of Europe, and such titles, or those that are
+equivalent, would belong to the higher classes here."
+
+"I fancy that Sir George Templemore would not be persuaded to admit
+all this!"
+
+"If you had seen Miss Eve, surrounded and admired by princes, as I
+have seen her, Miss Grace," said Ann Sidley, "you would not think any
+simple Sir George half good enough for her."
+
+"Our good Nanny means, _a_ Sir George," interrupted Eve, laughing,
+"and not _the_ Sir George in question. But, seriously, dearest coz,
+it depends more on ourselves, and less on others, in what light they
+are to regard us, than is commonly supposed. Do you not suppose there
+are families in America who, if disposed to raise any objections
+beyond those that are purely personal, would object to baronets, and
+the wearers of red ribands, as unfit matches for their daughters, on
+the ground of rank? What an absurdity would it be, for _a_ Sir
+George, or _the_ Sir George either, to object to a daughter of a
+President of the United States for instance, on account of station;
+and yet I'll answer for it, _you_ would think it no personal honour,
+if Mr. Jackson had a son, that he should, propose to my dear father
+for you. Let us respect ourselves properly, take care to be truly
+ladies and gentlemen, and so far from titular rank's being necessary
+to us, before a hundred lustres are past, we shall bring all such
+distinctions into discredit, by showing that they are not necessary
+to any one important interest, or to true happiness and
+respectability any where."
+
+"And do you not believe, Eve, that Sir George Templemore thinks of
+the difference in station between us?"
+
+"I cannot answer for that," said Eve, calmly. "The man is naturally
+modest; and, it is possible, when he sees that we belong to the
+highest social condition of a great country, he may regret that such
+has not been his own good fortune in his native land; especially,
+Grace, since he has known _you_."
+
+Grace blushed, looked pleased, delighted even, and yet surprised. It
+is unnecessary to explain the causes of the three first expressions
+of her emotions; but the last may require a short examination.
+Nothing but time and a change of circumstances, can ever raise a
+province or a provincial town to the independent state of feeling
+that so strikingly distinguishes a metropolitan country, or a
+capital. It would be as rational to expect that the inhabitants of
+the nursery should disregard the opinions of the drawing-room, as to
+believe that the provincial should do all his own thinking. Political
+dependency, moreover, is much more easily thrown aside than mental
+dependency. It is not surprising, therefore, that Grace Van
+Cortlandt, with her narrow associations, general notions of life,
+origin, and provincial habits, should be the very opposite of Eve, in
+all that relates to independence of thought, on subjects like those
+that they were now discussing. Had Grace been a native of New
+England, even, she would have been less influenced by the mere social
+rank of the baronet than was actually the case; for, while the
+population of that part of the Union feel more of the general
+subserviency to Great Britain than the population of any other
+portion of the republic, they probably feel less of it, in this
+particular form, from the circumstance that their colonial habits
+were less connected with the aristocratical usages of the mother
+country. Grace was allied by blood, too, with the higher classes of
+England, as, indeed, was the fact with most of the old families among
+the New York gentry; and the traditions of her race came in aid of
+the traditions of her colony, to continue the profound deference she
+felt for an English title. Eve might have been equally subjected to
+the same feelings, had she not been removed into another sphere at so
+early a period of life, where she imbibed the notions already
+mentioned--notions that were quite as effectually rooted in her moral
+system, as those of Grace herself could be in her own.
+
+"This is a strange way of viewing the rank of a baronet, Eve!" Grace
+exclaimed, as soon as she had a little recovered from the confusion
+caused by the personal allusion. "I greatly question if you can
+induce Sir George Templemore to see his own position with your eyes."
+
+"No, my dear; I think he will be much more likely to regard, not only
+that, but most other things, with the eyes of another person. We will
+now talk of more agreeable things, however; for I confess, when I do
+dwell on titles, I have a taste for the more princely appellations;
+and that a simple _chevalier_ can scarce excite a feeling that such
+is the theme."
+
+"Nay, Eve," interrupted Grace, with spirit, "an _English_ baronet
+_is_ noble. Sir George Templemore assured me that, as lately as last
+evening. The heralds, I believe, have quite recently established that
+fact to their own satisfaction."
+
+"I am glad of it, dear," returned Eve, with difficulty refraining
+from gaping, "as it will be of great importance to them, in their own
+eyes. At all events, I concede that Sir George Templemore, knight, or
+baronet, big baron or little baron, is a noble fellow; and what more
+can any reasonable person desire. Do you know, sweet coz, that the
+Wigwam will be full to overflowing next week?--that it will be
+necessary to light our council-fire, and to smoke the pipe of many
+welcomes?"
+
+"I have understood Mr. Powis, that his kinsman, Captain Ducie, will
+arrive on Monday."
+
+"And Mrs. Hawker will come on Tuesday, Mr. and Mrs. Bloomfield on
+Wednesday, and honest, brave straight-forward, literati-hating
+Captain Truck, on Thursday, at the latest. We shall be a large
+country-circle, and I hear the gentlemen talking of the boats and
+other amusements. But I believe my father has a consultation in the
+library, at which he wishes us to be present; we will join him, if
+you please."
+
+As Eve's toilette was now completed, the two ladies rose, and
+descended together to join the party below. Mr. Effingham was
+standing at a table that was covered with maps, while two or three
+respectable-looking men, master-mechanics, were at his side. The
+manners of these men were quiet, civil, and respectful, having a
+mixture of manly simplicity, with a proper deference for the years
+and station of the master of the house; though all but one, wore
+their hats. The one who formed the exception, had become refined by a
+long intercourse with this particular family; and his acquired taste
+had taught him that, respect for himself, as well as for decency,
+rendered it necessary to observe the long-established rules of
+decorum, in his intercourse with others. His companions, though
+without a particle of coarseness, or any rudeness of intention, were
+less decorous, simply from a loose habit, that is insensibly taking
+the place of the ancient laws of propriety in such matters, and which
+habit, it is to be feared, has a part of its origin in false and
+impracticable political notions, that have been stimulated by the
+arts of demagogues. Still, not one of the three hardworking, really
+civil, and even humane men, who now stood covered in the library of
+Mr. Effingham, was probably conscious of the impropriety of which he
+was guilty, or was doing more than insensibly yielding to a vicious
+and vulgar practice.
+
+"I am glad you have come, my love," said Mr. Effingham, as his
+daughter entered the room, "for I find I need support in maintaining
+my own opinions here. John is obstinately silent; and, as for all
+these other gentlemen, I fear they have decidedly taken sides against
+me."
+
+"You can usually count on my support, dearest father, feeble as it
+may be. But what is the disputed point to-day?"
+
+"There is a proposition to alter the interior of the church, and our
+neighbour Gouge has brought the plans, on which, as he says, he has
+lately altered several churches in the county. The idea is, to remove
+the pews entirely, converting them into what are called 'slips,' to
+lower the pulpit, and to raise the floor, amphitheatre fashion."
+
+"Can there be a sufficient reason for this change?" demanded Eve,
+with surprise. "Slips! The word has a vulgar sound even, and savours
+of a useless innovation. I doubt its orthodoxy."
+
+"It is very popular, Miss Eve," answered Aristabulus, advancing from
+a window, where he had been whispering assent. "This fashion takes
+universally and is getting to prevail in all denominations."
+
+Eve turned involuntarily, and to her surprise she perceived that the
+editor of the Active Inquirer was added to their party. The
+salutations, on the part of the young lady, were distant and stately,
+while Mr. Dodge, who had not been able to resist public opinion, and
+had actually parted with his moustachios, simpered, and wished to
+have it understood by the spectators, that he was on familiar terms
+with all the family.
+
+"It may be popular, Mr. Bragg," returned Eve, as soon as she rose
+from her profound curtsey to Mr. Dodge; "but it can scarcely be said
+to be seemly. This is, indeed, changing the order of things, by
+elevating the sinner, and depressing the saint."
+
+"You forget, Miss Eve, that under the old plan, the people could not
+see; they were kept unnaturally down, if one can so express it, while
+nobody had a good look-out but the parson and the singers in the
+front row of the gallery. This was unjust."
+
+"I do not conceive, sir, that a good look-out, as you term it, is at
+all essential to devotion, or that one cannot as well listen to
+instruction when beneath the teacher, as when above him."
+
+"Pardon me, Miss;" Eve recoiled, as she always did, when Mr. Bragg
+used this vulgar and contemptuous mode of address; "we put no body up
+or down; all we aim it is a just equality--to place all, as near as
+possible, on a level."
+
+Eve gazed about her in wonder; and then she hesitated a moment, as if
+distrusting her ears.
+
+"Equality! Equality with what? Surely not with the ordained ministers
+of the church, in the performance of their sacred duties! Surely not
+with the Deity!"
+
+"We do not look at it exactly in this light, ma'am. The people build
+the church, _that_ you will allow, Miss Effingham; even _you_ will
+allow _this_, Mr. Effingham."
+
+Both the parties appealed to, bowed a simple assent to so plain a
+proposition, but neither spoke.
+
+"Well, the people building the church very naturally ask themselves
+for what purpose it was built?"
+
+"For the worship of God," returned Eve with a steady solemnity of
+manner that a little abashed even the ordinarily indomitable and
+self-composed Aristabulus.
+
+"Yes, Miss; for the worship of God and the accommodation of the
+public."
+
+"Certainly," added Mr. Dodge; "for the public accommodation and for
+public worship;" laying due emphasis on the adjectives.
+
+"Father, you, at least, will never consent to this?"
+
+"Not readily, my love. I confess it shocks all my notions of
+propriety to see the sinner, even when he professes to be the most
+humble and penitent, thrust himself up ostentatiously, as if filled
+only with his own self-love and self-importance."
+
+"You will allow, Mr. Effingham," rejoined Aristabulus, "that churches
+are built to accommodate the public, as Mr. Dodge has so well
+remarked."
+
+"No, sir; they are built for the worship of God, as my daughter has
+so well remarked."
+
+"Yes, sir; that, too, I grant you"
+
+"As secondary to the main object--the public convenience, Mr. Bragg
+unquestionably means;" put in John Effingham, speaking for the first
+time that morning on the subject.
+
+Eve turned quickly, and looked towards her kinsman. He was standing
+near the table, with folded arms, and his fine face expressing all
+the sarcasm and contempt that a countenance so singularly calm and
+gentleman-like, could betray.
+
+"Cousin Jack," she said earnestly, "this ought not to be."
+
+"Cousin Eve, nevertheless this will be."
+
+"Surely not--surely not! Men can never so far forget appearances as
+to convert the temple of God into a theatre, in which the convenience
+of the spectators is the one great object to be kept in view!"
+
+"_You_ have travelled, sir," said John Effingham, indicating by his
+eye that he addressed Mr. Dodge, in particular, "and must have
+entered places of worship in other parts of the world. Did not the
+simple beauty of the manner in which all classes, the great and the
+humble, the rich and the poor, kneel in a common humility before the
+altar, strike you agreeably, on such occasions; in Catholic
+countries, in particular?"
+
+"Bless me! no, Mr. John Effingham. I was disgusted at the meanness of
+their rites, and really shocked at the abject manner in which the
+people knelt on the cold damp stones, as if they were no better than
+beggars."
+
+"And were they not beggars?" asked Eve, with almost a severity of
+tone: "ought they not so to consider themselves, when petitioning for
+mercy of the one great and omnipotent God?"
+
+"Why, Miss Effingham, the people _will_ rule; and it is useless to
+pretend to tell them that they shall not have the highest seats in
+the church as well as in the state. Really, I can see no ground why a
+parson should be raised above his parishioners. The new-order
+churches consult the public convenience, and place every body on a
+level, as it might be. Now, in old times, a family was buried in its
+pew; it could neither see nor be seen; and I can remember the time
+when I could just get a look of our clergyman's wig, for he was an
+old-school man; and as for his fellow-creatures, one might as well be
+praying in his own closet. I must say I am a supporter of liberty, if
+it be only in pews."
+
+"I am sorry, Mr. Dodge," answered Eve, mildly, "you did not extend
+your travels into the countries of the Mussulmans, where most
+Christian sects might get some useful notions concerning the part of
+worship, at least, that is connected with appearances. There you
+would have seen no seats, but sinners bowing down in a mass, on the
+cold stones, and all thoughts of cushioned pews and drawing-room
+conveniences unknown. We Protestants have improved on our Catholic
+forefathers in this respect; and the innovation of which you now
+speak, in my eyes is an irreverent, almost a sinful, invasion of the
+proprieties of the temple."
+
+"Ah, Miss Eve, this comes from substituting forms for the substance
+of things," exclaimed the editor. "For my part, I can say, I was
+truly shocked with the extravagancies I witnessed, in the way of
+worship, in most of the countries I visited. Would you think it, Mr.
+Bragg, rational beings, real _bonâ fide_ living men and women,
+kneeling on the stone pavement, like so many camels in the Desert,"
+Mr. Dodge loved to draw his images from the different parts of the
+world he had seen, "ready to receive the burthens of their masters;
+not a pew, not a cushion, not a single comfort that is suitable to a
+free and intelligent being, but every thing conducted in the most
+abject manner, as if accountable human souls were no better than so
+many mutes in a Turkish palace."
+
+"You ought to mention this in the Active Inquirer," said Aristabulus.
+
+"All in good time, sir; I have many things in reserve, among which I
+propose to give a few remarks, I dare say they will be very worthless
+ones, on the impropriety of a rational being's ever kneeling. To my
+notion, gentlemen and ladies, God never intended an American to
+kneel."
+
+The respectable mechanics who stood around the table did not
+absolutely assent to this proposition, for one of them actually
+remarked that "he saw no great harm in a man's kneeling to the
+Deity;" but they evidently inclined to the opinion that the new-
+school of pews was far better than the old.
+
+"It always appears to me, Miss Effingham," said one, "that I hear and
+understand the sermon better in one of the low pews, than in one of
+the old high-backed things, that look so much like pounds."
+
+"But can you withdraw into yourself better, sir? Can you more truly
+devote all your thoughts, with a suitable singleness of heart, to the
+worship of God?"
+
+"You mean in the prayers, now, I rather conclude?"
+
+"Certainly, sir, I mean in the prayers and the thanksgivings."
+
+"Why, we leave them pretty much to the parson; though I will own it
+is not quite as easy leaning on the edge of one of the new-school
+pews as on one of the old. They are better for sitting, but not so
+good for standing. But then the sitting posture at prayers is quite
+coming into favour among our people, Miss Effingham, as well as among
+yours. The sermon is the main chance, after all."
+
+"Yes," observed Mr. Gouge, "give me good, strong preaching, any day,
+in preference to good praying. A man may get along with second-rate
+prayers, but he stands in need of first-rate preaching."
+
+"These gentlemen consider religion a little like a cordial on a cold
+day," observed John Effingham, "which is to be taken in sufficient
+doses to make the blood circulate. They are not the men to be
+_pounded_ in pews, like lost sheep, not they?"
+
+"Mr. John will always have his say;" one remarked: and then Mr.
+Effingham dismissed the party, by telling them he would think of the
+matter.
+
+When the mechanics were gone, the subject was discussed at some
+length between those that remained--all the Effinghams agreeing that
+they would oppose the innovation, as irreverent in appearance,
+unsuited to the retirement and self-abasement that best comported
+with prayer, and opposed to the delicacy of their own habits; while
+Messrs. Bragg and Dodge contended to the last that such changes were
+loudly called for by the popular sentiment--- that it was unsuited to
+the dignity of a man to be 'pounded,' even in a church--and
+virtually, that a good, 'stirring' sermon, as they called it, was of
+far more account, in public worship, than all the prayers and praises
+that could issue from the heart or throat.
+
+Chapter XIV.
+
+  "We'll follow Cade--we'll follow Cade."
+
+  MOB.
+
+"The views of this Mr. Bragg, and of our old fellow-traveller, Mr.
+Dodge, appear to be peculiar on the subject of religious forms,"
+observed Sir George Templemore, as he descended the little lawn
+before the Wigwam, in company with the three ladies, Paul Powis, and
+John Effingham, on their way to the lake. "I should think it would be
+difficult to find another Christian, who objects to kneeling at
+prayer."
+
+"Therein you are mistaken, Templemore," answered Paul; "for this
+country, to say nothing of one sect which holds it in utter
+abomination, is filled with them. Our pious ancestors, like
+neophytes, ran into extremes, on the subject of forms, as well as in
+other matters. When you go to Philadelphia, Miss Effingham, you will
+see an instance of a most ludicrous nature--ludicrous, if there were
+not something painfully revolting mingled with it--of the manner in
+which men can strain at a gnat and swallow a camel; and which, I am
+sorry to say, is immediately connected with our own church."
+
+It was music to Eve's ears, to hear Paul Powis speak of his pious
+ancestors, as being American, and to find him so thoroughly
+identifying himself with her own native land; for, while condemning
+so many of its practices, and so much alive to its absurdities and
+contradictions, our heroine had seen too much of other countries, not
+to take an honest pride in the real excellencies of her own. There
+was, also, a soothing pleasure in hearing him openly own that he
+belonged to the same church as herself.
+
+"And what is there ridiculous in Philadelphia, in particular, and in
+connection with our own church?" she asked. "I am not so easily
+disposed to find fault where the venerable church is concerned."
+
+"You know that the Protestants, in their horror of idolatry,
+discontinued, in a great degree, the use of the cross, as an outward
+religious symbol; and that there was probably a time when there was
+not a single cross to be seen in the whole of a country that was
+settled by those who made a profession of love for Christ, and a
+dependence on his expiation, the great business of their lives?"
+
+"Certainly. We all know our predecessors were a little over-rigid and
+scrupulous on all the points connected with outward appearances."
+
+"They certainly contrived to render the religious rites as little
+pleasing to the senses as possible, by aiming at a sublimation that
+peculiarly favours spiritual pride and a pious conceit. I do not know
+whether travelling has had the same effect on you, as it has produced
+on me; but I find all my inherited antipathies to the mere visible
+representation of the cross, superseded by a sort of solemn affection
+for it, as a symbol, when it is plain, and unaccompanied by any of
+those bloody and minute accessories that are so often seen around it
+in Catholic countries. The German Protestants, who usually ornament
+the altar with a cross, first cured me of the disrelish I imbibed, on
+this subject, in childhood."
+
+"We, also, I think, cousin John, were agreeably struck with the same
+usage in Germany. From feeling a species of nervousness at the sight
+of a cross, I came to love to see it; and I think you must have
+undergone a similar change; for I have discovered no less than three
+among the ornaments of the great window of the entrance tower, at the
+Wigwam."
+
+"You might have discovered one, also, in every door of the building,
+whether great or small, young lady. Our pious ancestors, as Powis
+calls them, much of whose piety, by the way, was any thing but
+meliorated with spiritual humility or Christian charity, were such
+ignoramuses as to set up crosses in every door they built, even while
+they veiled their eyes in holy horror whenever the sacred symbol was
+seen in a church."
+
+"Every door!" exclaimed the Protestants of the party.
+
+"Yes, literally every door, I might almost say certainly every
+panelled door that was constructed twenty years since. I first
+discovered the secret of our blunder, when visiting a castle in
+France, that dated back from the time of the crusade. It was a
+_château_ of the Montmorencies, that had passed into the hands of the
+Condé family by marriage; and the courtly old domestic, who showed me
+the curiosities, pointed out to me the stone _croix_ in the windows,
+which has caused the latter to be called _croisées_, as a pious usage
+of the crusaders. Turning to a door, I saw the same crosses in the
+wooden stiles; and if you cast an eye on the first humble door that
+you may pass in this village, you will detect the same symbol staring
+you boldly in the face, in the very heart of a population that would
+almost expire at the thoughts of placing such a sign of the beast on
+their very thresholds."
+
+The whole party expressed their surprise; but the first door they
+passed corroborated this account, and proved the accuracy of John
+Effingham's statements. Catholic zeal and ingenuity could not have
+wrought more accurate symbols of this peculiar sign of the sect; and
+yet, here they stood, staring every passenger in the face, as if
+mocking the ignorant and exaggerated pretension which would lay undue
+stress on the minor points of a religion, the essence of which was
+faith and humility.
+
+"And the Philadelphia church?" said Eve, quickly, so soon as her
+curiosity was satisfied on the subject of the door; "I am now more
+impatient than ever, to learn what silly blunder we have also
+committed there."
+
+"Impious would almost be a better term," Paul answered. "The only
+church spire that existed for half a century, in that town, was
+surmounted by a _mitre_, while the _cross_ was studiously rejected!"
+
+A silence followed; for there is often more true argument in simply
+presenting the facts of a case, than in all the rhetoric and logic
+that could be urged, by way of auxiliaries. Every one saw the
+egregious folly, not to say presumption, of the mistake; and at the
+moment, every one wondered how a common-sense community could have
+committed so indecent a blunder. We are mistaken. There was an
+exception to the general feeling in the person of Sir George
+Templemore. To his church-and-state notions, and anti-catholic
+prejudices, which were quite as much political as religious, there
+was every thing that was proper, and nothing that was wrong, in
+rejecting a cross for a mitre.
+
+"The church, no doubt, was Episcopal, Powis," he remarked, "and it
+was not Roman. What better symbol than the mitre could be chosen?"
+
+"Now I reflect, it is not so very strange," said Grace, eagerly, "for
+you will remember, Mr. Effingham, that Protestants attach the idea of
+idolatry to the cross, as it is used by Catholics."
+
+"And of bishops, peers in parliament, church and state, to a mitre."
+
+"Yes, but the church in question I have seen; and it was erected
+before the war of the revolution. It was an English rather than an
+American church."
+
+"It was, indeed, an English church, rather than an American; and
+Templemore is very right to defend it, mitre and all."
+
+"I dare say, a bishop officiated at its altar?"
+
+"I dare say--nay, I know, he did; and, I will add, he would rather
+that the mitre were two hundred feet in the air, than down on his own
+simple, white-haired, apostolical-looking head. But enough of
+divinity for the morning; yonder is Tom with the boat, let us to our
+oars."
+
+The party were now on the little wharf that served as a village-
+landing, and the boatman mentioned lay off, in waiting for the
+arrival of his fare. Instead of using him, however, the man was
+dismissed; the gentlemen preferring to handle the oars themselves.
+Aquatic excursions were of constant occurrence in the warm months, on
+that beautifully limpid sheet of water, and it was the practice to
+dispense with the regular boatmen, whenever good oarsmen were to be
+found among the company.
+
+As soon as the light buoyant skiff was brought to the side of the
+wharf, the whole party embarked; and Paul and the baronet taking the
+oars, they soon urged the boat from the shore.
+
+"The world is getting to be too confined for the adventurous spirit
+of the age," said Sir George, as he and his companion pulled
+leisurely along, taking the direction of the eastern shore, beneath
+the forest-clad cliffs of which the ladies had expressed a wish to be
+rowed; "here are Powis and myself actually rowing together on a
+mountain lake of America, after having boated as companions on the
+coast of Africa, and on the margin of the Great Desert. Polynesia,
+and Terra Australis, may yet see us in company, as hardy cruisers."
+
+"The spirit of the age is, indeed, working wonders in the way you
+mean," said John Effingham. "Countries of which our fathers merely
+read, are getting to be as familiar as our own homes to their sons;
+and, with you, one can hardly foresee to what a pass of adventure the
+generation or two that will follow us may not reach."
+
+"_Vraiment, c'est fort extraordinaire de se trouver sur un lac
+Americain_," exclaimed Mademoiselle Viefville.
+
+"More extraordinary than to find one's self on a Swiss lake, think
+you, my dear Mademoiselle Viefville?"
+
+"_Non, non, mais tout aussi extraordinaire pour une Parisienne._"
+
+"I am now about to introduce you, Mr. John Effingham and Miss Van
+Cortlandt excepted," Eve continued, "to the wonders and curiosities
+of this lake and region. There, near the small house that is erected
+over a spring of delicious water, stood the hut of Natty Bumppo, once
+known throughout all these mountains as a renowned hunter; a man who
+had the simplicity of a woodsman, the heroism of a savage, the faith
+of a Christian, and the feelings of a poet. A better than he, after
+his fashion, seldom lived."
+
+"We have all heard of him," said the baronet, looking round
+curiously; "and must all feel an interest in what concerns so brave
+and just a man. I would I could see his counterpart."
+
+"Alas!" said John Effingham, "the days of the 'Leather-stockings'
+have passed away. He preceded me in life, and I see few remains of
+his character in a region where speculation is more rife than
+moralizing, and emigrants are plentier than hunters. Natty probably
+chose that spot for his hut on account of the vicinity of the spring:
+is it not so. Miss Effingham?"
+
+"He did; and yonder little fountain that you see gushing from the
+thicket, and which comes glancing like diamonds into the lake, is
+called the 'Fairy Spring,' by some flight of poetry that, like so
+many of our feelings, must have been imported; for I see no
+connection between the name and the character of the country, fairies
+having never been known, even by tradition, in Otsego."
+
+The boat now came under a shore where the trees fringed the very
+water, frequently overhanging the element that mirrored their
+fantastic forms. At this point, a light skiff was moving leisurely
+along in their own direction, but a short distance in advance. On a
+hint from John Effingham, a few vigorous strokes of the oars brought
+the two boats near each other.
+
+"This is the flag-ship," half whispered John Effingham, as they came
+near the other skiff, "containing no less a man than the 'commodore.'
+Formerly, the chief of the lake was an admiral, but that was in times
+when, living nearer to the monarchy, we retained some of the European
+terms; now, no man rises higher than a commodore in America, whether
+it be on the ocean or on the Otsego, whatever may be his merits or
+his services. A charming day, commodore; I rejoice to see you still
+afloat, in your glory."
+
+The commodore, a tail, thin, athletic man of seventy, with a white
+head, and movements that were quick as those of a boy, had not
+glanced aside at the approaching boat, until he was thus saluted in
+the well-known voice of John Effingham. He then turned his head,
+however, and scanning the whole party through his spectacles, he
+smiled good-naturedly made a flourish with one hand, while he
+continued paddling with the other, for he stood erect and straight in
+the stern of his skiff, and answered heartily--
+
+"A fine morning, Mr. John, and the right time of the moon for
+boating. This is not a real scientific day for the fish, perhaps; but
+I have just come out to see that all the points and bays are in their
+right places."
+
+"How is it, commodore, that the water near the village is less limpid
+than common, and that even up here, we see so many specks floating on
+its surface?"
+
+"What a question for Mr. John Effingham to ask on his native water!
+So much for travelling in far countries, where a man forgets quite as
+much as he learns, I fear." Here the commodore turned entirely round,
+and raising an open hand in an oratorical manner, he added,--"You
+must know, ladies and gentlemen, that the lake is in blow."
+
+"In blow, commodore! I did not know that the lake bore its blossoms."
+
+"It does, sir, nevertheless. Ay, Mr. John, and its fruits, too; but
+the last must be dug for, like potatoes. There have been no
+miraculous draughts of the fishes, of late years, in the Otsego,
+ladies and gentlemen; but it needs the scientific touch, and the
+knowledge of baits, to get a fin of any of your true game above the
+water, now-a-days. Well, I have had the head of the sogdollager
+thrice in the open air, in my time; though I am told the admiral
+actually got hold of him once with his hand."
+
+"The sogdollager," said Eve, much amused with the singularities of
+the man, whom she perfectly remembered to have been commander of the
+lake, even in her own infancy; "we must be indebted to you for an
+explanation of that term, as well as for the meaning of your allusion
+to the head and the open air."
+
+"A sogdollager, young lady, is the perfection of a thing. I know Mr.
+Grant used to say there was no such word in the dictionary; but then
+there are many words that ought to be in the dictionaries that have
+been forgotten by the printers. In the way of salmon trout, the
+sogdollager is their commodore. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I should
+not like to tell you all I know about the patriarch of this lake, for
+you would scarcely believe me; but if he would not weigh a hundred
+when cleaned, there is not an ox in the county that will weigh a
+pound when slaughtered."
+
+"You say you had his head above water?" said John Effingham.
+
+"Thrice, Mr. John. The first time was thirty years ago; and I confess
+I lost him, on that occasion, by want of science; for the art is not
+learned in a day, and I had then followed the business but ten years.
+The second time was five years later: and I had then been fishing
+expressly for the old gentleman, about a month. For near a minute, it
+was a matter of dispute between us, whether he should come out of the
+lake or I go into it; but I actually got his gills in plain sight.
+That was a glorious haul! Washington did not feel better the night
+Cornwallis surrendered, than I felt on that great occasion!"
+
+"One never knows the feelings of another, it seems. I should have
+thought disappointment at the loss would have been the prevailing
+sentiment on that great occasion, as you so justly term it."
+
+"So it would have been, Mr. John, with an unscientific fisherman; but
+we experienced hands know better. Glory is to be measured by quality,
+and not by quantity, ladies and gentlemen; and I look on it as a
+greater feather in a man's cap, to see the sogdollager's head above
+water, for half a minute, than to bring home a skiff filled with
+pickerel. The last time I got a look at the old gentleman, I did not
+try to get him into the boat, but we sat and conversed for near two
+minutes; he in the water, and I in the skiff."
+
+"Conversed!" exclaimed Eve, "and with a fish, too! What could the
+animal have to say!"
+
+"Why, young lady, a fish can talk as well as one of ourselves; the
+only difficulty is to understand what he says. I have heard the old
+settlers affirm, that the Leather-stocking used to talk for hours at
+a time, with the animals of the forest."
+
+"You knew the Leather-stocking, commodore?"
+
+"No, young lady, I am sorry to say I never had the pleasure of
+looking on him even. He _was_ a great man! They may talk of their
+Jeffersons and Jacksons, but I set down Washington and Natty Bumppo
+as the two only really great men of my time."
+
+"What do you think of Bonaparte, commodore?" inquired Paul.
+
+"Well, sir, Bonaparte had some strong points about him, I do really
+believe. But he could have been nothing to the Leather-stocking, in
+the woods! It's no great matter, young gentleman, to be a great man
+among your inhabitants of cities--what I call umbrella people. Why,
+Natty was almost as great with the spear as with the rifle; though I
+never heard that he got a sight of the sogdollager."
+
+"We shall meet again this summer, commodore," said John Effingham;
+"the ladies wish to hear the echoes, and we must leave you."
+
+"All very natural, Mr. John," returned the commodore, laughing, and
+again flourishing his hand in his own peculiar manner. "The women all
+love to hear the echoes, for they are not satisfied with what they
+have once said, but they like to hear it over again. I never knew a
+lady come on the Otsego, but one of the first things she did was to
+get paddled to the Speaking Rocks, to have a chat with herself. They
+come out in such numbers, sometimes, and then all talk at once, in a
+way quite to confuse the echo. I suppose you have heard, young lady,
+the opinion people have now got concerning these voices."
+
+"I cannot say I have ever heard more than that they are some of the
+most perfect echoes known;" answered Eve, turning her body, so as to
+face the old man, as the skiff of the party passed that of the
+veteran fisherman.
+
+"Some people maintain that there is no echo at all, and that the
+sounds we hear come from the spirit of the Leather-stocking, which
+keeps about its old haunts, and repeats every thing we say, in
+mockery of our invasion of the woods. I do not say this notion is
+true, or that it is my own; but we all know that Natty _did_ dislike
+to see a new settler arrive in the mountains, and that he loved a
+tree as a muskrat loves water. They show a pine up here on the side
+of the Vision, which he notched at every new-comer, until reaching
+seventeen, his honest old heart could go no farther, and he gave the
+matter up in despair."
+
+"This is so poetical, commodore, it is a pity it cannot be true. I
+like this explanation of the 'Speaking Rocks,' much better than that
+implied by the name of 'Fairy Spring.'"
+
+"You are quite right, young lady," called out the fisherman, as the
+boats separated still farther; "there never was any fairy known in
+Otsego; but the time has been when we could boast of a Natty Bumppo."
+
+Here the commodore flourished his hand again, and Eve nodded her
+adieus. The skiff of the party continued to pull slowly along the
+fringed shore, occasionally sheering more into the lake, to avoid
+some overhanging and nearly horizontal tree, and then returning so
+closely to the land, as barely to clear the pebbles of the narrow
+strand with the oar.
+
+Eve thought she had never beheld a more wild or beautifully
+variegated foliage, than that which the whole leafy mountainside
+presented. More than half of the forest of tall, solemn pines, that
+had veiled the earth when the country was first settled, had already
+disappeared; but, agreeably to one of the mysterious laws by which
+nature is governed, a rich second growth, that included nearly every
+variety of American wood, had shot up in their places. The rich
+Rembrandt-like hemlocks, in particular, were perfectly beautiful,
+contrasting admirably with the livelier tints of the various
+deciduous trees. Here and there, some flowering shrub rendered the
+picture gay, while masses of the rich chestnut, in blossom, lay in
+clouds of natural glory among the dark tops of the pines.
+
+The gentlemen pulled the light skiff fully a mile under this
+overhanging foliage, occasionally frightening some migratory bird
+from a branch, or a water-fowl from the narrow strand. At length,
+John Effingham desired them to cease rowing, and managing the skiff
+for a minute or two with the paddle which he had used in steering, he
+desired the whole party to look up, announcing to them that they were
+beneath the 'Silent Pine.'
+
+A common exclamation of pleasure succeeded the upward glance; for it
+is seldom that a tree is seen to more advantage than that which
+immediately attracted every eye. The pine stood on the bank, with its
+roots embedded in the earth, a few feet higher than the level of the
+lake, but in such a situation as to bring the distance above the
+water into the apparent height of the tree. Like all of its kind that
+grows in the dense forests of America, its increase, for a thousand
+years, had been upward; and it now stood in solitary glory, a
+memorial of what the mountains which were yet so rich in vegetation
+had really been in their days of nature and pride. For near a hundred
+feet above the eye, the even round trunk was branchless, and then
+commenced the dark-green masses of foliage, which clung around the
+stem like smoke ascending in wreaths. The tall column-like tree had
+inclined to wards the light when struggling among its fellows, and it
+now so far overhung the lake, that its summit may have been some ten
+or fifteen feet without the base. A gentle, graceful curve added to
+the effect of this variation from the perpendicular, and infused
+enough of the fearful into the grand, to render the picture sublime.
+Although there was not a breath of wind on the lake, the currents
+were strong enough above the forest to move this lofty object, and it
+was just possible to detect a slight, graceful yielding of the very
+uppermost boughs to the passing air.
+
+"This pine is ill-named," cried Sir George Templemore, "for it is the
+most eloquent tree eye of mine has ever looked on!"
+
+"It is, indeed, eloquent," answered Eve; "one hears it speak even now
+of the fierce storms that have whistled round its tops--of the
+seasons that have passed since it extricated that verdant cap from
+the throng of sisters that grew beneath it, and of all that has
+passed on the Otsego, when this limpid lake lay, like a gem embedded
+in the forest. When the Conqueror first landed in England, this tree
+stood on the spot where it now stands! Here, then, is at last, an
+American antiquity!"
+
+"A true and regulated taste, Miss Effingham," said Paul, "has pointed
+out to you one of the real charms of the country. Were we to think
+less of the artificial, and more of our natural excellencies, we
+should render ourselves less liable to criticism."
+
+Eve was never inattentive when Paul spoke; and her colour heightened,
+as he paid this compliment to her taste, but still her soft blue eye
+was riveted on the pine.
+
+"Silent it may be, in one respect, but it is, indeed, all eloquence
+in another," she resumed, with a fervour that was not lessened by
+Paul's remark. "That crest of verdure, which resembles a plume of
+feathers, speaks of a thousand things to the imagination."
+
+"I have never known a person of any poetry, who came under this
+tree," said John Effingham, "that did not fall into this very train
+of thought. I once brought a man celebrated for his genius here, and,
+after gazing for a minute or two at the high, green tuft that tops
+the tree, he exclaimed, 'that mass of green waved there in the fierce
+light when Columbus first ventured into the unknown sea.' It is,
+indeed, eloquent; for it tells the same glowing tale to all who
+approach it--a tale fraught with feeling and recollections."
+
+"And yet its silence is, after all, its eloquence," added Paul; "and
+the name is not so misplaced as one might at first think."
+
+"It probably obtained its name from some fancied contrast to the
+garrulous rocks that lie up yonder, half concealed by the forest. If
+you will ply the oars, gentlemen, we will now hold a little communion
+with the spirit of the Leather-stocking."
+
+The young men complied; and in about five minutes, the skiff was off
+in the lake, at the distance of fifty rods from the shore, where the
+whole mountainside came at one glance into the view. Here they lay on
+their oars, and John Effingham called out to the rocks a "good
+morning," in a clear distinct voice. The mocking sounds were thrown
+back again, with a closeness of resemblance that actually startled
+the novice. Then followed other calls and other repetitions of the
+echoes, which did not lose the minutest intonation of the voice.
+
+"This actually surpasses the celebrated echoes of the Rhine," cried
+the delighted Eve; "for, though those do give the strains of the
+bugle so clearly, I do not think they answer to the voice with so
+much fidelity."
+
+"You are very right, Eve," replied her kinsman, "for I can recall no
+place where so perfect and accurate an echo is to be heard as at
+these speaking rocks. By increasing our distance to half a mile, and
+using a bugle, as I well know, from actual experiment, we should get
+back entire passages of an air. The interval between the sound and
+the echo, too, would be distinct, and would give time for an
+undivided attention. Whatever may be said of the 'pine,' these rocks
+are most aptly named; and if the spirit of Leather-stocking has any
+concern with the matter, he is a mocking spirit."
+
+John Effingham now looked at his watch, and then he explained to the
+party a pleasure he had in store for them. On a sort of small, public
+promenade, that lay at the point where the river flowed out of the
+lake, stood a rude shell of a building that was called the "gun-
+house." Here, a speaking picture of the entire security of the
+country, from foes within as well as from foes without, were kept two
+or three pieces of field artillery, with doors so open that any one
+might enter the building, and even use the guns at will, although
+they properly belonged to the organized corps of the state.
+
+One of these guns had been sent a short distance down the valley; and
+John Effingham informed his companions that they might look
+momentarily for its reports to arouse the echoes of the mountains. He
+was still speaking when the gun was fired, its muzzle being turned
+eastward. The sound first reached the side of the Vision, abreast of
+the village, whence the reverberations reissued, and rolled along the
+range, from cave to cave, and cliff to cliff, and wood to wood, until
+they were lost, like distant thunder, two or three leagues to the
+northward. The experiment was thrice repeated, and always with the
+same magnificent effect, the western hills actually echoing the
+echoes of the eastern mountains, like the dying strains of some
+falling music.
+
+"Such a locality would be a treasure in the vicinity of a melo-
+dramatic theatre," said Paul, laughing, "for certainly, no artificial
+thunder I have ever heard has equalled this. This sheet of water
+might even receive a gondola."
+
+"And yet, I fear one accustomed to the boundless horizon of the
+ocean, might in time weary of it," answered John Effingham,
+significantly.
+
+Paul made no answer; and the party rowed away in silence.
+
+"Yonder is the spot where we have so long been accustomed to resort
+for Pic-Nics," said Eve, pointing out a lovely place, that was
+beautifully shaded by old oaks, and on which stood a rude house that
+was much dilapidated, and indeed injured, by the hands of man. John
+Effingham smiled, as his cousin showed the place to her companions,
+promising them an early and a nearer view of its beauties.
+
+"By the way, Miss Effingham," he said, "I suppose you flatter
+yourself with being the heiress of that desirable retreat?"
+
+"It is very natural that, at some day, though I trust a very distant
+one, I should succeed to that which belongs to my dear father."
+
+"Both natural and legal, my fair cousin; but you are yet to learn
+that there is a power that threatens to rise up and dispute your
+claim."
+
+"What power--human power, at least--can dispute the lawful claim of
+an owner to his property? That Point has been ours ever since
+civilized man has dwelt among these hills; who will presume to rob us
+of it?"
+
+"You will be much surprised to discover that there is such a power,
+and that there is actually a disposition to exercise it. The public--
+the all-powerful omnipotent, overruling, law-making, law-breaking
+public--has a passing caprice to possess itself of your beloved
+Point; and Ned Effingham must show unusual energy, or it will get
+it?"
+
+"Are you serious, cousin Jack?"
+
+"As serious as the magnitude of the subject can render a responsible
+being, as Mr. Dodge would say."
+
+Eve said no more, but she looked vexed, and remained almost silent
+until they landed, when she hastened to seek her father, with a view
+to communicate what she had heard. Mr. Effingham listened to his
+daughter, as he always did, with tender interest; and when she had
+done, he kissed her glowing cheek, bidding her not to believe that
+which she seemed so seriously to dread, possible.
+
+"But, cousin John would not trifle with me on such a subject,
+father," Eve continued; "he knows how much I prize all those little
+heir-looms that are connected with the affections."
+
+"We can inquire further into the affair, my child, if it be your
+desire; ring for Pierre, if you please."
+
+Pierre answered, and a message was sent to Mr. Bragg, requiring his
+presence in the library.
+
+Aristabulus appeared, by no means in the best humour, for he disliked
+having been omitted in the late excursion on the lake, fancying that
+he had a community-right to share in all his neighbour's amusements,
+though he had sufficient self-command to conceal his feelings.
+
+"I wish to know, sir," Mr. Effingham commenced, without introduction,
+"whether there can be any mistake concerning the ownership of the
+Fishing Point on the west side of the lake."
+
+"Certainly not, sir; it belongs to the public."
+
+Mr. Effingham's cheek glowed, and he looked astonished: but he
+remained calm.
+
+"The public! Do you gravely affirm, Mr. Bragg, that the public
+pretends to claim that Point?"
+
+"Claim, Mr. Effingham! as long as I have resided in this county, I
+have never heard its right disputed."
+
+"Your residence in this county, sir, is not of very ancient date, and
+nothing is easier than that _you_ may be mistaken. I confess some
+curiosity to know in what manner the public has acquired its title to
+the spot. You are a lawyer, Mr. Bragg, and may give an intelligible
+account of it."
+
+"Why, sir, your father gave it to them in his lifetime. Every body,
+in all this region, will tell you as much as this."
+
+"Do you suppose, Mr. Bragg, there is any body in all this region who
+will swear to the fact? Proof, you well know, is very requisite even
+to obtain justice."
+
+"I much question, sir, if there be any body in all this region that
+will not swear to the fact. It is the common tradition of the whole
+country; and, to be frank with you, sir, there is a little
+displeasure, because Mr. John Effingham has talked of giving private
+entertainments on the Point."
+
+"This, then, only shows how idly and inconsiderately the traditions
+of the country take their rise. But, as I wish to understand all the
+points of the case, do me the favour to walk into the village, and
+inquire of those whom you think the best informed in the matter, what
+they know of the Point, in order that I may regulate my course
+accordingly. Be particular, if you please, on the subject of title,
+as one would not wish to move in the dark."
+
+Aristabulus quitted the house immediately, and Eve, perceiving that
+things were in the right train, left her father alone to meditate on
+what had just passed. Mr. Effingham walked up and down his library
+for some time, much disturbed, for the spot in question was
+identified with all his early feelings and recollections; and if
+there were a foot of land on earth, to which he was more attached
+than to all others, next to his immediate residence, it was this.
+Still, he could not conceal from himself, in despite of his
+opposition to John Effingham's sarcasms, that his native country had
+undergone many changes since he last resided in it, and that some of
+these changes were quite sensibly for the worse. The spirit of
+misrule was abroad, and the lawless and unprincipled held bold
+language, when it suited their purpose to intimidate. As he ran over
+in his mind, however, the facts of the case, and the nature of his
+right, he smiled to think that any one should contest it, and sat
+down to his writing, almost forgetting that there had been any
+question at all on the unpleasant subject.
+
+Aristabulus was absent for several hours, nor did he return until Mr.
+Effingham was dressed for dinner, and alone in the library, again,
+having absolutely lost all recollection of the commission he had
+given his agent.
+
+"It is as I told you, sir--the public insists that it owns the Point;
+and I feel it my duty to say, Mr. Effingham, that the public is
+determined to maintain its claim."
+
+"Then, Mr. Bragg, it is proper I should tell the public that it is
+_not_ the owner of the Point, but that _I_ am its owner, and that I
+am determined to maintain _my_ claim."
+
+"It is hard to kick against the pricks, Mr. Effingham."
+
+"It is so, sir, as the public will discover, if it persevere in
+invading a private right."
+
+"Why, sir, some of those with whom I have conversed have gone so far
+as to desire me to tell you--I trust my motive will not be
+mistaken----"
+
+"If you have any communication to make, Mr. Bragg, do it without
+reserve. It is proper I should know the truth exactly."
+
+"Well, then, sir, I am the bearer of something like a defiance; the
+people wish you to know that they hold your right cheaply, and that
+they laugh at it. Not to mince matters, they defy you."
+
+"I thank you for this frankness, Mr. Bragg, and increases my respect
+for your character. Affairs are now at such a pass, that it is
+necessary to act. If you will amuse yourself with a book for a
+moment, I shall have further occasion for your kindness."
+
+Aristabulus did not read, for he was too much filled with wonder at
+seeing a man so coolly set about contending with that awful public
+which he himself as habitually deferred to, as any Asiatic slave
+defers to his monarch. Indeed, nothing but his being sustained by
+that omnipotent power, as he viewed the power of the public to be,
+had emboldened him to speak so openly to his employer, for
+Aristabulus felt a secret confidence that, right or wrong, it was
+always safe in America to make the most fearless professions in
+favour of the great body of the community. In the mean time, Mr.
+Effingham wrote a simple advertisement, against trespassing on the
+property in question, and handed it to the other, with a request that
+he would have it inserted in the number of the village paper that was
+to appear next morning. Mr. Bragg took the advertisement, and went to
+execute the duty without comment.
+
+The evening arrived before Mr. Effingham was again alone, when, being
+by himself in the library once more, Mr. Bragg entered, full of his
+subject. He was followed by John Effingham, who had gained an inkling
+of what had passed.
+
+"I regret to say, Mr. Effingham," Aristabulus commenced, "that your
+advertisement has created one of the greatest excitements it has ever
+been my ill-fortune to witness in Templeton."
+
+"All of which ought to be very encouraging to us, Mr.. Bragg, as men
+under excitement are usually wrong."
+
+"Very true, sir, as regards individual excitement, but this is a
+public excitement."
+
+"I am not at all aware that the fact, in the least alters the case.
+If one excited man is apt to do silly things, half a dozen backers
+will be very likely to increase his folly."
+
+Aristabulus listened with wonder, for excitement was one of the means
+for effecting public objects, so much practised by men of his habits,
+that it had never crossed his mind any single individual could be
+indifferent to its effect. To own the truth, he had anticipated so
+much unpopularity, from his unavoidable connexion with the affair, as
+to have contributed himself in producing the excitement, with the
+hope of "choking Mr. Effingham off," as he had elegantly expressed it
+to one of his intimates, in the vernacular of the country.
+
+"A public excitement is a powerful engine, Mr. Effingham!" he
+exclaimed, in a sort of politico pious horror.
+
+"I am fully aware, sir, that it may be even a fearfully powerful
+engine. Excited men, acting in masses, compose what are called mobs,
+and have committed a thousand excesses."
+
+"Your advertisement is, to the last degree, disrelished; to be very
+sincere, it is awfully unpopular!"
+
+"I suppose it is always what you term an unpopular act, so far as the
+individuals opposed are concerned, to resist aggression."
+
+"But they call your advertisement aggression, sir."
+
+"In that simple fact exist all the merits of the question. If I own
+this property, the public, or that portion of it which is connected
+with this affair, are aggressors; and so much more in the wrong that
+they are many against one; if _they_ own the property, I am not only
+wrong, but very indiscreet."
+
+The calmness with which Mr. Effingham spoke had an effect on
+Aristabulus, and, for a moment, he was staggered. It was only for a
+moment, however, as the pains and penalties of unpopularity presented
+themselves afresh to an imagination that had been so long accustomed
+to study the popular caprice, that it had got to deem the public
+favour the one great good of life.
+
+"But _they_ say, _they_ own the Point, Mr. Effingham."
+
+"And _I_ say, they do _not_ own the Point, Mr. Bragg; never _did_ own
+it; and, with my consent, never _shall_ own it."
+
+"This is purely a matter of fact," observed John Effingham, "and I
+confess I am curious to know how or whence this potent public derives
+its title. You are lawyer enough, Mr. Bragg, to know that the public
+can hold property only by use, or by especial statute. Now, under
+which title does this claim present itself."
+
+"First, by use, sir, and then by especial gift."
+
+"The use, you are aware, must be adverse, or as opposed to the title
+of the other claimants. Now, I am a living witness that my late uncle
+_permitted_ the public to use this Point, and that the public
+accepted the conditions. Its use, therefore, has not been adverse,
+or, at least, not for a time sufficient to make title. Every hour
+that my cousin has _permitted_ the public to enjoy his property, adds
+to his right, as well as to the obligation conferred on that public,
+and increases the duty of the latter to cease intruding, whenever he
+desires it. If there is an especial gift, as I understand you to say,
+from my late uncle, there must also be a law to enable the public to
+hold, or a trustee; which is the fact?"
+
+"I admit, Mr. John Effingham, that I have seen neither deed nor law,
+and I doubt if the latter exist. Still the public _must_ have some
+claim, for it is impossible that every body should be mistaken."
+
+"Nothing is easier, nor any thing more common, than for whole
+communities to be mistaken, and more particularly when they commence
+with excitement."
+
+While his cousin was speaking, Mr. Effingham went to a secretary, and
+taking out a large bundle of papers, he laid it down on the table,
+unfolding several parchment deeds, to which massive seals, bearing
+the arms of the late colony, as well as those of England, were
+pendent.
+
+"Here are my titles, sir," he said, addressing Aristabulus pointedly;
+"if the public has a better, let it be produced, and I shall at once
+submit to its claim."
+
+"No one doubts that the King, through his authorized agent, the
+Governor of the colony of New-York, granted this estate to your
+predecessor, Mr. Effingham; or that it descended legally to your
+immediate parent; but all contend that your parent gave this spot to
+the public, as a spot of public resort."
+
+"I am glad that the question is narrowed down within limits that are
+so easily examined. What evidence is there of this intention, on the
+part of my late father?"
+
+"Common report; I have talked with twenty people in the village, and
+they all agree that the 'Point' has been used by the public, as
+public property, from time immemorial."
+
+"Will you be so good, Mr. Bragg, as to name some of those who affirm
+this."
+
+Mr. Bragg complied, naming quite the number of persons he had
+mentioned, with a readiness that proved he thought he was advancing
+testimony of weight.
+
+"Of all the names you have mentioned," returned Mr. Effingham, "I
+never heard but three, and these are the names of mere boys. The
+first dozen are certainly the names of persons who can know no more
+of this village than they have gleaned in the last few years; and
+several of them, I understand, have dwelt among us but a few weeks;
+nay, days."
+
+"Have I not told you, Ned," interrupted John Effingham, "that, an
+American 'always' means eighteen months, and that 'time immemorial'
+is only since the last general crisis in the money market!"
+
+"The persons I have mentioned compose a part of the population, sir,"
+added Mr. Bragg, "and, one and all, they are ready to swear that your
+father, by some means or other, they are not very particular as to
+minutiae, gave them the right to use this property."
+
+"They are mistaken, and I should be sorry that any one among them
+should swear to such a falsehood. But here are my titles--let them
+show better, or, if they can, any, indeed."
+
+"Perhaps your father abandoned the place to the public; this might
+make a good claim."
+
+"That he did not, I am a living proof to the contrary; he left it to
+his heirs at his death, and I myself exercised full right of
+ownership over it, until I went abroad. I did not travel with it in
+my pocket, sir, it is true; but I left it to the protection of the
+laws, which, I trust, are as available to the rich as to the poor,
+although this is a free country."
+
+"Well, sir, I suppose a jury must determine the point, as you seem
+firm; though I warn you, Mr. Effingham, as one who knows his country,
+that a verdict, in the face of a popular feeling, is rather a
+hopeless matter. If they prove that your late father intended to
+abandon or give this property to the public, your case will be lost."
+
+Mr. Effingham looked among the papers a moment, and selecting one, he
+handed it to Mr. Bragg, first pointing out to his notice a particular
+paragraph.
+
+"This, sir, is my late father's will," Mr. Effingham said mildly;
+"and, in that particular clause, you will find that he makes a
+special devise of this very 'Point,' leaving it to his heirs, in such
+terms as to put any intention to give it to the public quite out of
+the question. This, at least, is the latest evidence I, his only son,
+executor, and heir possess of his final wishes; if that wondering and
+time-immemorial public of which you speak, has a better, I wait with
+patience that it may be produced."
+
+The composed manner of Mr. Effingham had deceived Aristabulus, who
+did not anticipate any proof so completely annihilating to the
+pretensions of the public, as that he now held in his hand. It was a
+simple, brief devise, disposing of the piece of property in question,
+and left it without dispute, that Mr. Effingham had succeeded to all
+the rights of his father, with no reservation or condition of any
+sort.
+
+"This is very extraordinary!" exclaimed Mr. Bragg, when he had read
+the clause seven times, each perusal contributing to leave the case
+still clearer in favour of his employer, the individual, and still
+stronger against the hoped-for future employers, the people. "The
+public ought to know of this bequest of the late Mr. Effingham."
+
+"I think it ought, sir, before it pretended to deprive his child of
+his property; or, rather, it ought to be certain, at least, that
+there was no such devise."
+
+"You will excuse me, Mr. Effingham, but I think it is incumbent on a
+private citizen, in a case of this sort, when the public has taken up
+a wrong notion, as I now admit is clearly the fact as regards the
+Point, to enlighten it, and to inform it that it does not own the
+spot."
+
+"This has been done already, Mr. Bragg, in the advertisement you had
+the goodness to carry to the printers, although I deny that there
+exists any such obligation."
+
+"But, sir, they object to the mode you have chosen to set them
+right."
+
+"The mode is usual, I believe in the case of trespasses."
+
+"They expect something different, sir, in an affair in which the
+public is--is--is--all--"
+
+"Wrong," put in John Effingham, pointedly. "I have heard something of
+this out of doors, Ned, and blame you for your moderation. Is it true
+that you had told several of your neighbours that you have no wish to
+prevent them from using the Point, but that your sole object is
+merely to settle the question of right, and to prevent intrusions on
+your family when it is enjoying its own place of retirement?"
+
+"Certainly, John, my only wish is to preserve the property for those
+to whom it is especially devised, to allow those who have the best,
+nay, the only right to it, its undisturbed possession, occasionally,
+and to prevent any more of that injury to the trees that has been
+committed by some of those rude men, who always fancy themselves so
+completely all the public, as to be masters, in their own particular
+persons, whenever the public has any claim. I can have no wish to
+deprive my neighbours of the innocent pleasure of visiting the Point,
+though I am fully determined they shall not deprive me of my
+property."
+
+"You are far more indulgent than I should be, or perhaps, than you
+will be yourself, when you read this."
+
+As John Effingham spoke, he handed his kinsman a small handbill,
+which purported to call a meeting for that night, of the inhabitants
+of Templeton, to resist his arrogant claim to the disputed property.
+This handbill had the usual marks of a feeble and vulgar malignancy
+about it, affecting to call Mr. Effingham, "_one_ Mr. Effingham," and
+it was anonymous.
+
+"This is scarcely worth our attention, John," said Mr. Effingham,
+mildly. "Meetings of this sort cannot decide a legal title, and no
+man who respects himself will be the tool of so pitiful an attempt to
+frighten a citizen from maintaining his rights."
+
+"I agree with you, as respects the meeting, which has been conceived
+in ignorance and low malice, and will probably end, as all such
+efforts end, in ridicule. But----"
+
+"Excuse me, Mr. John," interrupted Aristabulus, "there is an awful
+excitement! Some have even spoken of Lynching!"
+
+"Then," said Mr. Effingham, "it does, indeed, require that we should
+be more firm. Do _you_, sir, know of any person who has dared to use
+such a menace?"
+
+Aristabulus quailed before the stern eye of Mr. Effingham, and he
+regretted having communicated so much, though he had communicated
+nothing but the truth. He stammered out an obscure and half-
+intelligible explanation, and proposed to attend the meeting in
+person, in order that he might be in the way of understanding the
+subject, without falling into the danger of mistake. To this Mr.
+Effingham assented, as he felt too indignant at this outrage on all
+his rights, whether as a citizen or a man, to wish to pursue the
+subject with his agent that night. Aristabulus departed, and John
+Effingham remained closeted with his kinsman until the family
+retired. During this long interview, the former communicated many
+things to the latter, in relation to this very affair, of which the
+owner of the property, until then, had been profoundly ignorant.
+
+Chapter XV.
+
+  "There shall be, in England, seven half-penny loaves sold for a
+  penny, the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops; and I will make
+  it felony to drink small beer: all the realm shall be in common,
+  and, in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to grass."--JACK CADE.
+
+Though the affair of the Point continued to agitate the village of
+Templeton next day, and for many days, it was little remembered in
+the Wigwam. Confident of his right, Mr. Effingham, though naturally
+indignant at the abuse of his long liberality, through which alone
+the public had been permitted to frequent the place, and this too,
+quite often, to his own discomfort and disappointment, had dismissed
+the subject temporarily from his mind, and was already engaged in his
+ordinary pursuits. Not so, however, with Mr. Bragg. Agreeably to
+promise, he had attended the meeting; and now he seemed to regulate
+all his movements by a sort of mysterious self-importance, as if the
+repository of some secret of unusual consequence. No one regarded his
+manner, however; for Aristabulus, and his secrets, and opinions, were
+all of too little value, in the eyes of most of the party, to attract
+peculiar attention. He found a sympathetic listener in Mr. Dodge,
+happily; that person having been invited, through the courtesy of Mr.
+Effingham, to pass the day with those in whose company, though very
+unwillingly on the editor's part certainly, he had gone through so
+many dangerous trials. These two then, soon became intimate, and to
+have seen their shrugs, significant whisperings, and frequent
+conferences in corners, one who did not know them, might have fancied
+their shoulders burthened with the weight of the state.
+
+But all this pantomime, which was intended to awaken curiosity, was
+lost on the company in general. The ladies, attended by Paul and the
+Baronet, proceeded into the forest on foot, for a morning's walk,
+while the two Messrs. Effinghams continued to read the daily
+journals, that were received from town each morning, with a most
+provoking indifference. Neither Aristabulus, nor Mr. Dodge, could
+resist any longer; and, after exhausting their ingenuity, in the vain
+effort to induce one of the two gentlemen to question them in
+relation to the meeting of the previous night, the desire to be doing
+fairly overcame their affected mysteriousness, and a formal request
+was made to Mr. Effingham to give them an audience in the library. As
+the latter, who suspected the nature of the interview, requested his
+kinsman to make one in it, the four were soon alone, in the apartment
+so often named.
+
+Even now, that his own request for the interview was granted,
+Aristabulus hesitated about proceeding until a mild intimation from
+Mr. Effingham that he was ready to hear his communication, told the
+agent that it was too late to change his determination.
+
+"I attended the meeting last night, Mr. Effingham," Aristabulus
+commenced, "agreeably to our arrangement, and I feel the utmost
+regret at being compelled to lay the result before a gentleman for
+whom I entertain so profound a respect."
+
+"There was then a meeting?" said Mr. Effingham, inclining his body
+slightly, by way of acknowledgment for the other's compliment.
+
+"There was, sir; and I think, Mr. Dodge, we may say an overflowing
+one."
+
+"The public was fairly represented," returned the editor, "as many as
+fifty or sixty having been present."
+
+"The public has a perfect right to meet, and to consult on its claims
+to anything it may conceive itself entitled to enjoy," observed Mr.
+Effingham; "I can have no possible objection to such a course, though
+I think it would have consulted its own dignity more, had it insisted
+on being convoked by more respectable persons than those who, I
+understand, were foremost in this affair, and in terms better suited
+to its own sense of propriety."
+
+Aristabulus glanced at Mr. Dodge, and Mr. Dodge glanced back at Mr.
+Bragg, for neither of these political mushrooms could conceive of the
+dignity and fair-mindedness with which a gentleman could view an
+affair of this nature.
+
+"They passed a set of resolutions, Mr. Effingham;" Aristabulus
+resumed, with the gravity with which he ever spoke of things of this
+nature. "A set of resolutions, sir!"
+
+"That was to be expected," returned his employer, smiling; "the
+Americans are a set-of-resolutions-passing people. Three cannot get
+together, without naming a chairman and secretary, and a resolution
+is as much a consequence of such an 'organization,'--I believe that
+is the approved word,--as an egg is the accompaniment of the cackling
+of a hen."
+
+"But, sir, you do not yet know the nature of those resolutions!"
+
+"Very true, Mr. Bragg; that is a piece of knowledge I am to have the
+pleasure of obtaining from you."
+
+Again Aristabulus glanced at Steadfast, and Steadfast threw back the
+look of surprise, for, to both it was matter of real astonishment
+that any man should be so indifferent to the resolutions of a meeting
+that had been regularly organized, with a chairman and secretary at
+its head, and which so unequivocally professed to be the public.
+
+"I am reluctant to discharge this duty, Mr. Effingham, but as you
+insist on its performance it must be done. In the first place, they
+resolved that your father meant to give them the Point."
+
+"A decision that must clearly settle the matter, and which will
+destroy all my father's own resolutions on the same subject. Did they
+stop at the Point, Mr. Bragg or did they resolve that my father also
+gave them his wife and children?"
+
+"No, sir, nothing was said concerning the latter."
+
+"I cannot properly express my gratitude for the forbearance, as they
+had just as good a right to pass this resolution, as to pass the
+other."
+
+"The public's is an awful power, Mr. Effingham!"
+
+"Indeed it is, sir, but fortunately, that of the republic is still
+more awful, and I shall look to the latter for support, in this
+'crisis'--that is the word, too, is it not, Mr. John Effingham?"
+
+"If you mean a change of administration, the upsetting of a stage, or
+the death of a cart-horse; they are all equally crisises, in the
+American vocabulary."
+
+"Well, Mr. Bragg, having resolved that it knew my late father's
+intentions better than he knew them himself, as is apparent from the
+mistake he made in his will, what next did the public dispose of, in
+the plenitude of its power?"
+
+"It resolved, sir, that it was your duty to carry out the intentions
+of your father."
+
+"In that, then, we are perfectly of a mind; as the public will most
+probably discover, before we get through with this matter. This is
+one of the most pious resolutions I ever knew the public to pass. Did
+it proceed any farther?"
+
+Mr. Bragg, notwithstanding the long-encouraged truckling to the sets
+of men, whom he was accustomed to dignify with the name of the
+public, had a profound deference or the principles, character, and
+station of Mr. Effingham, that no sophistry, or self-encouragement in
+the practices of social confusion, could overcome; and he paused
+before he communicated the next resolution to his employers. But
+perceiving that both the latter and his cousin were quietly waiting
+to hear it, he was fain to overcome his scruples.
+
+"They have openly libelled you, by passing resolutions declaring you
+to be odious."
+
+"That, indeed, is a strong measure, and, in the interest of good
+manners and of good morals, it may call for a rebuke. No one can care
+less than myself, Mr. Bragg, for the opinions of those who have
+sufficiently demonstrated that their opinions are of no value, by the
+heedless manner in which they have permitted themselves to fall into
+this error; but it is proceeding too far, when a few members of the
+community presume to take these liberties with a private individual,
+and that, moreover, in a case affecting a pretended claim of their
+own; and I desire you to tell those concerned, that if they dare to
+publish their resolution declaring me to be odious, I will teach them
+what they now do not appear to know, that we live in a country of
+laws. I shall not prosecute them, but I shall indict them for the
+offence, and I hope this is plainly expressed."
+
+Aristabulus stood aghast! To indict the public was a step he had
+never heard of before, and he began to perceive that the question
+actually had two sides. Still, his awe of public meetings, and his
+habitual regard for popularity, induced him not to give up the
+matter, without another struggle.
+
+"They have already ordered their proceedings to be published, Mr.
+Effingham!" he said, as if such an order were not to be
+countermanded.
+
+"I fancy, sir, that when it comes to the issue, and the penalties of
+a prosecution present themselves, their readers will begin to
+recollect their individuality, and to think less of their public
+character. They who hunt in droves, like wolves, are seldom very
+valiant when singled out from their pack. The end will show."
+
+"I heartily wish this unpleasant affair might be amicably settled,"
+added Aristabulus.
+
+"One might, indeed, fancy so," observed John Effingham, "since no one
+likes to be persecuted."
+
+"But, Mr. John, the public thinks _itself_ persecuted, in this
+affair."
+
+"The term, as applied to a body that not only makes, but which
+executes, the law, is so palpably absurd, that I am surprised any man
+can presume to use it. But, Mr. Bragg, you have seen documents that
+cannot err, and know that the public has not the smallest right to
+this bit of land."
+
+"All very true, sir; but you will please to remember, that the people
+do not know what I now know."
+
+"And you will please to remember, sir, that when people choose to act
+affirmatively, in so high-handed a manner as this, they are _bound_
+to know what they are about. Ignorance in such a matter, is like the
+drunkard's plea of intoxication; it merely makes the offence worse."
+
+"Do you not think, Mr. John, that Mr. Effingham might have acquainted
+these citizens with the real state of the case? Are the people so
+very wrong that they have fallen into a mistake?"
+
+"Since you ask this question plainly, Mr. Bragg, it shall be answered
+with equal sincerity. Mr. Effingham is a man of mature years; the
+known child, executor, and heir of one who, it is admitted all round,
+was the master of the controverted property. Knowing his own
+business, this Mr. Effingham, in sight of the grave of his fathers,
+beneath the paternal roof, has the intolerable impudence--"
+
+"Arrogance is the word, Jack," said Mr. Effingham, smiling.
+
+"Aye, the intolerable arrogance to suppose that his own is his own;
+and this he dares to affirm, without having had the politeness to
+send his title-deeds, and private papers, round to those who have
+been so short a time in the place, that they might well know every
+thing that has occurred in it for the last half century. Oh thou
+naughty, arrogant fellow, Ned!"
+
+"Mr. John, you appear to forget that the public has more claims to be
+treated with attention, than a single individual. If it has fallen
+into error, it ought to be undeceived."
+
+"No doubt, sir; and I advise Mr. Effingham to send you, his agent, to
+every man, woman and child in the county, with the Patent of the
+King, all the mesne conveyances and wills, in your pocket, in order
+that you may read them at length to each individual, with a view that
+every man, woman and child, may be satisfied that he or she is not
+the owner of Edward Effingham's lands!"
+
+"Nay, sir, a shorter process might be adopted."
+
+"It might, indeed, sir, and such a process has been adopted by my
+cousin, in giving the usual notice, in the newspaper, against
+trespassing. But, Mr. Bragg, you must know that I took great pains,
+three years since, when repairing this house, to correct the mistake
+on this very point, into which I found that your immaculate public
+had fallen, through its disposition to know more of other people's
+affairs, than those concerned knew of themselves."
+
+Aristabulus said no more, but gave the matter up in despair. On
+quitting the house, he proceeded forthwith, to inform those most
+interested of the determination of Mr. Effingham, not to be trampled
+on by any pretended meeting of the public. Common sense, not to say
+common honesty, began to resume its sway, and prudence put in its
+plea, by way of applying the corrective. Both he and Mr. Dodge,
+however, agreed that there was an unheard-of temerity in thus
+resisting the people, and this too without a commensurate object, as
+the pecuniary value of the disputed point was of no material
+consequence to either party.
+
+The reader is not, by any means, to suppose that Aristabulus Bragg
+and Steadfast Dodge belonged to the same variety of the human
+species, in consequence of their unity of sentiment in this affair,
+and certain other general points of resemblance in their manner and
+modes of thinking. As a matter of necessity each partook of those
+features of caste, condition, origin, and association that
+characterize their particular set; but when it came to the nicer
+distinctions that mark true individuality, it would not have been
+easy to find two men more essentially different in character. The
+first was bold, morally and physically, aspiring, self-possessed,
+shrewd, singularly adapted to succeed in his schemes where he knew
+the parties, intelligent, after his tastes, and apt. Had it been his
+fortune to be thrown earlier into a better sphere, the same natural
+qualities that rendered him so expert in his present situation, would
+have conduced to his improvement, and most probably would have formed
+a gentleman, a scholar, and one who could have contributed largely to
+the welfare and tastes of his fellow-creatures. That such was not his
+fate, was more his misfortune than his fault, for his plastic
+character had readily taken the impression of those things that from
+propinquity alone, pressed hardest on it. On the other hand Steadfast
+was a hypocrite by nature, cowardly, envious, and malignant; and
+circumstances had only lent their aid to the natural tendencies of
+his disposition. That two men so differently constituted at their
+births, should meet, as it might be in a common centre, in so many of
+their habits and opinions, was merely the result of accident and
+education.
+
+Among the other points of resemblance between these two persons, was
+that fault of confounding the cause with the effects of the peculiar
+institutions under which they had been educated and lived. Because
+the law gave to the public, that authority which, under other
+systems, is entrusted either to one, or to the few they believed the
+public was invested with far more power than a right understanding of
+their own principles would have shown. In a word, both these persons
+made a mistake which is getting to be too common in America, that of
+supposing the institutions of the country were all means and no end.
+Under this erroneous impression they saw only the machinery of the
+government, becoming entirely forgetful that the power which was
+given to the people collectively, was only so given to secure to them
+as perfect a liberty as possible, in their characters of individuals.
+Neither had risen sufficiently above vulgar notions, to understand
+that public opinion, in order to be omnipotent, or even formidable
+beyond the inflictions of the moment, must be right; and that, if a
+solitary man renders himself contemptible by taking up false notions
+inconsiderately and unjustly, bodies of men, falling into the same
+error, incur the same penalties, with the additional stigma of having
+acted as cowards.
+
+There was also another common mistake into which Messrs. Bragg and
+Dodge had permitted themselves to fall, through the want of a proper
+distinction between principles. Resisting the popular will, on the
+part of an individual, they considered arrogance and aristocracy,
+_per se_, without at all entering into the question of the right, or
+the wrong. The people, rightly enough in the general signification of
+the term, they deemed to be sovereign; and they belonged to a
+numerous class, who view disobedience to the sovereign in a
+democracy, although it be in his illegal caprices, very much as the
+subject of a despot views disobedience to his prince.
+
+It is scarcely necessary to say, that Mr. Effingham and his cousin
+viewed these matters differently. Clear headed, just-minded, and
+liberal in all his practices, the former, in particular, was greatly
+pained by the recent occurrence; and he paced his library in silence,
+for several minutes after Mr. Bragg and his companion had withdrawn,
+really too much grieved to speak.
+
+"This is, altogether, a most extraordinary procedure, John," he at
+length observed, "and, it strikes me, that it is but an indifferent
+reward for the liberality with which I have permitted others to use
+my property, these thirty years; often, very often, as you well know,
+to my own discomfort, and to that of my friends."
+
+"I have told you, Ned, that you were not to expect the America on
+your return, that you left behind you on your departure for Europe. I
+insist that no country has so much altered for the worse, in so short
+a time."
+
+"That unequalled pecuniary prosperity should sensibly impair the
+manners of what is termed the world, By introducing suddenly lame
+bodies of uninstructed and untrained men and women into society, is a
+natural consequence of obvious causes; that it should corrupt morals,
+even, we have a right to expect, for we are taught to believe it the
+most corrupting influence under which men can live; but, I confess, I
+did not expect to see the day, when a body of strangers, birds of
+passage, creatures of an hour, should assume a right to call on the
+old and long-established inhabitants of a country, to prove their
+claims to their possessions, and this, too, in an unusual and
+unheard-of manner, under the penalty of being violently deprived of
+them!"
+
+"Long established!" repeated John Effingham, laughing; "what do you
+term long established? Have you not been absent a dozen years, and do
+not these people reduce everything to the level of their own habits.
+I suppose, now, you fancy you can go to Rome or Jerusalem, or
+Constantinople, and remain four or five lustres, and then come coolly
+back to Templeton. and, on taking possession of this house again,
+call yourself an old resident."
+
+"I certainly do suppose I have that right. How many English,
+Russians, and Germans, did we meet in Italy, the residents of years,
+who still retained all their natural and local right and feelings!"
+
+"Ay, that is in countries where society is permanent, and men get
+accustomed to look on the same objects, hear the same names, and see
+the same faces for their entire lives. I have had the curiosity to
+inquire, and have ascertained that none of the old, permanent
+families have been active in this affair of the Point, but that all
+the clamour has been made by those you call the birds of passage. But
+what of that? These people fancy everything reduced to the legal six
+months required to vote; and that rotation in persons is as necessary
+to republicanism as rotation in office."
+
+"Is is not extraordinary that persons who can know so little on the
+subject, should be thus indiscreet and positive?"
+
+"It is not extraordinary in America. Look about you, Ned, and you
+will see adventurers uppermost everywhere; in the government, in your
+towns, in your villages, in the country, even. We are a nation of
+changes. Much of this, I admit, is the fair consequence of legitimate
+causes, as an immense region, in forest, cannot be peopled on any
+other conditions. But this necessity has infected the entire national
+character, and men get to be impatient of any sameness, even though
+it be useful. Everything goes to confirm this feeling, instead of
+opposing it. The constant recurrences of the elections accustom men
+to changes in their public functionaries; the great increase in the
+population brings new faces; and the sudden accumulations of property
+place new men in conspicuous stations. The architecture of the
+country is barely becoming sufficiently respectable to render it
+desirable to preserve the buildings, without which we shall have no
+monuments to revere. In short, everything contributes to produce such
+a state of things, painful as it may be to all of any feeling, and
+little to oppose it."
+
+"You colour highly, Jack; and no picture loses in tints, in being
+retouched by you."
+
+"Look into the first paper that offers, and you will see the _young
+men_ of the country hardily invited to meet by themselves, to consult
+concerning public affairs, as if they were impatient of the counsels
+and experience of their fathers. No country can prosper, where the
+ordinary mode of transacting the business connected with the root of
+the government, commences with this impiety."
+
+"This is a disagreeable feature in the national character, certainly;
+but we must remember the arts employed by the designing to practise
+on the inexperienced."
+
+"Had I a son, who presumed to denounce the wisdom and experience of
+his father, in this disrespectful mariner, I would disinherit the
+rascal!"
+
+"Ah, Jack, bachelor's children are notoriously well educated, and
+well mannered. We will hope, however, that time will bring its
+changes also, and that one of them will be a greater constancy in
+persons, things, and the affections."
+
+"Time _will_ bring its changes, Ned; but all of them that are
+connected with individual rights, as opposed to popular caprice, or
+popular interests, are likely to be in the wrong direction."
+
+"The tendency is certainly to substitute popularity for the right,
+but we must take the good with the bad; Even you, Jack, would not
+exchange this popular oppression for any other system under which you
+have lived."
+
+"I don't know that--I don't know that. Of all tyranny, a vulgar
+tyranny is to me the most odious."
+
+"You used to admire the English system, but I think observation has
+lessened your particular admiration in that quarter;" said Mr.
+Effingham, smiling in a way that his cousin perfectly understood.
+
+"Harkee, Ned; we all take up false notions in youth, and this was one
+of mine; but, of the two, I should prefer the cold, dogged domination
+of English law, with its fruits, the heartlessness of a
+sophistication without parallel, to being trampled on by every arrant
+blackguard that may happen to traverse this valley, in his wanderings
+after dollars. There is one thing you yourself must admit; the public
+is a little too apt to neglect the duties it ought to discharge, and
+to assume duties it has no right to fulfil."
+
+This remark ended the discourse.
+
+Chapter XVI.
+
+  Her breast was a brave palace, a broad street, Where all heroic,
+  ample thoughts did meet, Where nature such a tenement had ta'en,
+  That other souls, to hers, dwelt in 'a lane.
+
+  JOHN NORTON.
+
+The village of Templeton, it has been already intimated, was a
+miniature town. Although it contained within the circle of its
+houses, half-a-dozen residences with grounds, and which were
+dignified with names, as has been also said, it did not cover a
+surface of more than a mile square; that disposition to
+concentration, which is as peculiar to an American town, as the
+disposition to diffusion is peculiar to the country population, and
+which seems almost to prescribe that a private dwelling shall have
+but three windows in front, and a _facade_ of twenty-five feet,
+having presided at the birth of this spot, as well as at the birth of
+so many of its predecessors and contemporaries. In one of its more
+retired streets (for Templeton had its publicity and retirement, the
+latter after a very village fashion, however,) dwelt a widow--
+bewitched of small worldly means, five children, and of great
+capacity for circulating intelligence. Mrs. Abbott, for so was this
+demi-relict called, was just on the verge of what is termed the "good
+society" of the village, the most uneasy of all positions for an
+ambitious and _ci-devant_ pretty woman to be placed in. She had not
+yet abandoned the hope of obtaining a divorce and its _suites_; was
+singularly, nay, rabidly devout, if we may coin the adverb; in her
+own eyes she was perfection, in those of her neighbours slightly
+objectionable; and she was altogether a droll, and by no means an
+unusual compound of piety, censoriousness, charity, proscription,
+gossip, kindness, meddling, ill-nature, and decency.
+
+The establishment of Mrs. Abbott, like her house, was necessarily
+very small, and she kept no servant but a girl she called her help, a
+very suitable appellation, by the way, as they did most of the work
+of the _mènage_ in common. This girl, in addition to cooking and
+washing, was the confidant of all her employer's wandering notions of
+mankind in general, and of her neighbours in particular; as often,
+helping her mistress in circulating her comments on the latter, as in
+anything else.
+
+Mrs. Abbott knew nothing of the Effinghams, except by a hearsay that
+got its intelligence from her own school, being herself a late
+arrival in the place. She had selected Templeton as a residence on
+account of its cheapness, and, having neglected to comply with the
+forms of the world, by hesitating about making the customary visit to
+the Wigwam, she began to resent, in her spirit at least, Eve's
+delicate forbearance from obtruding herself, where, agreeably to all
+usage, she had a perfect right to suppose she was not desired. It was
+in this spirit, then, that she sat, conversing with Jenny, as the
+maid of all work was called, the morning after the conversation
+related in the last chapter, in her snug little parlour, sometimes
+plying her needle, and oftener thrusting her head out of a window
+which commanded a view of the principal street of the place, in order
+to see what her neighbours might be about.
+
+"This is a most extraordinary course Mr. Effingham has taken
+concerning the Point," said Mrs. Abbott, "and I _do_ hope the people
+will bring him to his senses. Why, Jenny, the public has used that
+place ever since I can remember, and I have now lived in Templeton
+quite fifteen months.--What _can_ induce Mr. Howel to go so often to
+that barber's shop, which stands directly opposite the parlour
+windows of Mrs. Bennett--one would think the man was all beard."
+
+"I suppose Mr. Howel gets shaved sometimes," said the logical Jenny.
+
+"Not he; or if he does, no decent man would think of posting himself
+before a lady's window to do such a thing.--Orlando Furioso," calling
+to her eldest son, a boy of eleven, "run over to Mr. Jones's store,
+and listen to what the people are talking about, and bring me back
+the news, as soon as any thing worth hearing drops from any body; and
+stop as you come back, my son, and borrow neighbour Brown's gridiron.
+Jenny, it is most time to think of putting over the potatoes."
+
+"Ma'--" cried Orlando Furioso, from the front door, Mrs. Abbott being
+very rigid in requiring that all her children should call her 'ma','
+being so much behind the age as actually not to know that 'mother'
+had got to be much the genteeler term of the two; "Ma'," roared
+Orlando Furioso, "suppose there is no news at Mr. Jones's store?"
+
+"Then go to the nearest tavern; something must be stirring this fine
+morning, and I'm dying to know what it can possibly be. Mind you
+bring something besides the gridiron back with you. Hurry, or never
+come home again as long as you live! As I was saying, Jenny, the
+right of the public, which is our right, for we are a part of the
+public, to this Point, is as clear as day, and I am only astonished
+at the impudence of Mr. Effingham in pretending to deny it. I dare
+say his French daughter has put him up to it. They say she is
+monstrous arrogant!"
+
+"Is Eve Effingham, French," said Jenny, studiously avoiding any of
+the usual terms of civility and propriety, by way of showing her
+breeding--"well, I had always thought her nothing but Templeton
+born!"
+
+"What signifies where a person was born? where they _live_, is the
+essential thing; and Eve Effingham has lived so long in France, that
+she speaks nothing but broken English; and Miss Debby told me last
+week, that in drawing up a subscription paper for a new cushion to
+the reading-desk of her people, she actually spelt 'charity'
+'carrotty.'"
+
+"Is that French, Miss Abbott?"
+
+"I rather think it is, Jenny; the French are very niggardly, and give
+their poor carrots to live on, and so they have adopted the word, I
+suppose. You, Byansy-Alzumy-Ann, (Bianca-Alzuma-Ann!)"
+
+"Marm!"
+
+"Byansy-Alzumy-Ann! who taught you to call me marm! Is this the way
+you have learned your catechism? Say, ma', this instant."
+
+"Ma'."
+
+"Take your bonnet, my child, and run down to Mrs. Wheaton's, and ask
+her if any thing new has turned up about the Point, this morning;
+and, do you hear, Byansy-Alzumy-Ann Abbott--how the child starts
+away, as if she were sent on a matter of life and death!"
+
+"Why, ma', I want to hear the news, too."
+
+"Very likely, my dear, but, by stopping to get your errand, you may
+learn more than by being in such a hurry. Stop in at Mrs. Green's,
+and ask how the people liked the lecture of the strange parson, last
+evening--and ask her if she can lend me a watering-pot, Now, run, and
+be back as soon as possible. Never loiter when you carry news,
+child."
+
+"No one has a right to stop the man, I believe, Miss Abbott," put in
+Jenny, very appositely.
+
+"That, indeed, have they not, or else we could not calculate the
+consequences. You may remember, Jenny, the pious, even, had to give
+up that point, public convenience being; too strong for them. Roger-
+Demetrius-Benjamin!"--calling to a second boy, two years younger than
+his brother--"your eyes are better than mine--who are all those
+people collected together in the street. Is not Mr. Howel among
+them?"
+
+"I do not know, ma'!" answered Roger-Demetrius-Benjamin, gaping.
+
+"Then run, this minute, and see, and don't stop to look for your hat.
+As you come back, step into the tailor's shop and ask if your new
+jacket is most done, and what the news is? I rather think, Jenny, we
+shall find out something worth hearing, in the course of the day. By
+the way, they do say that Grace Van Cortlandt, Eve Effingham's
+cousin, is under concern."
+
+"Well, she is the last person I should think would be troubled about
+any thing, for every body says she is so desperate rich she might eat
+off of silver, if she liked; and she is sure of being married, some
+time or other."
+
+"That ought to lighten her concern, you think. Oh! it does my heart
+good when I see any of those flaunty people right well exercised!
+Nothing would make me happier than to see Eve Effingham groaning
+fairly in the spirit! That would teach her to take away the people's
+Points."
+
+"But, Miss Abbott, then she would become almost as good a woman as
+you are yourself,"
+
+"I am a miserable, graceless, awfully wicked sinner! Twenty times a
+day do I doubt whether I am actually converted or not. Sin has got
+such a hold of my very heart-strings, that I sometimes think they
+will crack before it lets go. Rinaldo-Rinaldini-Timothy, my child, do
+you toddle across the way, and give my compliments to Mrs. Hulbert,
+and inquire if it be true that young Dickson, the lawyer, is really
+engaged to Aspasia Tubbs or not? and borrow a skimmer, or a tin pot,
+or any thing you can carry, for we may want something of the sort in
+the course of the day. I do believe, Jenny, that a worse creature
+than myself is hardly to be found in Templeton."
+
+"Why, Miss Abbott," returned Jenny, who had heard too much of this
+self-abasement to be much alarmed at it, "this is giving almost as
+bad an account of yourself, as I heard somebody, that I won't name,
+give of you last week."
+
+"And who is your somebody, I should like to know? I dare say, one no
+better than a formalist, who thinks that reading prayers out of a
+book, kneeling, bowing, and changing gowns, is religion! Thank
+Heaven, I'm pretty indifferent to the opinions of such people.
+Harkee, Jenny; if I thought I was no better than some persons I could
+name, I'd give the point of salvation up, in despair!"
+
+"Miss Abbott," roared a rugged, dirty-faced, bare-footed boy, who
+entered without knocking, and stood in the middle of the room, with
+his hat on, with a suddenness that denoted great readiness in
+entering other people's possessions; "Miss Abbott, ma' wants to know
+if you are likely to go from home this week?"
+
+"Why, what in nature can she want to know that for, Ordeal Bumgrum?"
+Mrs. Abbott pronounced this singular name, however, "Ordeel."
+
+"Oh! she _warnts_ to know."
+
+"So do I _warnt_ to know; and know I will. Run home this instant, and
+ask your mother why she has sent you here with this message. Jenny, I
+am much exercised to find out the reason Mrs. Bumgrum should have
+sent Ordeal over with such a question."
+
+"I did hear that Miss Bumgrum intended to make a journey herself, and
+she may want your company."
+
+"Here comes Ordeal back, and we shall soon be out of the clouds. What
+a boy that is for errands. He is worth all my sons put together. You
+never see him losing time by going round by the streets, but away he
+goes over the garden fences like a cat, or he will whip through a
+house, if standing in his way, as if he were its owner, should the
+door happen to be open. Well, Ordeal?"
+
+But Ordeal was out of breath, and although Jenny shook him, as if to
+shake the news out of him, and Mrs. Abbott actually shook her fist,
+in her impatience to be enlightened, nothing could induce the child
+to speak, until he had recovered his wind.
+
+"I believe he does it on purpose," said the provoked maid.
+
+"It's just like him!" cried the mistress; "the very best news-carrier
+in the village is actually spoilt because he is thick-winded."
+
+"I wish folks wouldn't make their fences so high," Ordeal exclaimed,
+the instant he found breath. "I can't see of what use it is to make a
+fence people can't climb!"
+
+"What does your mother say?" cried Jenny repeating her shake, _con
+amore_.
+
+"Ma, wants to know, Miss Abbott, if you don't intend to use it
+yourself, if you will lend her your name for a few days, to go to
+Utica with? She says folks don't treat her half as well when she is
+called Bumgrum, as when she has another name, and she thinks she'd
+like to try yours, this time."
+
+"Is that all!--You needn't have been so hurried about such a trifle,
+Ordeal. Give my compliments to your mother, and tell her she is quite
+welcome to my name, and I hope it will be serviceable to her."
+
+"She says she is willing to pay for the use of it, if you will tell
+her what the damage will be."
+
+"Oh! it's not worth while to speak of such a trifle I dare say she
+will bring it back quite as good as when she took it away. I am no
+such unneighbourly or aristocratical person as to wish to keep my
+name all to myself. Tell your mother she is welcome to mine, and to
+keep it as long as she likes, and not to say any thing about pay; I
+may want to borrow hers, or something else, one of these days,
+though, to say the truth, my neighbours _are_ apt to complain of me
+as unfriendly and proud for not borrowing as much as a good neighbour
+ought."
+
+Ordeal departed, leaving Mrs. Abbot in some such condition as that of
+the man who had no shadow. A rap at the door interrupted the further
+discussion of the old subject, and Mr. Steadfast Dodge appeared in
+answer to the permission to enter. Mr. Dodge and Mrs. Abbott were
+congenial spirits, in the way of news, he living by it, and she
+living on it.
+
+"You are very welcome, Mr. Dodge," the mistress of the house
+commenced; "I hear you passed the day, yesterday, up at the
+Effinghamses."
+
+"Why, yes, Mrs. Abbott, the Effinghams insisted on it, and I could
+not well get over the sacrifice, after having been their shipmate so
+long. Besides it is a little relief to talk French, when one has been
+so long in the daily practice of it."
+
+"I hear there is company at the house?"
+
+"Two of our fellow-travellers, merely. An English baronet, and a
+young man of whom less is known than one could wish. He is a
+mysterious person, and I hate mystery, Mrs. Abbott."
+
+"In that, then, Mr. Dodge, you and I are alike. I think every thing
+should be known. Indeed, that is not a free country in which there
+are any secrets. I keep nothing from my neighbours, and, to own the
+truth, I do not like my neighbours to keep any thing from me."
+
+"Then you'll hardly like the Effinghams, for I never yet met with a
+more close-mouthed family. Although I was so long in the ship with
+Miss Eve, I never heard her once speak of her want of appetite; of
+sea-sickness, or of any thing relating to her ailings even: no? can
+you imagine how close she is on the subject of the beaux; I do not
+think I ever heard her use the word, or so much as allude to any walk
+or ride she ever took with a single man. I set her down, Mrs. Abbott,
+as unqualifiedly artful!"
+
+"That you may with certainty, sir, for there is no more sure sign
+that a young woman is all the while thinking of the beaux, than her
+never mentioning them."
+
+"That I believe to be human nature; no ingenuous person ever thinks
+much of the particular subject of conversation. What is your opinion,
+Mrs. Abbott, of the contemplated match at the Wigwam?"
+
+"Match!" exclaimed Mrs. Abbott.--"What, already! It is the most
+indecent thing I ever heard of! Why, Mr. Dodge, the family has not
+been home a fortnight, and to think so soon of getting married! It is
+quite as bad as a widower's marrying within the month."
+
+Mrs. Abbott made a distinction, habitually, between the cases of
+widowers and widows, as the first, she maintained, might get married
+whenever they pleased, and the latter only when they got offers; and
+she felt just that sort of horror of a man's thinking of marrying too
+soon after the death of his wife, as might be expected in one who
+actually thought of a second husband before the first was dead.
+
+"Why, yes," returned Steadfast, "it is a little premature, perhaps,
+though they have been long acquainted. Still, as you say, it would be
+more decent to wait and see what may turn up in a country, that, to
+them, may be said to be a foreign land."
+
+"But, who are the parties, Mr. Dodge."
+
+"Miss Eve Effingham, and Mr. John Effingham"
+
+"Mr. John Effingham!" exclaimed the lady, who had lent her name to a
+neighbour, aghast, for this was knocking one of her own day-dreams in
+the head, "well this is too much! But he shall not marry her, sir;
+the law will prevent it, and we live in a country of laws. A man
+cannot marry his own niece."
+
+"It is excessively improper, and ought to be put a stop to. And yet
+these Effinghams do very much as they please."
+
+"I am very sorry to hear that; they are extremely disagreeable," said
+Mrs. Abbott, with a look of eager inquiry, as if afraid the answer
+might be in the negative.
+
+"As much so as possible; they have hardly a way that you would like,
+my dear ma'am; and are as close-mouthed as if they were afraid of
+committing themselves."
+
+"Desperate bad news-carriers, I am told, Mr. Dodge. There is Dorindy
+(Dorinda) Mudge, who was employed there by Eve and Grace one day; she
+tells me she tried all she could to get them to talk, by speaking of
+the most common things; things that one of my children knew all
+about; such as the affairs of the neighbourhood, and how people are
+getting on; and, though they would listen a little, and that is
+something, I admit, not a syllable could she get in the way of
+answer, or remark. She tells me that, several times, she had a mind
+to quit, for it is monstrous unpleasant to associate with your
+tongue-tied folks."
+
+"I dare say Miss Effingham could throw out a hint now and then,
+concerning the voyage and her late fellow-travellers," said
+Steadfast, casting an uneasy glance at his companion.
+
+"Not she. Dorindy maintains that it is impossible to get a sentiment
+out of her concerning a single fellow-creature. When she talked of
+the late unpleasant affair of poor neighbour Bronson's family--a
+melancholy transaction that, Mr. Dodge, and I shouldn't wonder if it
+went to nigh break Mrs. Bronson's heart--but when Dorindy mentioned
+this, which is bad enough to stir the sensibility of a frog, neither
+of my young ladies replied, or put a single question. In this respect
+Grace is as bad as Eve, and Eve is as bad as Grace, they say. Instead
+of so much as seeming to wish to know any more, what does my Miss Eve
+do, but turn to some daubs of paintings, and point out to her cousin
+what she was pleased to term peculiarities in Swiss usages. Then the
+two hussies would talk of nature, 'our beautiful nature' Dorindy says
+Eve had the impudence to call it, and, as if human nature and its
+failings and backsliding wore not a fitter subject for a young
+woman's discourse, than a silly conversation about lakes, and rocks,
+and trees, and as if she _owned_ the nature about Templeton. It is my
+opinion, Mr. Dodge, that downright ignorance is at the bottom of it
+all, for Dorindy says that they actually know no more of the
+intricacies of the neighbourhood than if they lived in Japan."
+
+"All pride, Mrs. Abbott; rank pride. They feel themselves too great
+to enter into the minutiae of common folks' concerns. I often tried
+Miss Effingham coming from England; and things touching private
+interests, that I know she did and must understand, she always
+disdainfully refused to enter into. Oh! she is, a real Tartar, in her
+way; and what she does not wish to do, you never can make her do!"
+
+"Have you heard that Grace is under concern?"
+
+"Not a breath of it; under whose preaching was she sitting, Mrs.
+Abbott?"
+
+"That is more than I can tell you; not under the church parson's,
+I'll engage; no one ever heard of a real, active, regenerating, soul-
+reviving, spirit-groaning and fruit-yielding conversion under _his_
+ministry."
+
+"No, there is very little unction in that persuasion generally. How
+cold and apathetic they are, in these soul-stirring times! Not a
+sinner has been writhing on _their_ floor, I'll engage, nor a wretch
+transferred into a saint, in the twinkling of an eye, by _that_
+parson. Well, _we_ have every reason to be grateful, Mrs. Abbott."
+
+"That we have, for most glorious have been our privileges! To be sure
+that is a sinful pride that can puff up a wretched, sinful being like
+Eve Effingham to such a pass of conceit, as to induce her to think
+she is raised above thinking of, and taking an interest in the
+affairs of her neighbours. Now, for my part, conversion has so far
+opened _my_ heart, that I do actually feel as if I wanted to know all
+about the meanest creature in Templeton."
+
+"That's the true spirit, Mrs. Abbott; stick to that, and your
+redemption is secure. I only edit a newspaper, by way of showing an
+interest in mankind."
+
+"I hope, Mr. Dodge, the press does not mean to let this matter of the
+Point sleep; the press is the true guardian of the public rights, and
+I can tell you the whole community looks to it for support, in this
+crisis."
+
+"We shall not fail to do our duty," said Mr. Dodge, looking over his
+shoulder, and speaking lower. "What! shall one insignificant
+individual, who has not a single right above that of the meanest
+citizen in the county, oppress this great and powerful community!
+What if Mr. Effingham does own this point of land--"
+
+"But he does _not_ own it," interrupted Mrs. Abbott. "Ever since I
+have known Templeton, the public has owned it. The public, moreover,
+says it owns it, and what the public says, in this happy country, is
+law."
+
+"But, allowing that the public does not own--"
+
+"It _does_ own it, Mr. Dodge," the nameless repeated, positively.
+
+"Well, ma'am, own or no own, this is not a country in which the press
+ought to be silent, when a solitary individual undertakes to trample
+on the public. Leave that matter to us, Mrs. Abbott; it is in good
+hands, and shall be well taken care of."
+
+"I'm piously glad of it!"
+
+"I mention this to you, as to a friend," continued Mr. Dodge,
+cautiously drawing from his pocket a manuscript, which he prepared to
+read to his companion who sat with a devouring curiosity, ready to
+listen.
+
+The manuscript of Mr. Dodge contained a professed account of the
+affair of the Point. It was written obscurely, and was not without
+its contradictions, but the imagination of Mrs. Abbott supplied all
+the vacuums, and reconciled all the contradictions. The article was
+so liberal of its professions of contempt for Mr. Effingham, that
+every rational man was compelled to wonder, why a quality, that is
+usually so passive, should, in this particular instance, be aroused
+to so sudden and violent activity. In the way of facts, not one was
+faithfully stated; and there were several deliberate, unmitigated
+falsehoods, which went essentially to colour the whole account.
+
+"I think this will answer the purpose," said Steadfast, "and we have
+taken means to see that it shall be well circulated."
+
+"This will do them good," cried Mrs. Abbott; almost breathless with
+delight. "I hope folks will believe it."
+
+"No fear of that. If it were a party thing, now, one half would
+believe it, as a matter of course, and the other half would not
+believe it, as a matter of course; but, in a private matter, lord
+bless you, ma'am, people are always ready to believe any thing that
+will give them something to talk about."
+
+Here the _tête à tête_ was interrupted by the return of Mrs. Abbott's
+different messengers, all of whom, unlike the dove sent forth from
+the ark, brought back something in the way of hopes. The Point was a
+general theme, and, though the several accounts flatly contradicted
+each other, Mrs. Abbott, in the general benevolence of her pious
+heart, found the means to extract corroboration of her wishes from
+each.
+
+Mr. Dodge was as good as his word, and the account appeared. The
+press throughout the country seized with avidity on any thing that
+helped to fill its columns. No one appeared disposed to inquire into
+the truth of the account, or after the character of the original
+authority. It was in print, and that struck the great majority of the
+editors and their readers, as a sufficient sanction. Few, indeed,
+were they, who lived so much under a proper self-control, as to
+hesitate; and this rank injustice was done a private citizen, as much
+without moral restraint, as without remorse, by those, who, to take
+their own accounts of the matter, were the regular and habitual
+champions of human rights!
+
+John Effingham pointed out this extraordinary scene of reckless
+wrong, to his wondering cousin, with the cool sarcasm, with which he
+was apt to assail the weaknesses and crimes of the country. His
+firmness, united to that of his cousin, however, put a stop to the
+publication of the resolutions of Aristabulus's meeting, and when a
+sufficient time had elapsed to prove that these prurient denouncers
+of their fellow-citizens had taken wit in their anger, he procured
+them, and had them published himself, as the most effectual means of
+exposing the real character of the senseless mob, that had thus
+disgraced liberty, by assuming its professions and its usages.
+
+To an observer of men, the end of this affair presented several
+strong points for comment. As soon as the truth became generally
+known, in reference to the real ownership, and the public came to
+ascertain that instead of hitherto possessing a right, it had, in
+fact been merely enjoying a favour, those who had commit ted
+themselves by their arrogant assumptions of facts, and their indecent
+outrages, fell back on their self-love, and began to find excuses for
+their conduct in that of the other party. Mr. Effingham was loudly
+condemned for not having done the very thing, he, in truth, had done,
+viz: telling the public it did not own his property; and when this
+was shown to be an absurdity, the complaint followed that what he had
+done, had been done in precisely such a mode, although it was the
+mode constantly used by every one else. From these vague and
+indefinite accusations, those most implicated in the wrong, began to
+deny all their own original assertions, by insisting that they had
+known all along, that Mr. Effingham owned the property, but that they
+did not choose he, or any other man, should presume to tell them what
+they knew already. In short, the end of this affair exhibited human
+nature in its usual aspects of prevarication, untruth, contradiction,
+and inconsistency, notwithstanding the high profession of liberty
+made by those implicated; and they who had been the most guilty of
+wrong, were loudest in their complaints, as if they alone had
+suffered.
+
+"This is not exhibiting the country to us, certainly, after so long
+an absence, in its best appearance," said Mr. Effingham, "I must
+admit, John; but error belongs to all regions, and to all classes of
+institutions."
+
+"Ay, Ned, make the best of it, as usual; but, if you do not come
+round to my way of thinking, before you are a twelvemonth older, I
+shall renounce prophesying. I wish we could get at the bottom of Miss
+Effingham's thoughts, on this occasion."
+
+"Miss Effingham has been grieved, disappointed, nay, shocked," said
+Eve, "but, still she will not despair of the republic. None of our
+respectable neighbours, in the first place, have shared in this
+transaction, and that is something; though I confess I feel some
+surprise that any considerable portion of a community, that respects
+itself, should quietly allow an ignorant fragment of its own numbers,
+to misrepresent it so grossly, in an affair that so nearly touches
+its own character for common sense and justice."
+
+"You have yet to learn, Miss Effingham, that men can get to be so
+saturated with liberty, that they become insensible to the nicer
+feelings. The grossest enormities are constantly committed in this
+good republic of ours, under the pretence of being done by the
+public, and for the public. The public have got to bow to that
+bugbear, quite as submissively as Gesler would have wished the Swiss
+to bow to his own cap, as to the cap of Rodolph's substitute. Men
+will have idols, and the Americans have merely set up themselves."
+
+"And you, cousin Jack, you would be wretched were you doomed to live
+under a system less free. I fear you have the affectation of
+sometimes saying that which you do not exactly feel."
+
+Chapter XVII.
+
+  "Come, these are no times to think of dreams--
+  We'll talk of dreams hereafter."
+
+  SHAKSPEARE.
+
+The day succeeding that in which the conversation just mentioned
+occurred, was one of great expectation and delight in the Wigwam.
+Mrs. Hawker and the Bloomfields were expected, and the morning passed
+away rapidly, under the gay buoyancy of the feelings that usually
+accompany such anticipations in a country-house. The travellers were
+to leave town the previous evening, and, though the distance was near
+two hundred and thirty miles, they were engaged to arrive by the
+usual dinner hour. In speed, the Americans, so long as they follow
+the great routes, are unsurpassed; and even Sir George Templemore,
+coming, as he did, from a country of MacAdamized roads and excellent
+posting, expressed his surprise, when given to understand that a
+journey of this length, near a hundred miles of which were by land,
+moreover, was to be performed in twenty-four hours, the stops
+included.
+
+"One particularly likes this rapid travelling," he remarked, "when it
+is to bring us such friends as Mrs. Hawker."
+
+"And Mrs. Bloomfield," added Eve, quickly. "I rest the credit of the
+American females on Mrs. Bloomfield."
+
+"More so, than on Mrs. Hawker, Miss Effingham."
+
+"Not in all that is amiable, respectable, feminine, and lady-like;
+but certainly more so, in the way of mind. I know, Sir George
+Templemore, as a European, what your opinion is of our sex in this
+country."
+
+"Good heaven, my dear Miss Effingham!--My opinion of your sex, in
+America! It is impossible for any one to entertain a higher opinion
+of your country-women--as I hope to show--as, I trust, my respect and
+admiration have always proved--nay, Powis, you, as an American, will
+exonerate me from this want of taste--judgment--feeling--"
+
+Paul laughed, but told the embarrassed and really distressed baronet,
+that he should leave him in the very excellent hands into which he
+had fallen.
+
+"You see that bird, that is sailing so prettily above the roofs of
+the village," said Eve, pointing with her parasol in the direction
+she meant; for the three were walking together on the little lawn, in
+waiting for the appearance of the expected guests; "and I dare say
+you are ornithologist enough to tell its vulgar name."
+
+"You are in the humour to be severe this morning--the bird is but a
+common swallow."
+
+"One of which will not make a summer, as every one knows. Our
+cosmopolitism is already forgotten, and with it, I fear, our
+frankness."
+
+"Since Powis has hoisted his national colours, I do not feel as free
+on such subjects as formerly," returned Sir George, smiling. "When I
+thought I had a secret ally in him, I was not afraid to concede a
+little in such things, but his avowal of his country has put me on my
+guard. In no case, however, shall I admit my insensibility to the
+qualities of your countrywomen. Powis, as a native, may take that
+liberty; but, as for myself, I shall insist they are, at least, the
+equals of any females I know."
+
+"In _naiveté_, prettiness, delicacy of appearance, simplicity, and
+sincerity--"
+
+"In sincerity, think you, dear Miss Effingham?"
+
+"In sincerity, above all things, dear Sir George Templemore.
+Sincerity--nay, frankness is the last quality I should think of
+denying them."
+
+"But to return to Mrs. Bloomfield--she is clever, exceedingly clever,
+I allow; in what is her cleverness to be distinguished from that of
+one of her sex, on the other side of the ocean?"
+
+"In nothing, perhaps, did there exist no differences in national
+characteristics. Naples and New-York are in the same latitude, and
+yet, I think you will agree with me, that there is little resemblance
+in their populations."
+
+"I confess I do not understand the allusion--are you quicker witted,
+Powis?"
+
+"I will not say that," answered Paul; "but I think I do comprehend
+Miss Effingham's meaning. You have travelled enough to know, that, as
+a rule, there is more aptitude in a southern, than in a northern
+people. They receive impressions more readily, and are quicker in all
+their perceptions."
+
+"I believe this to be true; but, then, you will allow that they are
+less constant, and have less perseverance?"
+
+"In that we are agreed, Sir George Templemore," resumed Eve, "though
+we might differ as to the cause. The inconstancy of which you speak,
+is more connected with moral than physical causes, perhaps, and we,
+of this region, might claim an exemption from some of them. But, Mrs.
+Bloomfield is to be distinguished from her European rivals, by a
+frame so singularly feminine as to appear fragile, a delicacy of
+exterior, that, were it not for that illumined face of hers, might
+indicate a general feebleness, a sensitiveness and quickness of
+intellect that amount almost to inspiration; and yet all is balanced
+by a practical common sense, that renders her as safe a counsellor as
+she is a warm friend. This latter quality causes you sometimes to
+doubt her genius, it is so very homely and available. Now it is in
+this, that I think the American woman, when she does rise above
+mediocrity, is particularly to be distinguished from the European.
+The latter, as a genius, is almost always in the clouds, whereas,
+Mrs. Bloomfield, in her highest flights, is either all heart, or all
+good sense. The nation is practical, and the practical qualities get
+to be imparted even to its highest order of talents."
+
+"The English women are thought to be less excitable, and not so much
+under the influence of sentimentalism, as some of their continental
+neighbours."
+
+"And very justly--but----"
+
+"But, what, Miss Effingham--there is, in all this, a slight return to
+the cosmopolitism, that reminds me of our days of peril and
+adventure. Do not conceal a thought, if you wish to preserve that
+character."
+
+"Well, to be sincere, I shall say that your women live under a system
+too sophisticated and factitious to give fair play to common sense,
+at all times. What, for instance, can be the habitual notions of one,
+who, professing the doctrines of Christianity, is accustomed to find
+money placed so very much in the ascendant, as to see it daily
+exacted in payment for the very first of the sacred offices of the
+church? It would be as rational to contend that a mirror which had
+been cracked into radii, by a bullet, like those we have so often
+seen in Paris, would reflect faithfully, as to suppose a mind
+familiarized to such abuses would be sensitive on practical and
+common sense things."
+
+"But, my dear Miss Effingham, this is all habit."
+
+"I know it is all habit, Sir George Templemore, and a very bad habit
+it is. Even your devoutest clergymen get so accustomed to it, as not
+to see the capital mistake they make. I do not say it is absolutely
+sinful, where there is no compulsion; but, I hope you agree with me,
+Mr. Powis, when I say I think a clergyman ought to be so sensitive on
+such a subject, as to refuse even the little offerings for baptisms,
+that it is the practice of the wealthy of this country to make."
+
+"I agree with you entirely, for it would denote a more just
+perception of the nature of the office they are performing; and they
+who wish to give can always make occasions."
+
+"A hint might be taken from Franklin, who is said to have desired his
+father to ask a blessing on the pork-barrel, by way of condensation,"
+put in John Effingham, who joined them as he spoke, and who had heard
+a part of the conversation. "In this instance an average might be
+struck in the marriage fee, that should embrace all future baptisms.
+But here comes neighbour Howel to favour us with his opinion. Do you
+like the usages of the English church, as respects baptisms, Howel?"
+
+"Excellent, the best in the world, John Effingham."
+
+"Mr. Howel is so true an Englishman," said Eve, shaking hands
+cordially with their well-meaning neighbour, "that he would give a
+certificate in favour of polygamy, if it had a British origin."
+
+"And is not this a more natural sentiment for an American than that
+which distrusts so much, merely because it comes from the little
+island?" asked Sir George, reproachfully.
+
+"That is a question I shall leave Mr. Howel himself to answer."
+
+"Why, Sir George," observed the gentleman alluded to, "I do not
+attribute my respect for your country, in the least, to origin. I
+endeavour to keep myself free from all sorts of prejudices. My
+admiration of England arises from conviction, and I watch all her
+movements with the utmost jealousy, in order to see if I cannot find
+her tripping, though I feel bound to say I have never yet detected
+her in a single error. What a very different picture, France--I hope
+your governess is not within hearing, Miss Eve; it is not her fault;
+she was born a French woman, and we would not wish to hurt her
+feelings--but what a different picture France presents! I have
+watched her narrowly too, these forty years, I may say, and I have
+never yet found her right; and this, you must allow, is a great deal
+to be said by one who is thoroughly impartial."
+
+"This is a terrible picture, indeed, Howel, to come from an
+unprejudiced man," said John Effingham; "and I make no doubt Sir
+George Templemore will have a better opinion of himself for ever
+after--he for a valiant lion, and you for a true prince. But yonder
+is the 'exclusive extra,' which contains our party."
+
+The elevated bit of lawn on which they were walking commanded a view
+of the road that led into the village, and the travelling, vehicle
+engaged by Mrs. Hawker and her friends, was now seen moving along it
+at a rapid pace. Eve expressed her satisfaction, and then all resumed
+their walk, as some minutes must still elapse previously to the
+arrival.
+
+"Exclusive extra!" repeated Sir George; "that is a peculiar phrase,
+and one that denotes any thing but democracy."
+
+"In any other part of the world a thing would be sufficiently marked,
+by being 'extra,' but here it requires the addition of 'exclusive,'
+in order to give it the 'tower stamp,'" said John Effingham, with a
+curl of his handsome lip. "Any thing may be as exclusive as it
+please, provided it bear the public impress. A stagecoach being
+intended for every body, why, the more exclusive it is, the better.
+The next thing we shall hear of will be exclusive steamboats,
+exclusive railroads, and both for the uses of the exclusive people."
+
+Sir George now seriously asked an explanation of the meaning of the
+term, when Mr. Howel informed him that an 'extra' in America meant a
+supernumerary coach, to carry any excess of the ordinary number of
+passengers; whereas an 'exclusive extra' meant a coach expressly
+engaged by a particular individual.
+
+"The latter, then, is American posting," observed Sir George.
+
+"You have got the best idea of it that can be given," said Paul. "It
+is virtually posting with a coachman, instead of postillions, few
+persons in this country, where so much of the greater distances is
+done by steam, using their own travelling carriages. The American
+'exclusive extra' is not only posting, but, in many of the older
+parts of the country, it is posting of a very good quality."
+
+"I dare say, now, this is all wrong, if we only knew it," said the
+simple-minded Mr. Howel. "There is nothing exclusive in England, ha,
+Sir George?"
+
+Every body laughed except the person who put this question, but the
+rattling of wheels and the tramping of horses on the village bridge,
+announced the near approach of the travellers. By the time the party
+had reached the great door in front of the house, the carriage was
+already in the grounds, and at the next moment, Eve was in the arms
+of Mrs. Bloomfield. It was apparent, at a glance, that more than the
+expected number of guests was in the vehicle; and as its contents
+were slowly discharged, the spectators stood around it, with
+curiosity, to observe who would appear.
+
+The first person that descended, after the exit of Mrs. Bloomfield,
+was Captain Truck, who, however, instead of saluting his friends,
+turned assiduously to the door he had just passed through, to assist
+Mrs. Hawker to alight. Not until this office had been done, did he
+even look for Eve; for, so profound was the worthy captain's
+admiration and respect for this venerable lady, that she actually had
+got to supplant our heroine, in some measure, in his heart. Mr.
+Bloomfield appeared next, and an exclamation of surprise and pleasure
+proceeded from both Paul and the baronet, as they caught a glimpse of
+the face of the last of the travellers that got out.
+
+"Ducie!" cried Sir George. "This is even better than we expected."
+
+"Ducie!" added Paul, "you are several days before the expected time,
+and in excellent company."
+
+The explanation, however, was very simple Captain Ducie had found the
+facilities for rapid motion much greater than he had expected, and he
+reached Fort Plain, in the eastward cars, as the remainder of the
+party arrived in the westward. Captain Truck-who had met Mrs.
+Hawker's party in the river boat, had been intrusted with the duty of
+making the arrangements, and recognizing Captain Ducie, to their
+mutual surprise, while engaged in this employment, and ascertaining
+his destination, the latter was very cordially received into the
+"exclusive extra."
+
+Mr. Effingham welcomed all his guests with the hospitality and
+kindness for which he was distinguished. We are no great admirers of
+the pretension to peculiar national virtues, having ascertained, to
+our own satisfaction, by tolerably extensive observation, that the
+moral difference between men is of no great amount; but we are almost
+tempted to say, on this occasion, that Mr. Effingham received his
+guests with American hospitality; for if there be one quality that
+this people can claim to possess in a higher degree than that of most
+other Christian nations, it is that of a simple, sincere, confiding
+hospitality. For Mrs. Hawker, in common with all who knew her, the
+owner of the Wigwam entertained a profound respect; and though his
+less active mind did not take as much pleasure as that of his
+daughter, in the almost intuitive intelligence of Mrs. Bloomfield, he
+also felt for this lady a very friendly regard. It gave him pleasure
+to see Eve surrounded by persons of her own sex, of so high a tone of
+thought and breeding; a tone of thought and breeding, moreover, that
+was as far removed as possible from anything strained or artificial:
+and his welcomes were cordial in proportion. Mr. Bloomfield was a
+quiet, sensible, gentleman-like man, whom his wife fervently loved,
+without making any parade of her attachment and he was also one who
+had the good sense to make himself agreeable wherever he went.
+Captain Ducie, who, Englishman-like, had required some urging to be
+induced to present himself before the precise hour named in his own
+letter, and who had seriously contemplated passing several days in a
+tavern, previously to showing himself at the Wigwam, was agreeably
+disappointed at a reception, that would have been just as frank and
+warm, had he come without any notice at all: for the Effinghams knew
+that the usages which sophistication and a crowded population perhaps
+render necessary in older countries, were not needed in their own;
+and then the circumstance that their quondam pursuer was so near a
+kinsman of Paul Powis', did not fail to act essentially in his
+favour.
+
+"We can offer but little, in these retired mountains, to interest a
+traveller and a man of the world, Captain Ducie," said Mr. Effingham,
+when he went to pay his compliments more particularly, after the
+whole party was in the house; "but there is a common interest in our
+past adventures to talk about, after all other topics fail. When, we
+met on the ocean, and you deprived us so unexpectedly of our friend
+Powis, we did not know that you had the better claim of affinity to
+his company."
+
+Captain Ducie coloured slightly, but he made his answer with a proper
+degree of courtesy and gratitude.
+
+"It is very true," he added, "Powis and myself are relatives, and I
+shall place all my claims to your hospitality to his account; for I
+feel that I have been the unwilling cause of too much suffering to
+your party to bring with me any very pleasant recollections,
+notwithstanding your kindness in including me as a friend in the
+adventures of which you speak."
+
+"Dangers that are happily past, seldom bring very unpleasant
+recollections, more especially when they were connected with scenes
+of excitement, I understand, sir, that the unhappy young man, who was
+the principal cause of all that passed, anticipated the sentence of
+the law, by destroying himself."
+
+"He was his own executioner, and the victim of a silly weakness that,
+I should think, your state of society was yet too young and simple to
+encourage. The idle vanity of making an appearance, a vanity, by the
+way, that seldom besets gentlemen, or the class to which it may be
+thought more properly to belong, ruins hundreds of young men in
+England, and this poor creature was of the number. I never was more
+rejoiced than when he quitted my ship, for the sight of so much
+weakness sickened one of human nature. Miserable as his fate proved
+to be, and pitiable as his condition really was while in my charge,
+his case has the alleviating circumstance with me, of having made me
+acquainted with those whom it might not otherwise have been my good
+fortune to meet!"
+
+This civil speech was properly acknowledged, and Mr. Effingham
+addressed himself to Captain Truck, to whom, in the hurry of the
+moment, he had not yet said half that his feelings dictated.
+
+"I am rejoiced to see you under my roof, my worthy friend," taking
+the rough hand of the old seaman between his own whiter and more
+delicate fingers, and shaking it with cordiality, "for this _is_
+being under my roof, while those town residences have less the air of
+domestication and familiarity. You will spend many of your holidays
+here, I trust; and when we get a few years older, we will begin to
+prattle about the marvels we have seen in company."
+
+The eye of Captain Truck glistened, and, as he return ed the shake by
+another of twice the energy, and the gentle pressure of Mr. Effingham
+by a squeeze like that of a vice, he said in his honest off-hand
+manner--
+
+"The happiest hour I ever knew was that in which I discharged the
+pilot, the first time out, as a ship-master; the next great event of
+my life, in the way of happiness, was the moment I found myself on
+the deck of the Montauk, after we had given those greasy Arabs a him
+that their room was better than their company; and I really think
+this very instant must be set down as the third. I never knew, my
+dear sir, how much I truly loved you and your daughter, until both
+were out of sight."
+
+"That is so kind and gallant a speech, that it ought not to be lost
+on the person most concerned. Eve, my love, our worthy friend has
+just made a declaration which will be a novelty to you, who have not
+been much in the way of listening to speeches of this nature."
+
+Mr. Effingham then acquainted his daughter with what Captain Truck
+had just said.
+
+"This is certainly the first declaration of the sort I ever heard,
+and with the simplicity of an unpractised young woman, I here avow
+that the attachment is reciprocal," said the smiling Eve. "If there
+is an indiscretion in this hasty acknowledgement, it must be ascribed
+to surprise, and to the suddenness with which I have learned my
+power, for your _parvenues_ are not always perfectly regulated."
+
+"I hope Mamselle V.A.V. is well," returned the Captain, cordially
+shaking the hand the young lady had given him, "and that she enjoys
+herself to her liking in this outlandish country?"
+
+"Mademoiselle Viefville will return you her thanks in person, at
+dinner; and I believe she does not yet regret _la belle France_
+unreasonably; as I regret it myself, in many particulars, it would be
+unjust not to permit a native of the country some liberty in that
+way."
+
+"I perceive a strange face in the room--one of the family, my dear
+young lady?"
+
+"Not a relative, but a very old friend.--Shall I have the pleasure of
+introducing you, Captain?"
+
+"I hardly dared to ask it, for I know you must have been overworked
+in this way, lately, but I confess I _should_ like an introduction; I
+have neither introduced, nor been introduced since I left New-York,
+with the exception of the case of Captain Ducie, whom I made properly
+acquainted with Mrs. Hawker and her party as you may suppose. They
+know each other regularly now, and you are saved the trouble of going
+through the ceremony yourself."
+
+"And how is it with you and the Bloomfields? Did Mrs. Hawker name you
+to them properly?"
+
+"That is the most extraordinary thing of the sort I ever knew! Not a
+word was said in the way of introduction, and yet I slid into an
+acquaintance with Mrs. Bloomfield so easily, that I could not tell
+how it was done, if my life depended on it. But this very old friend
+of yours, my dear young lady----"
+
+"Captain Truck, Mr. Howel; Mr. Howel, Captain Truck;" said Eve,
+imitating the most approved manner of the introductory spirit of the
+day with admirable self-possession and gravity. "I am fortunate in
+having it in my power to make two persons whom I so much esteem
+acquainted."
+
+"Captain Truck is the gentleman who commands the Montauk?" said Mr.
+Howel, glancing at Eve, as much as to say, "am I right?"
+
+"The very same, and the brave seaman to whom we are all indebted for
+the happiness of standing here at this moment."
+
+"You are to be envied, Captain Truck; of all the men in your calling,
+you are exactly the one I should most wish to supplant. I understand
+you actually go to England twice every year!"
+
+"Three times, sir, when the winds permit. I have even seen the old
+island four times, between January and January."
+
+"What a pleasure! It must be the very acme of navigation to sail
+between America and England!"
+
+"It is not unpleasant, sir, from April to November, but the long
+nights, thick weather, and heavy winds knock off a good deal of the
+satisfaction for the rest of the year."
+
+"But I speak of the country; of old England itself; not of the
+passages."
+
+"Well, England has what I call a pretty fair coast. It is high, and
+great attention is paid to the lights; but of what account is either
+coast or lights, if the weather is so thick, you cannot see the end
+of your flying-jib-boom!"
+
+"Mr. Howel alludes more particularly to the country, inland," said
+Eve; "to the towns, the civilization and the other proofs of
+cultivation and refinement. To the government, especially."
+
+"In my judgment, sir, the government is much too particular about
+tobacco, and some other trifling things I could name. Then it
+restricts pennants to King's ships, whereas, to my notion, my dear
+young lady, a New-York packet is as worthy of wearing a pennant as
+any vessel that floats. I mean, of course, ships of the regular
+European lines, and not the Southern traders."
+
+"But these are merely spots on the sun, my good sir," returned Mr.
+Howel; "putting a few such trifles out of the question, I think you
+will allow that England is the most delightful country in the world?"
+
+"To be frank with you, Mr. Howel, there is a good deal of hang-dog
+weather, along in October, November and December. I have known March
+any thing but agreeable, and then April is just like a young girl
+with one of your melancholy novels, now smiling, and now blubbering."
+
+"But the morals of the country, my dear sir; the moral features of
+England must be a source of never-dying delight to a true
+philanthropist," resumed Mr. Howel, as Eve, who perceived that the
+discourse was likely to be long, went to join the ladies. "An
+Englishman has most reason to be proud of the moral excellencies of
+his country!"
+
+"Why, to be frank with you, Mr. Howel, there are some of the moral
+features of London, that are any thing but very beautiful. If you
+could pass twenty-four hours in the neighbourhood of St. Catharine's,
+would see sights that would throw Templeton into fits. The English
+are a handsome people, I allow; but their morality is none of the
+best-featured."
+
+"Let us be seated, sir; I am afraid we are not exactly agreed on our
+terms, and, in order that we may continue this subject, I beg you
+will let me take a seat next you, at table."
+
+To this Captain Truck very cheerfully assented, and then the two took
+chairs, continuing the discourse very much in the blind and ambiguous
+manner in which it had been commenced; the one party insisting on
+seeing every thing through the medium of an imagination that had got
+to be diseased on such subjects, or with a species of monomania;
+while the other seemed obstinately determined to consider the entire
+country as things had been presented to his limited and peculiar
+experience, in the vicinity of the docks.
+
+"We have had a very unexpected, and a very agreeable attendant in
+Captain Truck," said Mrs Hawker, when Eve had placed herself by her
+side, and respectfully taken one of her hands. "I really think if I
+were to suffer shipwreck, or to run the hazard of captivity, I should
+choose to have both occur in his good company."
+
+"Mrs. Hawker makes so many conquests," observed Mrs. Bloomfield,
+"that we are to think nothing of her success with this mer-man; but
+what will you say, Miss Effingham, when you learn that I am also in
+favour, in the same high quarter. I shall think the better of
+masters, and boatswains, and Trinculos and Stephanos, as long as I
+live, for this specimen of their craft."
+
+"Not Trinculos and Stephanos, dear Mrs. Bloom field; for, _à l'
+exception pres de_ Saturday-nights, and sweethearts and wives, a more
+exemplary person in the way of libations does not exist than our
+excellent Captain Truck. He is much too religious and moral for so
+vulgar an excess as drinking."
+
+"Religious!" exclaimed Mrs, Bloomfield, in sur prise. "This is a
+merit to which I did not know he possessed the smallest claims. One
+might imagine a little superstition, and some short-lived repentances
+in gales of wind; but scarcely any thing as much like a trade wind,
+as religion!"
+
+"Then you do not know him; for a more sincerely devout man, though I
+acknowledge it is after a fashion that is perhaps peculiar to the
+ocean, is not often met with. At any rate, you found him attentive to
+our sex?"
+
+"The pink of politeness, and, not to embellish, there is a manly
+deference about him, that is singularly agreeable to our frail
+vanity. This comes of his packet-training, I suppose, and we may
+thank you for some portion of his merit, His tongue never tires in
+your praises, and did I not feel persuaded that your mind is made up
+never to be the wife of any republican American, I should fear this
+visit exceedingly. Notwithstanding the remark I made concerning my
+being in favour, the affair lies between Mrs. Hawker and yourself. I
+know it is not your habit to trifle even on that very popular subject
+with young ladies, matrimony; but this case forms so complete an
+exception to the vulgar passion, that I trust you will overlook the
+indiscretion. Our _golden_ captain, for _copper_ he is not, protests
+that Mrs. Hawker is the most delightful old lady he ever knew, and
+that Miss Eve Effingham is the most delightful young lady he ever
+knew. Here, then, each may see the ground she occupies, and play her
+cards accordingly. I hope to be forgiven for touching on a subject so
+delicate."
+
+"In the first place," said Eve, smiling, "I should wish to hear Mrs.
+Hawker's reply."
+
+"I have no more to say, than to express my perfect gratitude,"
+answered that lady, "to announce a determination not to change my
+condition, on account of extreme youth, and a disposition to abandon
+the field to my younger, if not fairer, rival."
+
+"Well, then," resumed Eve, anxious to change the subject, for she saw
+that Paul was approaching their group, "I believe it will be wisest
+in me to suspend a decision, circumstances leaving so much at my
+disposal. Time must show what that decision will be."
+
+"Nay," said Mrs. Bloomfield, who saw no feeling involved in the
+trifling, "this is unjustifiable coquetry, and I feel bound to
+ascertain how the land lies. You will remember I am the Captain's
+confidant, and you know the fearful responsibility of a friend in an
+affair of this sort; that of a friend in the duello being
+insignificant in comparison. That I may have testimony at need, Mr.
+Powis shall be made acquainted with the leading facts. Captain Truck
+is a devout admirer of this young lady, sir, and I am endeavouring to
+discover whether he ought to hang himself on her father's lawn, this
+evening, as soon as the moon rises, or live another week. In order to
+do this, I shall pursue the categorical and inquisitorial method--and
+so defend yourself Miss Effingham. Do you object to the country of
+your admirer?"
+
+Eve, though inwardly vexed at the turn this pleasantry had taken,
+maintained a perfectly composed manner, for she knew that Mrs.
+Bloomfield had too much feminine propriety to say any thing improper,
+or any thing that might seriously embarrass her.
+
+"It would, indeed, be extraordinary, should I object to a country
+which is not only my own, but which has so long been that of my
+ancestors," she answered steadily. "On this score, my knight has
+nothing to fear."
+
+"I rejoice to hear this," returned Mrs. Bloomfield, glancing her
+eyes, unconsciously to herself, however, towards Sir George
+Templemore, "and, Mr. Powis, you, who I believe are a European, will
+learn humility in the avowal. Do you object to your swain that he is
+a seaman?"
+
+Eve blushed, notwithstanding a strong effort to appear composed, and,
+for the first time since their acquaintance, she felt provoked with
+Mrs. Bloomfield. She hesitated before she answered in the negative,
+and this too in a way to give more meaning to her reply, although
+nothing could be farther from her intentions.
+
+"The happy man _may_ then be an American and a seaman! Here is great
+encouragement. Do you object to sixty?"
+
+"In any other man I should certainly consider it a blemish, as my own
+dear father is but fifty."
+
+Mrs. Bloomfield was struck with the tremor in the voice, and with the
+air of embarrassment, in one who usually was so easy and collected;
+and with feminine sensitiveness she adroitly abandoned the subject,
+though she often recurred to this stifled emotion in the course of
+the day, and from that moment she became a silent observer of Eve's
+deportment with all her father's guests.
+
+"This is hope enough for one day," she said, rising; "the profession
+and the flag must counterbalance the years as best they may, and the
+Truck lives another revolution of the sun! Mrs. Hawker, we shall be
+late at dinner, I see by that clock, unless we retire soon."
+
+Both the ladies now went to their rooms; Eve, who was already dressed
+for dinner, remaining in the drawing-room. Paul still stood before
+her, and, like herself, he seemed embarrassed.
+
+"There are men who would be delighted to hear even the little that
+has fallen from your lips in this trifling," he said, as soon as Mrs.
+Bloomfield was out of hearing. "To be an American and a seaman, then,
+are not serious defects in your eyes?"
+
+"Am I to be made responsible for Mrs. Bloomfield's caprices and
+pleasantries?"
+
+"By no means; but I do think you hold yourself responsible for Miss
+Effingham's truth and sincerity I can conceive of your silence, when
+questioned too far, but scarcely of any direct declaration, that
+shall not possess both these high qualities."
+
+Eve looked up gratefully, for she saw that profound respect for her
+character dictated the remark; but rising, she observed--
+
+"This is making a little _badinage_ about our honest, lion-hearted,
+old captain, a very serious affair. And now, to show you that I am
+conscious of, and thankful for, your own compliment, I shall place
+you on the footing of a friend to both the parties, and request you
+will take Captain Truck into your especial care, while he remains
+here. My father and cousin are both sincerely his friends, but their
+habits are not so much those of their guests, as yours will probably
+be; and to you, then, I commit him, with a request that he may miss
+his ship and the ocean as little as possible."
+
+"I would I knew how to take this charge, Miss Effingham!--To be a
+seaman is not always a recommendation with the polished, intelligent,
+and refined."
+
+"But when one is polished, intelligent, and refined, to be a seaman
+is to add one other particular and useful branch of knowledge to
+those which are more familiar. I feel certain Captain Truck will be
+in good hands, and now I will go and do my devoirs to my own especial
+charges, the ladies."
+
+Eve bowed as she passed the young man, and she left the room with as
+much haste as at all became her. Paul stood motionless quite a minute
+after she had vanished, nor did he awaken from his reverie, until
+aroused by an appeal from Captain Truck, to sustain him, in some of
+his matter-of-fact opinions concerning England, against the visionary
+and bookish notions of Mr. Howel.
+
+"Who is this Mr. Powis?" asked Mrs. Bloomfield of Eve, when the
+latter appeared in her dressing-room, with an unusual impatience of
+manner.
+
+"You know, my dear Mrs. Bloomfield, that he was our fellow-passenger
+in the Montauk, and that he was of infinite service to us, in
+escaping from the Arabs."
+
+"All this I know, certainly; but he is a European, is he not?"
+
+Eve scarcely ever felt more embarrassed than in answering this simple
+question.
+
+"I believe not; at least, I think not; we thought so when we met him
+in Europe, and even until quite lately; but he has avowed himself a
+countryman of our own, since his arrival at Templeton."
+
+"Has he been here long?"
+
+"We found him in the village on reaching home. He was from Canada,
+and has been in waiting for his cousin, Captain Ducie, who came with
+you."
+
+"His cousin!--He has English cousins, then! Mr. Ducie kept this to
+himself, with true English reserve. Captain Truck whispered something
+of the latter's having taken out one of his passengers, _the_ Mr.
+Powis. the hero of the rocks, but I did not know of his having found
+his way back to our--to his country. Is he as agreeable as Sir George
+Templemore?"
+
+"Nay, Mrs. Bloomfield, I must leave you to judge of that for
+yourself. I think them both agreeable men; but there is so much
+caprice in a woman's tastes, that I decline thinking for others."
+
+"He is a seaman, I believe," observed Mrs. Bloomfield, with an
+abstracted manner--"he _must_ have been, to have manoeuvred and
+managed as I have been told he did. Powis--Powis--that is not one of
+our names, neither--I should think he must be from the south."
+
+Here Eve's habitual truth and dignity of mind did her good service,
+and prevented any further betrayal of embarrassment.
+
+"We do not know his family," she steadily answered. "That he is a
+gentleman, we see; but of his origin and connections he never
+speaks."
+
+"His profession would have given him the notions of a gentleman, for
+he was in the navy I have heard, although I had thought it the
+British navy. I do not know of any Powises in Philadelphia, or
+Baltimore, or Richmond, or Charleston; he must surely be from the
+interior."
+
+Eve could scarcely condemn her friend for a curiosity that had not a
+little tormented herself, though she would gladly change the
+discourse.
+
+"Mr. Powis would be much gratified, did he know what a subject of
+interest he has suddenly become with Mrs. Bloomfield," she said,
+smiling.
+
+"I confess it all; to be very sincere, I think him the most
+distinguished young man, in air, appearance, and expression of
+countenance, I ever saw. When this is coupled with what I have heard
+of his gallantry and coolness, my dear, I should not be woman to feel
+no interest in him. I would give the world to know of what State he
+is a native, if native, in truth, he be."
+
+"For that we have his own word. He was born in this country, and was
+educated in our own marine."
+
+"And yet from the little that fell from him, in our first short
+conversation, he struck me as being educated above his profession."
+
+"Mr. Powis has seen much as a traveller; when we met him in Europe,
+it was in a circle particularly qualified to improve both his mind
+and his manners."
+
+"Europe! Your acquaintance did not then commence, like that with Sir
+George Templemore, in the packet?"
+
+"Our acquaintance with neither, commenced in the packet. My father
+had often seen both these gentlemen, during our residences in
+different parts of Europe."
+
+"And your father's daughter?"
+
+"My father's daughter, too," said Eve, laughing. "With Mr. Powis, in
+particular, we were acquainted under circumstances that left a vivid
+recollection of his manliness and professional skill. He was of
+almost as much service to us on one of the Swiss lakes, as he has
+subsequently been on the ocean."
+
+All this was news to Mrs. Bloomfield, and she looked as if she
+thought the intelligence interesting. At this moment the dinner-bell
+rang, and all the ladies descended to the drawing-room. The gentlemen
+were already assembled, and as Mr. Effingham led Mrs. Hawker to the
+table, Mrs. Bloomfield gaily took Eve by the arm, protesting that she
+felt herself privileged, the first day, to take a seat near the young
+mistress of the Wigwam.
+
+"Mr. Powis and Sir George Templemore will not quarrel about the
+honour," she said, in a low voice, as they proceeded towards the
+table.
+
+"Indeed you are in error, Mrs. Bloomfield; Sir George Templemore is
+much better pleased with being at liberty to sit next my cousin
+Grace."
+
+"Can this be so!" returned the other, looking intently at her young
+friend.
+
+"Indeed it is so, and I am very glad to be able to affirm it. How far
+Miss Van Cortlandt is pleased that it is so, time must show: but the
+baronet betrays every day, and all day, how much he is pleased with
+her."
+
+"He is then a man of less taste, and judgment, and intelligence, than
+I had thought him."
+
+"Nay, dearest Mrs. Bloomfield, this is not necessarily true; or, if
+true, need it be so openly said?"
+
+"_Se non e vero, e ben trovato_."
+
+Chapter XVIII.
+
+  "Thine for a space are they--
+  Yet shalt thou yield thy treasures up at last;
+  Thy gates shall yet give way,
+  Thy bolts shall fall, inexorable Past."
+
+  BRYANT
+
+Captain Ducie had retired for the night, and was sitting reading,
+when a low tap at the door roused him from a brown study. He gave the
+necessary permission, and the door opened.
+
+"I hope, Ducie, you have not forgotten the secretary I left among
+your effects," said Paul entering the room, "and concerning which I
+wrote you when you were still at Quebec."
+
+Captain Ducie pointed to the case, which was standing among his other
+luggage, on the floor of the room.
+
+"Thank you for this care," said Paul, taking the secretary under his
+arm, and retiring towards the door; "it contains papers of much
+importance to myself, and some that I have reason to think are of
+importance to others."
+
+"Stop, Powis--a word before, you quit me. Is Templemore _de trop_?"
+
+"Not at all; I have a sincere regard for Templemore, and should be
+sorry to see him leave us."
+
+"And yet I think it singular a man of his habits should be
+rusticating among these hills, when I know that he is expected to
+look at the Canadas, with a view to report their actual condition at
+home."
+
+"Is Sir George really entrusted with a commission of that sort?"
+inquired Paul, with interest.
+
+"Not with any positive commission, perhaps, for none was necessary.
+Templemore is a rich fellow, and has no need of appointments; but, it
+is hoped and understood, that he will look at the provinces, and
+report their condition to the government, I dare say he will not be
+impeached for his negligence, though it may occasion surprise."
+
+"Good night, Ducie; Templemore prefers a wigwam to your walled
+Quebec, and _natives_ to colonists, that's all."
+
+In a minute, Paul was at the door of John Effingham's room, where he
+again tapped, and was again told to enter.
+
+"Ducie has not forgotten my request, and here is the secretary that
+contains poor Mr. Monday's paper," he remarked, as he laid his load
+on a toilet-table, speaking in a way to show that the visit was
+expected. "We have, indeed, neglected this duty too long, and it is
+to be hoped no injustice, or wrong to any, will be the consequence."
+
+"Is that the package?" demanded John Effingham, extending a hand to
+receive a bundle of papers that Paul had taken from the secretary.
+"We will break the seals this moment, and ascertain what ought to be
+done, before we sleep."
+
+"These are papers of my own, and very precious are they," returned
+the young man, regarding them a moment, with interest, before he laid
+them on the toilet. "Here are the papers of Mr. Monday."
+
+John Effingham received the package from his young friend, placed the
+lights conveniently on the table, put on his spectacles, and invited
+Paul to be seated. The gentlemen were placed opposite each other, the
+duty of breaking the seals, and first casting an eye at the contents
+of the different documents, devolving, as a matter of course, on the
+senior of the two, who, in truth, had alone been entrusted with it.
+
+"Here is something signed by poor Monday himself, in the way of a
+general, certificate," observed John Effingham, who first read the
+paper, and then handed it to Paul. It was, in form, an unsealed
+letter; and it was addressed "to all whom it may concern." The
+certificate itself was in the following words:
+
+"I, John Monday, do declare and certify, that all the accompanying
+letters and documents are genuine and authentic. Jane Dowse, to whom
+and from whom, are so many letters, was my late mother, she having
+intermarried with Peter Dowse, the man so often named, and who led
+her into acts for which I know she has since been deeply repentant.
+In committing these papers to me, my poor mother left me the sole
+judge of the course I was to take, and I have put them in this form
+in order that they may yet do good, should I be called suddenly away.
+All depends on discovering who the person called Bright actually is,
+for he was never known to my mother, by any other name. She knows him
+to have been an Englishman, however, and thinks he was, or had been,
+an upper servant in a gentleman's family. JOHN MONDAY."
+
+This paper was dated several years back, a sign that the disposition
+to do right had existed some time in Mr. Monday; and all the letters
+and other papers had been carefully preserved. The latter also
+appeared to be regularly numbered, a precaution that much aided the
+investigations of the two gentlemen. The original letters spoke for
+themselves, and the copies had been made in a clear, strong,
+mercantile hand, and with the method of one accustomed to business.
+In short, so far as the contents of the different papers would allow,
+nothing was wanting to render the whole distinct and intelligible.
+
+John Effingham read the paper No. 1, with deliberation, though not
+aloud; and when he had done, he handed it to his young friend, coolly
+remarking--
+
+"That is the production of a deliberate villain."
+
+Paul glanced his eye over the document, which was an original letter
+signed, 'David Bright,' and addressed to 'Mrs. Jane Dowse,' It was
+written with exceeding art, made many professions of friendship,
+spoke of the writer's knowledge of the woman's friends in England,
+and of her first husband in particular, and freely professed the
+writer's desire to serve her, while it also contained several
+ambiguous allusions to certain means of doing so, which should be
+revealed whenever the person to whom the letter was addressed should
+discover a willingness to embark in the undertaking. This letter was
+dated Philadelphia, was addressed to one in New-York, and it was old.
+
+"This is, indeed, a rare specimen of villany," said Paul, as he laid
+down the paper, "and has been written in some such spirit as that
+employed by the devil when he tempted our common mother. I think I
+never read a better specimen of low, wily, cunning."
+
+"And, judging by all that we already know, it would seem to have
+succeeded. In this letter you will find the gentleman a little more
+explicit; and but a little; though he is evidently encouraged by the
+interest and curiosity betrayed by the woman in this copy of the
+answer to his first epistle."
+
+Paul read the letter just named, and then he laid it down to wait for
+the next, which was still in the hands of his companion.
+
+"This is likely to prove a history of unlawful love, and of its
+miserable consequences," said John Effingham in his cool manner, as
+he handed the answers to letter No. 1, and letter No. 2, to Paul.
+"The world is full of such unfortunate adventures, and I should think
+the parties English, by a hint or two you will find in this very
+honest and conscientious communication. Strongly artificial, social
+and political distinctions render expedients of this nature more
+frequent, perhaps, in Great Britain, than in any other country. Youth
+is the season of the passions, and many a man in the thoughtlessness
+of that period lays the foundation of bitter regret in after life."
+
+As John Effingham raised his eyes, in the act of extending his hand
+towards his companion, he perceived that the fresh ruddy hue of his
+embrowned cheek deepened, until the colour diffused itself over the
+whole of his fine brow. At first an unpleasant suspicion flashed on
+John Effingham, and he admitted it with regret, for Eve and her
+future happiness had got to be closely associated, in his mind, with
+the character and conduct of the young man; but when Paul took the
+papers, steadily, and by an effort seemed to subdue all unpleasant
+feelings, the calm dignity with which he read them completely effaced
+the disagreeable distrust. It was then John Effingham remembered that
+he had once believed Paul himself might be the fruits of the
+heartless indiscretion he condemned. Commiseration and sympathy
+instantly took the place of the first impression, and he was so much
+absorbed with these feelings that he had not taken up the letter
+which was to follow, when Paul laid down the paper he had last been
+required to read.
+
+"This does, indeed, sir, seem to foretell one of those painful
+histories of unbridled passion, with the still more painful
+consequences," said the young man with the steadiness of one who was
+unconscious of having a personal connexion with any events of a
+nature so unpleasant. "Let us examine farther."
+
+John Effingham felt emboldened by these encouraging signs of
+unconcern, and he read the succeeding letters aloud, so that they
+learned their contents simultaneously. The next six or eight
+communications betrayed nothing distinctly, beyond the fact that the
+child which formed the subject of the whole correspondence, was to be
+received by Peter Dowse and his wife, and to be retained as their own
+offspring, for the consideration of a considerable sum, with an
+additional engagement to pay an annuity. It appeared by these letters
+also, that the child, which was hypocritically alluded to under the
+name of the 'pet,' had been actually transferred to the keeping of
+Jane Dowse, and that several years passed, after this arrangement,
+before the correspondence terminated. Most of the later letters
+referred to the payment of the annuity, although they all contained
+cold inquiries after the 'pet,' and answers so vague and general, as
+sufficiently to prove that the term was singularly misapplied. In the
+whole, there were some thirty or forty letters, each of which had
+been punctually answered, and their dates covered a space of near
+twelve years. The perusal of all these papers consumed more than an
+hour, and when John Effingham laid his spectacles on the table, the
+village clock had struck the hour of midnight.
+
+"As yet," he observed, "we have learned little more than the fact,
+that a child was made to take a false character, without possessing
+any other clue to the circumstances than is given in the names of the
+parties, all of whom are evidently obscure, and one of the most
+material of whom, we are plainly told, must have borne a fictitious
+name. Even poor Monday, in possession of so much collateral testimony
+that we want, could not have known what was the precise injustice
+done, if any, or, certainly, with the intentions he manifests, he
+would not have left that important particular in the dark."
+
+"This is likely to prove a complicated affair," returned Paul, "and
+it is not very clear that we can be of any immediate service. As you
+are probably fatigued, we may without impropriety defer the further
+examination to another time."
+
+To this John Effingham assented, and Paul, during the short
+conversation that followed, brought the secretary from the toilet to
+the table, along with the bundle of important papers that belonged to
+himself, to which he had alluded, and busied himself in replacing the
+whole in the drawer from which they had been taken.
+
+"All the formalities about the seals, that we observed when poor
+Monday gave us the packet, would seem to be unnecessary," he
+remarked, while thus occupied, "and it will probably be sufficient if
+I leave the secretary in your room, and keep the keys myself."
+
+"One never knows," returned John Effingham, with the greater caution
+of experience and age. "We have not read all the papers, and there
+are wax and lights before you; each has his watch and seal, and it
+will be the work of a minute only, to replace every thing as we left
+the package, originally. When this is done, you may leave the
+secretary, or remove it, at your own pleasure."
+
+"I will leave it; for, though it contains so much that I prize, and
+which is really of great importance to myself, it contains nothing
+for which I shall have immediate occasion."
+
+"In that case, it were better that I place the package in which we
+have a common interest in an _armoire_, or in my secretary, and that
+you keep your precious effects more immediately under your own eye."
+
+"It is immaterial, unless the case will inconvenience you, for I do
+not know that I am not happier when it is out of my sight, so long as
+I feel certain of its security, than when it is constantly before my
+eyes."
+
+Paul said this with a forced smile, and there was a sadness in his
+countenance that excited the sympathy of his companion. The latter,
+however, merely bowed his assent, and the papers were replaced, and
+the secretary was locked and deposited in an _armoire_, in silence.
+Paul was then about to wish the other good night, when John Effingham
+seized his hand, and by a gentle effort induced him to resume his
+seat. An embarrassing, but short pause succeeded, when the latter
+spoke.
+
+"We have suffered enough in company, and have seen each other in
+situations of sufficient trial to be friends," he said. "I should
+feel mortified, did I believe you could think me influenced by an
+improper curiosity, in wishing to share more of your confidence than
+you are perhaps willing to bestow; I trust you will attribute to its
+right motive the liberty I am now taking. Age makes some difference
+between us, and the sincere and strong interest I feel in your
+welfare, ought to give me a small claim not to be treated as a total
+stranger. So jealous and watchful has this interest been, I might
+with great truth call it affection, that I have discovered you are
+not situated exactly as other men in your condition of life are
+situated, and feel persuaded that the sympathy, perhaps the advice,
+of one so many years older than yourself, might be useful. You have
+already said so much to me, on the subject of your personal
+situation, that I almost feel a right to ask for more."
+
+John Effingham uttered this in his mildest and most winning manner;
+and few men could carry with them, on such an occasion, more of
+persuasion in their voices and looks. Paul's features worked, and it
+was evident to his companion that he was moved, while, at the same
+time, he was not displeased.
+
+"I am grateful, deeply grateful, sir, for this interest in my
+happiness," Paul answered, "and if I knew the particular points on
+which you feel any curiosity, there is nothing that I can desire to
+conceal. Have the further kindness to question me, Mr. Effingham,
+that I need not touch on things you do not care to hear."
+
+"All that really concerns your welfare, would have interest with me.
+You have been the agent of rescuing not only myself, but those whom I
+most love, from a fate worse than death; and, a childless bachelor
+myself, I have more than once thought of attempting to supply the
+places of those natural friends that I fear you have lost. Your
+parents--"
+
+"Are both dead. I never knew either," said Paul, who spoke huskily,
+"and will most cheerfully accept your generous offer, if you will
+allow me to attach to it a single condition."
+
+"Beggars must not be choosers," returned John Effingham, "and if you
+will allow me to feel this interest in you, and occasionally to share
+in the confidence of a father; I shall not insist on any unreasonable
+terms. What is your condition?"
+
+"That the word money may be struck out of our vocabulary, and that
+you leave your will unaltered. Were the world to be examined, you
+could not find a worthier or a lovelier heiress, than the one you
+have already selected, and whom Providence itself has given you.
+Compared with yourself, I am not rich, but I have a gentleman's
+income, and as I shall probably never marry, it will suffice for all
+my wants."
+
+John Effingham was more pleased than he cared to express with this
+frankness, and with the secret sympathy that had existed between
+them; but he smiled at the injunction; for, with Eve's knowledge, and
+her father's entire approbation, he had actually made a codicil to
+his will, in which their young protector was left one half of his
+large fortune.
+
+"The will may remain untouched, if you desire it," he answered,
+evasively, "and that condition is disposed of. I am glad to learn so
+directly from yourself, what your manner of living and the reports of
+others had prepared me to hear, that you are independent. This fact,
+alone, will place us solely on our mutual esteem, and render the
+friendship that I hope is now brought within a covenant, if not now
+first established, more equal and frank. You have seen much of the
+world, Powis, for your years and profession?"
+
+"It is usual to think that men of my profession see much of the
+world, as a consequence of their pursuits; though I agree with you,
+sir, that this is seeing the world only in a very limited circle. It
+is now several years since circumstances, I might almost say the
+imperative order of one whom I was bound to obey, induced me to
+resign, and since that time I have done little else but travel. Owing
+to certain adventitious causes, I have enjoyed an access to European
+society that few of our countrymen possess, and I hope the advantage
+has not been entirely thrown away. It was as a traveller on the
+continent of Europe, that I had the pleasure of first meeting with
+Mr. and Miss Effingham. I was much abroad, even as a child, and owe
+some little skill in foreign languages to that circumstance."
+
+"So my cousin has informed me. You have set the question of country
+at rest, by declaring that you are an American, and yet I find you
+have English relatives. Captain Ducie, I believe, is a kinsman?"
+
+"He is; we are sister's children, though our friendship has not
+always been such as the connexion would infer. When Ducie and myself
+met at sea, there was an awkwardness, if not a coolness, in the
+interview, that, coupled with my sudden return to England, I fear did
+not make the most favourable impression, on those who witnessed what
+passed."
+
+"We had confidence in your principles," said John Effingham, with a
+frank simplicity, "and, though the first surmises were not pleasant,
+perhaps, a little reflection told us that there was no just ground
+for suspicion."
+
+"Ducie is a fine, manly fellow, and has a seaman's generosity and
+sincerity. I had last parted from him on the field, where we met as
+enemies; and the circumstance rendered the unexpected meeting
+awkward. Our wounds no longer smarted, it is true; but, perhaps, we
+both felt shame and sorrow that they had ever been inflicted."
+
+"It should be a very serious quarrel that could arm sister's children
+against each other," said John Effingham, gravely.
+
+"I admit as much. But, at that time, Captain Ducie was not disposed
+to admit the consanguinity, and the offence grew out of an
+intemperate resentment of some imputations on my birth; between two
+military men, the issue could scarcely be avoided. Ducie challenged,
+and I was not then in the humour to balk him. A couple of flesh-
+wounds happily terminated the affair. But an interval of three years
+had enabled my enemy to discover that he had not done me justice;
+that I had been causelessly provoked to the quarrel, and that we
+ought to be firm friends. The generous desire to make suitable
+expiation, urged him to seize the first occasion of coming to America
+that offered; and when ordered to chase the Montauk, by a telegraphic
+communication from London, he was hourly expecting to sail for our
+seas, where he wished to come, expressly that we might meet. You will
+judge, therefore, how happy he was to find me unexpectedly in the
+vessel that contained his principal object of pursuit, thus killing,
+as it might be, two birds with one stone."
+
+"And did he carry you away with him, with any such murderous
+intention?" demanded John Effingham, smiling.
+
+"By no means; nothing could be more amicable than Ducie and myself
+got to be, when we had been a few hours together in his cabin. As
+often happens, when there have been violent antipathies and
+unreasonable prejudices, a nearer view of each other's character and
+motives removed every obstacle; and long before we reached England,
+two warmer friends could not be found, or a more frank intercourse
+between relatives could not be desired. You are aware, sir, that our
+English cousins do not often view their cis-atlantic relatives with
+the most lenient eyes."
+
+"This is but too true," said John Effingham proudly, though his lip
+quivered as he spoke, "and it is, in a great measure, the fault of
+that miserable mental bondage which has left this country, after
+sixty years of nominal independence, so much at the mercy of a
+hostile opinion. It is necessary that we respect ourselves in order
+that others respect us."
+
+"I agree with you, sir, entirely. In my case, however, previous
+injustice disposed my relatives to receive me better, perhaps, than
+might otherwise have been the case. I had little to ask in the way of
+fortune, and feeling no disposition to raise a question that might
+disturb the peerage of the Ducies, I became a favourite."
+
+"A peerage!--Both your parents, then, were English?"
+
+"Neither, I believe; but the connection between the two countries was
+so close, that it can occasion no surprise a right of this nature
+should have passed into the colonies. My mother's mother became the
+heiress of one of those ancient baronies, that pass to the heirs-
+general, and, in consequence of the deaths of two brothers, these
+rights, which however were never actually possessed by any of the
+previous generation, centered in my mother and my aunt. The former
+being dead, as was contended, without issue--"
+
+"You forget yourself!"
+
+"Lawful issue," added Paul, reddening to the temples, "I should have
+added--Mrs. Ducie, who was married to the younger son of an English
+nobleman, claimed and obtained the rank. My pretension would have
+left the peerage in abeyance, and I probably owe some little of the
+opposition I found, to that circumstance. But, after Ducie's generous
+conduct, I could not hesitate about joining in the application to the
+crown that, by its decision, the abeyance might be determined in
+favour of the person who was in possession; and Lady Dunluce is now
+quietly confirmed in her claim."
+
+"There are many young men in this country, who would cling to the
+hopes of a British peerage with greater tenacity!"
+
+"It is probable there are; but my self-denial is not of a very high
+order, for; it could scarcely be expected the English ministers would
+consent to give the rank to a foreigner who did not hesitate about
+avowing his principles and national feelings. I shall not say I did
+hot covet this peerage, for it would be supererogatory; but I am born
+an American, and will die an American; and an American who swaggers
+about such a claim, is like the daw among the peacocks. The less that
+is said about it, the better."
+
+"You are fortunate to have escaped the journals, which, most
+probably, would have _begraced_ you, by elevating you at once to the
+rank of a duke."
+
+"Instead of which, I had no other station than that of a dog in the
+manger. If it makes my aunt happy to be called Lady Dunluce, I am
+sure she is welcome to the privilege; and when Ducie succeeds her, as
+will one day be the case, an excellent fellow will be a peer of
+England. _Voila tout_! You are the only countryman, sir, to whom I
+have ever spoken of the circumstance, and with you I trust it will
+remain a secret"
+
+"What! am I precluded from mentioning the facts in my own family? I
+am not the only sincere, the only warm friend, you have in this
+house, Powis."
+
+"In that respect, I leave you to act your pleasure, my dear sir. If
+Mr. Effingham feel sufficient interest in my fortunes, to wish to
+hear what I have told you, let there be no silly mysteries,--or--or
+Mademoiselle Viefville--"
+
+"Or Nanny Sidley, or Annette," interrupted John Effingham, with a
+kind smile. "Well, trust to me for that; but, before we separate for
+the night, I wish to ascertain beyond question one other fact,
+although the circumstances you have stated scarce leave a doubt of
+the reply."
+
+"I understand you, sir, and did not intend to leave you in any
+uncertainty on that important particular. If there can be a feeling,
+more painful than all others, with a man of any pride, it is to
+distrust the purity of his mother. Mine was beyond reproach, thank
+God, and so it was most clearly established, or I could certainly
+have had no legal claim to the peerage."
+
+"Or your fortune--" added John Effingham, drawing a long breath, like
+one suddenly relieved from an unpleasant suspicion.
+
+"My fortune comes from neither parent, but from one of those generous
+dispositions, or caprices, if you will, that sometimes induce men to
+adopt those who are alien to their blood. My guardian adopted me,
+took me abroad with him, placed me, quite young, in the navy, and
+dying, he finally left me all he possessed As he was a bachelor, with
+no near relative, and had been the artisan of his own fortune, I
+could have no hesitation about accepting the gift he so liberally
+bequeathed. It was coupled with the condition that I should retire
+from the service, travel for five years, return home, and marry.
+There is no silly-forfeiture exacted in either case, but such is the
+general course solemnly advised by a man who showed himself my true
+friend for so many years."
+
+"I envy him the opportunity he enjoyed of serving you. I hope he
+would have approved of your national pride, for I believe we must put
+that at the bottom of your disinterestedness, in the affair of the
+peerage."
+
+"He would, indeed, although he never knew anything of the claim which
+arose out of the death of the two lords who preceded my aunt, and who
+were the brothers of my grandmother. My guardian was in all respects
+a man, and, in nothing more, than in a manly national pride. While
+abroad a decoration was offered him, and he declined it with the
+character and dignity of one who felt that distinctions which his
+country repudiated, every gentleman belonging to that country ought
+to reject; and yet he did it with a respectful gratitude for the
+compliment, that was due to the government from which the offer
+came."
+
+"I almost envy that man," said John Effingham, with warmth. "To have
+appreciated you, Powis, was a mark of a high judgment; but it seems
+he properly appreciated himself, his country, and human nature."
+
+"And yet he was little appreciated in his turn. That man passed years
+in one of our largest towns, of no more apparent account among its
+population than any one of its commoner spirits, and of not half as
+much as one of its bustling brokers, or jobbers."
+
+"In that there is nothing surprising. The class of the chosen few is
+too small every where, to be very numerous at any given point, in a
+scattered population like that of America. The broker will as
+naturally appreciate the broker, as the dog appreciates the dog, or
+the wolf the wolf. Least of all is the manliness you have named,
+likely to be valued among a people who have been put into men's
+clothes before they are out of leading-strings. I am older than you,
+my dear Paul," it was the first time John Effingham ever used so
+familiar an appellation, and the young man thought it sounded
+kindly--"I am older than you, my dear Paul, and will venture to tell
+you an important fact that may hereafter lessen some of your own
+mortifications. In most nations there is a high standard to which man
+at least affects to look; and acts are extolled and seemingly
+appreciated, for their naked merits. Little of this exists in
+America, where no man is much praised for himself, but for the
+purposes of party, or to feed national vanity. In the country in
+which, of all others, political opinion ought to be the freest, it is
+the most persecuted, and the community-character of the nation
+induces every man to think he has a right of property in all its
+fame. England exhibits a great deal of this weakness and injustice,
+which, it is to be feared, is a vicious fruit of liberty; for it is
+certain that the sacred nature of opinion is most appreciated in
+those countries in which it has the least efficiency. We are
+constantly deriding those governments which fetter opinion, and yet I
+know of no nation in which the expression of opinion is so certain to
+attract persecution and hostility as our own, though it may be, and
+is, in one sense, free."
+
+"This arises from its potency. Men quarrel about opinion here,
+because opinion rules. It is but one mode of struggling for power.
+But to return to my guardian; he was a man to think and act for
+himself, and as far from the magazine and newspaper existence that
+most Americans, in a moral sense, pass, as any man could be."
+
+"It is indeed a newspaper and magazine existence," said John
+Effingham, smiling at Paul's terms, "to know life only through such
+mediums! It is as bad as the condition of those English who form
+their notions of society from novels written by men and women who
+have no access to it, and from the records of the court journal. I
+thank you sincerely, Mr. Powis for this confidence, which has not
+been idly solicited on my part, and which shall not be abused. At no
+distant day we will break the seals again, and renew our
+investigations into this affair of the unfortunate Monday, which is
+not yet, certainly, very promising in the way of revelations."
+
+The gentlemen shook hands cordially, and Paul, lighted by his
+companion, withdrew. When the young man was at the door of his own
+room, he turned, and saw John Effingham following him with his eye.
+The latter then renewed the good night, with one of those winning
+smiles that rendered his face so brilliantly handsome, and each
+retired.
+
+Chapter XIX.
+
+  "Item, a capon, 2_s_. 2_d_. Item, sauce, 4_d_. Item, sack, two
+   gallons, 5_s_. 8_d_. Item, bread, a half-penny."
+
+  SHAKSPEARE.
+
+The next day John Effingham made no allusion to the conversation of
+the previous night, though the squeeze of the hand he gave Paul, when
+they met, was an assurance that nothing was forgotten. As he had a
+secret pleasure in obeying any injunction of Eve's, the young man
+himself sought Captain Truck, even before they had breakfasted, and,
+as he had made an acquaintance with 'the commodore,' on the lake,
+previously to the arrival of the Effinghams, that worthy was
+summoned, and regularly introduced to the honest ship-master. The
+meeting between these two distinguished men was grave, ceremonious
+and dignified, each probably feeling that he was temporarily the
+guardian of a particular portion of an element that was equally dear
+to both. After a few minutes passed, as it might be, in the
+preliminary points of etiquette, a better feeling and more confidence
+was established, and it was soon settled that they should fish in
+company, the rest of the day; Paul promising to row the ladies out on
+the lake, and to join them in the course of the afternoon.
+
+As the party quitted the breakfast-table, Eve took an occasion to
+thank the young man for his attention to their common friend, who, it
+was reported, had taken his morning's repast at an early hour, and
+was already on the lake, the day by this time having advanced within
+two hours of noon.
+
+"I have dared even to exceed your instructions, Miss Effingham," said
+Paul, "for I have promised the Captain to endeavour to persuade you,
+and as many of the ladies as possible, to trust yourselves to my
+seamanship, and to submit to be rowed out to the spot where we shall
+find him and his friend the commodore riding at anchor."
+
+"An engagement that my influence shall be used to see fulfilled. Mrs.
+Bloomfield has already expressed a desire to go on the Otsego-Water,
+and I make no doubt I shall find other companions. Once more let me
+thank you for this little attention, for I too well know your tastes,
+not to understand that you might find a more agreeable ward."
+
+"Upon my word, I feel a sincere regard for our old Captain, and could
+often wish for no better companion. Were he, however, as disagreeable
+as I find him, in truth, pleasant and frank, your wishes would
+conceal all his faults."
+
+"You have learned, Mr. Powis, that small attentions are as much
+remembered as important services, and after having saved our lives,
+wish to prove that you can discharge _les petits devoirs socials_, as
+well as perform great deeds. I trust you will persuade Sir George
+Templemore to be of our party, and at four we shall be ready to
+accompany you; until then I am contracted to a gossip with Mrs.
+Bloomfield in her dressing-room."
+
+We shall now leave the party on the land, and follow those who have
+already taken boat, or the fishermen. The beginning of the
+intercourse between the salt-water navigator and his fresh-water
+companion was again a little constrained and critical. Their
+professional terms agreed as ill as possible, for when the Captain
+used the expression 'ship the oars,' the commodore understood just
+the reverse of what it had been intended to express; and, once, when
+he told his companion to 'give way,' the latter took the hint so
+literally as actually to cease rowing. All these professional
+niceties induced the worthy ship-master to undervalue his companion,
+who, in the main, was very skilful in his particular pursuit, though
+it was a skill that he exerted after the fashions of his own lake,
+and not after the fashions of the ocean. Owing to several contre-tems
+of this nature, by the time they reached the fishing-ground the
+Captain began to entertain a feeling for the commodore, that ill
+comported with the deference due to his titular rank.
+
+"I have come out with you, commodore," said Captain Truck, when they
+had got to their station, and laying a peculiar emphasis on the
+appellation he used, "in order to _enjoy_ myself, and you will confer
+an especial favour on me by not using such phrases as 'cable-rope,'
+'casting anchor,' and 'titivating.' As for the two first, no seaman
+ever uses them; and I never heard suchna word on board a ship, as the
+last, D----e, sir, if I believe it is to be found in the dictionary,
+even."
+
+"You amaze me, sir! 'Casting anchor,' and 'cable-rope' are both Bible
+phrases, and they must be right."
+
+"That follows by no means, commodore, as I have some reason to know;
+for my father having been a parson, and I being a seaman, we may be
+said to have the whole subject, as it were, in the family. St. Paul--
+you have heard of such a man as St. Paul, commodore?--"
+
+"I know him almost by heart, Captain Truck; but St. Peter and St.
+Andrew were the men, most after my heart. Ours is an ancient calling,
+sir, and in those two instances you see to what a fisherman can rise.
+I do not remember to have ever heard of a sea-captain who was
+converted into a saint."
+
+"Ay, ay, there is always too much to do on board ship to have time to
+be much more than a beginner in religion. There was my mate, v'y'ge
+before last, Tom Leach, who is now master of a ship of his own, had
+he been brought up to it properly, he would have made as
+conscientious a parson as did his grandfather before him. Such a man
+would have been a seaman, as well as a parson. I have little to say
+against St. Peter or St. Andrew, but, in my judgment, they were none
+the better saints for having been fishermen; and, if the truth were
+known, I dare say they were at the bottom of introducing such
+lubberly phrases into the Bible, as 'casting-anchor,' and 'cable-
+rope."
+
+"Pray, sir," asked the commodore, with dignity, "what are _you_ in
+the practice of saying, when you speak of such matters; for, to be
+frank with you, _we_ always use these terms on these lakes."
+
+"Ay, ay, there is a fresh-water smell about them. We say 'anchor,' or
+'let go the anchor,' or 'dropped the anchor,' or some such reasonable
+expression, and not 'cast anchor,' as if a bit of iron, weighing two
+or three tons, is to be jerked about like a stone big enough to kill
+a bird with. As for the 'cable-rope,' as you call it, we say the
+'cable,' or 'the chain,' or 'the ground tackle,' according to reason
+and circumstances. You never hear a real 'salt' flourishing his
+'cable-ropes,' and his 'casting-anchors,' which are altogether too
+sentimental and particular for his manner of speaking. As for
+'ropes,' I suppose you have not got to be a commodore, and need being
+told how many there are in a ship."
+
+"I do not pretend to have counted them, but I have seen a ship, sir,
+and one under full sail, too, and I know there were as many ropes
+about her as there are pines on the Vision."
+
+"Are there more than seven of these trees on your mountain? for that
+is just the number of ropes in a merchant-man; though a man-of-war's-
+man counts one or two more."
+
+"You astonish me, sir! But seven ropes in a ship?--I should have said
+there are seven hundred!"
+
+"I dare say, I dare say; that is just the way in which a landsman
+pretends to criticise a vessel. As for the ropes, I will now give you
+their names, and then you can lay athwart hawse of these canoe
+gentry, by the hour, and teach them rigging and modesty, both at the
+same time. In the first place," continued the captain, jerking at his
+line, and then beginning to count on his fingers--"There is the 'man-
+rope;' then come the 'bucket-rope,' the 'tiller-rope,' the 'bolt-
+rope,' the 'foot-rope,' the 'top-rope,' and the 'limber-rope.' I have
+followed the seas, now, more than half a century, and never yet heard
+of a 'cable-rope,' from any one who could hand, reef, and steer."
+
+"Well, sir, every man to his trade," said the commodore, who just
+then pulled in a fine pickerel, which was the third he had taken,
+while his companion rejoiced in no more than a few fruitless bites.
+"You are more expert in ropes than in lines, it would seem. I shall
+not deny your experience and knowledge; but in the way of fishing,
+you will at least allow that the sea is no great school. I dare say,
+now, if you were to hook the 'sogdollager,' we should have you
+jumping into the lake to get rid of him. Quite probably, sir, you
+never before heard of that celebrated fish?"
+
+Notwithstanding the many excellent qualities of Captain Truck, he had
+a weakness that is rather peculiar to a class of men, who, having
+seen so much of this earth, are unwilling to admit they have not seen
+it all. The little brush in which he was now engaged with the
+commodore, he conceived due to his own dignity, and his motive was
+duly to impress his companion with his superiority, which being
+fairly admitted, he would have been ready enough to acknowledge that
+the other understood pike-fishing much better than himself. But it
+was quite too early in the discussion to make any such avowal, and
+the supercilious remark of the commodore's putting him on his mettle,
+he was ready to affirm that he had eaten 'sogdollagers' for
+breakfast, a month at a time, had it been necessary.
+
+"Pooh! pooh! man," returned the captain, with an air of cool
+indifference, "you do not surely fancy that you have any thing in a
+lake like this, that is not to be found in the ocean! If you were to
+see a whale's flukes thrashing your puddle, every cruiser among you
+would run for a port; and as for 'sogdollagers,' we think little of
+them in salt-water; the flying-fish, or even the dry dolphin, being
+much the best eating."
+
+"Sir," said the commodore, with some heat, and a great deal of
+emphasis, "there is but _one_ 'sogdollager' in the world, and he is
+in this lake. No man has ever seen him, but my predecessor, the
+'Admiral,' and myself."
+
+"Bah!" ejaculated the captain, "they are as plenty as soft clams, in
+the Mediterranean, and the Egyptians use them as a pan-fish. In the
+East, they catch them to bait with, for hallibut, and other middling
+sized creatures, that are particular about their diet. It is a good
+fish, I own, as is seen in this very circumstance."
+
+"Sir," repeated the commodore, flourishing his hand, and waxing warm
+with earnestness, "there is but one 'sogdollager' in the universe,
+and that is in Lake Otsego. A 'sogdollager' is a salmon trout, and
+not a species; a sort of father to all the salmon trout in this part
+of the world; a scaly patriarch."
+
+"I make no doubt _your_ 'sogdollager' is scaly enough; but what is
+the use in wasting words about such a trifle? A whale is the only
+fish fit to occupy a gentleman's thoughts. As long as I have been at
+sea, I have never witnessed the taking of more than three whales."
+
+This allusion happily preserved the peace; for, if there were any
+thing in the world for which the commodore entertained a profound,
+but obscure reverence, it was for a whale. He even thought better of
+a man for having actually seen one, gambolling in the freedom of the
+ocean; and his mind became suddenly oppressed by the glory of a
+mariner, who had passed his life among such gigantic animals. Shoving
+back his cap, the old man gazed steadily at the captain a minute, and
+all his displeasure about the 'sogdollagers' vanished, though, in his
+inmost mind, he set down all that the other had told him on that
+particular subject, as so many parts of a regular 'fish story.'
+
+"Captain Truck," he said, with solemnity, "I acknowledge myself to be
+but an ignorant and inexperienced man, one who has passed his life on
+this lake, which, broad and beautiful as it is, must seem a pond in
+the eyes of a seaman like yourself, who have passed your days on the
+Atlantic----"
+
+"Atlantic!" interrupted the captain contemptuously, "I should have
+but a poor opinion of myself, had I seen nothing but the Atlantic!
+Indeed, I never can believe I am at sea at all, on the Atlantic, the
+passages between New-York and Portsmouth being little more than so
+much canalling along a tow-path. If you wish to say any thing about
+oceans, talk of the Pacific, or of the Great South Sea, where a man
+may run a month with a fair wind, and hardly go from island to
+island. Indeed, that is an ocean in which there is a manufactory of
+islands, for they turn them off in lots to supply the market, and of
+a size to suit customers."
+
+"A manufactory of islands!" repeated the commodore, who began to
+entertain an awe of his companion, that he never expected to feel for
+any human being on Lake Otsego; "are you certain, sir, there is no
+mistake in this?"
+
+"None in the least; not only islands, but whole Archipelagos are made
+annually, by the sea insects in that quarter of the world; but, then,
+you are not to form your notions of an insect in such an ocean, by
+the insects you see in such a bit of water as this."
+
+"As big as our pickerel, or salmon trout, I dare say?" returned the
+commodore, in the simplicity of his heart, for by this time his local
+and exclusive conceit was thoroughly humbled, and he was almost ready
+to believe any thing.
+
+"I say nothing of their size, for it is to their numbers and industry
+that I principally allude now. A solitary shark, I dare say, would
+set your whole Lake in commotion?"
+
+"I think we might manage a shark, sir. I once saw one of those
+animals, and I do really believe the sogdollager would outweigh him.
+I do think we might manage a shark, sir."
+
+"Ay, you mean an in-shore, high-latitude fellow. But what would you
+say to a shark as long as one of those pines on the mountain?"
+
+"Such a monster would take in a man, whole?"
+
+"A man! He would take in a platoon, Indian file I dare say one of
+those pines, now, may be thirty or forty feet high!"
+
+A gleam of intelligence and of exultation shot across the weather-
+beaten face of the old fisherman, for he detected a weak spot in the
+other's knowledge. The worthy Captain, with that species of
+exclusiveness which accompanies excellence in any one thing, was
+quite ignorant of most matters that pertain to the land. That there
+should be a tree, so far inland, that was larger than his main-yard,
+he did not think probable, although that yard itself was made of part
+of a tree; and, in the laudable intention of duly impressing his
+companion with the superiority of a real seaman over a mere fresh-
+water navigator, he had inadvertently laid bare a weak spot in his
+estimate of heights and distances, that the Commodore seized upon,
+with some such avidity as the pike seizes the hook. This accidental
+mistake alone saved the latter from an abject submission, for the
+cool superiority of the Captain had so far deprived him of his
+conceit, that he was almost ready to acknowledge himself no better
+than a dog, when he caught a glimpse of light through this opening.
+
+"There is not a pine, that can be called of age, on all the mountain,
+which is not more than a hundred feet high, and many are nearer two,"
+he cried in exultation, flourishing his hand. "The sea may have its
+big monsters, Captain, but our hills have their big trees. Did you
+ever see a shark of half that length?"
+
+Now, Captain Truck was a man of truth, although so much given to
+occasional humorous violations of its laws, and, withal, a little
+disposed to dwell upon the marvels of the great deep, in the spirit
+of exaggeration, and he could not, in conscience, affirm any thing so
+extravagant as this. He was accordingly obliged to admit his mistake,
+and from this moment, the conversation was carried on with a greater
+regard to equality. They talked, as they fished, of politics,
+religion, philosophy, human nature, the useful arts, abolition, and
+most other subjects that would be likely to interest a couple of
+Americans who had nothing to do but to twitch, from time to time, at
+two lines dangling in the water. Although few people possess less of
+the art of conversation than our own countrymen, no other nation
+takes as wide a range in its discussions. He is but a very
+indifferent American that does not know, or thinks he knows, a little
+of every thing, and neither of our worthies was in the least backward
+in supporting the claims of the national character in this respect.
+This general discussion completely restored amity between the
+parties; for, to confess the truth, our old friend the Captain was a
+little rebuked about the affair of the tree. The only peculiarity
+worthy of notice, that occurred in the course of their various
+digressions, was the fact, that the commodore insensibly began to
+style his companion "General;" the courtesy of the country in his
+eyes, appearing to require that a man who has seen so much more than
+himself, should, at least, enjoy a title equal to his own in rank,
+and that of Admiral being proscribed by the sensitiveness of
+republican principles. After fishing a few hours, the old laker
+pulled the skiff up to the Point so often mentioned, where he Lighted
+a fire on the grass, and prepared a dinner. When every thing was
+ready, the two seated themselves, and began to enjoy the fruits of
+their labours in a way that will be understood by all sportsmen.
+
+"I have never thought of asking you, general," said the commodore, as
+he began to masticate a perch, "whether you are an aristocrat or a
+democrat. We have had the government pretty much upside-down, too,
+this morning, but this question has escaped me."
+
+"As we are here by ourselves under these venerable oaks, and talking
+like two old messmates," returned the general, "I shall just own the
+truth, and make no bones of it. I have been captain of my own ship so
+long, that I have a most thorough contempt for all equality. It is a
+vice that I deprecate, and, whatever may be the laws of this country,
+I am of opinion, that equality is no where borne out by the Law of
+Nations; which, after all, commodore, is the only true law for a
+gentleman to live under."
+
+"That is the law of the strongest, if I understand the matter,
+general."
+
+"Only reduced to rules. The Law of Nations, to own the truth to you,
+is full of categories, and this will give an enterprising man an
+opportunity to make use of his knowledge. Would you believe,
+commodore, that there are countries, in which they lay taxes on
+tobacco?"
+
+"Taxes on tobacco! Sir, I never heard of such an act of oppression
+under the forms of law! What has tobacco done, that any one should
+think of taxing it?"
+
+"I believe, commodore, that its greatest offence is being so general
+a favourite. Taxation, I have found, differs from most other things,
+generally attacking that which men most prize."
+
+"This is quite new to me, general; a tax on tobacco. The law-makers
+in those countries cannot chew. I drink to your good health, sir, and
+to many happy returns of such banquets as this."
+
+Here the commodore raised a large silver punch-bowl, which Pierre had
+furnished, to his lips, and fastening his eyes on the boughs of a
+knarled oak, he looked like a man who was taking an observation, for
+near a minute. All this time, the captain regarded him with a
+sympathetic pleasure, and when the bowl was free, he imitated the
+example, levelling his own eye at a cloud, that seemed floating at an
+angle of forty-five degrees above him, expressly for that purpose.
+
+"There is a lazy cloud!" exclaimed the general, as he let go his hold
+to catch breath; "I have been watching it some time, and it has not
+moved an inch."
+
+"Tobacco!" repeated the commodore, drawing a long breath, as if he
+was just recovering the play of his lungs, "I should as soon think of
+laying a tax on punch. The country that pursues such a policy must,
+sooner or later, meet with a downfall. I never knew good come of
+persecution."
+
+"I find you are a sensible man, commodore, and regret I did not make
+your acquaintance earlier in life. Have you yet made up your mind on
+the subject of religious faith?"
+
+"Why, my dear general, not to be nibbling like a sucker with a sore
+mouth, with a person of your liberality, I shall give you a plain
+history of my adventures, in the way of experiences, that you may
+judge for yourself. I was born an Episcopalian, if one can say so,
+but was converted to Presbyterianism at twenty. I stuck to this
+denomination about five years, when I thought I would try the
+Baptists, having got to be fond of the water, by this time. At
+thirty-two I fished a while with the Methodists; since which
+conversion, I have chosen to worship God pretty much by myself, out
+here on the lake."
+
+"Do you consider it any harm, to hook a fish of a Sunday?"
+
+"No more than it is to eat a fish of a Sunday. I go altogether by
+faith, in my religion, general, for they talked so much to me of the
+uselessness of works, that I've got to be very unparticular as to
+what I do. Your people who have been converted four or five times,
+are like so many pickerel, which strike at every hook."
+
+"This is very much my case. Now, on the river--of course you know
+where the river is?"
+
+"Certain," said the commodore; "it is at the foot of the lake."
+
+"My dear commodore, when we say 'the river,' we always mean the
+Connecticut; and I am surprised a man of your sagacity should require
+to be told this. There are people on the river who contend that a
+ship should heave-to of a Sunday. They did talk of getting up an
+Anti-Sunday-Sailing-Society, but the ship-masters were too many for
+them, since they threatened to start a society to put down the
+growing of inyens, (the captain would sometimes use this
+pronunciation) except of week-days. Well, I started in life, on the
+platform tack, in the way of religion, and I believe I shall stand on
+the same course till orders come to 'cast anchor,' as you call it.
+With you, I hold out for faith, as the one thing needful. Pray, my
+good friend, what are your real sentiments concerning 'Old Hickory.'
+
+"Tough, sir;--Tough as a day in February on this lake. All fins, and
+gills, and bones."
+
+"That is the justest character I have yet heard of the old gentleman;
+and then it says so much in a few words; no category about it. I hope
+the punch is to your liking?"
+
+On this hint the old fisherman raised the bowl a second time to his
+lips, and renewed the agreeable duty of letting its contents flow
+down his throat, in a pleasant stream. This time, he took aim at a
+gull that was sailing over his head, only relinquishing the draught
+as the bird settled into the water. The 'general' was more
+particular; for selecting a stationary object, in the top of an oak,
+that grew on the mountain near him, he studied it with an admirable
+abstruseness of attention, until the last drop was drained. As soon
+as this startling fact was mentioned, however, both the _convives_
+set about repairing the accident, by squeezing lemons, sweetening
+water, and mixing liquors, _secundem artem._ At the same time, each
+lighted a cigar, and the conversation, for some time, was carried on
+between their teeth.
+
+"We have been so frank with each other to-day, my excellent
+commodore," said Captain Truck, "that did I know your true sentiments
+concerning Temperance Societies, I should look on your inmost soul as
+a part of myself. By these free communications men get really to know
+each other."
+
+"If liquor is not made to be drunk, for what is it made? Any one may
+see that this lake was made for skiffs and fishing; it has a length,
+breadth, and depth suited to such purposes. Now, here is liquor
+distilled, bottled, and corked, and I ask if all does not show that
+it was made to be drunk. I dare say your temperance men are
+ingenious, but let them answer that if they can."
+
+"I wish, from my heart, my dear sir, we had known each other fifty
+years since. That would have brought you acquainted with salt-water,
+and left nothing to be desired in your character. We think alike, I
+believe, in every thing but on the virtues of fresh-water. If these
+temperance people had their way, we should all be turned into so many
+Turks, who never taste wine, and yet marry a dozen wives."
+
+"One of the great merits of fresh-water, general, is what I call its
+mixable quality."
+
+"There would be an end to Saturday nights, too, which are the
+seamen's tea-parties."
+
+"I question if many of them fish in the rain, from sunrise to
+sunset."
+
+"Or, stand their watches in wet pee-jackets, from sunset to sunrise.
+Splicing the main brace at such times, is the very quintessence of
+human enjoyments."
+
+"If liquors were not made to be drunk," put in the commodore,
+logically, "I would again ask for what are they made? Let the
+temperance men get over that difficulty if they can."
+
+"Commodore, I wish you twenty more good hearty years of fishing in
+this lake, which grows, each instant, more beautiful in my eyes, as I
+confess does the whole earth; and to show you that I say no more than
+I think, I will clench it with a draught."
+
+Captain Truck now brought his right eye to bear on the new moon,
+which happened to be at a convenient height, closed the left one, and
+continued in that attitude until the commodore began seriously to
+think he was to get nothing besides, the lemon-seeds for his share.
+This apprehension, however, could only arise from ignorance of his
+companion's character, than whom a juster man, according to the
+notions of ship-masters, did not live; and had one measured the punch
+that was left in the bowl when this draught was ended, he would have
+found that precisely one half of it was still untouched, to a
+thimblefull. The commodore now had his turn; and before he got
+through, the bottom of the vessel was as much uppermost as the butt
+of a club bed firelock. When the honest fisherman took breath after
+this exploit, and lowered his cup from the vault of heaven to the
+surface of the earth, he caught a view of a boat crossing the lake,
+coming from the Silent Pine, to that Point on which they were
+enjoying so many agreeable hallucinations on the subject of
+temperance.
+
+"Yonder is the party from the Wigwam," he said, "and they will be
+just in time to become converts to our opinions, if they have any
+doubts on the subjects we have discussed. Shall we give up the ground
+to them, by taking to the skiff, or do you feel disposed to face the
+women?"
+
+"Under ordinary circumstances, commodore, I should prefer your
+society to all the petticoats in the State, but there are two ladies
+in that party, either of whom I would marry, any day, at a minute's
+warning."
+
+"Sir," said the commodore with a tone of warning, "we, who have lived
+bachelors so long, and are wedded to the water, ought never to speak
+lightly on so grave a subject."
+
+"Nor do I. Two women, one of whom is twenty, and the other seventy--
+and hang me if I know which I prefer."
+
+"You would soonest be rid of the last, my dear general, and my advice
+is to take her."
+
+"Old as she is, sir, a king would have to plead hard to get her
+consent. We will make them some punch, that they may see we were
+mindful of them in their absence."
+
+To work these worthies now went in earnest, in order to anticipate
+the arrival of the party, and as the different compounds were in the
+course of mingling, the conversation did not flag. By this time both
+the salt-water and the fresh-water sailor were in that condition when
+men are apt to think aloud, and the commodore had lost all his awe of
+his companion.
+
+"My dear sir," said the former, "I am a thousand times sorry you came
+from that river, for, to tell you my mind without any concealment, my
+only objection to you is that you are not of the middle states. I
+admit the good qualities of the Yankees, in a general way, and yet
+they are the very worst neighbours that a man can have."
+
+"This is a new character of them, commodore, as they generally pass
+for the best, in their own eyes. I should like to hear you explain
+your meaning."
+
+"I call him a bad neighbour who never remains long enough in a place
+to love any thing but himself. Now, sir, I have a feeling for every
+pebble on the shore of this lake, a sympathy with every wave,"--here
+the commodore began to twirl his hand about, with the fingers
+standing apart, like so many spikes in a _che-vaux-de-frise_--"and
+each hour, as I row across it, I find I like it better; and yet, sir,
+would you believe me, I often go away of a morning to pass the day on
+the water, and, on returning home at night, find half the houses
+filled with new faces."
+
+"What becomes of the old ones?" demanded Captain Truck; for this, it
+struck him, was getting the better of him with his own weapons. "Do
+you mean that the people come and go like the tides?"
+
+"Exactly so, sir; just as it used to be with the herrings in the
+Otsego, before the. Susquehannah was dammed, and is still, with the
+swallows."
+
+"Well, well, my good friend, take consolation. You'll meet all the
+faces you ever saw here, one day in heaven."
+
+"Never; not a man of them will stay there, if there be such a thing
+as moving. Depend on it, sir," added the commodore, in the simplicity
+of his heart, "heaven is no place for a Yankee, if he can get farther
+west, by hook or by crook. They are all too uneasy for any steady
+occupation. You, who are a navigator, must know something concerning
+the stars; is there such a thing as another world, that lies west of
+this?"
+
+"That can hardly be, commodore, since the points of the compass only
+refer to objects on this earth. You know, I suppose, that a man
+starting from this spot, and travelling due west, would arrive, in
+time, at this very point, coming in from the east; so that what is
+west to us, in the heavens, on this side of the world, is east to
+those on the other."
+
+"This I confess I did not know, general. I have understood that what
+is good in one man's eyes, will be bad in another's; but never before
+have I heard that what is west to one man, lies east to another. I am
+afraid, general, that there is a little of the sogdollager bait in
+this?"
+
+"Not enough, sir, to catch the merest fresh-water gudgeon that swims.
+No, no; there is neither east nor west off the earth, nor any up and
+down; and so we Yankees must try and content ourselves with heaven.
+Now, commodore, hand me the bowl, and we will get it ready down to
+the shore, and offer the ladies our homage. And so you have become a
+laker in your religion, my dear commodore," continued the general,
+between his teeth, while he smoked and squeezed a lemon at the same
+time, "and do your worshipping on the water?"
+
+"Altogether of late, and more especially since my dream."
+
+"Dream! My dear sir, I should think you altogether too innocent a man
+to dream."
+
+"The best of us have our failings, general. I do sometimes dream, I
+own, as well as the greatest sinner of them all."
+
+"And of what did you dream--the sogdollager?"
+
+"I dreamt of death."
+
+"Of slipping the cable!" cried the general, looking up suddenly.
+"Well, what was the drift?"
+
+"Why, sir, having no wings, I went down below, and soon found myself
+in the presence of the old gentleman himself."
+
+"That was pleasant--had he a tail? I have always been curious to know
+whether he really has a tail or not."
+
+"I saw none, sir, but then we stood face to face, like gentlemen, and
+I cannot describe what I did not see."
+
+"Was he glad to see you, commodore?"
+
+"Why, sir; he was civilly spoken, but his occupation prevented many
+compliments."
+
+"Occupation!"
+
+"Certainly, sir; he was cutting out shoes, for his imps to travel
+about in, in order to stir up mischief."
+
+"And did he set you to work?--This is a sort of State-Prison affair,
+after all!"
+
+"No sir, he was too much of a gentleman to set me at making shoes as
+soon as I arrived. He first inquired what part of the country I was
+from, and when I told him, he was curious to know what most of the
+people were about in our neighbourhood."
+
+"You told him, of course, commodore?"
+
+"Certainly, sir, I told him their chief occupation was quarrelling
+about religion; making saints of them selves, and sinners of their
+neighbours. 'Hollo!' says the Devil, calling out to one of his imps,
+'boy, run and catch my horse--I must be off, and have a finger in
+that pie. What denominations have you in that quarter, commodore? So
+I told him, general, that we had Baptists, and Quakers, and
+Universalists, and Episcopalians, and Presbyterians, old-lights, new-
+lights, and blue-lights; and Methodists----. 'Stop,' said the Devil,
+'that's enough; you imp, be nimble with that horse.--Let me see,
+commodore, what, part of the country did you say you came from?' I
+told him the name more distinctly this time----"
+
+"The very spot?"
+
+"Town and county."
+
+"And what did the Devil say to that?"
+
+"He called out to the imp, again--'Hollo, you boy, never mind that
+horse; _these_ people will all be here before I can get there.'"
+
+Here the commodore and the general began to laugh, until the arches
+of the forest rang with their merriment. Three times they stopped,
+and as often did they return to their glee, until, the punch being
+ready, each took a fresh draught, in order to ascertain if it were
+fit to be offered to the ladies.
+
+Chapter XX.
+
+  "O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?"
+
+  ROMEO AND JULIET.
+
+The usual effect of punch is to cause people to see double; but, on
+this occasion, the mistake was the other way, for two boats had
+touched the strand, instead of the one announced by the commodore,
+and they brought with them the whole party from the Wigwam, Steadfast
+and Aristabalus included. A domestic or two had also been brought to
+prepare the customary repast.
+
+Captain Truck was as good as his word, as respects the punch, and the
+beverage was offered to each of the ladies in form, as soon as her
+feet had touched the green sward which covers that beautiful spot.
+Mrs. Hawker declined drinking, in a way to delight the gallant
+seaman; for so completely had she got the better of all his habits
+and prejudices, that every thing she did seemed right and gracious in
+his eyes.
+
+The party soon separated into groups, or pairs, some being seated on
+the margin of the limpid water, enjoying the light cool airs, by
+which it was fanned, others lay off in the boats fishing, while the
+remainder plunged into the woods, that, in their native wildness,
+bounded the little spot of verdure, which, canopied by old oaks,
+formed the arena so lately in controversy. In this manner, an hour or
+two soon slipped away, when a summons was given for all to assemble
+around the viands.
+
+The repast was laid on the grass, notwithstanding Aristabulus more
+than hinted that the public, his beloved public, usually saw fit to
+introduce rude tables for that purpose. The Messrs. Effinghams,
+however, were not to be taught by a mere bird of passage, how a
+rustic fête so peculiarly their own, ought to be conducted, and the
+attendants were directed to spread the dishes on the turf. Around
+this spot, rustic seats were _improvisés_, and the business of
+_restauration_ proceeded. Of all there assembled, the Parisian
+feelings of Mademoiselle Viefville were the most excited; for to her,
+the scene was one of pure delights, with the noble panorama of
+forest-clad mountains, the mirror-like lake, the overshadowing oaks,
+and the tangled brakes of the adjoining woods.
+
+"_Mais, vraiment ceci surpasse les Tuileries, même dans leur propre
+genre_!" she exclaimed, with energy. "_On passer ait volontiers par
+les dangers du désert pour y parvenir_."
+
+Those who understood her, smiled at this characteristic remark, and
+most felt disposed to join in the enthusiasm. Still, the manner in
+which their companions expressed the happiness they felt, appeared
+tame and unsatisfactory to Mr. Bragg and Mr. Dodge, these two persons
+being accustomed to see the young of the two sexes indulge in broader
+exhibitions of merry-making than those in which it comported with the
+tastes and habits of the present party to indulge. In vain Mrs.
+Hawker, in her quiet dignified way, enjoyed the ready wit and
+masculine thoughts of Mrs. Bloom field, appearing to renew her youth;
+or, Eve, with her sweet simplicity, and highly cultivated mind and
+improved tastes, seemed like a highly-polished mirror, to throw back
+the flashes of thought and memory, that so constantly gleamed before
+both; it was all lost on these thoroughly matter-of-fact
+utilitarians. Mr. Effingham, all courtesy and mild refinement, was
+seldom happier; and John Effingham was never more pleasant, for he
+had laid aside the severity of his character, to appear, what he
+ought always to have been, a man in whom intelligence and quickness
+of thought could be made to seem secondary to the gentler qualities.
+The young men were not behind their companions, either, each, in his
+particular way, appearing to advantage, gay, regulated, and full of a
+humour that was rendered so much the more agreeable, by drawing its
+images from a knowledge of the world, that was tempered by
+observation and practice.
+
+Poor Grace, alone, was the only one of the whole party, always
+excepting Aristabulus and Steadfast, who, for those fleeting but gay
+hours, was not thoroughly happy. For the first time in her life, she
+felt her own deficiencies, that ready and available knowledge, so
+exquisitely feminine in its nature and exhibition, which escaped Mrs.
+Bloomfield and Eve, as it might be from its own excess; which the
+former possessed almost, intuitively, a gift of Heaven, and which the
+latter enjoyed, not only from the same source, but as a just
+consequence of her long and steady self-denial, application, and a
+proper appreciation of her duty to herself, was denied one who, in
+ill-judged compliance with the customs of a society that has no other
+apparent aim than the love of display, had precluded herself from
+enjoyments that none but the intellectual can feel. Still Grace was
+beautiful and attractive; and though she wondered where her cousin,
+in general so simple and unpretending, had acquired all those stores
+of thought, that, in the _abandon_ and freedom of such a fête,
+escaped her in rich profusion, embellished with ready allusions and a
+brilliant though chastened wit, her generous and affectionate heart
+could permit her to wonder without envying. She perceived, for the
+first time, on this occasion, that if Eve were indeed a Hajji, it was
+not a Hajji of a common school; and, while her modesty and self-
+abasement led her bitterly to regret the hours irretrievably wasted
+in the frivolous levities so common to those of her sex with whom she
+had been most accustomed to mingle, her sincere regret did not lessen
+her admiration for one she began tenderly to love.
+
+As for Messrs. Dodge and Bragg, they both determined, in their own
+minds, that this was much the most stupid entertainment they had ever
+seen on that spot, for it was entirely destitute of loud laughing,
+noisy merriment, coarse witticisms, and practical jokes. To them it
+appeared the height of arrogance, for any particular set of persons
+to presume to come to a spot, rendered sacred by the public suffrage
+in its favour, in order to indulge in these outlandish dog-in-the-
+mangerisms.
+
+Towards the close of this gay repast, and when the party were about
+to yield their places to the attendants, who were ready to re-ship
+the utensils, John Effingham observed--
+
+"I trust, Mrs. Hawker, you have been-duly warned of the catastrophe-
+character of this point, on which woman is said never to have been
+wooed in vain. Here are Captain Truck and myself, ready at any moment
+to use these carving knives, _faute des Bowies_, in order to show our
+desperate devotion; and I deem it no more than prudent in you, not to
+smile again this day, lest the cross-eyed readings of jealousy should
+impute a wrong motive."
+
+"Had the injunction been against laughing, sir, I might have
+resisted, but smiles are far too feeble to express one's approbation,
+on such a day as this; you may, therefore, trust to my discretion. Is
+it then true, however, that Hymen haunts these shades?"
+
+"A bachelor's history of the progress of love, may be, like the
+education of his children, distrusted; but so sayeth tradition; and I
+never put my foot in the place, without making fresh vows of
+constancy to myself. After this announcement of the danger, dare you
+accept an arm, for I perceive signs that life cannot be entirely
+wasted in these pleasures, great as they may prove."
+
+The whole party arose, and separating naturally, they strolled in
+groups or pairs again, along the pebbly strand, or beneath the trees,
+while the attendants made the preparations to depart. Accident, as
+much as design, left Sir George and Grace alone, for neither
+perceived the circumstance until they had both passed a little rise
+in the formation of the ground, and were beyond the view of their
+companions. The baronet was the first to perceive how much he had
+been favoured by fortune, and his feelings were touched by the air of
+gentle melancholy, that shaded the usually bright and brilliant
+countenance of the beautiful girl.
+
+"I should have thrice enjoyed this pleasant day," he said, with an
+interest in his manner, that caused the heart of Grace to beat
+quicker, "had I not seen that to you it has been less productive of
+satisfaction, than to most of those around you. I fear you may not be
+as well, as usual?"
+
+"In health, never better, though not in spirits, perhaps."
+
+"I could wish I had a right to inquire why you, who have so few
+causes in general to be out of spirits, should have chosen a moment
+so little in accordance with the common feeling."
+
+"I have chosen no moment; the moment has chosen me, I fear. Not until
+this day, Sir George Templemore, have I ever been truly sensible of
+my great inferiority to my cousin, Eve."
+
+"An inferiority that no one but yourself would observe or mention."
+
+"No, I am neither vain enough, nor ignorant enough, to be the dupe of
+this flattery," returned Grace, shaking her hands and head, while she
+forced a smile; for even the delusions those we love pour into our
+ears, are not without their charms. "When I first met my cousin,
+after her return, my own imperfections rendered me blind to her
+superiority; but she herself has gradually taught me to respect her
+mind, her womanly character, her tact, her delicacy, principles,
+breeding, every thing that can make a woman estimable, or worthy to
+be loved! Oh! how have I wasted in childish amusements, and frivolous
+vanities, the precious moments of that girlhood which can never be
+recalled, and left myself scarcely worthy to be an associate of Eve
+Effingham!"
+
+The first feelings of Grace had so far gotten the control, that she
+scarce knew what she said, or to whom she was speaking; she even
+wrung her hands, in the momentary bitterness of her regrets, and in a
+way to arouse all the sympathy of a lover.
+
+"No one but yourself would say this, Miss Van Cortlandt, and least of
+all your admirable cousin."
+
+"She is, indeed, my admirable cousin! But what are _we_, in
+comparison with such a woman. Simple and unaffected as a child, with
+the intelligence of a scholar; with all the graces of a woman, she
+has the learning and mind of a man. Mistress of so many
+languages----"
+
+"But you, too, speak several, my dear Miss Van Cortlandt."
+
+"Yes," said Grace, bitterly, "I _speak_ them, as the parrot repeats
+words that he does not understand. But Eve Effingham has used these
+languages as means, and she does not tell you merely what such a
+phrase or idiom signifies, but what the greatest writers have thought
+and written."
+
+"No one has a more profound respect for your cousin than myself, Miss
+Van Cortlandt, but justice to you requires that I should say her
+great superiority over yourself has escaped me."
+
+"This may be true, Sir George Templemore, and for a long time it
+escaped me too. I have only learned to prize her as she ought to be
+prized by an intimate acquaintance; hour by hour, as it might be. But
+even you must have observed how quick and intuitively my cousin and
+Mrs. Bloomfield have understood each other to-day; how much extensive
+reading, and, what polished tastes they have both shown, and all so
+truly feminine! Mrs. Bloomfield is a remarkable woman, but she loves
+these exhibitions, for she knows she excels in them. Not so with Eve
+Effingham, who, while she so thoroughly enjoys every thing
+intellectual, is content, always, to seem so simple. Now, it happens,
+that the conversation turned once to-day on a subject that my cousin,
+no later than yesterday, fully explained to me, at my own earnest
+request; and I observed that, while she joined so naturally with Mrs.
+Bloomfield in adding to our pleasure, she kept back half what she
+knew, lest she might seem to surpass her friend. No--no--no--there is
+not such another woman as Eve Effingham in this world!"
+
+"So keen a perception of excellence in others, denotes an equal
+excellence in yourself."
+
+"I know my own great inferiority now, and no kindness of yours, Sir
+George Templemore, can ever persuade me into a better opinion of
+myself. Eve has travelled, seen much in Europe that does not exist
+here, and, instead of passing her youth in girlish trifling, has
+treated the minutes as if they were all precious, as she well knew
+them to be."
+
+"If Europe, then, does indeed possess these advantages, why not
+yourself visit it, dearest Miss Van Cortlandt?"
+
+"I--I a Hajji!" cried Grace with childish pleasure, though her colour
+heightened, and, for a moment, Eve and her superiority was forgotten.
+
+Certainly Sir George Templemore did not come out on the lake that day
+with any expectation of offering his baronetcy, his fair estate, with
+his hand, to this artless, half-educated, provincial, but beautiful
+girl. For a long time he had been debating with himself the propriety
+of such a step, and it is probable that, at some later period, he
+would have sought an occasion, had not one now so opportunely
+offered, notwithstanding all his doubts and reasonings with himself.
+If the "woman who hesitates is lost," it is equally true that the man
+who pretends to set up his reason alone against beauty, is certain to
+find that sense is less powerful than the senses. Had Grace Van
+Cortlandt been more sophisticated, less natural, her beauty might
+have failed to make this conquest; but the baronet found a charm in
+her _naiveté_, that was singularly winning to the feelings of a man
+of the world. Eve had first attracted him by the same quality; the
+early education of American females being less constrained and
+artificial than that of the English; but in Eve he found a mental
+training and acquisitions that left the quality less conspicuous,
+perhaps, than in her scarcely less beautiful cousin; though, had Eve
+met his admiration with any thing like sympathy, her power over him
+would not have been easily weakened. As it was, Grace had been
+gradually winding herself around his affections, and he now poured
+out his love, in a language that her unpractised and already
+favourably disposed feelings had no means of withstanding. A very few
+minutes were allowed to them, before the summons to the boat; but
+when this summons came, Grace rejoined the party, elevated in her own
+good opinion, as happy as a cloudless future could make her and
+without another thought of the immeasurable superiority of her
+cousin.
+
+By a singular coincidence, while the baronet and Grace were thus
+engaged on one part of the shore, Eve was the subject of a similar
+proffer of connecting herself for life, on another. She had left the
+circle, attended by Paul, her father, and Aristabulus; but no sooner
+had they reached the margin of the water, than the two former were
+called away by Captain Truck, to settle some controverted point
+between the latter and the commodore. By this unlooked-for desertion,
+Eve found herself alone with Mr. Bragg.
+
+"That was a funny and comprehensive remark Mr. John made about the
+'Point,' Miss Eve," Aristabulus commenced, as soon as he found
+himself in possession of the ground. "I should like to know if it be
+really true that no woman was ever unsuccessfully wooed beneath these
+oaks? If such be the case, we gentlemen ought to be cautious how we
+come here."
+
+Here Aristabulus simpered, and looked, if possible, more amiable than
+ever; though the quiet composure and womanly dignity of Eve, who
+respected herself too much, and too well knew what was due to her
+sex, even to enter into, or, so far as it depended on her will, to
+permit any of that common-place and vulgar trifling about love and
+matrimony, which formed a never-failing theme between the youthful of
+the two sexes, in Mr. Bragg's particular circle, sensibly curbed his
+ambitious hopes. Still he thought he had made too good an opening,
+not to pursue the subject.
+
+"Mr. John Effingham sometimes indulges in pleasantries," Eve
+answered, "that would lead one astray who might attempt to follow."
+
+"Love _is_ a jack-o'-lantern," rejoined Aristabulus sentimentally.
+"That I admit; and it is no wonder so many get swamped in following
+his lights. Have you ever felt the tender passion, Miss Eve?"
+
+Now, Aristabulus had heard this question put at the _soirée_ of Mrs.
+Houston, more than once, and he believed himself to be in the most
+polite road for a regular declaration. An ordinary woman, who felt
+herself offended by this question, would, most probably, have stepped
+back, and, raising her form to its utmost elevation, answered by an
+emphatic "sir!" Not so with Eve. She felt the distance between Mr.
+Bragg and herself to be so great, that by no probable means could he
+even offend her by any assumption of equality. This distance was the
+result of opinions, habits, and education, rather than of condition,
+however; for, though Eve Effingham could become the wife of a
+gentleman only, she was entirely superior to those prejudices of the
+world that depend on purely factitious causes. Instead of discovering
+surprise, indignation, or dramatic dignity, therefore, at this
+extraordinary question, she barely permitted a smile to curl her
+handsome mouth; and this so slightly, as to escape her companion's
+eye.
+
+"I believe we are to be favoured with as smooth water, in returning
+to the village, as we had in the morning, while coming to this
+place," she simply said. "You row sometimes, I think, Mr. Bragg?"
+
+"Ah! Miss Eve, such another opportunity may never occur again, for
+you foreign ladies are so difficult of access! Let me, then, seize
+this happy moment, here, beneath the hymeneal oaks, to offer you this
+faithful hand and this willing heart. Of fortune you will have enough
+for both, and I say nothing about the miserable dross. Reflect, Miss
+Eve, how happy we might be, protecting and soothing the old age of
+your father, and in going down the hill of life in company; or, as
+the song says, 'and hand in hand we'll go, and sleep the'gither at
+the foot, John Anderson, my Joe.'"
+
+"You draw very agreeable pictures, Mr Bragg, and with the touches of
+a master!"
+
+"However agreeable you find them, Miss Eve, they fall infinitely
+short of the truth. The tie of wedlock, besides being the most
+sacred, is also the dearest; and happy, indeed, are they who enter
+into the solemn engagement with such cheerful prospects as ourselves.
+Our ages are perfectly suitable, our disposition entirely consonant,
+our habits so similar as to obviate all unpleasant changes, and our
+fortunes precisely what they ought to be to render a marriage happy,
+with confidence on one side, and gratitude on the other. As to the
+day, Miss Eve, I could wish to leave you altogether the mistress of
+that, and shall not be urgent."
+
+Eve had often heard John Effingham comment on the cool impudence of a
+particular portion of the American population, with great amusement
+to herself; but never did she expect to be the subject of an attack
+like this in her own person. By way of rendering the scene perfect,
+Aristabulus had taken out his penknife, cut a twig from a bush, and
+he now rendered himself doubly interesting by commencing the
+favourite occupation of whittling. A cooler picture of passion could
+not well have been drawn.
+
+"You are bashfully silent, Miss Eve! I make all due allowances for
+natural timidity, and shall say no more at present--though, as
+silence universally 'gives consent--'" "If you please, sir,"
+interrupted Eve, with a slight motion of her parasol, that implied a
+check. "I presume our habits and opinions, notwithstanding you seem
+to think them so consonant with each other, are sufficiently
+different to cause you not to see the impropriety of one, who is
+situated like yourself, abusing the confidence of a parent, by making
+such a proposal to a daughter without her father's knowledge: and, on
+that point, I shall say nothing. But as you have done me the honour
+of making me a very unequivocal offer of your hand, I wish that the
+answer may be as distinct as the proposal. I decline the advantage
+and happiness of becoming your wife, sir----"
+
+"Time flies, Miss Eve!"
+
+"Time does fly, Mr. Bragg; and, if you remain much longer in the
+employment of Mr. Effingham, you may lose an opportunity of advancing
+your fortunes at the west, whither I understand it has long been your
+intention to emigrate----"
+
+"I will readily relinquish all my hopes at the west, for your sake."
+
+"No, sir, I cannot be a party to such a sacrifice. I will not say
+forget _me_, but forget your hopes here, and renew those you have so
+unreflectingly abandoned beyond the Mississippi. I shall not
+represent this conversation to Mr. Effingham in a manner to create
+any unnecessary prejudices against you; and while I thank you, as
+every woman should, for an offer that must infer some portion, at
+least, of your good opinion, you will permit me again to wish you all
+lawful success in your western enterprises."
+
+Eve gave Mr. Bragg no farther opportunity to renew his suit; for, she
+curtsied and left him, as she ceased speaking. Mr. Dodge, who had
+been a distant observer of the interview, now hastened to join his
+friend, curious to know the result, for it had been privately
+arranged between these modest youths, that each should try his
+fortune in turn, with the heiress, did she not accept the first
+proposal. To the chagrin of Steadfast, and probably to the reader's
+surprise, Aristabulus informed his friend that Eve's manner and
+language had been full of encouragement.
+
+"She thanked me for the offer, Mr. Dodge," he said, "and her wishes
+for my future prosperity at the west, were warm and repeated. Eve
+Effingham is, indeed, a charming creature!"
+
+"At the west! Perhaps she meant differently from what you imagine. I
+know her well; the girl is full of art."
+
+"Art, sir! She spoke as plainly as woman could speak, and I repeat
+that I feel considerably encouraged. It is something, to have had so
+plain a conversation with Eve Effingham."
+
+Mr. Dodge swallowed his discontent, and the whole party soon
+embarked, to return to the village; the commodore and general taking
+a boat by themselves, in order to bring their discussions on human
+affairs in general, to a suitable close.
+
+That night, Sir George Templemore, asked an interview with Mr.
+Effingham, when the latter was alone in his library.
+
+"I sincerely hope this request is not the forerunner of a departure,"
+said the host kindly, as the young man entered, "in which case I
+shall regard you as one unmindful of the hopes he has raised. You
+stand pledged by implication, if not in words, to pass another month
+with us."
+
+"So far from entertaining an intention so faithless, my dear sir, I
+am fearful that you may think I trespass too far on your
+hospitality."
+
+He then communicated his wish to be allowed to make Grace Van
+Cortlandt his wife. Mr. Effingham heard him with a smile, that showed
+he was not altogether unprepared for such a demand, and his eye
+glistened as he squeezed the other's hand.
+
+"Take her with all my heart, Sir George," he said, "but remember you
+are transferring a tender plant into a strange soil. There are not
+many of your countrymen to whom I would confide such a trust, for I
+know the risk they run who make ill-assorted unions--"
+
+"Ill-assorted unions, Mr. Effingham!"
+
+"Yours will not be one, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, I
+know; for in years, birth and fortune, you and my dear niece are as
+much, on an equality as can be desired: but it is too often an ill-
+assorted union for an American woman to become an English wife. So
+much depends on the man, that with one in whom I have less confidence
+than I have in you, I might justly hesitate. I shall take a
+guardian's privilege, though Grace be her own mistress, and give you
+one solemn piece of advice--always respect the country of the woman
+you have thought worthy to bear your name."
+
+"I hope always to respect every thing that is hers; but, why this
+particular caution?--Miss Van Cortlandt is almost English in her
+heart."
+
+"An affectionate wife will take her bias in such matters, generally
+from her husband. Your country will be her country, your God her God.
+Still, Sir George Templemore, a woman of spirit and sentiment can
+never wholly forget the land of her birth. You love us not in
+England, and one who settles there will often have occasion to hear
+gibes and sneers on the land from which she came--"
+
+"Good God, Mr. Effingham, you do not think I shall take my wife into
+society where--"
+
+"Bear with a proser's doubts, Templemore. You will do all that is
+well-intentioned and proper, I dare say, in the usual acceptation of
+the words; but I wish you to do more; that which is wise. Grace has
+now a sincere reverence and respect for England, feelings that in
+many particulars are sustained by the facts, and will be permanent;
+but, in some things, observation, as it usually happens with the
+young and sanguine, will expose the mistakes into which she has been
+led by enthusiasm and the imagination. As she knows other countries
+better, she will come to regard her own with more favourable and
+discriminating eyes, losing her sensitiveness on account of
+peculiarities she now esteems, and taking new views of things.
+Perhaps you will think me selfish, but I shall add, also, that if you
+wish to cure your wife of any homesickness, the surest mode will be
+to bring her back to her native land."
+
+"Nay, my dear sir," said Sir George, laughing, "this is very much
+like acknowledging its blemishes."
+
+"I am aware it has that appearance, and yet the fact is otherwise.
+The cure is as certain with the Englishman as with the American; and
+with the German as with either. It depends on a general law which
+causes us all to over-estimate by-gone pleasures and distant scenes,
+and to undervalue those of the present moment. You know I have always
+maintained there is no real philosopher short of fifty, nor any taste
+worth possessing that is a dozen years old."
+
+Here Mr. Effingham rang the bell, and desired Pierre to request Miss
+Van Cortlandt to join him in the library. Grace entered blushing and
+shy, but with a countenance beaming with inward peace. Her uncle
+regarded her a moment intently, and a tear glistened in his eye,
+again, as he tenderly kissed her burning cheek.
+
+"God bless you, love," he said--"'tis a fearful change for your sex,
+and yet you all enter into it radiant with hope, and noble in your
+confidence. Take her, Templemore," giving her hand to the baronet,
+"and deal kindly by her. You will not desert us entirely I trust I
+shall see you both once more in the Wigwam before I die."
+
+"Uncle--uncle--" burst from Grace, as, drowned in tears, she threw
+herself into Mr. Effingham's arms; "I am an ungrateful girl, thus to
+abandon all my natural friends. I have acted wrong----"
+
+"Wrong, dearest Miss Van Cortlandt!"
+
+"Selfishly, then, Sir George Templemore," the simple-hearted girl
+ingenuously added, scarcely knowing how much her words implied--
+"Perhaps this matter night be reconsidered."
+
+"I am afraid little would be gained by that, my love," returned the
+smiling uncle, wiping his eyes at the same instant. "The second
+thoughts of ladies usually confirm the first, in such matters. God
+bless you, Grace;--Templemore, may Heaven have you, too, in its holy
+keeping. Remember what I have said, and to-morrow we will converse
+further on the subject. Does Eve know of this, my niece?"
+
+The colour went and came rapidly in Grace's cheek, and she looked to
+the floor, abashed.
+
+"We ought then to send for her," resumed Mr. Effingham, again
+reaching towards the bell.
+
+"Uncle--" and Grace hurriedly interposed, in time to save the string
+from being pulled. "Could I keep such an important secret from my
+dearest cousin!"
+
+"I find that I am the last in the secret, as is generally the case
+with old fellows, and I believe I am even now _de trop_."
+
+Mr. Effingham kissed Grace again affectionately, and, although she
+strenuously endeavoured to detain him, he left the room.
+
+"We must follow," said Grace, hastily wiping her eyes, and rubbing
+the traces of tears from her cheeks--"Excuse me, Sir George
+Templemore; will you open----"
+
+He did, though it was not the door, but his arms. Grace seemed like
+one that was rendered giddy by standing on a precipice, but when she
+fell, the young baronet was at hand to receive her. Instead of
+quitting the library that instant, the bell had announced the
+appearance of the supper-tray, before she remembered that she had so
+earnestly intended to do so.
+
+Chapter XXI.
+
+  "This day, no man thinks He has business at his house."
+
+  KING HENRY VIII.
+
+The warm weather, which was always a little behind that of the lower
+counties, had now set in among the mountains, and the season had
+advanced into the first week in July. "Independence Day," as the
+fourth of that month is termed by the Americans, arrived; and the
+wits of Templeton were taxed, as usual, in order that the festival
+might be celebrated with the customary intellectual and moral treat.
+The morning commenced with a parade of the two or three uniformed
+companies of the vicinity, much gingerbread and spruce-beer were
+consumed in the streets, no light potations of whiskey were swallowed
+in the groceries, and a great variety of drinks, some of which bore
+very ambitious names, shared the same fate in the taverns.
+
+Mademoiselle Viefville had been told that this was the great American
+_fête_; the festival of the nation; and she appeared that morning in
+gay ribands, and with her bright, animated face, covered with smiles
+for the occasion. To her surprise, however, no one seemed to respond
+to her feelings; and as the party rose from the breakfast-table, she
+took an opportunity to ask an explanation of Eve, in a little
+'aside.'
+
+"_Est-ce que je me suis trompée, ma chere_?" demanded the lively
+Frenchwoman. "Is not this _la célébration de votre indépendance_?"
+
+"You are not mistaken, my dear Mademoiselle Viefville, and great
+preparations are made to do it honour. I understand there is to be a
+military parade, an oration, a dinner, and fire-works."
+
+"_Monsieur votre père----?_"
+
+"_Monsieur mon père_ is not much given to rejoicings, and he takes
+this annual joy, much as a valetudinarian takes his morning draught."
+
+"_Et Monsieur Jean Effingham----?_"
+
+"Is always a philosopher; you are to expect no antics from him."
+
+"_Mais ces jeunes gens, Monsieur Bragg, Monsieur Dodge, et Monsieur
+Powis, même!_"
+
+"_Se réjouissent en Américains._ I presume you are aware that Mr.
+Powis has declared himself to be an American?"
+
+Mademoiselle Viefville looked towards the streets, along which divers
+tall, sombre-looking countrymen, with faces more lugubrious than
+those of the mutes of a funeral, were sauntering, with a desperate
+air of enjoyment; and she shrugged her shoulders, as she muttered to
+herself, "_que ces Americains sont drôles!_"
+
+At a later hour, however, Eve surprised her father, and indeed most
+of the Americans of the party, by proposing that the ladies should
+walk out into the street, and witness the fête.
+
+"My child, this is a strange proposition to come from a young lady of
+twenty," said her father.
+
+"Why strange, dear sir?--We always mingled in the village fêtes in
+Europe."
+
+"_Certainement_" cried the delighted Mademoiselle Viefville; "_c'est
+de rigueur, même_"
+
+"And it is _de rigueur_, here, Mademoiselle, for young ladies to keep
+out of them," put in John Effingham. "I should be very sorry to see
+either of you three ladies in the streets of Templeton to-day."
+
+Why so, cousin Jack? Have we any thing to fear from the rudeness of
+our countrymen? I have always understood, on the contrary, that in no
+other part of the world is woman so uniformly treated with respect
+and kindness, as in this very republic of ours; and yet, by all these
+ominous faces, I perceive that it will not do for her to trust
+herself in the streets of a village on a _festa_"
+
+"You are not altogether wrong, in what you now say, Miss Effingham,
+nor are you wholly right. Woman, as a whole, is well treated in
+America; and yet it will not do for a _lady_ to mingle in scenes like
+these, as ladies may and do mingle with them in Europe."
+
+"I have heard this difference accounted for," said Paul Powis, "by
+the fact that women have no legal rank in this country. In those
+nations where the station of a lady is protected by legal ordinances,
+it is said she may descend with impunity; but, in this, where all are
+equal before the law, so many misunderstand the real merits of their
+position, that she is obliged to keep aloof from any collisions with
+those who might be disposed to mistake their own claims."
+
+"But I wish for no collisions, no associations, Mr. Powis, but simply
+to pass through the streets, with my cousin and Mademoiselle
+Viefville, to enjoy the sight of the rustic sports, as one would do
+in France, or Italy, or even in republican Switzerland, if you insist
+on a republican example."
+
+"Rustic sports!" repeated Aristabulus with a frightened look--"the
+people will not bear to hear their sports called rustic, Miss
+Effingham."
+
+"Surely, sir,"--Eve never spoke to Mr. Bragg, now, without using a
+repelling politeness--"surely, sir, the people of these mountains
+will hardly pretend that their sports are those of a capital."
+
+"I merely mean, ma'am, that the _term_ would be monstrously
+unpopular; nor do I see why the sports in a city"--Aristabulus was
+much too peculiar in his notions, to call any place that had a mayor
+and aldermen a town,--"should not be just as rustic as those of a
+village. The contrary supposition violates the principle of
+equality."
+
+"And do _you_ decide against us, dear sir?" Eve added looking at Mr.
+Effingham.
+
+"Without stopping to examine causes, my child. I shall say that I
+think you had better all remain at home."
+
+"_Voilà, Mademoiselle Viefville, une fête Americaine!"_
+
+A shrug of the shoulders was the significant reply.
+
+"Nay, my daughter, you are not entirely excluded from the
+festivities; all gallantry has not quite deserted the land."
+
+"A young lady shall walk _alone_ with a young gentleman--shall ride
+alone with him--shall drive out alone with him--shall not move
+_without_ him, _dans le monde, mais_, she shall not walk in the
+crowd, to look at _une fête avec son père!_" exclaimed Mademoiselle
+Viefville, in her imperfect English. "_Je désespère vraiment_, to
+understand some _habitudes Americaines!_"
+
+"Well, Mademoiselle, that you may not think us altogether barbarians,
+you shall, at least, have the benefit of the oration."
+
+"You may well call it _the_ oration, Ned; for, I believe one, or,
+certainly one skeleton, has served some thousand orators annually,
+any time these sixty years."
+
+"Of this skeleton, then, the ladies shall have the benefit. The
+procession is about to form, I hear; and by getting ready
+immediately, we shall be just in time to obtain good seats."
+
+Mademoiselle Viefville was delighted; for, after trying the theatres,
+the churches, sundry balls, the opera, and all the admirable gaieties
+of New-York, she had reluctantly come to the conclusion that America
+was a very good country _pour s'ennuyer_, and for very little else;
+but here was the promise of a novelty. The ladies completed their
+preparations, and, accordingly, attended by all the gentlemen, made
+their appearance in the assembly, at the appointed hour.
+
+The orator, who, as usual, was a lawyer, was already in possession of
+the pulpit, for one of the village churches had been selected as the
+scene of the ceremonies. He was a young man, who had recently been
+called to the bar, it being as much in rule for the legal tyro to
+take off the wire-edge of his wit in a Fourth of July oration, as it
+was formerly for a Mousquetaire to prove his spirit in a duel. The
+academy which, formerly, was a servant of all work to the public,
+being equally used for education, balls, preaching, town-meetings,
+and caucuses, had shared the fate of most American edifices in wood,
+having lived its hour and been burned; and the collection of people,
+whom we have formerly had occasion to describe, appeared to have also
+vanished from the earth, for nothing could be less alike in exterior,
+at least, than those who had assembled under the ministry of Mr.
+Grant, and their successors, who were now collected to listen to the
+wisdom of Mr. Writ. Such a thing as a coat of two generations was no
+longer to be seen; the latest fashion, or what was thought to be the
+latest fashion, being as rigidly respected by the young farmer, or
+the young mechanic, as by the more admitted bucks, the law student,
+and the village shop-boy. All the red cloaks had long since been laid
+aside to give place to imitation merino shawls, or, in cases of
+unusual moderation and sobriety, to mantles of silk. As Eve glanced
+her eye around her, she perceived Tuscan hats, bonnets of gay colours
+and flowers, and dresses of French chintzes, where fifty years ago
+would have been seen even men's woollen hats, and homely English
+calicoes. It is true that the change among the men was not quite as
+striking, for their attire admits of less variety; but the black
+stock had superseded the check handkerchief and the bandanna; gloves
+had taken the places of mittens; and the coarse and clownish shoe of
+"cow-hide" was supplanted by the calf-skin boot.
+
+"Where are your peasants, your rustics, your milk and dairy
+maids--_the people_, in short"--whispered Sir George Templemore to
+Mrs. Bloomfield, as they took their seats; "or is this occasion
+thought to be too intellectual for them, and the present assembly
+composed only of the _élite_?"
+
+"These _are_ the people, and a pretty fair sample, too, of their
+appearance and deportment. Most of these men are what you in England
+would call operatives, and the women are their wives, daughters, and
+sisters."
+
+The baronet said nothing at the moment, but he sat looking around him
+with a curious eye for some time, when he again addressed his
+companion.
+
+"I see the truth of what you say, as regards the men, for a critical
+eye can discover the proofs of their occupations; but, surely, you
+must be mistaken as respects your own sex; there is too much delicacy
+of form and feature for the class you mean."
+
+"Nevertheless, I have said naught but truth."
+
+"But look at the hands and the feet, dear Mrs. Bloomfield. Those are
+French gloves, too, or I am mistaken."
+
+"I will not positively affirm that the French gloves actually belong
+to the dairy-maids, though I have known even this prodigy; but, rely
+on it, you see here the proper female counterparts of the men, and
+singularly delicate and pretty females are they, for persons of their
+class. This is what you call democratic coarseness and vulgarity,
+Miss Effingham tells me, in England."
+
+Sir George smiled, but, as what it is the fashion of me country to
+call 'the exercises,' just then began, he made no other answer.
+
+These exercises commenced with instrumental music, certainly the
+weakest side of American civilization. That of the occasion of which
+we write, had three essential faults, all of which are sufficiently
+general to be termed characteristic, in a national point of view. In
+the first place, the instruments themselves were bad; in the next
+place, they were assorted without any regard to harmony; and, in the
+last place, their owners did not know how to use them. As in certain
+American _cities_--the word is well applied here--she is esteemed the
+greatest belle who can contrive to utter her nursery sentiments in
+the loudest voice, so in Templeton, was he considered the ablest
+musician who could give the greatest _éclat_ to a false note. In a
+word, clamour was the one thing needful, and as regards time, that
+great regulator of all harmonies, Paul Powis whispered to the captain
+that the air they had just been listening to, resembled what the
+sailors call a 'round robin;' or a particular mode of signing
+complaints practised by seamen, in which the nicest observer cannot
+tell which is the beginning, or which the end.
+
+It required all the Parisian breeding of Mademoiselle Viefville to
+preserve her gravity during this overture, though she kept her bright
+animated, French-looking eyes, roaming over the assembly, with an air
+of delight that, as Mr. Bragg would say, made her very popular. No
+one else in the party from the Wigwam, Captain Truck excepted, dared
+look up, but each kept his or her eyes riveted on the floor, as if in
+silent enjoyment of the harmonies. As for the honest old seaman,
+there was as much melody in the howling of a gale to his
+unsophisticated ears, as in any thing else, and he saw no difference
+between this feat of the Templeton band and the sighings of old
+Boreas; and, to say the truth, our nautical critic was not so much
+out of the way.
+
+Of the oration it is scarcely necessary to say much, for if human
+nature is the same in all ages, and under all circumstances, so is a
+fourth of July oration. There were the usual allusions to Greece and
+Rome, between the republics of which and that of this country there
+exists some such affinity as is to be found between a horse-chestnut
+and a chestnut-horse; or that, of mere words: and a long catalogue of
+national glories that might very well have sufficed for all the
+republics, both of antiquity and of our own time. But when the orator
+came to speak of the American character, and particularly of the
+intelligence of the nation, he was most felicitous, and made the
+largest investments in popularity. According to his account of the
+matter, no other people possessed a tithe of the knowledge, or a
+hundredth part of the honesty and virtue of the very community he was
+addressing; and after labouring for ten minutes to convince his
+hearers that they already knew every thing, he wasted several more in
+trying to persuade them to undertake further acquisitions of the same
+nature.
+
+"How much better all this might be made," said Paul Powis, as the
+party returned towards the Wigwam, when the 'exercises' were ended,
+"by substituting a little plain instruction on the real nature and
+obligations of the institutions, for so much unmeaning rhapsody.
+Nothing has struck me with more surprise and pain, than to find how
+far, or it might be better to say, how high, ignorance reaches on
+such subjects, and how few men, in a country where all depends on the
+institutions, have clear notions concerning their own condition."
+
+"Certainly this is not the opinion we usually entertain of
+ourselves," observed John Effingham. "And yet it ought to be. I am
+far from underrating the ordinary information of the country, which,
+as an average information, is superior to that of almost every other
+people; nor am I one of those who, according to the popular European
+notion, fancy the Americans less gifted than common in intellect;
+there can be but one truth in any thing, however, and it falls to the
+lot of very few, any where, to master it. The Americans, moreover,
+are a people of facts and practices, paying but little attention to
+principles, and giving themselves the very minimum of time for
+investigations that lie beyond the reach of the common mind; and it
+follows that they know little of that which does not present itself
+in their every-day transactions. As regards the practice of the
+institutions, it is regulated here, as elsewhere, by party, and party
+is never an honest or a disinterested expounder."
+
+"Are you, then, more than in the common dilemma," asked Sir George,
+"or worse off than your neighbours?"
+
+"We are worse off than our neighbours for the simple reason that it
+is the intention of the American system, which has been deliberately
+framed, and which is moreover the result of a bargain, to carry out
+its theory in practice; whereas, in countries where the institutions
+are the results of time and accidents, _improvement_ is only obtained
+by _innovations_. Party invariably assails and weakens power. When
+power is the possession of a few, the many gain by party; but when
+power is the legal right of the many, the few gain by party. Now, as
+party has no ally as strong as ignorance and prejudice, a right
+understanding of the principles of a government is of far more
+importance in a popular government, than in any other. In place of
+the eternal eulogies on facts, that one hears on all public occasions
+in this country, I would substitute some plain and clear expositions
+of principles; or, indeed, I might say, of facts as they are
+connected with principles."
+
+"_Mais, la musique, Monsieur_," interrupted Mademoiselle Viefville,
+in a way so droll as to raise a general smile, "_qu'en pensez-vous?_"
+
+"That it is music, my dear Mademoiselle, in neither fact nor
+principle."
+
+"It only proves that a people can be free, Mademoiselle," observed
+Mrs. Bloomfield, "and enjoy fourth of July orations, without having
+very correct notions of harmony or time. But do our rejoicings end
+here, Miss Effingham?"
+
+"Not at all--there is still something in reserve for the day, and all
+who honour it. I am told the evening, which promises to be
+sufficiently sombre, is to terminate with a fête that is peculiar to
+Templeton, and which is called 'The Fun of Fire.'"
+
+"It is an ominous name, and ought to be a brilliant ceremony."
+
+As this was uttered, the whole party entered the Wigwam.
+
+"The Fun of Fire" took place, as a matter of course, at a later hour.
+When night had set in, every body appeared in the main street of the
+village, a part of which, from its width and form, was particularly
+adapted to the sports of the evening. The females were mostly at the
+windows, or on such elevated stands as favoured their view, and the
+party from the Wigwam occupied a large balcony that topped the piazza
+of one of the principal inns of the place.
+
+The sports of the night commenced with rockets, of which a few, that
+did as much credit to the climate as to the state of the pyrotechnics
+of the village, were thrown up, as soon as the darkness had become
+sufficiently dense to lend them brilliancy. Then followed wheels,
+crackers and serpents, all of the most primitive kind, if, indeed,
+there be any thing primitive in such amusements. The "Fun of Fire"
+was to close the rejoicings, and it was certainly worth all the other
+sports of that day, united, the gingerbread and spruce beer included.
+
+A blazing ball cast from a shop-door, was the signal for the
+commencement of the Fun. It was merely a ball of rope-yarn, or of
+some other similar material, saturated with turpentine, and it burned
+with a bright, fierce flame until consumed. As the first of these
+fiery meteors sailed into the street, a common shout from the boys,
+apprentices, and young men, proclaimed that the fun was at hand. It
+was followed by several more, and in a few minutes the entire area
+was gleaming with glancing light. The whole of the amusement
+consisted in tossing the fire-balls with boldness, and in avoiding
+them with dexterity, something like competition soon entering into
+the business of the scene.
+
+The effect was singularly beautiful. Groups of dark objects became
+suddenly illuminated, and here a portion of the throng might be seen
+beneath a brightness like that produced by a bonfire, while all the
+back-ground of persons and faces were gliding about in a darkness
+that almost swallowed up a human figure. Suddenly all this would be
+changed; the brightness would pass away, and a ball alighting in a
+spot that had seemed abandoned to gloom, it would be found peopled
+with merry countenances, and active forms. The constant changes from
+brightness to deep darkness, with all the varying gleams of light and
+shadow, made the beauty of the scene, which soon extorted admiration
+from all in the balcony."
+
+"_Mais, c'est charmant_!" exclaimed Mademoiselle Vielville, who was
+enchanted at discovering something like gaiety and pleasure among the
+"_tristes Amêricains_," and who had never even suspected them of
+being capable of so much apparent enjoyment.
+
+"These are the prettiest village sports I have ever witnessed," said
+Eve, "though a little dangerous, one would think. There is something
+refreshing, as the magazine writers term it, to find one of these
+miniature towns of ours condescending to be gay and happy in a
+village fashion. If I were to bring my strongest objection to
+American country life, it would be its ambitious desire to ape the
+towns, converting the ease and _abandon_ of a village, into the
+formality and stiffness that render children in the clothes of grown
+people so absurdly ludicrous."
+
+"What!" exclaimed John Effingham; "do you fancy it possible to reduce
+a free-man so low, as to deprive him of his stilts! No, no, young
+lady; you are now in a country where if you have two rows of flounces
+on your frock, your maid will make it a point to have three, by way
+of maintaining the equilibrium. This is the noble ambition of
+liberty."
+
+"Annette's foible is a love of flounces, cousin Jack, and you have
+drawn that image from your eye, instead of your imagination. It is a
+French, as well as an American ambition, if ambition it be."
+
+"Let it be drawn whence it may, it is true. Have you not remarked,
+Sir George Templemore, that the Americans will not even bear the
+ascendency of a capital? Formerly, Philadelphia, then the largest
+town in the country, was the political capital; but it was too much
+for any one community to enjoy the united consideration that belongs
+to extent and politics; and so the honest public went to work to make
+a capital, that should have nothing else in its favour, but the naked
+fact that it was the seat of government, and I think it will be
+generally allowed, that they have succeeded to admiration. I fancy
+Mr. Dodge will admit that it would be quite intolerable, that country
+should not be town, and town country."
+
+"This is a land of equal rights, Mr. John Effingham, and I confess
+that I see no claims that New-York possesses, which does not equally
+belong to Templeton."
+
+"Do you hold, sir," inquired Captain Truck, "that a ship is a brig,
+and a brig a ship."
+
+"The case is different; Templeton _is_ a town, is it not, Mr. John
+Effingham?"
+
+"_A_ town, Mr. Dodge, but not town. The difference is essential."
+
+"I do not see it, sir. Now, New-York, to my notion is not a _town_,
+but a _city_."
+
+"Ah! This is the critical acumen of the editor! But you should be
+indulgent, Mr. Dodge, to us laymen, who pick up our phrases by merely
+wandering about the world; or in the nursery perhaps, while you, of
+the favoured few, by living in the condensation of a province, obtain
+a precision and accuracy to which we can lay no claim."
+
+The darkness prevented the editor of the Active Inquirer from
+detecting the general smile, and he remained in happy ignorance of
+the feeling that produced it. To say the truth, not the smallest of
+the besetting vices of Mr. Dodge had their foundation in a provincial
+education, and in provincial notions; the invariable tendency of both
+being to persuade their subject that he is always right, while all
+opposed to him in opinion are wrong. That well-known line of Pope, in
+which the poet asks, "what can we reason, but from what we know?"
+contains the principle of half our foibles and faults, and perhaps
+explains fully that proportion of those of Mr. Dodge, to say nothing
+of those of no small number of his countrymen. There are limits to
+the knowledge, and tastes, and habits of every man, and, as each is
+regulated by the opportunities of the individual, it follows of
+necessity, that no one can have a standard much above his own
+experience. That an isolated and remote people should be a provincial
+people, or, in other words, a people of narrow and peculiar practices
+and opinions, is as unavoidable as that study should make a scholar;
+though in the case of America, the great motive for surprise is to be
+found in the fact that causes so very obvious should produce so
+little effect. When compared with the bulk of other nations, the
+Americans, though so remote and insulated, are scarcely provincial,
+for it is only when the highest standard of this nation is compared
+with the highest standard of other nations, that we detect the great
+deficiency that actually exists. That a moral foundation so broad
+should uphold a moral superstructure so narrow, is owing to the
+circumstance that the popular sentiment rules, and as every thing is
+referred to a body of judges that, in the nature of things, must be
+of very limited and superficial attainments, it cannot be a matter of
+wonder to the reflecting, that the decision shares in the qualities
+of the tribunal. In America, the gross mistake has been made of
+supposing, that, because the mass rules in a political sense, it has
+a right to be listened to and obeyed in all other matters, a
+practical deduction that can only lead, under the most favourable
+exercise of power, to a very humble mediocrity. It is to be hoped,
+that time, and a greater concentration of taste, liberality, and
+knowledge than can well distinguish a young and scattered population,
+will repair this evil, and that our children will reap the harvest of
+the broad fields of intelligence that have been sowed by ourselves.
+In the mean time, the present generation must endure that which
+cannot easily be cured; and, among its other evils, it will have to
+submit to a great deal of very questionable information, not a few
+false principles, and an unpleasant degree of intolerant and narrow
+bigotry, that are propagated by such apostles of liberty and learning
+as Steadfast Dodge, Esquire.
+
+We have written in vain, if it now be necessary to point out a
+multitude of things in which that professed instructor and Mentor of
+the public, the editor of the Active Inquirer, had made a false
+estimate of himself, as well as of his fellow-creatures. That such a
+man should be ignorant, is to be expected, as he had never been
+instructed; that he was self-sufficient was owing to his ignorance,
+which oftener induces vanity than modesty; that he was intolerant and
+bigoted, follows as a legitimate effect of his provincial and
+contracted habits; that he was a hypocrite, came from his homage of
+the people; and that one thus constituted, should be permitted,
+periodically, to pour out his vapidity, folly, malice, envy, and
+ignorance, on his fellow-creatures, in the columns of a newspaper,
+was owing to a state of society in which the truth of the wholesome
+adage "that what is every man's business is nobody's business," is
+exemplified not only daily, but hourly, in a hundred other interests
+of equal magnitude, as well as to a capital mistake, that leads the
+community to fancy that whatever is done in their time, is done for
+their good.
+
+As the "Fun of Fire" had, by this time, exhibited most of its
+beauties, the party belonging to the Wigwam left the balcony, and,
+the evening proving mild, they walked into the grounds of the
+building, where they naturally broke into groups, conversing on the
+incidents of the day, or of such other matters as came uppermost.
+Occasionally, gleams of light were thrown across them from a fire-
+ball; or a rocket's starry train was still seen drawn in the air,
+resembling the wake of a ship at night, as it wades through the
+ocean.
+
+Chapter XXII.
+
+                              Gentle Octavia, Let your best love draw
+  to that point, which seeks But to preserve it.
+
+  ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.
+
+We shall not say it was an accident that brought Paul and Eve side by
+side, and a little separated from the others; for a secret sympathy
+had certainly exercised its influence over both, and probably
+contributed as much as any thing else towards bringing about the
+circumstance. Although the Wigwam stood in the centre of the village,
+its grounds covered several acres, and were intersected with winding
+walks, and ornamented with shrubbery, in the well-known English
+style, improvements also of John Effingham; for, while the climate
+and forests of America offer so many inducements to encourage
+landscape gardening, it is the branch of art that, of all the other
+ornamental arts, is perhaps the least known in this country. It is
+true, time had not yet brought the labours of the projector to
+perfection, in this instance; but enough had been done to afford very
+extensive, varied, and pleasing walks. The grounds were broken, and
+John Effingham had turned the irregularities to good account, by
+planting and leading paths among them, to the great amusement of the
+lookers-on, however, who, like true disciples of the Manhattanese
+economy, had already begun to calculate the cost of what they termed
+grading the lawns, it being with them as much a matter of course to
+bring pleasure grounds down to a mathematical surface, as to bring a
+rail-road route down to the proper level.
+
+Through these paths, and among the irregularities, groves, and
+shrubberies, just mentioned, the party began to stroll; one group
+taking a direction eastward, another south, and a third westward, in
+a way soon to break them up into five or six different divisions.
+These several portions of the company ere long got to move in
+opposite directions, by taking the various paths, and while they
+frequently met, they did not often re-unite. As has been already
+intimated, Eve and Paul were alone, for the first time in their
+lives, under circumstances that admitted of an uninterrupted
+confidential conversation. Instead of profiting immediately, however,
+by this unusual occurrence, as many of our readers may anticipate,
+the young man continued the discourse, in which the whole party had
+been engaged when they entered the gate that communicated with the
+street.
+
+"I know not whether you felt the same embarrassment as myself, to-
+day, Miss Effingham," he said, "when the orator was dilating on the
+glories of the republic, and on the high honours that accompany the
+American name. Certainly, though a pretty extensive traveller, I have
+never yet been able to discover that it is any advantage abroad to be
+one of the 'fourteen millions of freemen.'"
+
+"Are we to attribute the mystery that so long hung over your birth-
+place, to this fact," Eve asked, a little pointedly.
+
+"If I have made any seeming mystery, as to the place of my birth, it
+has been involuntary on my part, Miss Effingham, so far as you, at
+least, have been concerned. I may not have thought myself authorized
+to introduce my own history into our little discussions, but I am not
+conscious of aiming at any unusual concealments. At Vienna, and in
+Switzerland, we met as travellers; and now that you appear disposed
+to accuse me of concealment, I may retort, and say that, neither you
+nor your father ever expressly stated in my presence that you were
+Americans."
+
+"Was that necessary, Mr. Powis?"
+
+"Perhaps not; and I am wrong to draw a comparison between my own
+insignificance, and the éclat that attended you and your movements."
+
+"Nay," interrupted Eve, "do not misconceive me. My father felt an
+interest in you, quite naturally, after what had occurred on the lake
+of Lucerne, and I believe he was desirous of making you out a
+countryman,--a pleasure that he has at length received."
+
+"To own the truth, I was never quite certain, until my last visit to
+England, on which side of the Atlantic I was actually born, and to
+this uncertainty, perhaps, may be attributed some of that
+cosmopolitism to which I made so many high pretensions in our late
+passage."
+
+"Not know where you were born!" exclaimed Eve, with an involuntary
+haste, that she immediately repented.
+
+"This, no doubt, sounds odd to you, Miss Effingham, who have always
+been the pride and solace of a most affectionate father, but it has
+never been my good fortune to know either parent. My mother, who was
+the sister of Ducie's mother, died at my birth, and the loss of my
+father even preceded hers. I may be said to have been born an
+orphan."
+
+Eve, for the first time in her life, had taken his arm, and the young
+man felt the gentle pressure of her little hand, as she permitted
+this expression of sympathy to escape her, at a moment she found so
+intensely interesting to herself.
+
+"It was, indeed, a misfortune, Mr. Powis, and I fear you were put
+into the navy through the want of those who would feel a natural
+concern in your welfare."
+
+"The navy was my own choice; partly, I think, from a certain love of
+adventure, and quite as much, perhaps, with a wish to settle the
+question of my birth-place, practically at least, by enlisting in the
+service of the one that I first knew, and certainly best loved."
+
+"But of that birth-place, I understand there is now no doubt?" said
+Eve, with more interest than she was herself conscious of betraying.
+
+"None whatever; I am a native of Philadelphia; that point was
+conclusively settled in my late visit to my aunt, Lady Dunluce, who
+was present at my birth."
+
+"Is Lady Dunluce also an American?"
+
+"She is; never having quitted the country until after her marriage to
+Colonel Ducie. She was a younger sister of my mother's, and,
+notwithstanding some jealousies and a little coldness that I trust
+have now disappeared, I am of opinion she loved her; though one can
+hardly answer for the durability of the family ties in a country
+where the institutions and habits are as artificial as in England."
+
+"Do you think there is less family affection, then, in England than
+in America?"
+
+"I will not exactly say as much, though I am of opinion that neither
+country is remarkable in that way. In England, among the higher
+classes, it is impossible that the feelings should not be weakened by
+so many adverse interests. When a brother knows that nothing stands
+between himself and rank and wealth, but the claims of one who was
+born a twelvemonth earlier than himself, he gets to feel more like a
+rival than a kinsman, and the temptation to envy or dislike, or even
+hatred, sometimes becomes stronger than the duty to love."
+
+"And yet the English, themselves, say that the services rendered by
+the elder to the younger brother, and the gratitude of the younger to
+the elder, are so many additional ties."
+
+"It would be contrary to all the known laws of feeling, and all
+experience, if this were so. The younger applies to the elder for aid
+in preference to a stranger, because he thinks he has a claim; and
+what man who fancies he has a claim, is disposed to believe justice
+is fully done him; or who that is required to discharge a duty,
+imagines he has not done more than could be properly asked?"
+
+"I fear your opinion of men is none of the best, Mr. Powis!"
+
+"There may be exceptions, but such I believe to be the common fate of
+humanity. The moment a duty is created, a disposition to think it
+easily discharged follows; and of all sentiments, that of a continued
+and exacting gratitude is the most oppressive. I fear more brothers
+are aided, through family pride, than through natural affection."
+
+"What, then, loosens the tie among ourselves, where no law of
+primogeniture exists?"
+
+"That which loosens every thing. A love of change that has grown up
+with the migratory habits of the people; and which, perhaps, is, in
+some measure, fostered by the institutions. Here is Mr. Bragg to
+confirm what I say, and we may hear his sentiments on this subject."
+
+As Aristabulus, with whom walked Mr. Dodge, just at that moment came
+out of the shrubbery, and took the same direction with themselves,
+Powis put the question, as one addresses an acquaintance in a room.
+
+"Rotation in feelings, sir," returned Mr. Bragg, "is human nature, as
+rotation in office is natural justice. Some of our people are of
+opinion that it might be useful could the whole of society be made
+periodically to change places, in order that every one might know how
+his neighbour lives."
+
+"You are, then, an Agrarian, Mr. Bragg?"
+
+"As far from it as possible; nor do I believe you will find such an
+animal in this county. Where property is concerned, we are a people
+that never let go, as long as we can hold on, sir; but, beyond this
+we like lively changes. Now, Miss Effingham, every body thinks
+frequent changes of religious instructors in particular, necessary.
+There can be no vital piety without, keeping the flame alive with
+excitement."
+
+"I confess, sir, that my own reasoning would lead to a directly
+contrary conclusion, and that there can be no vital piety, as you
+term it, _with_ excitement."
+
+Mr. Bragg looked at Mr. Dodge, and Mr. Dodge looked at Mr. Bragg.
+Then each shrugged his shoulders, and the former continued the
+discourse.
+
+"That may be the case in France, Miss Effingham," he said, "but, in
+America, we look to excitement as the great purifier. We should as
+soon expect the air in the bottom of a well to be elastic, as that
+the moral atmosphere shall be clear and salutary, without the breezes
+of excitement. For my part, Mr. Dodge, I think no man should be a
+judge, in the same court, more than ten years at a time, and a priest
+gets to be rather common-place and flat after five. There are men
+that may hold out a little longer, I acknowledge; but to keep real,
+vital, soul-saving regeneration stirring, a change should take place
+as often as once in five years, in a parish; that is my opinion, at
+least."
+
+"But, sir," rejoined Eve, "as the laws of religion are immutable, the
+modes by which it is known universal, and the promises, mediation,
+and obligations are every where the same, I do not see what you
+propose to gain by so many changes."
+
+"Why, Miss Effingham, we change the dishes at table, and no family of
+my acquaintance, more than this of your honourable father's; and I am
+surprised to find you opposed to the system."
+
+"Our religion, sir," answered Eve, gravely, "is a duty, and rests on
+revelation and obedience; while our diet may, very innocently, be a
+matter of mere taste, even of caprice, if you will."
+
+"Well, I confess I see no great difference, the main object in this
+life being to stir people up, and to go ahead. I presume you know,
+Miss Eve, that many people think that we ought to change our own
+parson, if we expect a blessing on the congregation."
+
+"I should sooner expect a curse would follow an act of so much
+heartlessness, sir. Our clergyman has been with us since his entrance
+into the duties of his holy office; and it will be difficult to
+suppose that the Divine favour would follow the commission of so
+selfish and capricious a step, with a motive no better than the
+desire for novelty."
+
+"You quite mistake the object, Miss Eve, which is to stir the people
+up; a hopeless thing, I fear, so long as they always sit under the
+same preaching."
+
+"I have been taught to believe that piety is increased, Mr. Bragg, by
+the aid of the Holy Spirit's sustaining and supporting us in our good
+desires; and I cannot persuade myself that the Deity finds it
+necessary to save a soul, by the means of any of those human agencies
+by which men sack towns, turn an election, or incite a mob. I hear
+that extraordinary scenes are witnessed in this country, in some of
+the other sects; but I trust never to see the day, when the
+apostolic, reverend, and sober church, in which I have been nurtured,
+shall attempt to advance the workings of that Divine power, by a
+profane, human hurrah."
+
+All this was Greek to Messrs. Dodge and Bragg, who, in furthering
+their objects, were so accustomed to "stirring people up," that they
+had quite forgotten that the more a man was in "an excitement," the
+less he had to do with reason. The exaggerated religious sects, which
+first peopled America, have had a strong influence in transmitting to
+their posterity false notions on such subjects; for while the old
+world is accustomed to see Christianity used as an ally of
+government, and perverted from its one great end to be the instrument
+of ambition, cupidity, and selfishness, the new world has been fated
+to witness the reaction of such abuses, and to run into nearly as
+many errors in the opposite extreme. The two persons just mentioned,
+had been educated in the provincial school of religious notions, that
+is so much in favour, in a portion of this country; and they were
+striking examples of the truth of the adage, that "what is bred in
+the bone will be seen in the flesh," for their common character,
+common in this particular at least, was a queer mixture of the most
+narrow superstitions and prejudices, that existed under the garb of
+religious training, and of unjustifiable frauds, meannesses, and even
+vices. Mr. Bragg was a better man than Mr. Dodge, for he had more
+self-reliance, and was more manly; but, on the score of religion, he
+had the same contradictory excesses, and there was a common point, in
+the way of vulgar vice, towards which each tended, simply for the
+want of breeding and tastes, as infallibly as the needle points to
+the pole. Cards were often introduced in Mr. Effingham's drawing-
+room, and there was one apartment expressly devoted to a billiard-
+table; and many was the secret fling, and biting gibe, that these
+pious devotees passed between themselves, on the subject of so
+flagrant an instance of immorality, in a family of so high moral
+pretensions; the two worthies not unfrequently concluding their
+comments by repairing to some secret room in a tavern, where, after
+carefully locking the door, and drawing the curtains, they would
+order brandy, and pass a refreshing hour in endeavouring to relieve
+each other of the labour of carrying their odd sixpences, by means of
+little shoemaker's loo.
+
+On the present occasion, however, the earnestness of Eve produced a
+pacifying effect on their consciences, for, as our heroine never
+raised her sweet voice above the tones of a gentlewoman, its very
+mildness and softness gave force to her expressions. Had John
+Effingham uttered the sentiments to which they had just listened it
+is probable Mr. Bragg would have attempted an answer; but, under the
+circumstances, he preferred making his bow, and diverging into the
+first path that offered, followed by his companion. Eve and Paul
+continued their circuit of the grounds, as if no interruption had
+taken place.
+
+"This disposition to change is getting to be universal in the
+country," remarked the latter, as soon as Aristabulus and his friend
+had left them, "and I consider it one of the worst signs of the
+times; more especially since it has become so common to connect it
+with what it is the fashion to call excitement."
+
+"To return to the subject which these gentlemen interrupted," said
+Eve, "that of the family ties; I have always heard England quoted as
+one of the strongest instances of a nation in which this tie is
+slight, beyond its aristocratical influence; and I should be sorry to
+suppose that we are following in the footsteps of our good-mother, in
+this respect at least."
+
+"Has Mademoiselle Viefville never made any remark on this subject?"
+
+"Mademoiselle Viefville, though observant, is discreet. That she
+believes the standard of the affections as high in this as in her own
+country, I do not think; for, like most Europeans, she believes the
+Americans to be a passionless people, who are more bound up in the
+interests of gain, than in any other of the concerns of life."
+
+"She does not know us!" said Paul so earnestly as to cause Eve to
+start at the deep energy with which he spoke. "The passions lie as
+deep, and run in currents as strong here, as in any other part of the
+world, though, there not being as many factitious causes to dam them,
+they less seldom break through the bounds of propriety."
+
+For near a minute the two paced the walk in silence, and Eve began to
+wish that some one of the party would again join them, that a
+conversation which she felt was getting to be awkward, might be
+interrupted. But no one crossed their path again, and without
+rudeness, or affectation, she saw no means of effecting her object.
+Paul was too much occupied with his own feelings to observe his
+companion's embarrassment, and, after the short pause mentioned, he
+naturally pursued the subject, though in a less emphatic manner than
+before.
+
+"It was an old, and a favourite theory, with the Europeans," he said,
+with a sort of bitter irony, "that all the animals of this hemisphere
+have less gifted natures than those of the other; nor is it a theory
+of which they are yet entirely rid. The Indian was supposed to be
+passionless, because he had self-command; and what in the European
+would be thought exhibiting the feelings of a noble nature, in him
+has been represented as ferocity and revenge; Miss Effingham, you and
+I have seen Europe, have stood in the presence of its wisest, its
+noblest and its best; and what have they to boast beyond the
+immediate results of their factitious and laboured political systems,
+that is denied to the American--or rather would be denied to the
+American, had the latter the manliness and mental independence, to be
+equal to his fortunes?"
+
+"Which, you think he is not."
+
+"How can a people be even independent that imports its thoughts, as
+it does its wares,--that has not the spirit to invent even its own
+prejudices?"
+
+"Something should be allowed to habit, and to the influence of time.
+England, herself, probably has inherited some of her false notions,
+from the Saxons and Normans."
+
+"That is not only possible, but probable; but England, in thinking of
+Russia, France, Turkey, or Egypt, when induced to think wrong, yields
+to an English, and not to an American interest. Her errors are at
+least requited, in a degree, by serving her own ends, whereas ours
+are made, too often, to oppose our most obvious interests. We are
+never independent unless when stimulated by some strong and pressing
+moneyed concern, and not often then beyond the plainest of its
+effects.--Here is one, apparently, who does not belong to our party."
+
+Paul interrupted himself, in consequence of their meeting a stranger
+in the walk, who moved with the indecision of one uncertain whether
+to advance or to recede. Rockets frequently fell into the grounds,
+and there had been one or two inroads of boys, which had been
+tolerated on account of the occasion; but this intruder was a man in
+the decline of life, of the condition of a warm tradesman seemingly,
+and he clearly had no connection with sky-rockets, as his eyes were
+turned inquiringly on the persons of those who passed him, from time
+to time, none of whom had he stopped, however, until he now placed
+himself before Paul and Eve, in a way to denote a desire to speak.
+
+"The young people are making a merry night of it," he said, keeping a
+hand in each coat-pocket, while he unceremoniously occupied the
+centre of the narrow walk, as if determined to compel a parley.
+
+Although sufficiently acquainted with the unceremonious habits of the
+people of the country to feel no surprise at this intrusion, Paul was
+vexed at having his tête à tête with Eve so rudely broken; and he
+answered with more of the hauteur of the quarterdeck than he might
+otherwise have done, by saying coldly--
+
+"Perhaps, sir, it is your wish to see Mr. Effingham--or--" hesitating
+an instant, as he scanned the stranger's appearance--"some of his
+people. The first will soon pass this spot, and you will find most of
+the latter on the lawn, watching the rockets."
+
+The man regarded Paul a moment, and then he removed his hat
+respectfully.
+
+"Please, sir, can you inform me if a gentleman called Captain Truck--
+one that sails the packets between New-York and England, is staying
+at the Wigwam at present."
+
+Paul told him that the captain was walking with Mr. Effingham, and
+that the next pair that approached would be they. The stranger fell
+back, keeping his hat respectfully in his hand, and the two passed.
+
+"That man has been an English servant, but has been a little spoiled
+by the reaction of an excessive liberty to do as he pleases. The
+'please, sir,' and the attitude can hardly be mistaken, while the
+_nonchalance_ of his manner '_à nous aborder_' sufficiently betrays
+the second edition of his education."
+
+"I am curious to know what this person can want with our excellent
+captain--it can scarcely be one of the Montauk's crew!"
+
+"I will answer for it, that the fellow has not enough seamanship
+about him to whip a rope," said Paul, laughing; "for if there be two
+temporal pursuits that have less affinity than any two others, they
+are those of the pantry and the tar-bucket. I think it will be seen
+that this man has been an English servant, and he has probably been a
+passenger on board some ship commanded by our honest old friend."
+
+Eve and Paul now turned, and they met Mr. Effingham and the captain
+just as the two latter reached the spot where the stranger still
+stood.
+
+"This is Captain Truck, the gentleman for whom you inquired," said
+Paul.
+
+The stranger looked hard at the captain, and the captain looked hard
+at the stranger, the obscurity rendering a pretty close scrutiny
+necessary, to enable either to distinguish features. The examination
+seemed to be mutually unsatisfactory, for each retired a little, like
+a man who had not found a face that he knew.
+
+"There must be two Captain Trucks, then, in the trade," said the
+stranger; "this is not the gentleman I used to know."
+
+"I think you are as right in the latter part of your remark, friend,
+as you are wrong in the first," returned the captain. "Know you, I do
+not, and yet there are no more two Captain Trucks in the English
+trade, than there are two Miss Eve Effinghams, or two Mrs. Hawkers in
+the universe. I am John Truck, and no other man of that name ever
+sailed a ship between New York and England, in my day, at least."
+
+"Did you ever command the Dawn, sir?"
+
+"The Dawn! That I did; and the Regulus, and the Manhattan, and the
+Wilful Girl, and the Deborah-Angelina, and the Sukey and Katy, which,
+my dear young lady, I may say, was my first love. She was only a
+fore-and-after, carrying no standing topsail, even, and we named her
+after two of the river girls, who were flyers, in their way; at
+least, I thought so then; though a man by sailing a packet comes to
+alter his notions about men and things, or, for that matter, about
+women and things, too. I got into a category, in that schooner, that
+I never expect to see equalled; for I was driven ashore to windward
+in her, which is gibberish to you, my dear young lady, but which Mr.
+Powis will very well understand, though he may not be able to explain
+it."
+
+"I certainly know what you mean," said Paul, "though I confess I am
+in a category, as well as the schooner, so far as knowing how it
+could have happened."
+
+"The Sukey and Katy ran away with me, that's the upshot of it. Since
+that time I have never consented to command a vessel that was called
+after _two_ of our river young women, for I do believe that one of
+them is as much as a common mariner can manage. You see, Mr.
+Effingham, we were running along a weather-shore, as close in as we
+could get, to be in the eddy, when a squall struck her a-beam, and
+she luffed right on to the beach. No helping it. Helm hard up, peak
+down, head sheets to windward, and main sheet flying, but it was all
+too late; away she went plump ashore to windward. But for that
+accident, I think I might have married."
+
+"And what connexion could you find between matrimony and this
+accident, captain?" demanded the laughing Eve.
+
+"There was an admonition in it, my dear young lady, that I thought
+was not to be disregarded. I tried the Wilful Girl next, and she was
+thrown on her beam-ends with me; after which I renounced all female
+names, and took to the Egyptian."
+
+"The Egyptian!"
+
+"Certainly, Regulus, who was a great snake-killer, they tell me, in
+that part of the world. But I never saw my way quite clear as
+bachelor, until I got the Dawn. Did you know that ship, friend?"
+
+"I believe, sir, I made two passages in her while you commanded her."
+
+"Nothing more likely; we carried lots of your countrymen, though
+mostly forward of the gangways. I commanded the Dawn more than twenty
+years ago."
+
+"It is all of that time since I crossed with you, sir; you may
+remember that we fell in with a wreck, ten days after we sailed, and
+took off her crew and two passengers. Three or four of the latter had
+died with their sufferings, and several of the people."
+
+"All this seems but as yesterday! The wreck was a Charleston ship
+that had started a butt."
+
+"Yes, sir--yes, sir--that is just it--she had started, _but_ could
+not get in. That is just what they said at the time. I am David,
+sir--I should think you _cannot_ have forgotten David."
+
+The honest captain was very willing to gratify the other's harmless
+self-importance, though, to tell the truth, he retained no more
+personal knowledge of the David of the Dawn, than he had of David,
+King of the Jews.
+
+"Oh, David!" he cried, cordially--"are _you_ David? Well, I did not
+expect to see you again in this world, though I never doubted where
+we should be, hereafter I hope you are very well, David; what sort of
+weather have you made of it since we parted? If I recollect aright,
+you worked your passage;--never at sea before."
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir; I never was at sea before the _first_ time,
+it is true; but I did not belong to the crew. I was a passenger."
+
+"I remember, now, you were in the steerage," returned the captain,
+who saw daylight ahead.
+
+"Not at all, sir, but in the cabin."
+
+"Cabin!" echoed the captain, who perceived none of the requisites of
+a cabin-passenger in the other--"Oh! I understand, in the pantry?"
+
+"Exactly so, sir. You may remember my master--he had the left-hand
+state-room to himself, and I slept next to the scuttle-butt. You
+recollect master, sir?"
+
+"Out of doubt, and a very good fellow he was. I hope you live with
+him still?"
+
+"Lord bless you, sir, he is dead!"
+
+"Oh! I recollect hearing of it, at the time. Well, David. I hope if
+ever we cross again, we shall be ship-mates once more. We were
+beginners, then, but we have ships worth living in, now.--Good
+night."
+
+"Do you remember Dowse, sir, that we got from the wreck?" continued
+the other, unwilling to give up his gossip so soon. "He was a dark
+man, that had had the small-pox badly. I think, sir, you will
+recollect _him_, for he was a hard man in other particulars, besides
+his countenance."
+
+"Somewhat flinty about the soul; I remember the man well; and so,
+David, good night; you will come and see me, if you are ever in town.
+Good night, David."
+
+David was now compelled to leave the place, for Captain Truck, who
+perceived that the whole party was getting together again, in
+consequence of the halt, felt the propriety of dismissing his
+visiter, of whom, his master, and Dowse, he retained just as much
+recollection as one retains of a common stage-coach companion after
+twenty years. The appearance of Mr. Howel, who just at that moment
+approached them, aided the manoeuvre, and, in a few minutes the
+different groups were again in motion, though some slight changes had
+taken place in the distribution of the parties.
+
+Chapter XXIII.
+
+  "How silver sweet sound lovers' tongues at night, Like softest
+  music to attending ears!"
+
+  ROMEO AND JULIET.
+
+"A poor matter, this of the fire-works," said Mr. Howel, who, with an
+old bachelor's want of tact, had joined Eve and Paul in their walk.
+"The English would laugh at them famously, I dare say. Have you heard
+Sir George allude to them at all, Miss Eve?"
+
+"It would be great affectation for an Englishman to deride the fire-
+works of any _dry_ climate," said Eve laughing; "and I dare say, if
+Sir George Templemore has been silent on the subject, it is because
+he is conscious he knows little about it."
+
+"Well, that is odd! I should think England the very first country in
+the world for fire-works. I hear, Miss Eve, that, on the whole, the
+baronet is rather pleased with us; and I must say that he is getting
+to be very popular in Templeton."
+
+"Nothing is easier than for an Englishman to become popular in
+America," observed Paul, "especially if his condition in life be
+above that of the vulgar. He has only to declare himself pleased with
+America; or, to be sincerely hated, to declare himself displeased."
+
+"And in what does America differ from any other country, in this
+respect?" asked Eve, quickly.
+
+"Not much, certainly; love induces love, and dislike, dislike. There
+is nothing new in all this; but the people of other countries, having
+more confidence in themselves, do not so sensitively inquire what
+others think of them. I believe this contains the whole difference."
+
+"But Sir George does _rather_ like us?" inquired Mr. Howel, with
+interest.
+
+"He likes some of us particularly well," returned Eve. "Do you not
+know that my cousin Grace is to become Mrs.--I beg her pardon--Lady
+Templemore, very shortly?"
+
+"Good God!--Is that possible--Lady Templemore!--Lady Grace
+Templemore!"
+
+"Not Lady Grace Templemore, but Grace, Lady Templemore, and graceful
+Lady Templemore in the bargain."
+
+"And this honour, my dear Miss Eve, they tell me you refused!"
+
+"They tell you wrong then, sir," answered the young lady, a little
+startled with the suddenness and _brusquerie_ of the remark, and yet
+prompt to do justice to all concerned. "Sir George Templemore never
+did me the honour to propose _to_ me, or _for_ me, and consequently
+he _could_ not be refused."
+
+"It is very extraordinary!--I hear you were actually acquainted in
+Europe?"
+
+"We were, Mr. Howel, actually acquainted in Europe, but I knew
+hundreds of persons in Europe, who have never dreamed of asking me to
+marry them."
+
+"This is very strange--quite unlooked for--to marry Miss Van
+Cortlandt! Is Mr. John Effingham in the grounds?"
+
+Eve made no answer, but Paul hurriedly observed--"You will find him
+in the next walk, I think, by returning a short distance, and taking
+the first path to the left."
+
+Mr. Howel did as told, and was soon out of sight.
+
+"That is a most earnest believer in English superiority, and, one may
+say, by his strong desire to give you an English husband, Miss
+Effingham, in English merit."
+
+"It is the weak spot in the character of a very honest man. They tell
+me such instances were much more frequent in this country thirty
+years since, than they are to-day."
+
+"I can easily believe it, for I think I remember some characters of
+the sort, myself. I have heard those who are older than I am, draw a
+distinction like this between the state of feeling that prevailed
+forty years ago, and that which prevails to-day; they say that,
+formerly, England absolutely and despotically thought for America, in
+all but those cases in which the interests of the two nations
+conflicted; and I have even heard competent judges affirm, that so
+powerful was the influence of habit, and so successful the schemes of
+the political managers of the mother country, that even many of those
+who fought for the independence of America, actually doubted of the
+propriety of their acts, as Luther is known to have had fits of
+despondency concerning the justness of the reformation he was
+producing; while, latterly, the leaning towards England is less the
+result of a simple mental dependence,--though of that there still
+remains a disgraceful amount--than of calculation, and a desire in a
+certain class to defeat the dominion of the mass, and to establish
+that of a few in its stead."
+
+"It would, indeed, be a strange consummation of the history of this
+country, to find it becoming monarchical!"
+
+"There are a few monarchists no doubt springing up in the country,
+though almost entirely in a class that only knows the world through
+the imagination and by means of books; but the disposition, in our
+time, is to aristocracy, and not to monarchy. Most men that get to be
+rich, discover that they are no happier for their possessions;
+perhaps every man who has not been trained and prepared to use his
+means properly, is in this category, as our friend the captain would
+call it, and then they begin to long for some other untried
+advantages. The example of the rest of the world is before our own
+wealthy, and, _faute d'imagination_, they imitate because they cannot
+invent. Exclusive political power is also a great ally in the
+accumulation of money, and a portion have the sagacity to see it;
+though I suspect more pine for the vanities of the exclusive classes,
+than for the substance. Your sex, Miss Effingham, as a whole, is not
+above this latter weakness, as I think you must have observed in your
+intercourse with those you met abroad."
+
+"I met with some instances of weakness, in this way," said Eve, with
+reserve, and with the pride of a woman, "though not more, I think,
+than among the men; and seldom, in either case, among those whom we
+are accustomed to consider people of condition at home. The self-
+respect and the habits of the latter, generally preserved them from
+betraying this feebleness of character, if indeed they felt it."
+
+"The Americans abroad may be divided into two great classes; those
+who go for improvement in the sciences or the arts, and those who go
+for mere amusement. As a whole, the former have struck me as being
+singularly respectable, equally removed from an apish servility and a
+swaggering pretension of superiority; while, I fear, a majority of
+the latter have a disagreeable direction towards the vanities."
+
+"I will not affirm the contrary," said Eve, "for frivolity and
+pleasure are only too closely associated in ordinary minds. The
+number of those who prize the elegancies of life, for their intrinsic
+value, is every where small, I should think; and I question if Europe
+is much better off than ourselves, in this respect."
+
+"This may be true, and yet one can only regret that, in a case where
+so much depends on example, the tone of our people was not more
+assimilated to their facts. I do not know whether you were struck
+with the same peculiarity, but, whenever I felt in the mood to hear
+high monarchical and aristocratical doctrines blindly promulgated, I
+used to go to the nearest American Legation."
+
+"I have heard this fact commented on," Eve answered, "and even by
+foreigners, and I confess it has always struck me as singular. Why
+should the agent of a republic make a parade of his anti-republican
+sentiments?"
+
+"That there are exceptions, I will allow; but, after the experience
+of many years, I honestly think that such is the rule. I might
+distrust my own opinion, or my own knowledge; but others, with
+opportunities equal to my own, have come to the same conclusion. I
+have just received a letter from Europe, complaining that an American
+Envoy Extraordinary, who would as soon think of denouncing himself,
+as utter the same sentiments openly at home, has given an opinion
+against the utility of the vote by ballot; and this, too, under
+circumstances that might naturally be thought to produce a practical
+effect."
+
+"_Tant pis_. To me all this is inexplicable!"
+
+"It has its solution, Miss Effingham, like any other problem. In
+ordinary times, extraordinary men seldom become prominent, power
+passing into the hands of clever managers. Now, the very vanity, and
+the petty desires, that betray themselves in glittering uniforms,
+puerile affectations, and feeble imitations of other systems,
+probably induce more than half of those who fill the foreign missions
+to apply for them, and it is no more than we ought to expect that the
+real disposition should betray itself, when there was no longer any
+necessity for hypocrisy."
+
+"But I should think this necessity for hypocrisy would never cease!
+Can it be possible that a people, as much attached to their
+institutions as the great mass of the American nation is known to be,
+will tolerate such a base abandonment of all they cherish!"
+
+"How are they to know any thing about it? It is a startling fact,
+that there is a man at this instant, who has not a single claim to
+such a confidence, either in the way of mind, principles, manners, or
+attainments, filling a public trust abroad, who, on all occasions
+except those which he thinks will come directly before the American
+people, not only proclaims himself opposed to the great principles of
+the institutions but who, in a recent controversy with a foreign
+nation, actually took sides against his own country, informing that
+of the opposing nation, that the administration at home would not be
+supported by the legislative part of the government!"
+
+"And why is not this publicly exposed?"
+
+"_Cui bono_! The presses that have no direct interest in the matter,
+would treat the affair with indifference or levity, while a few would
+mystify the truth. It is quite impossible for any man in a private
+station to make the truth available in any country, in a matter of
+public interest; and those in public stations seldom or never attempt
+it, unless they see a direct party end to be obtained. This is the
+reason that we see so much infidelity to the principles of the
+institutions, among the public agents abroad, for they very well know
+that no one will be able to expose them. In addition to this motive,
+there is so strong a desire in that portion of the community which is
+considered the highest, to effect a radical change in these very
+institutions, that infidelity to them, in their eyes, would be a
+merit, rather than an offence."
+
+"Surely, surely, other nations are not treated in this cavalier
+manner!"
+
+"Certainly not. The foreign agent of a prince, who should whisper a
+syllable against his master, would be recalled with disgrace; but the
+servant of the people is differently situated, since there are so
+many to be persuaded of his guilt. I could always get along with all
+the attacks that the Europeans are so fond of making on the American
+system, but those which they quoted from the mouths of our own
+diplomatic agents."
+
+"Why do not our travellers expose this?"
+
+"Most of them see too little to know anything of it. They dine at a
+diplomatic table, see a star or two, fancy themselves obliged, and
+puff elegancies that have no existence, except in their own brains.
+Some think with the unfaithful, and see no harm in the infidelity.
+Others calculate the injury to themselves, and no small portion would
+fancy it a greater proof of patriotism to turn a sentence in favour
+of the comparative 'energies' and 'superior intelligence' of their
+own people, than to point out this or any other disgraceful fact, did
+they even possess the opportunities to discover it. Though no one
+thinks more highly of these qualities in the Americans, considered in
+connexion with practical things, than myself, no one probably gives
+them less credit for their ability to distinguish between appearances
+and reality, in matters of principle."
+
+"It is probable that were we nearer to the rest of the world, these
+abuses would not exist, for it is certain they are not so openly
+practised at home. I am glad, however, to find that, even while you
+felt some uncertainty concerning your own birth-place, you took so
+much interest in us, as to identify yourself in feeling, at least,
+with the nation."
+
+"There was one moment when I was really afraid that the truth would
+show I was actually born an Englishman--"
+
+"Afraid!" interrupted Eve; "that is a strong word to apply to so
+great and glorious a people."
+
+"We cannot always account for our prejudices, and perhaps this was
+one of mine; and, now that I know that to be an Englishman is not the
+greatest possible merit in your eyes, Miss Effingham, it is in no
+manner lessened."
+
+"In my eyes, Mr. Powis! I do not remember to have expressed any
+partiality for, or any prejudice against the English: so far as I can
+speak of my own feelings, I regard the English the same as any other
+foreign people."
+
+"In words you have not certainly; but acts speak louder than words."
+
+"You are disposed to be mysterious to-night. What act of mine has
+declared _pro_ or _con_ in this important affair."
+
+"You have at least done what, I fear, few of your countrywomen would
+have the moral courage and self-denial to do, and especially those
+who are accustomed to living abroad--refused to be the wife of an
+English baronet of a good estate and respectable family."
+
+"Mr. Powis," said Eve, gravely, "this is an injustice to Sir George
+Templemore, that my sense of right will not permit to go
+uncontradicted, as well as an injustice to my sex and me. As I told
+Mr. Howel, in your presence, that gentleman has never proposed for
+me, and of course cannot have been refused. Nor can I suppose that
+any American gentlewoman can deem so paltry a thing as a baronetcy,
+an inducement to forget her self-respect."
+
+"I fully appreciate your generous modesty, Miss Effingham; but you
+cannot expect that I, to whom Templemore's admiration gave so much
+uneasiness, not to say pain, am to understand you, as Mr. Howel has
+probably done, too broadly. Although Sir George may not have
+positively proposed, his readiness to do so, on the least
+encouragement, was too obvious to be overlooked by a near observer."
+
+Eve was ready to gasp for breath, so completely by surprise was she
+taken, by the calm, earnest, and yet respectful manner, in which Paul
+confessed his jealousy. There was a tremor in his voice, too, usually
+so clear and even, that touched her heart, for feeling responds to
+feeling, as the echo answers sound, when there exists a real sympathy
+between the sexes. She felt the necessity of saying something, and
+yet they had walked some distance, ere it was in her power to utter a
+syllable.
+
+"I fear my presumption has offended you, Miss Effingham," said Paul,
+speaking more like a corrected child, than the lion-hearted young man
+he had proved himself.
+
+There was deep homage in the emotion he betrayed, and Eve, although
+she could barely distinguish his features, was not slow in
+discovering this proof of the extent of her power over his feelings.
+
+"Do not call it presumption," she said; "for, one who has done so
+much for us all, can surely claim some right to take an interest in
+those he has so well served. As for Sir George Templemore, you have
+probably mistaken the feeling created by our common adventures for
+one of more importance. He is warmly and sincerely attached to my
+cousin, Grace Van Cortlandt."
+
+"That he is so now, I fully believe; but that a very different magnet
+first kept him from the Canadas, I am sure.--We treated each other
+generously, Miss Effingham, and had no concealments, during that long
+and anxious night, when all expected that the day would dawn on our
+captivity. Templemore is too manly and honest to deny his former
+desire to obtain you for a wife, and I think even he would admit that
+it depended entirely on yourself to be so, or not."
+
+"This is an act of self-humiliation that he is not called onto
+perform," Eve hurriedly replied; "such allusions, now, are worse than
+useless, and they might pain my cousin, were she to hear them."
+
+"I am mistaken in my friend's character, if he leave his betrothed in
+any doubt, on this subject. Five minutes of perfect frankness now,
+might obviate years of distrust, hereafter."
+
+And would you Mr. Powis, avow a former weakness of this sort, to the
+woman you had finally selected for your wife?"
+
+"I ought not to quote myself for authority, for or against such a
+course, since I have never loved but one, and her with a passion too
+single and too ardent ever to admit of competition. Miss Effingham,
+there would be something worse than affectation--it would be trifling
+with one who is sacred in my eyes, were I now to refrain from
+speaking explicitly, although what I am about to say is forced from
+me by circumstances, rather than voluntary, and is almost uttered
+without a definite object. Have I your permission to proceed?'
+
+"You can scarcely need a permission, being the master of your own
+secrets, Mr. Powis."
+
+Paul, like all men agitated by strong passion, was inconsistent, and
+far from just; and Eve felt the truth of this, even while her mind
+was ingeniously framing excuses for his weaknesses. Still, the
+impression that she was about to listen to a declaration that
+possibly ought never to be made, weighed upon her, and caused her to
+speak with more coldness than she actually felt. As she continued
+silent, however, the young man saw that it had become indispensably
+necessary to be explicit.
+
+"I shall not detain you, Miss Effingham, perhaps vex you," he said,
+"with the history of those early impressions, which have gradually
+grown upon me, until they have become interwoven with my very
+existence. We met, as you know, at Vienna, for the first time. An
+Austrian of rank, to whom I had become known through some fortunate
+circumstances, introduced me into the best society of that capital,
+in which I found you the admiration of all who knew you. My first
+feeling was that of exultation, at seeing a young countrywoman--you
+were then almost a child, Miss Effingham--the greatest attraction of
+a capital celebrated for the beauty and grace of its women----"
+
+"Your national partialities have made you an unjust judge towards
+others, Mr. Powis." Eve interrupted him by saying, though the
+earnestness and passion with which the young man uttered his
+feelings, made music to her ears: "what had a young, frightened,
+half-educated American girl to boast of, when put in competition with
+the finished women of Austria?"
+
+"Her surpassing beauty, her unconscious superiority, her attainments,
+her trembling simplicity and modesty and her meek purity of mind. All
+these did you possess, not only in my eyes, but in those of others;
+for these are subjects on which I dwelt too fondly to be mistaken."
+
+A rocket passed near them at the moment, and, while both were too
+much occupied by the discourse to heed the interruption, its
+transient light enabled Paul to see the flushed cheeks and tearful
+eyes of Eve, as the latter were turned on him, in a grateful
+pleasure, that his ardent praises extorted from her, in despite of
+all her struggles for self-command.
+
+"We will leave to others this comparison, Mr. Powis," she said, "and
+confine ourselves to less doubtful subjects."
+
+"If I am then to speak only of that which is beyond all question, I
+shall speak chiefly of my long cherished, devoted, unceasing love. I
+adored you at Vienna, Miss Effingham, though it was at a distance, as
+one might worship the sun; for, while your excellent father admitted
+me to his society, and I even think honoured me with some portion of
+his esteem, I had but little opportunity to ascertain the value of
+the jewel that was contained in so beautiful a casket; but when we
+met the following summer in Switzerland, I first began truly to love.
+Then I learned the justness of thought, the beautiful candour, the
+perfectly feminine delicacy of your mind; and, although I will not
+say that these qualities were not enhanced in the eyes of so young a
+man, by the extreme beauty of their possessor, I will say that, as
+weighed against each other, I could a thousand times prefer the
+former to the latter, unequalled as the latter almost is, even among
+your own beautiful sex."
+
+"This is presenting flattery in its most seductive form, Powis."
+
+"Perhaps my incoherent and abrupt manner of explaining myself
+deserves a rebuke; though nothing can be farther from my intentions
+than to seem to flatter or in any manner to exaggerate. I intend
+merely to give a faithful history of the state of my feelings, and of
+the progress of my love."
+
+Eve smiled faintly, but very sweetly, as Paul would have thought, had
+the obscurity permitted more than a dim view of her lovely
+countenance.
+
+"Ought I to listen to such praises, Mr. Powis," she asked; "praises
+which only contribute to a self-esteem that is too great already?"
+
+"No one but yourself would say this; but your question does, indeed,
+remind me of the indiscretion that I have fallen into, by losing that
+command of my feelings, in which I have so long exulted. No man
+should make a woman the confidant of his attachment, until he is
+fully prepared to accompany the declaration with an offer of his
+hand;--and such is not my condition."
+
+Eve made no dramatic start, assumed no look of affected surprise, or
+of wounded dignity; but she turned on her lover, her serene eyes,
+with an expression of concern so eloquent, and of a wonder so
+natural, that, could he have seen it, it would probably have
+overcome every difficulty on the spot, and produced the usual
+offer, notwithstanding the difficulty that he seemed to think
+insurmountable.
+
+"And yet," he continued, "I have now said so much, involuntarily as
+it has been, that I feel it not only due to you, but in some measure
+to myself, to add that the fondest wish of my heart, the end and aim
+of all my day-dreams, as well as of my most sober thoughts for the
+future, centre in the common wish to obtain you for a wife."
+
+The eye of Eve fell, and the expression of her countenance changed,
+while a slight but uncontrollable tremor ran through her frame. After
+a short pause, she summoned all her resolution, and in a voice, the
+firmness of which surprised even herself, she asked--
+
+"Powis, to what does all this tend?"
+
+"Well may you ask that question, Miss Effingham! You have every right
+to put it, and the answer, at least, shall add no further cause of
+self-reproach. Give me, I entreat you, but a minute to collect my
+thoughts, and I will endeavour to acquit myself of an imperious duty,
+in a manner more manly and coherent, than I fear has been observed
+for the last ten minutes."
+
+They walked a short distance in profound silence, Eve still under the
+influence of astonishment, in which an uncertain and indefinite dread
+of, she scarce knew what, began to mingle; and Paul, endeavouring to
+quiet the tumult that had been so suddenly aroused within him. The
+latter then spoke:
+
+"Circumstances have always deprived me of the happiness of
+experiencing the tenderness and sympathy of your sex, Miss Effingham,
+and have thrown me more exclusively among the colder and ruder
+spirits of my own. My mother died at the time of my birth, thus
+cutting me off, at once, from one of the dearest of earthly ties. I
+am not certain that I do not exaggerate the loss in consequence of
+the privations I have suffered; but, from the hour when I first
+learned to feel, I have had a yearning for the tender, patient,
+endearing, disinterested love of a mother. You, too, suffered a
+similar loss, at an early period, if I have been correctly
+informed----"
+
+A sob--a stifled, but painful sob, escaped Eve; and, inexpressibly
+shocked, Paul ceased dwelling on his own sources of sorrow, to attend
+to those he had so unintentionally disturbed.
+
+"I have been selfish, dearest Miss Effingham," he exclaimed--"have
+overtaxed your patience--have annoyed you with griefs and losses that
+have no interest for you, which can have no interest, with one happy
+and blessed as yourself."
+
+"No, no, no, Powis--you are unjust to both. I, too, lost my mother
+when a mere child, and never knew her love and tenderness. Proceed; I
+am calmer, and earnestly intreat you to forget my weakness, and to
+proceed."
+
+Paul did proceed, but this brief interruption in which they had
+mingled their sorrows for a common misfortune, struck a new chord of
+feeling, and removed a mountain of reserve and distance, that might
+otherwise have obstructed their growing confidence.
+
+"Cut off in this manner, from my nearest and dearest natural friend,"
+Paul continued, "I was thrown, an infant, into the care of hirelings;
+and, in this at least, my fortune was still more cruel than your own;
+for the excellent woman who has been so happy as to have had the
+charge of your infancy, had nearly the love of a natural mother,
+however she may have been wanting in the attainments of one of your
+own condition in life."
+
+"But we had both of us, our fathers, Mr. Powis. To me, my excellent,
+high principled, affectionate--nay tender father, has been every
+thing. Without him, I should have been truly miserable; and with him,
+notwithstanding these rebellious tears, tears that I must ascribe to
+the infection of your own grief, I have been truly blest."
+
+"Mr. Effingham deserves this from you, but I never knew my father,
+you will remember."
+
+"I am an unworthy confidant, to have forgotten this so soon. Poor
+Powis, you were, indeed, unhappy!"
+
+"He had parted from my mother before my birth and either died soon
+after, or has never deemed his child of sufficient worth to make him
+the subject of interest sufficient to excite a single inquiry into
+his fate."
+
+"Then he never knew that child!" burst from Eve, with a fervour and
+frankness, that set all reserves, whether of womanly training, or of
+natural timidity, at defiance.
+
+"Miss Effingham!--dearest Miss Effingham--Eve, my own Eve, what am I
+to infer from this generous warmth! Do not mislead me! I can bear my
+solitary misery, can brave the sufferings of an isolated existence;
+but I could not live under the disappointments of such a hope, a hope
+fairly quickened by a clear expression from your lips."
+
+"You teach me the importance of caution, Powis, and we will now
+return to your history, and to that confidence of which I shall not
+again prove a faithless repository. For the present at least, I beg
+that you will forget all else."
+
+"A command so kindly--so encouragingly given--do I offend, dearest
+Miss Effingham?" Eve, for the second time in her life, placed her own
+light arm and beautiful hand, through the arm of Paul, discovering a
+bewitching but modest reliance on his worth and truth, by the very
+manner in which she did this simple and every-day act, while she said
+more cheerfully--
+
+"You forget the substance of the command, at the very moment you
+would have me suppose you most disposed to obey it."
+
+"Well, then, Miss Effingham, you shall be more implicitly minded.
+_Why_ my father left my mother so soon after their union, I never
+knew. It would seem that they lived together but a few months, though
+I have the proud consolation of knowing that my mother was blameless.
+For years I suffered the misery of doubt on a point that is ever the
+most tender with man, a distrust of his own mother; but all this has
+been happily, blessedly, cleared up, during my late visit to England.
+It is true that Lady Dunluce was my mother's sister, and as such
+might have been lenient to her failings; but a letter from my father,
+that was written only a month before my mother's death, leaves no
+doubt not only of her blamelessness as a wife, but bears ample
+testimony to the sweetness of her disposition. This letter is a
+precious document for a son to possess, Miss Effingham!"
+
+Eve made no answer; but Paul fancied that he felt another gentle
+pressure of the hand, which, until then, had rested so lightly on his
+own arm, that he scarcely dared to move the latter, lest he might
+lose the precious consciousness of its presence.
+
+"I have other letters from my father to my mother," the young man
+continued, "but none that are so cheering to my heart as this. From
+their general tone, I cannot persuade myself that he ever truly loved
+her. It is a cruel thing, Miss Effingham, for a man to deceive a
+woman on a point like that!"
+
+"Cruel, indeed," said Eve, firmly. "Death itself were preferable to
+such a delusion."
+
+"I think my father deceived himself as well as my mother; for there
+is a strange incoherence and a want of distinctness in some of his
+letters, that caused feelings, keen as mine naturally were on such a
+subject, to distrust his affection from the first."
+
+"Was your mother rich?" Eve asked innocently; for, an heiress
+herself, her vigilance had early been directed to that great motive
+of deception and dishonesty.
+
+"Not in the least. She had little besides her high lineage, and her
+beauty. I have her picture, which sufficiently proves the latter;
+had, I ought rather to say, for it was her miniature, of which I was
+robbed by the Arabs, as you may remember, and I have not seen it
+since. In the way of money, my mother had barely the competency of a
+gentlewoman; nothing more."
+
+The pressure on Paul was more palpable, as spoke of the miniature;
+and he ventured to touch his companion's arm, in order to give it a
+surer hold of his own.
+
+"Mr. Powis was not mercenary, then, and it is a great deal," said
+Eve, speaking as if she were scarcely conscious that she spoke at
+all.
+
+"Mr. Powis!--He was every thing that was noble and disinterested. A
+more generous, or a less selfish man, never existed than Francis
+Powis."
+
+"I thought you never knew your father personally!" exclaimed Eve in
+surprise.
+
+"Nor did I. But, you are in an error, in supposing that my father's
+name was Powis, when it was Assheton."
+
+Paul then explained the manner in which he had been adopted while
+still a child, by a gentleman called Powis, whose name he had taken,
+on finding himself deserted by his own natural parent, and to whose
+fortune he had succeeded, on the death of his voluntary protector.
+
+"I bore the name of Assheton until Mr. Powis took me to France, when
+he advised me to assume his own, which I did the more readily, as he
+thought he had ascertained that my father was dead, and that he had
+bequeathed the whole of a very considerable estate to his nephews and
+nieces, making no allusion to me in his will, and seemingly anxious
+even to deny his marriage; at least, he passed among his
+acquaintances for a bachelor to his dying day."
+
+"There is something so unusual and inexplicable in all this, Mr.
+Powis, that it strikes me you have been to blame, in not inquiring
+more closely into the circumstances than, by your own account I
+should think had been done."
+
+"For a long time, for many bitter years, I was afraid to inquire,
+lest I should learn something injurious to a mother's name. Then
+there was the arduous and confined service of my profession, which
+kept me in distant seas: and the last journey and painful
+indisposition of my excellent benefactor, prevented even the wish to
+inquire after my own family. The offended pride of Mr. Powis, who was
+justly hurt at the cavalier manner in which my father's relatives met
+his advances, aided in alienating me from that portion of my
+relatives, and put a stop to all additional proffers of intercourse
+from me. They even affected to doubt the fact that my father had ever
+married."
+
+"But of that you had proof?" Eve earnestly asked.
+
+"Unanswerable. My aunt Dunluce was present at the ceremony, and I
+possess the certificate given to my mother by the clergyman who
+officiated. Is it not strange, Miss Effingham, that with all these
+circumstances in favour of my legitimacy, even Lady Dunluce and her
+family, until lately, had doubts of the fact."
+
+"That is indeed unaccountable, your aunt having witnessed the
+ceremony."
+
+"Very true; but some circumstances, a little aided perhaps by the
+strong desire of her husband, General Ducie, to obtain the revival of
+a barony that was in abeyance, and of which she would be the only
+heir, assuming that my rights were invalid, inclined her to believe
+that my father was already married, when he entered into the solemn
+contract with my mother. But from that curse too, I have been happily
+relieved."
+
+"Poor Powis!" said Eve, with a sympathy that her voice expressed more
+clearly even than her words; "you have, indeed, suffered cruelly, for
+one so young."
+
+"I have learned to bear it, dearest Miss Effingham, and have stood so
+long a solitary and isolated being, one in whom none have taken any
+interest--"
+
+"Nay, say not that--_we_, at least, have always felt an interest in
+you--have always esteemed you, and now have learned to--"
+
+"Learned to--?"
+
+"Love you," said Eve, with a steadiness that afterwards astonished
+herself; but she felt that a being so placed, was entitled to be
+treated with a frankness different from the reserve that it is usual
+for her sex to observe on similar occasions.
+
+"Love!" cried Paul, dropping her arm. "Miss Effingham!--Eve--but that
+_we_!"
+
+"I mean my dear father--cousin Jack--myself."
+
+"Such a feeling will not heal a wound like mine. A love that is
+shared with even such men as your excellent father, and your worthy
+cousin, will not make me happy. But, why should I, unowned, bearing a
+name to which I have no legal title, and virtually without relatives,
+aspire to one like you!"
+
+The windings of the path had brought them near a window of the house,
+whence a stream of strong light gleamed upon the sweet countenance of
+Eve, as raising her eyes to those of her companion, with a face
+bathed in tears, and flushed with natural feeling and modesty, the
+struggle between which even heightened her loveliness, she smiled an
+encouragement that it was impossible to misconstrue.
+
+"Can I believe my senses! Will _you_--_do_ you--_can_ you listen to
+the suit of one like me?" the young man exclaimed, as he hurried his
+companion past the window, lest some interruption might destroy his
+hopes.
+
+"Is there any sufficient reason why I should not, Powis?"
+
+"Nothing but my unfortunate situation in respect to my family, my
+comparative poverty, and my general unworthiness."
+
+"Your unfortunate situation in respect to your relatives would, if
+any thing, be a new and dearer tie with us; your comparative poverty
+is merely comparative, and can be of no account, where there is
+sufficient already; and as for your general unworthiness, I fear it
+will find more than an offset, in that of the girl you have so rashly
+chosen from the rest of the world."
+
+"Eve--dearest Eve--" said Paul, seizing both her hands, and stopping
+her at the entrance of some shrubbery, that densely shaded the path,
+and where the little light that fell from the stars enabled him still
+to trace her features--"you will not leave me in doubt on a subject
+of this nature--am I really so blessed?"
+
+"If accepting the faith and affection of a heart that is wholly
+yours, Powis, can mate you happy, your sorrows will be at an end--"
+
+"But your father?" said the young man, almost breathless in his
+eagerness to know all.
+
+"Is here to confirm what his daughter has just declared," said Mr.
+Effingham, coming out of the shrubbery beyond them, and laying a hand
+kindly on Paul's shoulder. "To find that you so well understand each
+other, Powis, removes from my mind one of the greatest anxieties I
+have ever experienced. My cousin John, as he was bound to do, has
+made me acquainted with all you have, told him of your past life, and
+there remains nothing further to be revealed. We have known you for
+years, and receive you into our family with as free a welcome as we
+could receive any precious boon from Providence."
+
+"Mr. Effingham!--dear sir," said Paul, almost gasping between
+surprise and rapture--"this is indeed beyond all my hopes--and this
+generous frankness too, in your lovely daughter--"
+
+Paul's hands had been transferred to those of the father, he knew not
+how; but releasing them hurriedly, he now turned in quest of Eve
+again, and found she had fled. In the short interval between the
+address of her father and the words of Paul, she had found means to
+disappear, leaving the gentlemen together. The young man would have
+followed, but the cooler head of Mr. Effingham perceiving that the
+occasion was favourable to a private conversation with his accepted
+son-in-law, and quite as unfavourable to one, or at least to a very
+rational one, between the lovers, he quietly took the young man's
+arm, and led him towards a more private walk. There half an hour of
+confidential discourse calmed the feelings of both, and rendered Paul
+Powis one of the happiest of human beings.
+
+Chapter XXIV.
+
+  "You shall do marvellous wisely, good Reynaldo, Before you visit
+  him, to make inquiry Of his behaviour."
+
+  HAMLET
+
+Ann Sidley was engaged among the dresses of Eve, as she loved to be,
+although Annette held her taste in too low estimation ever to permit
+her to apply a needle, or even to fit a robe to the beautiful form
+that was to wear it, when our heroine glided into the room and sunk
+upon a sofa. Eve was too much absorbed with her own feelings to
+observe the presence of her quiet unobtrusive old nurse, and too much
+accustomed to her care and sympathy to heed it, had it been seen. For
+a moment she remained, her face still suffused with blushes, her
+hands lying before her folded, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, and
+then the pent emotions found an outlet in a flood of tears.
+
+Poor Ann could not have felt more shocked, had she heard of any
+unexpected calamity, than she was at this sudden outbreaking of
+feeling in her child. She went to her, and bent over her with the
+solicitude of a mother, as she inquired into the causes of her
+apparent sorrow.
+
+"Tell me, Miss Eve, and it will relieve your mind," said the faithful
+woman; "your dear mother had such feelings sometimes, and I never
+dared to question her about them; but you are my own child, and
+nothing can grieve you without grieving me."
+
+The eyes of Eve were brilliant, her face continued to be suffused,
+and the smile which she gave through her tears was so bright, as to
+leave her poor attendant in deep perplexity as to the cause of a gush
+of feeling that was very unusual in one of the other's regulated
+mind.
+
+"It is not grief, dear Nanny,"--Eve at length murmured--"any thing
+but that! I am not unhappy. Oh! no; as far from unhappiness as
+possible."
+
+"God be praised it is so, ma'am! I was afraid that this affair of the
+English gentleman and Miss Grace might not prove agreeable to you,
+for he has not behaved as handsomely as he might, in that
+transaction."
+
+"And why not, my poor Nanny?--I have neither claim, nor the wish to
+possess a claim, on Sir George Templemore. His selection of my cousin
+has given me sincere satisfaction, rather than pain; were he a
+countryman of our own, I should say unalloyed satisfaction, for I
+firmly believe he will strive to make her happy."
+
+Nanny now looked at her young mistress, then at the floor; at her
+young mistress again, and afterwards at a rocket that was sailing
+athwart the sky. Her eyes, however, returned to those of Eve, and
+encouraged by the bright beam of happiness that was glowing in the
+countenance she so much loved, she ventured to say--
+
+"If Mr. Powis were a more presuming gentleman than he is, ma'am--"
+
+"You mean a less modest, Nanny," said Eve, perceiving that her nurse
+paused.
+
+"Yes, ma'am--one that thought more of himself, and less of other
+people, is what I wish to say."
+
+"And were this the case?"
+
+"I might think _he_ would find the heart to say what I know he
+feels."
+
+"And did he find the heart to say what you know he feels, what does
+Ann Sidley think should be my answer?"
+
+"Oh, ma'am, I know it would be just as it ought to be. I cannot
+repeat what ladies say on such occasions, but I know that it is what
+makes the hearts of the gentlemen leap for joy."
+
+There are occasions in which woman can hardly dispense with the
+sympathy of woman. Eve loved her father most tenderly, had more than
+the usual confidence in him, for she had never known a mother; but
+had the present conversation been with him, notwithstanding all her
+reliance on his affection, her nature would have shrunk from pouring
+out her feelings as freely as she might have done with her other
+parent, had not death deprived her of such a blessing. Between our
+heroine and Ann Sidley, on the other hand, there existed a confidence
+of a nature so peculiar, as to require a word of explanation before
+we exhibit its effects. In all that related to physical wants, Ann
+had been a mother, or even more than a mother to Eve, and this alone
+had induced great personal dependence in the one, and a sort of
+supervisory care in the other, that had brought her to fancy she was
+responsible for the bodily health and well-doing of her charge. But
+this was not all. Nanny had been the repository of Eve's childish
+griefs, the confidant of her girlish secrets; and though the years of
+the latter soon caused her to be placed under the management of those
+who were better qualified to store her mind, this communication never
+ceased; the high-toned and educated young woman reverting with
+unabated affection, and a reliance that nothing could shake, to the
+long-tried tenderness of the being who had watched over her infancy.
+The effect of such an intimacy was often amusing; the one party
+bringing to the conferences, a mind filled with the knowledge suited
+to her sex and station, habits that had been formed in the best
+circles of christendom, and tastes that had been acquired in schools
+of high reputation; and the other, little more than her single-
+hearted love, a fidelity that ennobled her nature, and a simplicity
+that betokened perfect purity of thought Nor was this extraordinary
+confidence without its advantages to Eve; for, thrown so early among
+the artificial and calculating, it served to keep her own
+ingenuousness of character active, and prevented that cold, selfish,
+and unattractive sophistication, that mere women of fashion are apt
+to fall into, from their isolated and factitious mode of existence.
+When Eve, therefore, put the questions to her nurse, that have
+already been mentioned, it was more with a real wish to know how the
+latter would view a choice on which her own mind was so fully made
+up, than any silly trifling on a subject that engrossed so much of
+her best affections.
+
+"But you have not told me, dear Nanny," she continued, "what _you_
+would have that answer be. Ought I, for instance, ever to quit my
+beloved father?"
+
+"What necessity would there be for that, ma'am? Mr. Powis has no home
+of his own; and, for that matter, scarcely any country----"
+
+"How can you know this, Nanny?" demanded Eve, with the jealous
+sensitiveness of a young love.
+
+"Why, Miss Eve, his man says this much, and he has lived with him
+long enough to know it, if he had a home. Now, I seldom sleep without
+looking back at the day, and often have my thoughts turned to Sir
+George Temple more and Mr. Powis; and when I have remembered that the
+first had a house and a home, and that the last had neither, it has
+always seemed to me that _he_ ought to be the one."
+
+"And then, in all this matter, you have thought of convenience, and
+what might be agreeable to others, rather than of me."
+
+"Miss Eve!"
+
+"Nay, dearest Nanny, forgive me; I know your last thought, in every
+thing, is for yourself. But surely, the mere circumstance that he had
+no home ought not to be a sufficient reason for selecting any man,
+for a husband. With most women it would be an objection."
+
+"I pretend to know very little of these feelings, Miss Eve. I have
+been wooed, I acknowledge; and once I do think I might have been
+tempted to marry, had it not been for a particular circumstance."
+
+"You! You marry, Ann Sidley!" exclaimed Eve, to whom the bare idea
+seemed as odd and unnatural, as that her own father should forget her
+mother, and take a second wife. "This is altogether new, and I should
+be glad to know what the lucky circumstance was, which prevented
+what, to me, might have proved so great a calamity."
+
+"Why, ma'am, I said to myself, what does a woman do, who marries? She
+vows to quit all else to go with her husband, and to love him before
+father and mother, and all other living beings on earth--is it not
+so, Miss Eve?"
+
+"I believe it is so, indeed, Nanny--nay, I am quite certain it is
+so," Eve answered, the colour deepening on her cheek, as she gave
+this opinion to her old nurse, with the inward consciousness that she
+had just experienced some of the happiest moments of her life,
+through the admission of a passion that thus overshadowed all the
+natural affections. "It is, truly? as you say."
+
+"Well, ma'am, I investigated my feelings, I believe they call it, and
+after a proper trial, I found that I loved you so much better than
+any one else, that I could not, in conscience, make the vows."
+
+"Dearest Nanny! my kind, good, faithful old nurse! let me hold you in
+my arms: and, I, selfish, thoughtless, heartless girl, would forget
+the circumstance that would be most likely to keep us together, for
+the remainder of our lives! Hist! there is a tap at the door It is
+Mrs. Bloomfield; I know her light step. Admit her, my kind Ann, and
+leave us together."
+
+The bright searching eye of Mrs. Bloomfield was riveted on her young
+friend, as she advanced into the room; and her smile, usually so gay
+and sometimes ironical, was now thoughtful and kind.
+
+"Well, Miss Effingham," she cried, in a manner that her looks
+contradicted, "am I to condole with you," or to congratulate?--For a
+more sudden, or miraculous change did I never before witness in a
+young lady, though whether it be for the better or the worse----These
+are ominous words, too--for 'better or worse, for richer or
+poorer'----"
+
+"You are in fine spirits this evening, my dear Mrs. Bloomfield, and
+appear to have entered into the gaieties of the Fun of Fire, with all
+your--"
+
+"Might, will be a homely, but an expressive word. Your Templeton Fun
+of Fire is fiery fun, for it has cost us something like a general
+conflagration. Mrs. Hawker has been near a downfall, like your great
+namesake, by a serpent's coming too near her dress; one barn, I hear,
+has actually been in a blaze, and Sir George Templemore's heart is in
+cinders. Mr. John Effingham has been telling me that he should not
+have been a bachelor, had there been two Mrs. Bloomfields in the
+world, and Mr. Powis looks like a rafter dugout of Herculaneum,
+nothing but coal."
+
+"And what occasions this pleasantry?" asked Eve, so composed in
+manner that her friend was momentarily deceived.
+
+Mrs. Bloomfield took a seat on the sofa, by the side of our heroine,
+and regarding her steadily for near a minute, she continued--
+
+"Hypocrisy and Eve Effingham can have little in common, and my ears
+must have deceived me."
+
+"Your ears, dear Mrs. Bloomfield!"
+
+"My ears, dear Miss Effingham. I very well know the character of an
+eaves-dropper, but if gentlemen will make passionate declarations in
+the walk of a garden, with nothing but a little shrubbery between his
+ardent declarations and the curiosity of those who may happen to be
+passing, they must expect to be overheard."
+
+Eve's colour had gradually increased as her friend proceeded; and
+when the other ceased speaking, as bright a bloom glowed on her
+countenance, as had shone there when she first entered the room.
+
+"May I ask the meaning of all this?" she said, with an effort to
+appear calm.
+
+"Certainly, my dear; and you shall also know the _feelings_ that
+prompt it, as well as the meaning," returned Mrs. Bloomfield, kindly
+taking Eve's hand in a way to show that she did not mean to trifle
+further on a subject that was of so much moment to her young friend.
+"Mr. John Effingham and myself were star-gazing at a point where two
+walks approach each other, just as you and Mr. Powis were passing in
+the adjoining path. Without absolutely stepping our ears, it was
+quite impossible not to hear a portion of your conversation. We both
+tried to behave honourably; for I coughed, and your kinsman actually
+hemmed, but we were unheeded."
+
+"Coughed and hemmed!" repeated Eve, in greater confusion than ever.
+"There must be some mistake, dear Mrs. Bloomfield, as I remember to
+have heard no such signals."
+
+"Quite likely, my love, for there was a time when I too had ears for
+only one voice; but you can have affidavits to the fact, _à la mode
+de New England_, if you require them. Do not mistake my motive,
+nevertheless, Miss Effingham, which is any thing but vulgar
+curiosity"--here Mrs. Bloomfield looked so kind and friendly, that
+Eve took both her hands and pressed them to her heart--"you are
+motherless; without even a single female connexion of a suitable age
+to consult with on such an occasion, and fathers after all are but
+men----"
+
+"Mine is as kind, and delicate, and tender, as any woman can be, Mrs.
+Bloomfield."
+
+"I believe it all, though he may not be quite as quick-sighted, in an
+affair of this nature.--Am I at liberty to speak to you as if I were
+an elder sister?"
+
+"Speak, Mrs. Bloomfield, as frankly as you please, but leave me the
+mistress of my answers."
+
+"It is, then, as I suspected," said Mrs. Bloomfield, in a sort of
+musing manner; "the men have been won over, and this young creature
+has absolutely been left without a protector in the most important
+moment of her life!"
+
+"Mrs. Bloomfield!--What does this mean?--What _can_ it mean?"
+
+"It means merely general principles, child; that your father and
+cousin have been parties concerned, instead of vigilant sentinels;
+and, with all their pretended care, that you have been left to grope
+your way in the darkness of female uncertainty, with one of the most
+pleasing young men in the country constantly before you, to help the
+obscurity."
+
+It is a dreadful moment, when we are taught to doubt the worth of
+those we love; and Eve became pale as death, as she listened to the
+words of her friend. Once before, on the occasion of Paul's return to
+England, she had felt a pang of that sort, though reflection, and a
+calm revision of all his acts and words since they first met in
+Germany, had enabled her to get the better of indecision, and when
+she first saw him on the mountain, nearly every unpleasant
+apprehension and distrust had been dissipated by an effort of pure
+reason. His own explanations had cleared up the unpleasant affair,
+and, from that moment, she had regarded him altogether with the eyes
+of a confiding partiality. The speech of Mrs. Bloomfield now sounded
+like words of doom to her, and, for an instant, her friend was
+frightened with the effects of her own imperfect communication. Until
+that moment Mrs. Bloomfield had formed no just idea of the extent to
+which the feelings of Eve were interested in Paul, for she had but an
+imperfect knowledge of their early association in Europe, and she
+sincerely repented having introduced the subject at all. It was too
+late to retreat, however, and, first folding Eve in her arms, and
+kissing her cold forehead, she hastened to repair a part, at least,
+of the mischief she had done.
+
+"My words have been too strong, I fear," she said, "but such is my
+general horror of the manner in which the young of our sex, in this
+country, are abandoned to the schemes of the designing and selfish of
+the other, that I am, perhaps, too sensitive when I see any one that
+I love thus exposed. You are known, my dear, to be one of the richest
+heiresses of the country; and, I blush to say that no accounts of
+European society that we have, make fortune-hunting a more regular
+occupation there, than it has got to be here."
+
+The paleness left Eve's face, and a look of slight displeasure
+succeeded.
+
+"Mr. Powis is no fortune-hunter, Mrs. Bloomfield," she said,
+steadily; "his whole conduct for three years has been opposed to such
+a character; and, then, though not absolutely rich, perhaps, he has a
+gentleman's income, and is removed from the necessity of being
+reduced to such an act of baseness."
+
+"I perceive my error, but it is now too late to retreat. I do not say
+that Mr. Powis is a fortune-hunter, but there are circumstances
+connected with his history, that you ought at least to know, and that
+immediately. I have chosen to speak to you, rather than to speak to
+your father, because I thought you might like a female confidant on
+such occasion, in preference even to your excellent natural
+protector. The idea of. Mrs. Hawker occurred to me, on account of her
+age; but I did not feel authorised to communicate to her a secret of
+which I had myself become so accidentally possessed,'
+
+"I appreciate your motive fully, dearest Mrs. Bloomfield," said Eve,
+smiling with all her native sweetness, and greatly relieved, for she
+now began to think that too keen a sensitiveness on the subject of
+Paul had unnecessarily alarmed her, "and beg there may be no reserves
+between us. If you know a reason why Mr. Powis should not be received
+as a suitor, I entreat you to mention it."
+
+"Is he Mr. Powis at all?"
+
+Again Eve smiled, to Mrs. Bloomfield's great, surprise, for, as the
+latter had put the question with sincere reluctance, she was
+astonished at the coolness with which it was received.
+
+"He is not Mr. Powis, legally perhaps, though he might be, but that
+he dislikes the publicity of an application to the legislature. His
+paternal name is Assheton."
+
+"You know his history, then!"
+
+"There has been no reserve on the part of Mr. Powis; least of all,
+any deception."
+
+Mrs. Bloomfield appeared perplexed, even distressed; and there was a
+brief space, during which her mind was undecided as to the course she
+ought to take. That she had committed an error by attempting a
+consultation, in a matter of the heart, with one of her own sex,
+after the affections were engaged, she discovered when it was too
+late; but she prized Eve's friendship too much, and had too just a
+sense of what was due to herself, to leave the affair where it was,
+or without clearing up her own unasked agency in it.
+
+"I rejoice to learn this," she said, as soon as her doubts had ended,
+"for frankness, while it is one of the safest, is one of the most
+beautiful traits in human character; but beautiful though it be, it
+is one that the other sex uses least to our own."
+
+"Is our own too ready to use it to the other?"
+
+"Perhaps not: it might be better for both parties, were there less
+deception practised during the period of courtship, generally: but as
+this is hopeless, and might, destroy some of the most pleasing
+illusions of life, we will not enter into a treatise on the frauds of
+Cupid, Now to my own confessions, which I make all the more
+willingly, because I know they are uttered to the ear of one of a
+forgiving temperament, and who is disposed to view even my follies
+favourably."
+
+The kind but painful smile of Eve, assured the speaker she was not
+mistaken, and she continued, after taking time to read the expression
+of the countenance of her young friend--
+
+"In common with all of New-York, that town of babbling misses, who
+prattle as water flows, without consciousness or effort, and of
+whiskered masters, who fancy Broadway the world, and the flirtations
+of miniature drawing-rooms, human nature, I believed, on your return
+from Europe, that an accepted suitor followed in your train, in the
+person of Sir George Templemore."
+
+"Nothing in my deportment, or in that of Sir George, or in that of
+any of my family, could justly have given rise to such a notion,"
+said Eve, quickly.
+
+"Justly! What has justice, or truth, or even probability, to do with
+a report, of which love and matrimony are the themes? Do you not know
+_society_ better than to fancy this improbability, child?"
+
+"I know that our own sex would better consult their own dignity and
+respectability, my dear Mrs. Bloomfield, if they talked less of such
+matters; and that they would be more apt to acquire the habits of
+good taste, not to say of good principles, if they confined their
+strictures more to things and sentiments than they do, and meddled
+less with persons."
+
+"And pray, is there no tittle-tattle, no scandal, no commenting on
+one's neighbours, in other civilized nations besides this?"
+
+"Unquestionably; though I believe, as a rule, it is every where
+thought to be inherently vulgar, and a proof of low associations."
+
+"In that, we are perfectly of a mind; for, if there be any thing that
+betrays a consciousness of inferiority, it is our rendering others of
+so much obvious importance to ourselves, as to make them the subjects
+of our constant conversation. We may speak of virtues, for therein we
+pay an homage to that which is good; but when we come to dwell on
+personal faults, it is rather a proof that we have a silent
+conviction of the superiority of the subject of our comments to
+ourselves, either in character, talents, social position, or
+something else that is deemed essential, than of our distaste for his
+failings. Who, for instance, talks scandal of his grocer, or of his
+shoemaker? No, no, our pride forbids this; we always make our betters
+the subject of our strictures by preference, taking up with our
+equals only when we can get none of a higher class."
+
+"This quite reconciles me to having been given to Sir George
+Templemore, by the world of New-York," said Eve, smiling.
+
+"And well it may, for they who have prattled of your engagement, have
+done so principally because they are incapable of maintaining a
+conversation on any thing else. But, all this time, I fear I stand
+accused in your mind, of having given advice unasked, and of feeling
+an alarm in an affair that affected others, instead of myself, which
+is the very sin that we lay at the door of our worthy Manhattanese.
+In common with all around me, then, I fancied Sir George Templemore
+an accepted lover, and, by habit, had gotten to associate you
+together in my pictures. Oh my arrival here, however, I will confess
+that Mr. Powis, whom, you will remember, I had never seen before,
+struck me as much the most dangerous man.--Shall I own all my
+absurdity?"
+
+"Even to the smallest shade."
+
+"Well, then, I confess to having supposed that, while the excellent
+father believed you were in a fair way to become Lady Templemore, the
+equally excellent daughter thought the other suitor, infinitely the
+most agreeable person."
+
+"What! in contempt of a betrothal?"
+
+"Of course I, at once, ascribed that part of the report to the usual
+embellishments. We do not like to be deceived in our calculations, or
+to discover that even our gossip has misled us. In pure resentment at
+my own previous delusion, I began to criticise this Mr. Powis--"
+
+"Criticise, Mrs. Bloomfield!"
+
+"To find fault with him, my dear; to try to think he was not just the
+handsomest and most engaging young man I had ever seen; to imagine
+what he ought to be, in place of what he was; and among other things,
+to inquire _who_ he was?"
+
+"You did not think proper to ask that question of any of _us_," said
+Eve, gravely.
+
+"I did not; for I discovered by instinct, or intuition, or
+conjecture--they mean pretty much the same thing, I believe--that
+there was a mystery about him; something that even his Templeton
+friends did not quite understand, and a lucky thought occurred of
+making my inquiries of another person."
+
+"They were answered satisfactorily," said Eve, looking up at her
+friend, with the artless confidence that marks her sex, when the
+affections have gotten the mastery of reason.
+
+"_Cosi, cosi_. Bloomfield has a brother who is in the Navy, as you
+know, and I happened to remember that he had once spoken of an
+officer of the name of Powis, who had performed a clever thing in the
+West Indies, when they were employed together against the pirates. I
+wrote to him one of my usual letters, that are compounded of all
+things in nature and art, and took an occasion to allude to a certain
+Mr. Paul Powis, with a general remark that he had formerly served,
+together with a particular inquiry if he knew any thing about him.
+All this, no doubt, you think very officious; but believe me, dear
+Eve, where there was as much interest as I felt and feel in you, it
+was very natural."
+
+"So far from entertaining resentment, I am grateful for your concern,
+especially as I know it was manifested cautiously, and without any
+unpleasant allusions to third persons."
+
+"In that respect I believe I did pretty well. Tom Bloomfield--I beg
+his pardon, Captain Bloomfield, for so he calls himself, at present--
+knows Mr. Powis well; or, rather _did_ know him, for they have not
+met for years, and he speaks of his personal qualities and
+professional merit highly, but takes occasion to remark that there
+was some mystery connected with his birth, as, before he joined the
+service he understood he was called Assheton, and at a later day,
+Powis, and this without any public law, or public avowal of a motive.
+Now, it struck me that Eve Effingham ought not to be permitted to
+form a connection with a man so unpleasantly situated, without being
+apprised of the fact. I was waiting for a proper occasion to do this
+ungrateful office myself, when accident made me acquainted with what
+has passed this evening, and perceiving that there was no time to
+lose, I came hither, more led by interest in you, my dear, perhaps,
+than by discretion."
+
+"I thank you sincerely for this kind concern in my welfare, dear Mrs.
+Bloomfield, and give you full credit for the motive. Will you permit
+me to inquire how much you know of that which passed this evening?"
+
+"Simply that Mr. Powis is desperately in love, a declaration that I
+take it is always dangerous to the peace of mind of a young woman,
+when it comes from a very engaging young man."
+
+"And my part of the dialogue--" Eve blushed to the eyes as she asked
+this question, though she made a great effort to appear calm--"my
+answer?"
+
+"There was too much of woman in me--of true, genuine, loyal, native
+woman, Miss Effingham, to listen to that had there been an
+opportunity. We were but a moment near enough to hear any thing,
+though that moment sufficed to let us know the state of feelings of
+the gentleman. I ask no confidences, my dear Eve, and now that I have
+made my explanations, lame though they be, I will kiss you and repair
+to the drawing-room, where we shall both be soon missed. Forgive me,
+if I have seemed impertinent in my interference, and continue to
+ascribe it to its true motive."
+
+"Stop, Mrs. Bloomfield, I entreat, for a single moment; I wish to say
+a word before we part. As you have been accidentally made acquainted
+with Mr. Powis's sentiments towards me, it is no more than just that
+you should know the nature of mine towards him----"
+
+Eve paused involuntarily, for, though she had commenced her
+explanation, with a firm intention to do justice to Paul, the
+bashfulness of her sex held her tongue tied, at the very moment her
+desire to speak was the strongest. An effort conquered the weakness,
+and the warm-hearted, generous-minded girl succeeded in commanding
+her voice.
+
+"I cannot allow you to go away with the impression, that there is a
+shade of any sort on the conduct of Mr. Powis," she said. "So far
+from desiring to profit by the accidents that have placed it in his
+power to render us such essential service, he has never spoken of his
+love until this evening, and then under circumstances in which
+feeling, naturally, perhaps I might say uncontrollably, got the
+ascendency."
+
+"I believe it all, for I feel certain Eve Effingham would not bestow
+her heart heedlessly."
+
+"Heart!--Mrs. Bloomfield!"
+
+"Heart, my dear; and now I insist on the subject's being dropped, at
+least, for the present. Your decision is probably not yet made--you
+are not yet an hour in possession of your suitor's secret, and
+prudence demands deliberation. I shall hope to see you in the
+drawing-room, and until then, adieu."
+
+Mrs. Bloomfield signed for silence, and quitted the room with the
+same light tread as that with which she had entered it.
+
+Chapter XXV.
+
+  "To show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very
+  age and body of the time, his form and pressure."
+
+  SHAKSPEARE.
+
+When Mrs. Bloomfield entered the drawing-room, she found nearly the
+whole party assembled. The Fun of Fire had ceased, and the rockets no
+longer gleamed athwart the sky; but the blaze of artificial light
+within, was more than a substitute for that which had so lately
+existed without.
+
+Mr. Effingham and Paul were conversing by themselves, in a window-
+seat, while John Effingham, Mrs. Hawker, and Mr. Howel were in an
+animated discussion on a sofa; Mr. Wenham had also joined the party,
+and was occupied with Captain Ducie, though not so much so as to
+prevent occasional glances at the trio just mentioned. Sir George
+Templemore and Grace Van Cortlandt were walking together in the great
+hall, and were visible through the open door, as they passed and
+repassed.
+
+"I am glad of your appearance among us, Mrs. Bloomfield," said John
+Effingham, "for, certainly more Anglo-mania never existed than that
+which my good friend Howel manifests this evening, and I have hopes
+that your eloquence may persuade him out of some of those notions, on
+which my logic has fallen like seed scattered by the way-side."
+
+"I can have little hopes of success where Mr. John Effingham has
+failed."
+
+"I am far from being certain of that; for, somehow Howel has taken up
+the notion that I have gotten a grudge against England, and he
+listens to all I say with distrust and distaste."
+
+"Mr. John uses strong language habitually, ma'am," cried Mr. Howel,
+"and you will make some allowances for a vocabulary that has no very
+mild terms in it; though, to be frank, I do confess that he seems
+prejudiced on the subject of that great nation."
+
+"What is the point in immediate controversy, gentlemen?" asked Mrs.
+Bloomfield, taking a seat.
+
+"Why here is a review of a late American work, ma'am, and I insist
+that the author is skinned alive, whereas, Mr. John insists that the
+reviewer exposes only his own rage, the work having a national
+character, and running counter to the reviewer's feelings and
+interests."
+
+"Nay, I protest against this statement of the case, for I affirm that
+the reviewer exposes a great deal more than his rage, since his
+imbecility, ignorance, and dishonesty, are quite as apparent as any
+thing else."
+
+"I have read the article," said Mrs. Bloomfield, after glancing her
+eye at the periodical, "and I must say that I take sides with Mr.
+John Effingham in his opinion of its character."
+
+"But do you not perceive, ma'am, that this is the idol of the
+nobility and gentry; the work that is more in favour with people of
+consequence in England than any other. Bishops are said to write for
+it!"
+
+"I know it is a work expressly established to sustain one of the most
+factitious political systems that ever existed, and that it
+sacrifices every high quality to attain its end."
+
+"Mrs. Bloomfield, you amaze me! The first writers of Great Britain
+figure in its pages."
+
+"That I much question, in the first place; but even if it were so, it
+would be but a shallow mystification. Although a man of character
+might write one article in a work of this nature, it does not follow
+that a man of no character does not write the next. The principles of
+the communications of a periodical are as different as their
+talents."
+
+"But the editor is a pledge for all.--The editor of this review is an
+eminent writer himself."
+
+"An eminent writer may be a very great knave, in the first place, and
+one fact is worth a thousand conjectures in such a matter. But we do
+not know that there is any responsible editor to works of this nature
+at all, for there is no name given in the title-page, and nothing is
+more common than vague declarations of a want of this very
+responsibility. But if I can prove to you that this article _cannot_
+have been written by a man of common honesty, Mr. Howel, what will
+you then say to the responsibility of your editor?"
+
+"In that case I shall be compelled to admit that he had no connexion
+with it."
+
+"Any thing in preference to giving up the beloved idol!" said John
+Effingham laughing. "Why not add at once, that he is as great a knave
+as the writer himself? I am glad, however, that Tom Howel has fallen
+into such good hands, Mrs. Bloomfield, and I devoutly pray you may
+not spare him."
+
+We have said that Mrs. Bloomfield had a rapid perception of things
+and principles, that amounted almost to intuition. She had read the
+article in question, and, as she glanced her eyes through its pages,
+had detected its fallacies and falsehoods, in almost every sentence.
+Indeed, they had not been put together with ordinary skill, the
+writer having evidently presumed on the easiness of the class of
+readers who generally swallowed his round assertions, and were so
+clumsily done that any one who had not the faith to move mountains
+would have seen through most of them without difficulty. But Mr.
+Howel belonged to another school, and he was so much accustomed to
+shut his eyes to palpable mystification mentioned by Mrs. Bloomfield,
+that a lie, which, advanced in most works, would have carried no
+weight with it, advanced in this particular periodical became
+elevated to the dignity of truth.
+
+Mrs. Bloomfield turned to an article on America, in the periodical in
+question, and read from it several disparaging expressions concerning
+Mr. Howel's native country, one of which was, "The American's first
+plaything is the rattle-snake's tail."
+
+"Now, what do you think of this assertion in particular, Mr. Howel?"
+she asked, reading the words we have just quoted.
+
+"Oh! that is said in mere pleasantry--it is only wit."
+
+"Well, then, what do you think of it as wit?"
+
+"Well, well, it may not be of a very pure water, but the best of men
+are unequal at all times, and more especially in their wit."
+
+"Here," continued Mrs. Bloomfield, pointing to another paragraph, "is
+a positive statement or misstatement, which makes the cost of the
+'civil department of the United States Government,' about six times
+more than it really is."
+
+"Our government is so extremely mean, that I ascribe that error to
+generosity."
+
+"Well," continued the lady, smiling, "here the reviewer asserts that
+Congress passed a law _limiting_ the size of certain ships, in order
+to please the democracy; and that the Executive privately evaded this
+law, and built vessels of a much greater size; whereas the provision
+of the law is just the contrary, or that the ships should not be
+_less_ than of seventy-four guns; a piece of information, by the way,
+that I obtained from Mr. Powis."
+
+"Ignorance, ma'am; a stranger cannot be supposed to know all the laws
+of a foreign country."
+
+"Then why make bold and false assertions about them, that are
+intended to discredit the country? Here is another assertion--'ten
+thousand of the men that fought at Waterloo would have marched
+through North America?' Do you believe that, Mr. Howel?"
+
+"But that is merely an opinion, Mrs. Bloomfield; any man may be wrong
+in his opinion."
+
+"Very true, but it is an opinion uttered in the year of our Lord one
+thousand eight hundred and twenty-eight; and after the battles of
+Bunker Hill, Cowpens, Plattsburg, Saratoga, and New-Orleans! And,
+moreover, after it had been proved that something very like ten
+thousand of the identical men who fought at Waterloo, could not march
+even ten miles into the country."
+
+"Well, well, all this shows that the reviewer is sometimes mistaken."
+
+"Your pardon Mr. Howel; I think it shows, according to your own
+admission, that his wit, or rather its wit, for there is no _his_
+about it--that its wit is of a very indifferent quality as witticisms
+even; that it is ignorant of what it pretends to know; and that its
+opinions are no better than its knowledge: all of which, when fairly
+established against one who, by his very pursuit, professes to know
+more than other people, is very much like making it appear
+contemptible."
+
+"This is going back eight or ten years--let us look more particularly
+at the article about which the discussion commences."
+
+"_Volontiers_"
+
+Mrs. Bloomfield now sent to the library for the work reviewed, and
+opening the review she read some of its strictures; and then turning
+to the corresponding passages in the work itself, she pointed out the
+unfairness of the quotations, the omissions of the context, and, in
+several flagrant instances, witticisms of the reviewer, that were
+purchased at the expense of the English language. She next showed
+several of those audacious assertions, for which the particular
+periodical was so remarkable, leaving no doubt with any candid
+person, that they were purchased at the expense of truth.
+
+"But here is an instance that will scarce admit of cavilling or
+objection on your part, Mr. Howel," she continued; "do me the favour
+to read the passage in the review."
+
+Mr. Howel complied, and when he had done, he looked expectingly at
+the lady.
+
+"The effect of the reviewer's statement is to make it appear that the
+author has contradicted himself, is it not?"
+
+"Certainly, nothing can be plainer."
+
+"According to your favourite reviewer, who accuses him of it, in
+terms. Now let us look at the fact. Here is the passage in the work
+itself. In the first place you will remark that this sentence, which
+contains the alleged contradiction, is mutilated; the part which is
+omitted, giving a directly contrary meaning to it, from that it bears
+under the reviewer's scissors."
+
+"It has some such appearance, I do confess."
+
+"Here you perceive that the closing sentence of the same paragraph,
+and which refers directly to the point at issue, is displaced, made
+to appear as belonging to a separate paragraph, and as conveying a
+different meaning from what the author has actually expressed."
+
+"Upon my word, I do not know but you are right!"
+
+"Well, Mr. Howel, we have had wit of no very pure water, ignorance as
+relates to facts, and mistakes as regards very positive assertions.
+In what category, as Captain Truck would say, do you place this?"
+
+"Why does not the author reviewed expose this?"
+
+"Why does not a gentleman wrangle with a detected pick-pocket?"
+
+"It is literary swindling," said John Effingham, "and the man who did
+it, is inherently a knave."
+
+"I think both these facts quite beyond dispute," observed Mrs.
+Bloomfield, laying down Mr. Howel's favourite review with an air of
+cool contempt; "and I must say I did not think it necessary to prove
+the general character of the work, at this late date, to any American
+of ordinary intelligence; much less to a sensible man, like Mr.
+Howel."
+
+"But, ma'am, there may be much truth and justice in the rest of its
+remarks," returned the pertinacious Mr. Howel, "although it has
+fallen into these mistakes."
+
+"Were you ever on a jury, Howel?" asked John Effingham, in his
+caustic manner.
+
+"Often; and on grand juries, too."
+
+"Well, did the judge never tell you, when a witness is detected in
+lying on one point, that his testimony is valueless on all others?"
+
+"Very true; but this is a review, and not testimony."
+
+"The distinction is certainly a very good one," resumed Mrs.
+Bloomfield, laughing, "as nothing, in general, can be less like
+honest testimony than a review!"
+
+"But I think, my dear ma'am, you will allow that all this is
+excessively biting and severe--I can't say I ever read any thing
+sharper in my life."
+
+"It strikes me, Mr. Howel, as being nothing but epithets, the
+cheapest and most contemptible of all species of abuse. Were two men,
+in your presence, to call each other such names, I think it would
+excite nothing but disgust in your mind. When the thought is clear
+and poignant, there is little need to have recourse to mere epithets;
+indeed, men never use the latter, except when there is a deficiency
+of the first."
+
+"Well, well, my friends," cried Mr. Howel, as he walked away towards
+Grace and Sir George, "this is a different thing from what I at first
+thought it, but still I think you undervalue the periodical."
+
+"I hope this little lesson will cool some of Mr. Howel's faith in
+foreign morality," observed Mrs. Bloomfield, as soon as the gentleman
+named was out of hearing; "a more credulous and devout worshipper of
+the idol, I have never before met."
+
+"The school is diminishing, but it is still large. Men like Tom
+Howel, who have thought in one direction all their lives, are not
+easily brought to change their notions, especially when the
+admiration which proceeds from distance, distance 'that lends
+enchantment to the view,' is at the bottom of their faith. Had this
+very article been written and printed round the corner of the street
+in which he lives, Howel would be the first to say that it was the
+production of a fellow without talents or principles, and was
+unworthy of a second thought."
+
+"I still think he will be a wiser, if not a better man, by the
+exposure of its frauds."
+
+"Not he. If you will excuse a homely and a coarse simile, 'he will
+return like a dog to his vomit, or the sow to its wallowing in the
+mire.' I never knew one of that school thoroughly cured, until he
+became himself the subject of attack, or, by a close personal
+communication, was made to feel the superciliousness of European
+superiority. It is only a week since I had a discussion with him on
+the subject of the humanity and the relish for liberty in his beloved
+model; and when I cited the instance of the employment of the
+tomahawk, in the wars between England and this country, he actually
+affirmed that the Indian savages killed no women and children, but
+the wives and offspring of their enemies; and when I told him that
+the English, like most other people, cared very little for any
+liberty but their own, he coolly affirmed that their own was the only
+liberty worth caring for!"
+
+"Oh yes," put in young Mr. Wenham, who had overheard the latter
+portion of the conversation, "Mr. Howel is so thoroughly English,
+that he actually denies that America is the most civilized country in
+the world, or that we speak our language better than any nation was
+ever before known to speak its own language."
+
+"This is so manifest an act of treason," said Mrs. Bloomfield,
+endeavouring to look grave, for Mr. Wenham was any thing but accurate
+in the use of words himself, commonly pronouncing "been," "ben,"
+"does," "dooze," "nothing," "nawthing," "few," "foo," &c. &c. &c.,
+"that, certainly, Mr. Howel should be arraigned at the bar of public
+opinion for the outrage."
+
+"It is commonly admitted, even by our enemies, that our mode of
+speaking is the very best in the world, which, I suppose, is the real
+reason why our literature has so rapidly reached the top of the
+ladder."
+
+"And is that the fact?" asked Mrs. Bloomfield, with a curiosity that
+was not in the least feigned.
+
+"I believe no one denies _that. You_ will sustain me in this, I
+fancy, Mr. Dodge?"
+
+The editor of the Active Inquirer had approached, and was just in
+time to catch the subject in discussion. Now the modes of speech of
+these two persons, while they had a great deal in common, had also a
+great deal that was not in common. Mr. Wenham was a native of New-
+York, and his dialect was a mixture that is getting to be
+sufficiently general, partaking equally of the Doric of New England,
+the Dutch cross, and the old English root; whereas, Mr. Dodge spoke
+the pure, unalloyed Tuscan of his province, rigidly adhering to all
+its sounds and significations. "Dissipation," he contended, meant
+"drunkenness;" "ugly," "vicious;" "clever," "good-natured;" and
+"humbly," (homely) "ugly." In addition to this finesse in
+significations, he had a variety of pronunciations that often put
+strangers at fault, and to which he adhered with a pertinacity that
+obtained some of its force from the fact, that it exceeded his power
+to get rid of them. Notwithstanding all these little peculiarities,
+peculiarities as respects every one but those who dwelt in his own
+province, Mr. Dodge had also taken up the notion of his superiority
+on the subject of language, and always treated the matter as one that
+was placed quite beyond dispute, by its publicity and truth.
+
+"The progress of American Literature," returned the editor, "is
+really astonishing the four quarters of the world. I believe it is
+very generally admitted, now, that our pulpit and bar are at the very
+summit of these two professions. Then we have much the best poets of
+the age, while eleven of our novelists surpass any of all other
+countries. The American Philosophical Society is, I believe,
+generally considered the most acute learned body now extant, unless,
+indeed, the New-York Historical Society may compete with it, for that
+honour. Some persons give the palm to one, and some to the other;
+though I myself think it would be difficult to decide between them.
+Then to what a pass has the drama risen of late years! Genius is
+getting to be quite a drug in America!"
+
+"You have forgotten to speak of the press, in particular," put in the
+complacent Mr. Wenham. "I think we may more safely pride ourselves on
+the high character of the press, than any thing else."
+
+"Why, to tell you the truth, sir," answered Steadfast, taking the
+other by the arm, and leading him so slowly away, that a part of what
+followed was heard by the two amused listeners, "modesty is so
+infallibly the companion of merit, that _we_ who are engaged in that
+high pursuit do not like to say any thing in our own favour. You
+never detect a newspaper in the weakness of extolling itself; but,
+between ourselves, I may say, after a close examination of the
+condition of the press in other countries, I have come to the
+conclusion, that, for talents, taste, candour, philosophy, genius,
+honesty, and truth, the press of the United States stands at the
+very----"
+
+Here Mr. Dodge passed so far from the listeners, that the rest of the
+speech became inaudible, though from the well-established modesty of
+the man and the editor, there can be little doubt of the manner in
+which he concluded the sentence.
+
+"It is said in Europe," observed Johr Effingham, his fine face
+expressing the cool sarcasm in which he was so apt to indulge, "that
+there are _la vieille_ and _la Jeune France_. I think we have now had
+pretty fair specimens of _old_ and _young_ America; the first
+distrusting every thing native, even to a potatoe: and the second
+distrusting nothing, and least of all, itself."
+
+"There appears to be a sort of pendulum-uneasiness in mankind," said
+Mrs. Bloomfield, "that keeps opinion always vibrating around the
+centre of truth, for I think it the rarest thing in the world to find
+man or woman who has not a disposition, as soon as an error is
+abandoned, to fly off into its opposite extreme. From believing we
+had nothing worthy of a thought, there is a set springing up who
+appear to have jumped to the conclusion that we have every thing."
+
+"Ay, this is _one_ of the reasons that all the rest of the world
+laugh at us."
+
+"Laugh at us, Mr. Effingham! Even _I_ had supposed the American name
+had, at last, got to be in good credit in other parts of the world."
+
+"Then even _you_, my dear Mrs. Bloomfield, are notably mistaken.
+Europe, it is true, is beginning to give us credit for not being
+quite as bad as she once thought us; but we are far, very far, from
+being yet admitted to the ordinary level of nations, as respects
+goodness."
+
+"Surely they give us credit for energy, enterprize, activity----"
+
+"Qualities that they prettily term, rapacity, cunning, and swindling!
+I am far, very far, however, from giving credit to all that it suits
+the interests and prejudices of Europe, especially of our venerable
+kinswoman, Old England, to circulate and think to the prejudice of
+this country, which, in my poor judgment, has as much substantial
+merit to boast of as any nation on earth; though, in getting rid of a
+set of ancient vices and follies, it has not had the sagacity to
+discover that it is fast falling into pretty tolerable--or if you
+like it better--intolerable substitutes."
+
+"What then do _you_ deem our greatest error--our weakest point?"
+
+"Provincialisms, with their train of narrow prejudices, and a
+disposition to set up mediocrity as perfection, under the double
+influence of an ignorance that unavoidably arises from a want of
+models, and of the irresistible tendency to mediocrity, in a nation
+where the common mind so imperiously rules."
+
+"But does not the common mind rule every where? Is not public opinion
+always stronger than law?"
+
+"In a certain sense, both these positions may be true. But in a
+nation like this, without a capital, one _that is all provinces_, in
+which intelligence and tastes are scattered, this common mind wants
+the usual direction, and derives its impulses from the force of
+numbers, rather than from the force of knowledge. Hence the fact,
+that the public opinion never or seldom rises to absolute truth. I
+grant you that _as_ a mediocrity, it is well; much better than common
+even; but it is still a mediocrity."
+
+"I see the justice of your remark, and I suppose we are to ascribe
+the general use of superlatives, which is so very obvious, to these
+causes."
+
+"Unquestionably; men have gotten to be afraid to speak the truth,
+when that truth is a little beyond the common comprehension; and thus
+it is that you see the fulsome flattery that all the public servants,
+as they call themselves, resort to, in order to increase their
+popularity, instead of telling the wholesome facts that are needed."
+
+"And what is to be the result?"
+
+"Heaven knows. While America is so much in advance of other nations,
+in a freedom from prejudices of the old school, it is fast
+substituting a set of prejudices of its own, that are not without
+serious dangers. We may live through it, and the ills of society may
+correct themselves, though there is one fact that men aces more evil
+than any thing I could have feared."
+
+"You mean the political struggle between money and numbers, that has
+so seriously manifested itself of late!" exclaimed the quick-minded
+and intelligent Mrs. Bloomfield.
+
+"_That_ has its dangers; but there is still another evil of greater
+magnitude. I allude to the very general disposition to confine
+political discussions to political men. Thus, the private citizen,
+who should presume to discuss a political question, would be deemed
+fair game for all who thought differently from himself. He would be
+injured in his pocket, reputation, domestic happiness, if possible;
+for, in this respect, America is much the most intolerant nation I
+have ever visited. In all other countries, in which discussion is
+permitted at all, there is at least the _appearance_ of fair play,
+whatever may be done covertly; but here, it seems to be sufficient to
+justify falsehood, frauds, nay, barefaced rascality, to establish
+that the injured party has had the audacity to meddle with public
+questions, not being what the public chooses to call a public man. It
+is scarcely necessary to say that, when such an opinion gets to be
+effective, it must entirely defeat the real intentions of a popular
+government."
+
+"Now you mention it," said Mrs. Bloomfield, "I think I have witnessed
+instances of what you mean."
+
+"Witnessed, dear Mrs. Bloomfield! Instances are to be seen as often
+as a man is found freeman enough to have an opinion independent of
+party. It is not for connecting himself with party that a man is
+denounced in this country, but for daring to connect himself with
+truth. Party will bear with party, but party will not bear with
+truth. It is in politics as in war, regiments or individuals may
+desert, and they will be received by their late enemies with open
+arms, the honour of a soldier seldom reaching to the pass of refusing
+succour of any sort; but both sides will turn and fire on the
+countrymen who wish merely to defend their homes and firesides."
+
+"You draw disagreeable pictures of human nature, Mr. Effingham."
+
+"Merely because they are true, Mrs. Bloomfield. Man is worse than the
+beasts, merely because he has a code of right and wrong, which he
+never respects. They talk of the variation of the compass, and even
+pretend to calculate its changes, though no one can explain the
+principle that causes the attraction or its vagaries at all. So it is
+with men; they pretend to look always at the right, though their eyes
+are constantly directed obliquely; and it is a certain calculation to
+allow of a pretty wide variation--but here comes Miss Effingham,
+singularly well attired, and more beautiful than I have ever before
+seen her!"
+
+The two exchanged quick glances, and then, as if fearful of betraying
+to each other their thoughts, they moved towards our heroine, to do
+the honours of the reception.
+
+Chapter XXVI.
+
+          "Haply, when I shall wed, That lord, whose hand must take
+  my plight, shall carry Half my love with him, half my care and
+  duty."
+
+  CORDELIA.
+
+As no man could be more gracefully or delicately polite than John
+Effingham, when the humour seized him, Mrs. Bloomfield was struck
+with the kind and gentleman-like manner with which he met his young
+kinswoman on this trying occasion, and the affectionate tones of his
+voice, and the winning expression of his eye, as he addressed her.
+Eve herself was not unobservant of these peculiarities, nor was she
+slow in comprehending the reason. She perceived at once that he was
+acquainted with the state of things between her and Paul. As she well
+knew the womanly fidelity of Mrs. Bloomfield, she rightly enough
+conjectured that the long observation of her cousin, coupled with the
+few words accidentally overheard that evening had even made him
+better acquainted with the true condition of her feelings, than was
+the case with the friend with whom she had so lately been conversing
+on the subject.
+
+Still Eve was not embarrassed by the conviction that her secret was
+betrayed to so many persons. Her attachment to Paul was not the
+impulse of girlish caprice, but the warm affection of a woman, that
+had grown with time, was sanctioned by her reason, and which, if it
+was tinctured with the more glowing imagination and ample faith of
+youth, was also sustained by her principles and her sense of right.
+She knew that both her father and cousin esteemed the man of her own
+choice, nor did she believe the little cloud that, hung over his
+birth could do more than have a temporary influence on his own
+sensitive feelings. She met John Effingham, therefore, with a frank
+composure, returned the kind pressure of his hand, with a smile such
+as a daughter might bestow on an affectionate parent, and turned to
+salute the remainder of the party, with that lady-like ease which had
+got to be a part of her nature.
+
+"There goes one of the most attractive pictures that humanity can
+offer," said John Effingham to Mrs. Bloomfield, as Eve walked away;
+"a young, timid, modest, sensitive girl, so strong in her principles,
+so conscious of rectitude, so pure of thought, and so warm in her
+affections, that she views her selection of a husband, as others view
+their acts of duty and religious faith. With her love has no shame,
+as it has no weakness."
+
+"Eve Effingham is as faultless as comports with womanhood; and yet I
+confess ignorance of my own sex, if she receive Mr. Powis as calmly
+as she received her cousin."
+
+"Perhaps not, for in that case, she could scarcely feel the passion.
+You perceive that he avoids oppressing her with his notice, and that
+the meeting passes off without embarrassment. I do believe there is
+an elevating principle in love, that, by causing us to wish to be
+worthy of the object most prized, produces the desired effects by
+stimulating exertion. There, now, are two as perfect beings as one
+ordinarily meets with, each oppressed by a sense of his or her
+unworthiness to be the choice of the other."
+
+"Does love, then, teach humility; successful love too?"
+
+"Does it not? It would be hardly fair to press this matter on you, a
+married woman; for, by the pandects of American society, a man may
+philosophize on love, prattle about it, trifle on the subject, and
+even analyze the passion with, a miss in her teens, and yet he shall
+not allude to it, in a discourse with a matron. Well, _chacun à son
+goût_; we are, indeed, a little peculiar in our usages, and have
+promoted a good deal of village coquetry, and the flirtations of the
+may-pole, to the drawing-room."
+
+"Is it not better that such follies should be confined to youth, than
+that they should invade the sanctity of married life, as I understand
+is too much the case elsewhere?"
+
+"Perhaps so; though I confess it is easier to dispose of a straight-
+forward proposition from a mother, a father, or a commissioned
+friend, than to get rid of a young lady, who, _propriâ personâ_,
+angles on her own account. While abroad, I had a dozen proposals--"
+
+"Proposals!" exclaimed Mrs. Bloomfield, holding up both hands, and
+shaking her head incredulously.
+
+"Proposals! Why not, ma'am?--am I more than fifty? am I not
+reasonably youthful for that period of life, and have I not six or
+eight thousand a year--"
+
+"Eighteen, or you are much scandalized."
+
+"Well, eighteen, if you will," coolly returned the other, in whose
+eyes money was no merit, for he was born to a fortune, and always
+treated it as a means, and not as the end of life; "every dollar is a
+magnet, after one has turned forty. Do you suppose that a single man,
+of tolerable person, well-born, and with a hundred thousand francs of
+_rentes_, could entirely escape proposals from the ladies in Europe?"
+
+"This is so revolting to all our American notions, that, though I
+have often heard of such things, I have always found it difficult to
+believe them!"
+
+"And is it more revolting for the friends of young ladies to look out
+for them, on such occasions, than that the young ladies should take
+the affair into their own hands, as is practised quite as openly,
+here?"
+
+"It is well you are a confirmed bachelor, or declarations like these
+would mar your fortunes. I will admit that the school is not as
+retiring and diffident as formerly; for we are all ready enough to
+say that no times are egual to our own times; but I shall strenuously
+protest against your interpretation of the nature and artlessness of
+an American girl."
+
+"Artlessness!" repeated John Effingham, with a slight lifting of the
+eye-brows; "we live in an age when new dictionaries and vocabularies
+are necessary to understand each other's meaning. It is artlessness,
+with a vengeance, to beset an old fellow of fifty, as one would
+besiege a town. Hist!--Ned is retiring with his daughter, my dear
+Mrs. Bloomfield, and it will not be long before I shall be summoned
+to a family council. Well, we will keep the secret until it is
+publicly proclaimed."
+
+John Effingham was right, for his two cousins left the room together,
+and retired to the library, but in a way to attract no particular
+attention, except in those who were enlightened on the subject of
+what had already passed that evening. When they were alone, Mr.
+Effingham turned the key, and then he gave a free vent to his
+paternal feelings.
+
+Between Eve and her parent, there had always existed a confidence
+exceeding that which it is common to find between father and
+daughter. In one sense, they had been all in all to each other, and
+Eve had never hesitated about pouring those feelings into his breast,
+which, had she possessed another parent, would more naturally have
+been confided to the affection of a mother. When their eyes first
+met, therefore, they were mutually beaming with an expression of
+confidence and love, such as might, in a measure, have been expected
+between two of the gentler sex. Mr Effingham folded his child to his
+heart, pressed her there tenderly for near a minute in silence, and
+then kissing her burning cheek he permitted her to look up.
+
+"This answers all my fondest hopes, Eve"--he exclaimed; "fulfils my
+most cherished wishes for thy sake."
+
+"Dearest sir!"
+
+"Yes, my love, I have long secretly prayed that such might be your
+good fortune; for, of all the youths we have met, at home or abroad,
+Paul Powis is the one to whom I can consign you with the most
+confidence that he will cherish and love you as you deserve to be
+cherished and loved!"
+
+"Dearest father, nothing but this was wanting to complete my perfect
+happiness."
+
+Mr. Effingham kissed his daughter again, and he was then enabled to
+pursue the conversation with greater composure.
+
+"Powis and I have had a full explanation," he said, "though in order
+to obtain it, I have been obliged to give him strong encouragement"
+
+"Father!"
+
+"Nay, my love, your delicacy and feelings nave been sufficiently
+respected, but he has so much diffidence of himself, and permits the
+unpleasant circumstances connected with his birth to weigh so much on
+his mind, that I have been compelled to tell him, what I am sure you
+will approve, that we disregard family connections, and look only to
+the merit of the individual."
+
+"I hope, father, nothing was said to give Mr. Powis reason to suppose
+we did not deem him every way our equal."
+
+"Certainly not. He is a gentleman, and I can claim to be no more.
+There is but one thing in which connections ought to influence an
+American marriage, where the parties are suited to each other in the
+main requisites, and that is to ascertain that neither should be
+carried, necessarily, into associations for which their habits have
+given them too much and too good tastes to enter into. A _woman_,
+especially, ought never to be transplanted from a polished to
+an unpolished circle; for, when this is the case, if really a
+lady, there will be a dangerous clog on her affection for her
+husband. This one great point assured, I see no other about which a
+parent need feel concern."
+
+"Powis, unhappily, has no connections in this country; or none with
+whom he has any communications; and those he has in England are of a
+class to do him credit."
+
+"We have been conversing of this, and he has manifested so much
+proper feeling that it has even raised him in my esteem. I knew his
+father's family, and must have known his father, I think, though
+there were two or three Asshetons of the name of John. It is a highly
+respectable family of the middle states, and belonged formerly to the
+colonial aristocracy. Jack Effingham's mother was an Assheton."
+
+"Of the same blood, do you think, sir? I remembered this when Mr.
+Powis mentioned his father's name, and intended to question cousin
+Jack on the subject."
+
+"Now you speak of it, Eve, there _must_ be a relationship
+between them. Do you suppose that our kinsman is acquainted with the
+fact that Paul is, in truth, an Assheton?"
+
+Eve told her father that she had never spoken with their relative on
+the subject, at all.
+
+Then ring the bell and we will ascertain at once how far my
+conjecture is true. You can have no false delicacy, my child, about
+letting your engagement be known to one as near and as dear to us, as
+John."
+
+"Engagement, father!"
+
+"Yes, engagement," returned the smiling parent, "for such I already
+deem it. I have ventured, in your behalf, to plight your troth to
+Paul Powis, or what is almost equal to it; and in return I can give
+you back as many protestations of unequalled fidelity, and eternal
+constancy, as any reasonable girl can ask."
+
+Eve gazed at her lather in a way to show that reproach was mingled
+with fondness, for she felt that, in this instance, too much of the
+precipitation of the other sex had been manifested in her affairs;
+still, superior to coquetry and affectation, and much too warm in her
+attachments to be seriously hurt, she kissed the hand she held, shook
+her head reproachfully, even while she smiled, and did as had been
+desired.
+
+"You have, indeed, rendered it important to us to know more of Mr.
+Powis, my beloved father," she said, as she returned to her seat,
+"though I could wish matters had not proceeded quite so fast."
+
+"Nay, all I promised was conditional, and dependent on yourself. You
+have nothing to do, if I have said too much, but to refuse to ratify
+the treaty made by your negotiator."
+
+"You propose an impossibility,", said Eve, taking the hand, again,
+that she had so lately relinquished, and pressing it warmly between
+her own; "the negotiator is too much revered, has too strong a right
+to command, and is too much confided in to be thus dishonoured.
+Father, I _will_, I _do_, ratify all you _have_, all you _can_
+promise in my behalf."
+
+"Even, if I annul the treaty, darling?"
+
+"Even, in that case, father. I will marry none without your consent,
+and have so absolute a confidence in your tender care of me, that I
+do not even hesitate to say, I will marry him to whom you contract
+me."
+
+"Bless you, bless you, Eve; I do believe you, for such have I ever
+found you, since thought has had any control over your actions.
+Desire Mr. John Effingham to come hither"--then, as the servant
+closed the door, he continued,--"and such I believe you will continue
+to be until your dying day."
+
+"Nay, reckless, careless father, you forget that you yourself have
+been instrumental in transferring my duty and obedience to another.
+What if this sea-monster should prove a tyrant, throw off the mask,
+and show himself in his real colours? Are you prepared, then,
+thoughtless, precipitate, parent"--Eve kissed Mr, Effingham's cheek
+with childish playfulness, as she spoke, her heart swelling with
+happiness the whole time, "to preach obedience where obedience would
+then be due?"
+
+"Hush, precious--I hear the step of Jack; he must not catch us
+fooling in this manner."
+
+Eve rose; and when her kinsman entered the room, she held out her
+hand kindly to him, though it was with an averted face and a tearful
+eye.
+
+"It is time I was summoned," said John Effingham, after he had drawn
+the blushing girl to him and kissed her forehead, "for what between
+_tête à têtes_ with young fellows, and _tête à têtes_ with
+old fellows, this evening, I began to think myself neglected. I hope
+I am still in time to render my decided disapprobation available?"
+
+"Cousin Jack!" exclaimed Eve, with a look of reproachful mockery,
+"_you_ are the last person who ought to speak of disapprobation,
+for you have done little else but sing the praises of the applicant,
+since you first met him."
+
+"Is it even so? then, like others, I must submit to the consequences
+of my own precipitation and false conclusions. Am I summoned to
+inquire how many thousands a year I shall add to the establishment of
+the new couple? As I hate business, say five at once: and when the
+papers are ready, I will sign them, without reading,"
+
+"Most generous cynic," cried Eve, "I would I dared, now, to ask a
+single question!"
+
+"Ask it without scruple, young lady, for this is the day of your
+independence and power. I am mistaken in the man, if Powis do not
+prove to be the captain of his own ship, in the end."
+
+"Well, then, in whose behalf is this liberality really meant; mine,
+or that of the gentleman?"
+
+"Fairly enough put," said John Effingham, laughing, again drawing Eve
+towards him and saluting her cheek; "for if I were on the rack, I
+could scarcely say which I love best, although you have the
+consolation of knowing, pert one, that you get the most kisses."
+
+"I am almost in the same state of feeling myself, John, for a son of
+my own could scarcely be dearer to me than Paul."
+
+"I see, indeed, that I _must_ marry," said Eve hastily, dashing
+the tears of delight from her eyes, for what could give more delight
+than to hear the praises of her beloved, "if I wish to retain my
+place in your affections. But, father, we forget the question you
+were to put to cousin Jack."
+
+"True, love. John, your mother was an Assheton?"
+
+"Assuredly, Ned; you are not to learn my pedigree at this time of
+day, I trust."
+
+"We are anxious to make out a relationship between you and Paul; can
+it not be done?"
+
+"I would give half my fortune, Eve consenting, were it so!--What
+reason is there for supposing it probable, or even possible?"
+
+"You know that he bears the name of his friend, and adopted parent,
+while that of his family is really Assheton."
+
+"Assheton!" exclaimed the other, in a way to show that this was the
+first he had ever heard of the fact.
+
+"Certainly; and as there is but one family of this name, which is a
+little peculiar in the spelling--for here it is spelt by Paul
+himself, on this card--we have thought that he must be a relation of
+yours. I hope we are not to be disappointed."
+
+"Assheton!--It is, as you say, an unusual name; nor is there more
+than one family that bears it in this country, to my knowledge. Can
+it be possible that Powis is truly an Assheton?"
+
+"Out of all doubt," Eve eagerly exclaimed; "we have it from his own
+mouth. His father was an Assheton, and his mother was--"
+
+"Who!" demanded John Effingham, with a vehemence that startled his
+companions.
+
+"Nay, that is more than I can tell you, for he did not mention the
+family name of his mother; as she was a sister of Lady Dunluce,
+however, who is the wife of General Ducie, the father of our guest,
+it is probable her name was Dunluce."
+
+"I remember no relative that has made such a marriage, or who _can_
+have made such a marriage; and yet do I personally and intimately
+know every Assheton in the country."
+
+Mr. Effingham and his daughter looked at each other, for it at once
+struck them all painfully, that there must be Asshetons of another
+family.
+
+"Were it not for the peculiar manner in which this name is spelled,"
+said Mr. Effingham, "I could suppose that there are Asshetons of whom
+we know nothing, but it is difficult to believe that there can be
+such persons of a respectable family of whom we never heard, for
+Powis said his relatives were of the Middle States--"
+
+"And that his mother was called Dunluce?" demanded John Effingham
+earnestly, for he too appeared to wish to discover an affinity
+between himself and Paul.
+
+"Nay, father, this I think he did not say; though it is quite
+probable; for the title of his aunt is an ancient barony, and those
+ancient baronies usually became the family name."
+
+"In this you must be mistaken, Eve, since he mentioned that the right
+was derived through his mother's mother, who was an Englishwoman."
+
+"Why not send for him at once, and put the question?" said the
+simple-minded Mr. Effingham; "next to having him for my own son, it
+would give me pleasure, John, to learn that he was lawfully entitled
+to that which I know you have done in his behalf."
+
+"That is impossible," returned John Effingham. "I am an only child,
+and as for cousins through my mother, there are so many who stand in
+an equal degree of affinity to me, that no one in particular can be
+my heir-at-law. If there were, I am an Effingham; my estate came from
+Effinghams, and to an Effingham it should descend in despite of all
+the Asshetons in America."
+
+"Paul Powis included!" exclaimed Eve, raising a finger reproachfully.
+
+"True, to him I have left a legacy; but it was to a Powis, and not to
+an Assheton."
+
+"And yet he declares himself legally an Assheton, and not a Powis."
+
+"Say no more of this, Eve; it is unpleasant to me. I hate the name of
+Assheton, though it was my mother's, and could wish never to hear it
+again."
+
+Eve and her father were mute, for their kinsman, usually so proud and
+self-restrained, spoke with suppressed emotion, and it was plain
+that, for some hidden cause, he felt even more than he expressed. The
+idea that there should be any thing about Paul that could render him
+an object of dislike to one as dear to her as her cousin, was
+inexpressibly painful to the former, and she regretted that the
+subject had ever been introduced. Not so with her father. Simple,
+direct, and full of truth, Mr. Effingham rightly enough believed that
+mysteries in a family could lead to no good, and he repeated his
+proposal of sending for Paul, and having the matter cleared up at
+once.
+
+"You are too reasonable, Jack," he concluded, "to let an antipathy
+against a name that was your mother's, interfere with your sense of
+right. I know that some unpleasant questions arose concerning your
+succession to my aunt's fortune, but that was all settled in your
+favour twenty years ago, and I had thought to your entire
+satisfaction."
+
+"Unhappily, family quarrels are ever the most bitter, and usually
+they are the least reconcileable," returned John Effingham,
+evasively.--"I would that this young man's name were any thing but
+Assheton! I do not wish to see Eve plighting her faith at the altar,
+to any one bearing that, accursed name!"
+
+"I shall plight my faith, if ever it be done, dear cousin John, to
+the man, and not to his name."
+
+"No, no--he must keep the appellation of Powis by which we have all
+learned to love him, and to which he has done so much credit."
+
+"This is very strange, Jack, for a man who is usually as discreet and
+as well regulated as yourself. I again propose that we send for Paul,
+and ascertain precisely to what branch of this so-much-disliked
+family he really belongs."
+
+"No, father, if you love me, not now!" cried Eve, arresting Mr.
+Effingham's hand as it touched the bell-cord; "it would appear
+distrustful, and even cruel, were we to enter into such an inquiry so
+soon. Powis might think we valued his family, more than we do
+himself,"
+
+"Eve is right, Ned; but I will not sleep without learning all. There
+is an unfinished examination of the papers left by poor Monday, and I
+will take an occasion to summon Paul to its completion, when an
+opportunity will offer to renew the subject of his own history; for
+it was at the other investigation that he first spoke frankly to me,
+concerning himself."
+
+"Do so, cousin Jack, and let it be at once," said Eve earnestly. "I
+can trust you with Powis alone, for I know how much you respect and
+esteem him in your heart. See, it is already ten."
+
+"But, he will naturally wish to spend the close of an evening like
+this engaged in investigating something very different from Mr.
+Monday's tale," returned her cousin; the smile with which he spoke
+chasing away the look of chilled aversion that had so lately darkened
+his noble features.
+
+"No, not to-night," answered the blushing Eve. "I have confessed
+weakness enough for one day. Tomorrow, if you will--if he will,--but
+not to-night. I shall retire with Mrs. Hawker, who already complains
+of fatigue; and you will send for Powis, to meet you in your own
+room, without unnecessary delay."
+
+Eve kissed John Effingham coaxingly, and as they walked together out
+of the library, she pointed towards the door that led to the
+chambers. Her cousin laughingly complied, and when in his own room,
+he sent a message to Paul to join him.
+
+"Now, indeed, may I call you a kinsman," said John Effingham, rising
+to receive the young man, towards whom he advanced, with extended
+hands, in his most winning manner. "Eve's frankness and your own
+discernment have made us a happy family!"
+
+"If any thing could add to the felicity of being acceptable to Miss
+Effingham," returned Paul, struggling to command his feelings, "it is
+the manner in which her father and yourself have received my poor
+offers."
+
+"Well, we will now speak of it no more. I saw from the first which
+way things were tending, and it was my plain-dealing that opened the
+eyes of Templemore to the impossibility of his ever succeeding, by
+which means his heart has been kept from breaking."
+
+"Oh! Mr. Effingham, Templemore never loved-Eve Effingham! I thought
+so once, and he thought so, too; but it could not have been a love
+like mine."
+
+"It certainly differed in the essential circumstance of reciprocity,
+which, in itself, singularly qualifies the passion, so far as
+duration is concerned. Templemore did not exactly know the reason why
+he preferred Eve; but, having seen so much of the society in which he
+lived, I was enabled to detect the cause. Accustomed to an elaborate
+sophistication, the singular union of refinement and nature caught
+his fancy; for the English seldom see the last separated from
+vulgarity; and when it is found, softened by a high intelligence and
+polished manners, it has usually great attractions for the _biasés_."
+
+"He is fortunate in having so readily found a substitute for Eve
+Effingham!"
+
+"This change is not unnatural, neither. In the first place, I, with
+this truth-telling 'tongue, destroyed all hope, before he had
+committed himself by a declaration; and then Grace Van Cortlandt
+possesses the great attraction of nature, in a degree quite equal to
+that of her cousin. Besides, Templemore, though a gentleman, and a
+brave man, and a worthy one, is not remarkable for qualities of a
+very extraordinary kind. He will be as happy as is usual for an
+Englishman of his class to be, and he has no particular right to
+expect more. I sent for you, however, less to talk of love, than to
+trace its unhappy consequences in this affair, revealed by the papers
+of poor Monday. It is time we acquitted ourselves of that trust. Do
+me the favour to open the dressing-case that stands on the toilet-
+table; you will find in it the key that belongs to the bureau, where
+I have placed the secretary that contains the papers."
+
+Paul did as desired. The dressing-case was complicated and large,
+having several compartments, none of which were fastened. In the
+first opened, he saw a miniature of a female so beautiful, that his
+eve rested on it, as it might be, by a fascination.--Notwithstanding
+some difference produced by the fashions of different periods, the
+resemblance to the object of his love, was obvious at a glance. Borne
+away by the pleasure of the discovery, and actually believing that he
+saw a picture of Eve, drawn in a dress that did not in a great degree
+vary from the present attire, fashion having undergone no very
+striking revolution in the last twenty years, he exclaimed--
+
+"This is indeed a treasure, Mr. Effingham, and most sincerely do I
+envy you its possession. It is like, and yet, in some particulars, it
+is unlike--it scarcely does Miss Effingham justice about the nose and
+forehead!"
+
+John Effingham started when he saw the miniature in Paul's hand, but
+recovering himself, he smiled at the eager delusion of his young
+friend, and said with perfect composure--
+
+"It is not Eve, but her mother. The two features you have named in
+the former came from my family; but in all the others, the likeness
+is almost identical."
+
+"This then is Mrs. Effingham!" murmured Paul, gazing on the face of
+the mother of his love, with a respectful melancholy, and an interest
+that was rather heightened than lessened by a knowledge of the truth.
+"She died young, sir?"
+
+"Quite; she can scarcely be said to have become an angel too soon,
+for she was always one."
+
+This was said with a feeling that did not escape Paul, though it
+surprised him. There were six or seven miniature-cases in the
+compartment of the dressing-box, and supposing that the one which lay
+uppermost belonged to the miniature in his hand, he raised it, and
+opened the lid with a view to replace the picture of Eve's mother,
+with a species of pious reverence. Instead of finding an empty case,
+however, another miniature met his eye. The exclamation that now
+escaped the young man was one of delight and surprise.
+
+"That must be my grandmother, with whom you are in such raptures, at
+present," said John Effingham, laughing--"I was comparing it
+yesterday with the picture of Eve, which is in the Russia-leather
+case, that you will find somewhere there. I do not wonder, however,
+at your admiration, for she was a beauty in her day, and no woman is
+fool enough to be painted after she grows ugly."
+
+"Not so--not so--Mr. Effingham! This is the miniature I lost in the
+Montauk, and which I had given up as booty to the Arabs. It has,
+doubtless, found its way into your state-room, and has been put among
+your effects by your man, through mistake. It is very precious to me,
+for it is nearly every memorial I possess of my own mother!"
+
+"Your mother!" exclaimed John Effingham rising. "I think there must
+be some mistake, for I examined all those pictures this very morning,
+and it is the first time they have been opened since our arrival from
+Europe. It cannot be the missing picture."
+
+"Mine it is certainly; in that I cannot be mistaken!"
+
+"It would be odd indeed, if one of my grandmothers, for both are
+there, should prove to be your mother.--Powis, will you have the
+goodness to let me see the picture you mean."
+
+Paul brought the miniature and a light, placing both before the eyes
+of his friend.
+
+"That!" exclaimed John Effingham, his voice sounding harsh and
+unnatural to the listener,--"that picture like _your_ mother!"
+
+"It is her miniature--_the_ miniature that was transmitted to
+me, from those who had charge of my childhood. I cannot be mistaken
+as to the countenance, or the dress."
+
+"And your father's name was Assheton?"
+
+"Certainly--John Assheton, of the Asshetons of Pennsylvania."
+
+John Effingham groaned aloud; when Paul stepped back equally shocked
+and surprised, he saw that the face of his friend was almost livid,
+and that the hand which held the picture shook like the aspen.
+
+"Are you unwell, dear Mr. Effingham?"
+
+"No--no--'tis impossible! This lady never had a child. Powis, you
+have been deceived by some fancied, or some real resemblance. This
+picture is mine, and has not been out of my possession these five and
+twenty years."
+
+"Pardon me, sir, it is the picture of my mother, and no other; the
+very picture lost in the Montauk."
+
+The gaze that John Effingham cast upon the young man was ghastly; and
+Paul was about to ring the bell, but a gesture of denial prevented
+him.
+
+"See," said John Effingham, hoarsely, as he touched a spring in the
+setting, and exposed to view the initials of two names interwoven
+with hair--"is this, too, yours?"
+
+Paul looked surprised and disappointed.
+
+"That certainly settles the question; my miniature had no such
+addition; and yet I believe that sweet and pensive countenance to be
+the face of my own beloved mother, and of no one else."
+
+John Effingham struggled to appear calm; and, replacing the pictures,
+he took the key from the dressing case, and, opening the bureau, he
+took out the secretary. This he signed for Powis, who had the key, to
+open; throwing himself into a chair, though every thing was done
+mechanically, as if his mind and body had little or no connection
+with each other.
+
+"Some accidental resemblance has deceived you as to the miniature,"
+he said, while Paul was looking for the proper number among the
+letters of Mr. Monday. "No--no--that _cannot_ be the picture of
+your mother. She left no child. Assheton did you say, was the name of
+your father?"
+
+"Assheton--John Assheton--about that, at least, there can have been
+no mistake. This is the num her at which we left off--will you, sir,
+or shall I, read?"
+
+The other made a sign for Paul to read; looking, at the same time, as
+if it were impossible for him to discharge that duty himself.
+
+"This is a letter from the woman who appears to have been entrusted
+with the child, to the man Dowse," said Paul, first glancing his eyes
+over the page,--"it appears to be little else but gossip--ha!--what
+is this, I see?"
+
+John Effingham raised himself in his chair, and he sat gazing at
+Paul, as one gazes who expects some extraordinary developement,
+though of what nature he knew not.
+
+"This is a singular passage," Paul continued--"so much so as to need
+elucidation. 'I have taken the child with me to get the picture from
+the jeweller, who has mended the ring, and the little urchin knew it
+at a glance.'"
+
+"What is there remarkable in that? Others beside ourselves have had
+pictures;-and this child knows its own better than you."
+
+"Mr. Effingham, such a thing occurred to myself! It is one of those
+early events of which I still retain, have ever retained, a vivid
+recollection. Though little more than an infant at the time, well do
+I recollect to have been taken in this manner to a jeweller's, and
+the delight I felt at recovering my mother's picture, that which is
+now lost, after it had not been seen for a month or two."
+
+"Paul Blunt--Powis--Assheton "--said John Effingham, speaking so
+hoarsely as to be nearly unintelligible, "remain here a few minutes--
+I will rejoin you."
+
+John Effingham arose, and, notwithstanding he rallied all his powers,
+it was with extreme difficulty he succeeded in reaching the door,
+steadily rejecting the offered assistance of Paul, who was at a loss
+what to think of so much agitation in a man usually so self-possessed
+and tranquil. When out of the room, John Effingham did better, and he
+proceeded to the library, followed by his own man, whom he had
+ordered to accompany him with a light.
+
+"Desire Captain Ducie to give me the favour of his company for a
+moment," he then said, motioning to the servant to withdraw. "You
+will not be needed any longer."
+
+It was but a minute before Captain Ducie stood before him. This
+gentleman was instantly struck with the pallid look, and general
+agitation of the person he had come to meet, and he expressed an
+apprehension that he was suddenly taken ill. But a motion of the hand
+forbade his touching the bell-cord, and he waited in silent wonder at
+the scene which he had been so unexpectedly called to witness.
+
+"A glass of that water, if you please, Captain Ducie," said John
+Effingham, endeavouring to smile with gentleman-like courtesy, as he
+made the request, though the effort, caused his countenance to appear
+ghastly again. A little recovered by this beverage, he said more
+steadily--
+
+"You are the cousin of Powis, Captain Ducie."
+
+"We are sisters' children, sir."
+
+"And your mother is"
+
+"Lady Dunluce--a peeress in her own right."
+
+"But, what--her family name?"
+
+"Her own family name has been sunk in that of my father, the Ducies
+claiming to be as old and as honourable a family, as that from which
+my mother inherits her rank. Indeed the Dunluce barony has gone
+through so many names, by means of females, that I believe there is
+no intention to revive the original appellation of the family which
+was first summoned."
+
+"You mistake, me--your mother--when she married--was--"
+
+"Miss Warrender."
+
+"I thank you, sir, and will trouble you no longer," returned John
+Effingham, rising and struggling to make his manner second the
+courtesy of his words--"I have troubled you, abruptly--incoherently I
+fear--your arm--"
+
+Captain Ducie stepped hastily forward, and was just in time to
+prevent the other from falling senseless on the floor, by receiving
+him in his own arms.
+
+Chapter XXVII.
+
+  "What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for
+  her."
+
+  HAMLET.
+
+The next morning, Paul and Eve were alone in that library which had
+long been the scene of the confidential communications of the
+Effingham family. Eve had been weeping, nor were Paul's eyes entirely
+free from the signs of his having given way to strong sensations.
+Still happiness beamed in the countenance of each, and the timid but
+affectionate glances with which our heroine returned the fond,
+admiring look of her lover, were any thing but distrustful of their
+future felicity. Her hand was in his, and it was often raised to his
+lips, as they pursued the conversation.
+
+"This is so wonderful," exclaimed Eve, after one of the frequent
+musing pauses in which both indulged "that I can scarcely believe
+myself awake. That you Blunt, Powis, Assheton, should, after all,
+prove an Effingham!
+
+"And I, who have so long thought myself an orphan, should find a
+living father, and he a man like Mr. John Effingham!"
+
+I have long thought that something heavy lay at the honest heart of
+cousin Jack--you will excuse me Powis, but I shall need time to learn
+to call him by a name of greater respect."
+
+"Call him always so, love, for I am certain it would pain him to meet
+with any change in you. He _is_ your cousin Jack"
+
+"Nay, he may some day unexpectedly become _my_ father too, as he
+has so wonderfully become yours," rejoined Eve, glancing archly at
+the glowing face of the delighted young man; "and then cousin Jack
+might prove too familiar and disrespectful a term."
+
+"So much stronger does your claim to him appear than mine, that I
+think, when that blessed day shall arrive, Eve, it will convert him
+into _my_ cousin Jack, instead of your father. But call _him_
+as you may, why do you still insist on calling _me_ Powis?"
+
+"That name will ever be precious in my eyes! You abridge me of my
+rights, in denying me a change of name. Half the young ladies of the
+country marry for the novelty of being called Mrs. Somebody else,
+instead of the Misses they were, while I am condemned to remain Eve
+Effingham for life."
+
+"If you object to the appellation, I can continue to call myself
+Powis. This has been done so long now as almost to legalize the act."
+
+"Indeed, no--you are an Effingham, and as an Effingham ought you to
+be known. What a happy lot is mine! Spared even the pain of parting
+with my old friends, at the great occurrence of my life, and finding
+my married home the same as the home of my childhood!"
+
+"I owe every thing to you, Eve, name, happiness, and even a home."
+
+"I know not that. Now that it is known that you are the great-
+grandson of Edward Effingham, I think your chance of possessing the
+Wigwam would be quite equal to my own, even were we to look different
+ways in quest of married happiness. An arrangement of that nature
+would not be difficult to make, as John Effingham might easily
+compensate a daughter for the loss of her house and lands by means of
+those money-yielding stocks and bonds, of which he possesses so
+many."
+
+"I view it differently. _You_ were Mr.--my father's heir--how
+strangely the word father sounds in unaccustomed ears!--But you were
+my father's chosen heir, and I shall owe to you, dearest, in addition
+to the treasures of your heart and faith, my fortune."
+
+"Are you so very certain of this, ingrate?--Did not Mr. John
+Effingham--cousin Jack--adopt you as his son even before he knew of
+the natural tie that actually exists between you?"
+
+"True, for I perceive that you have been made acquainted with most of
+that which has passed. But I hope, that in telling you his own offer,
+Mr.--that my father did not forget to tell you of the terms on which
+it was accepted?"
+
+"He did you ample justice, or he informed me that you stipulated
+there should be no altering of wills, but that the unworthy heir
+already chosen, should still remain the heir."
+
+"And to this Mr--"
+
+"Cousin Jack," said Eve, laughing, for the laugh comes easy to the
+supremely happy.
+
+"To this cousin Jack assented?"
+
+"Most true, again. The will would not have been altered, for your
+interests were already cared for."
+
+"And at the expense of yours, dearest? Eve!"
+
+"It would have been at the expense of my better feelings, Paul, had
+it not been so. However, that will can never do either harm or good
+to any, now."
+
+"I trust it will remain unchanged, beloved, that I may owe as much to
+you as possible."
+
+Eve looked kindly at her betrothed, blushed even deeper than the
+bloom which happiness had left on her cheek, and smiled like one who
+knew more than she cared to express.
+
+"What secret meaning is concealed behind the look of portentous
+signification?"
+
+"It means, Powis, that I have done a deed that is almost criminal. I
+have destroyed a will."
+
+"Not my father's!"
+
+"Even so--but it was done in his presence, and if not absolutely with
+his consent, with his knowledge. When he informed me of your superior
+rights, I insisted on its being done, at once, so, should any
+accident occur, you will be heir at law, as a matter of course.
+Cousin Jack affected reluctance, but I believe he slept more sweetly,
+for the consciousness that this act of justice had been done."
+
+"I fear he slept little, as it was; it was long past midnight before
+I left him, and the agitation of his spirits was such as to appear
+awful in the eyes of a son!"
+
+"And the promised explanation is to come, to renew his distress! Why
+make it at all? is it not enough that we are certain that you are his
+child? and for that, have we not the solemn assurance, the
+declaration of almost a dying man!"
+
+"There should be no shade left over my mother's fame. Faults there
+have been, somewhere, but it is painful, oh! how painful! for a child
+to think evil of a mother."
+
+"On this head you are already assured. Your own previous knowledge,
+and John Effingham's distinct declarations, make your mother
+blameless."
+
+"Beyond question; but this sacrifice must be made to my mother's
+spirit. It is now nine; the breakfast-bell will soon ring, and then
+we are promised the whole of the melancholy tale. Pray with me, Eve,
+that it may be such as will not wound the ear of a son!"
+
+Eve took the hand of Paul within both of hers, and kissed it with a
+sort of holy hope, that in its exhibition caused neither blush nor
+shame. Indeed so bound together were these young hearts, so ample and
+confiding had been the confessions of both, and so pure was their
+love, that neither regarded such a manifestation of feeling,
+differently from what an acknowledgement of a dependence on any other
+sacred principle would have been esteemed. The bell now summoned them
+to the breakfast-table, and Eve, yielding to her sex's timidity,
+desired Paul to precede her a few minutes, that the sanctity of their
+confidence might not be weakened by the observation of profane eyes.
+
+The meal was silent; the discovery of the previous night, which had
+been made known to all in the house, by the declarations of John
+Effingham as soon as he was restored to his senses, Captain Ducie
+having innocently collected those within hearing to his succour,
+causing a sort of moral suspense that weighed on the vivacity if not
+on the comforts of the whole party, the lovers alone excepted.
+
+As profound happiness is seldom talkative, the meal was a silent one,
+then; and when it was ended, they who had no tie of blood with the
+parties most concerned with the revelations of the approaching
+interview, delicately separated, making employments and engagements
+that left the family at perfect liberty; while those who had been
+previously notified that their presence would be acceptable, silently
+repaired to the dressing-room of John Effingham. The latter party was
+composed of Mr. Effingham, Paul, and Eve, only. The first passed into
+his cousin's bed-room, where he had a private conference that lasted
+half an hour. At the end of that time, the two others were summoned
+to join him.
+
+John Effingham was a strong-minded and a proud man, his governing
+fault being the self-reliance that indisposed him to throw himself on
+a greater power, for the support, guidance, and counsel, that all
+need. To humiliation before God, however, he was not unused, and of
+late years it had got to be frequent with him, and it was only in
+connexion with his fellow-creatures that his repugnance to admitting
+even of an equality existed. He felt how much more just, intuitive,
+conscientious even, were his own views than those of mankind, in
+general; and he seldom deigned to consult with any as to the opinions
+he ought to entertain, or as to the conduct he ought to pursue. It is
+scarcely necessary to say, that such a being was one of strong and
+engrossing passions, the impulses frequently proving too imperious
+for the affections, or even for principles. The scene that he was now
+compelled to go through, was consequently one of sore mortification
+and self-abasement; and yet, feeling its justice no less than its
+necessity, and having made up his mind to discharge what had now
+become a duty, his very pride of character led him to do it manfully,
+and with no uncalled-for reserves. It was a painful and humiliating
+task, notwithstanding; and it required all the self-command, all the
+sense of right, and all the clear perception of consequences, that
+one so quick to discriminate could not avoid perceiving, to enable
+him to go through it with the required steadiness and connexion.
+
+John Effingham received Paul and Eve, seated in an easy chair; for,
+while he could not be said to be ill, it was evident that his very
+frame had been shaken by the events and emotions of the few preceding
+hours. He gave a hand to each, and, drawing Eve affectionately to
+him, he imprinted a kiss on a cheek that was burning, though it paled
+and reddened in quick succession, the heralds of the tumultuous
+thoughts within. The look he gave Paul was kind and welcome, while a
+hectic spot glowed on each cheek, betraying that his presence excited
+pain as well as pleasure. A long pause succeeded this meeting, when
+John Effingham broke the silence.
+
+"There can now be no manner of question, my dear Paul," he said,
+smiling affectionately but sadly as he looked at the young man,
+"about your being my son. The letter written by John Assheton to your
+mother, after the separation of your parents, would settle that
+important point, had not the names, and the other facts that have
+come to our knowledge, already convinced me of the precious truth;
+for precious and very dear to me is the knowledge that I am the
+father of so worthy a child. You must prepare yourself to hear things
+that it will not be pleasant for a son to listen--"
+
+"No, no--cousin Jack--_dear_ cousin Jack!" cried Eve, throwing
+herself precipitately into her kinsman's arms, "we will hear nothing
+of the sort. It is sufficient that you are Paul's father, and we wish
+to know no more--will hear no more."
+
+"This is like yourself, Eve, but it will not answer what I conceive
+to be the dictates of duty. Paul had two parents; and not the
+slightest suspicion ought to rest on one of them, in order to spare
+the feelings of the other. In showing me this kindness you are
+treating Paul inconsiderately."
+
+"I beg, dear sir, you will not think too much of me, but entirely
+consult your own judgment--your own sense of--in short, dear father,
+that you will consider yourself before your son."
+
+"I thank you, my children--what a word, and what a novel sensation is
+this, for me, Ned!--I feel all your kindness, but if you would
+consult my peace of mind, and wish me to regain my self-respect, you
+will allow me to disburthen my soul of the weight that oppresses it.
+This is strong language; but, while I have no confessions of
+deliberate criminality, or of positive vice to make, I feel it to be
+hardly too strong for the facts. My tale will be very short, and I
+crave your patience, Ned, while I expose my former weakness to these
+young people." Here John Effingham paused, as if to recollect
+himself; then he proceeded with a seriousness of manner that caused
+every syllable he uttered to tell on the ears of his listeners. "It
+is well known to your father, Eve, though it will probably be new to
+you," he said, "that I felt a passion for your sainted mother, such
+as few men ever experience for any of your sex. Your father and
+myself were suitors for her favour at the same time, though I can
+scarcely say, Edward, that any feeling of rivalry entered into the
+competition."
+
+"You do me no more than justice, John, for if the affection of my
+beloved Eve could cause me grief, it was because it brought you
+pain."
+
+"I had the additional mortification of approving of the choice she
+made; for, certainly, as respected her own happiness, your mother did
+more wisely in confiding it to the regulated, mild, and manly virtues
+of your father, than in placing her hopes on one as eccentric and
+violent as myself."
+
+"This is injustice, John. You may have been positive, and a little
+stern, at times, but never violent, and least of all with a woman."
+
+"Call it what you will, it unfitted me to make one so meek, gentle,
+and yet high-souled, as entirely happy as she deserved to be, and as
+you did make her, while she remained on earth. I had the courage to
+stay and learn that your father was accepted, (though the marriage
+was deferred two years in consideration for my feelings,) and then
+with a heart, in which mortified pride, wounded love, a resentment
+that was aimed rather against myself than against your parents, I
+quitted home, with a desperate determination never to rejoin my
+family again. This resolution I did not own to myself, even, but it
+lurked in my intentions unowned, festering like a mortal disease; and
+it caused me, when I burst away from the scene of happiness of which
+I had been a compelled witness, to change my name, and to make
+several inconsistent and extravagant arrangements to abandon my
+native country even."
+
+"Poor John!" exclaimed his cousin, involuntarily, "this would have
+been a sad blot on our felicity, had we known it!"
+
+"I was certain of that, even when most writhing under the blow you
+had so unintentionally inflicted, Ned; but the passions are
+tyrannical and inconsistent masters. I took my mother's name, changed
+my servant, and avoided those parts of the country where I was known.
+At this time, I feared for my own reason, and the thought crossed my
+mind, that by making a sudden marriage I might supplant the old
+passion, which was so near destroying me, by some of that gentler
+affection which seemed to render you so blest, Edward."
+
+"Nay, John, this was, itself, a temporary tottering of the reasoning
+faculties,"
+
+"It was simply the effect of passions, over which reason had never
+been taught to exercise a sufficient influence. Chance brought me
+acquainted with Miss Warrender, in one of the southern states, and
+she promised, as I fancied, to realize all my wild schemes of
+happiness and resentment."
+
+"Resentment, John?"
+
+"I fear I must confess it, Edward, though it were anger against
+myself. I first made Miss Warrender's acquaintance as John Assheton,
+and some months had passed before I determined to try the fearful
+experiment I have mentioned. She was young, beautiful, well-born,
+virtuous and good; if she had a fault, it was her high spirit--not
+high temper, but she was high-souled and proud."
+
+"Thank God, for this!" burst from the inmost soul of Paul, with
+unrestrainable feeling.
+
+"You have little to apprehend, my son, on the subject of your
+mother's character; if not perfect, she was wanting in no womanly
+virtue, and might, nay ought to have made any reasonable man happy.
+My offer was accepted, for I found her heart disengaged. Miss
+Warrender was not affluent, and, in addition to the other
+unjustifiable motives that influenced me, I thought there would be a
+satisfaction in believing that I had been chosen for myself, rather
+than for my wealth. Indeed, I had got to be distrustful and
+ungenerous, and then I disliked the confession of the weakness that
+had induced me to change my name. The simple, I might almost say,
+loose laws of this country, on the subject of marriage, removed all
+necessity for explanations, there being no bans nor license
+necessary, and the Christian name only being used in the ceremony. We
+were married, therefore, but I was not so unmindful of the rights of
+others, as to neglect to procure a certificate, under a promise of
+secrecy, in my own name. By going to the place where the ceremony was
+performed, you will also find the marriage of John Effingham and
+Mildred Warrender duly registered in the books of the church to which
+the officiating clergyman belonged. So far, I did what justice
+required, though, with a motiveless infatuation for which I can now
+hardly account, which _cannot_ be accounted for, except by
+ascribing it to the inconsistent cruelty of passion, I concealed my
+real name from her with whom there should have been no concealment. I
+fancied, I tried to fancy I was no impostor, as I was of the family I
+represented myself to be, by the mother's side; and. I wished to
+believe that my peace would easily be made when I avowed myself to be
+the man I really was. I had found Miss Warrender and her sister
+living with a well-intentioned but weak aunt, and with no male
+relative to make those inquiries which would so naturally have
+suggested themselves to persons of ordinary worldly prudence. It is
+true, I had become known to them under favourable circumstances, and
+they had good reason to believe me an Assheton from some accidental
+evidence that I possessed, which unanswerably proved my affinity to
+that family, without, betraying my true name. But there is so little
+distrust in this country, that, by keeping at a distance from the
+places in which I was personally known, a life might have passed
+without exposure."
+
+"This was all wrong, dear cousin Jack," said Eve, taking his hand and
+affectionately kissing it, while her face kindled with a sense of her
+sex's rights, "and I should be unfaithful to my womanhood were I to
+say otherwise. You had entered into the most solemn of all human
+contracts, and evil is the omen when such an engagement is veiled by
+any untruth. But, still, one would think you might have been happy
+with a virtuous and affectionate wife!"
+
+"Alas! it is but a hopeless experiment to marry one, while the heart
+is still yearning towards another. Confidence came too late; for,
+discovering my unhappiness, Mildred extorted a tardy confession from
+me; a confession of all but the concealment of the true name; and
+justly wounded at the deception of which she had been the dupe, and
+yielding to the impulses of a high and generous spirit, she announced
+to me that she was unwilling to continue the wife of any man on such
+terms. We parted, and I hastened into the south-western states, where
+I passed the next twelvemonth in travelling, hurrying from place to
+place, in the vain hope of obtaining peace of mind. I plunged into
+the prairies, and most of the time mentioned was lost to me as
+respects the world, in the company of hunters and trappers."
+
+"This, then, explains your knowledge of that section of the country,"
+exclaimed Mr. Effingham, "for which I have never been able to
+account! We thought you among your old friends in Carolina, all that
+time."
+
+"No one knew where I had secreted myself, for I passed under another
+feigned name, and had no servant, even. I had, however, sent an
+address to Mildred, where a letter would find me; for, I had begun to
+feel a sincere affection for her, though it might not have amounted
+to passion, and looked forward to being reunited, when her wounded
+feelings had time to regain their tranquillity. The obligations of
+wedlock are too serious to be lightly thrown aside, and I felt
+persuaded that neither of us would be satisfied in the end, without
+discharging the duties of the state into which we had entered."
+
+"And why did you not hasten to your poor wife, cousin Jack," Eve
+innocently demanded, "as soon as you returned to the settlements?"
+
+"Alas! my-dear girl, I found letters at St. Louis announcing her
+death. Nothing was said of any child, nor did I in the least suspect
+that I was about to become a father. When Mildred died, I thought all
+the ties, all the obligations, all the traces of my ill-judged
+marriage were extinct; and the course taken by her relations, of
+whom, in this country, there remained very few, left me no
+inclination to proclaim it. By observing silence, I continued to pass
+as a bachelor, of course; though had there been any apparent reason
+for avowing what had occurred, I think no one who knows me, can
+suppose I would have shrunk from doing so."
+
+"May I inquire, my dear sir," Paul asked, with a timidity of manner
+that betrayed how tenderly he felt it necessary to touch on the
+subject at all--"may I inquire, my dear sir, what course was taken by
+my mother's relatives?"
+
+"I never knew Mr. Warrender, my wife's brother, but he had the
+reputation of being a haughty and exacting man. His letters were not
+friendly; scarcely tolerable; for he affected to believe I had given
+a false address at the west, when I was residing in the middle
+states, and he threw out hints that to me were then inexplicable, but
+which the letters left with me, by Paul, have sufficiently explained.
+I thought him cruel and unfeeling at the time, but he had an excuse
+for his conduct."
+
+"Which was, sir--?" Paul eagerly inquired.
+
+"I perceive by the letters you have given me, my son, that your
+mother's family had imbibed the opinion, that I was John Assheton, of
+Lancaster, a man of singular humours, who had made an unfortunate
+marriage in Spain, and whose wife, I believe, is still living in
+Paris, though lost to herself and her friends. My kinsman lived
+retired, and never recovered the blow. As he was one of the only
+persons of the name, who could have married your mother, her
+relatives appear to have taken up the idea that he had been guilty of
+bigamy, and of course that Paul was illegitimate. Mr. Warrender, by
+his letters, appears even to have had an interview with this person,
+and, on mentioning his wife, was rudely repulsed from the house. It
+was a proud family, and Mildred being dead, the concealment of the
+birth of her child was resorted to, as a means of averting a fancied
+disgrace. As for myself, I call the all-seeing eye of God to witness,
+that the thought of my being a parent never crossed my mind, until I
+learned that a John Assheton was the father of Paul, and that the
+miniature of Mildred Warrender, that I received at the period of our
+engagement, was the likeness of his mother. The simple declaration of
+Captain Ducie concerning the family name of his mother, removed all
+doubt."
+
+"But, cousin Jack, did not the mention of Lady Dunluce, of the
+Ducies, and of Paul's connections, excite curiosity?"
+
+"Concerning what, dear? I could have no curiosity about a child of
+whose existence I was ignorant. I did know that the Warrenders had
+pretensions to both rank and fortune in England, but never heard the
+title, and cared nothing about money that would not probably, be
+Mildred's. Of General Ducie I never even heard, as he married after
+my separation, and subsequently to the receipt of my brother-in-law's
+letters, I wished to forget the existence of the family. I went to
+Europe, and remained abroad seven years and as this was at a time
+when the continent was closed against the English, I was not in a way
+to hear any thing on the subject. On my return, my wife's aunt was
+dead; the last of my wife's brothers was dead; her sister must then
+have been Mrs. Ducie; no one mentioned the Warrenders, all traces of
+whom were nearly lost in this country, and to me the subject was too
+painful to be either sought or dwelt on. It is a curious fact, that,
+in 1829, during our late visit to the old world, I ascended the Nile
+with General Ducie for a travelling companion. We met at Alexandria,
+and wont to the cataracts and returned in company, He knew me as John
+Effingham, an American traveller of fortune, if of no particular
+merit, and I knew him as an agreeable English general officer. He had
+the reserve of an Englishman of rank, and seldom spoke of his family,
+and it was only on our return, that I found he had letters from his
+wife, Lady Dunluce; but little did I dream that Lady Dunluce was
+Mabel Warrender. How often are we on the very verge of important
+information, and yet live on in ignorance and obscurity! The Ducies
+appear finally to have arrived at the opinion that the marriage was
+legal, and that no reproach rests on the birth of Paul, by the
+inquiries made concerning the eccentric John Assheton."
+
+"They fancied, in common with my uncle Warrender, for a long time,
+that the John Assheton whom you have mentioned, sir," said Paul, "was
+my father. But. some accidental information, at a late day, convinced
+them of their error, and then they naturally enough supposed that it
+was the only other John Assheton that could be heard of, who passes,
+and probably with sufficient reason, for a bachelor. This latter
+gentleman I have myself always supposed to be my father, though he
+has treated two or three letters I have written to him, with the
+indifference with which one would be apt to treat the pretensions of
+an impostor. Pride has prevented me from attempting to renew the
+correspondence lately."
+
+"It is John Assheton of Bristol, my mother's brother's son, as
+inveterate a bachelor as is to be found in the Union" said John
+Effingham, smiling, in spite of the grave subject and deep emotions
+that had so lately been uppermost in his thoughts. "He must have
+supposed your letters were an attempt at mystification on the part of
+some of his jocular associates, and I am surprised that he thought it
+necessary to answer them at all."
+
+"He did answer but one, and that reply certainly had something of the
+character you suggest, sir. I freely forgive him, now I understand
+the truth, though his apparent contempt gave me many a bitter pang at
+the time. I saw Mr. Assheton once in public, and observed him well,
+for, strange as it is, I have been thought to resemble him."
+
+"Why strange? Jack Assheton and myself have, or rather had a strong
+family likeness to each other, and, though the thought is new to me,
+I can now easily trace this resemblance to myself. It is rather an
+Assheton than an Effingham look, though the latter is not wanting."
+
+"These explanations are very clear and satisfactory," observed Mr.
+Effingham, "and leave little doubt that Paul is the child of John
+Effingham and Mildred Warrender; but they would be beyond all cavil,
+were the infancy of the boy placed in an equally plain point of view,
+and could the reasons be known why the Warrenders abandoned him to
+the care of those who yielded him up to Mr. Powis."
+
+"I see but little obscurity in that," returned John Effingham. "Paul
+is unquestionably the child referred to in the papers left by poor
+Monday, to the care of whose mother he was intrusted, until, in his
+fourth year, she yielded him to Mr. Powis, to get rid of trouble and
+expense, while she kept the annuity granted by Lady Dunluce. The
+names appear in the concluding letters; and had we read the latter
+through at first, we should earlier have arrived at, the same
+conclusion, Could we find the man called Dowse, who appears to have
+instigated the fraud, and who married Mrs. Monday, the whole thing
+would be explained."
+
+"Of this I am aware," said Paul, for he and John Effingham had
+perused the remainder of the Monday papers together, after the
+fainting fit of the latter, as soon as his strength would admit; "and
+Captain Truck is now searching for an old passenger of his, who I
+think will furnish the clue. Should we get this evidence, it would
+settle all legal questions."
+
+"Such questions will never be raised," said John Effingham, holding
+out his hand affectionately to his son; "you possess the marriage
+certificate given to your mother, and I avow myself to have been the
+person therein styled John Assheton. This fact I have endorsed on the
+back of the certificate; while here is another given to me in my
+proper name, with the endorsement made by the clergyman that I passed
+by another name, at the ceremony."
+
+"Such a man, cousin Jack, was unworthy of his cloth!" said Eve with
+energy.
+
+"I do not think so, my child. He was innocent of the original
+deception; this certificate was given after the death of my wife, and
+might do good, whereas it could do no harm. The clergyman in question
+is now a bishop, and is still living. He may give evidence if
+necessary, to the legality of the marriage."
+
+"And the clergyman by whom I was baptized is also alive," cried Paul,
+"and has never lost sight of me He was, in part, in the confidence of
+my mother' family, and even after I was adopted by Mr. Powis he kept
+me in view as one of his little Christians as he termed me. It was no
+less a person than Dr.----."
+
+"This alone would make out the connection and identity," said Mr.
+Effingham, "without the aid of the Monday witnesses. The whole
+obscurity has arisen from John's change of name, and his ignorance of
+the fact that his wife had a child. The Ducies appear to have had
+plausible reasons, too, for distrusting the legality of the marriage;
+but all is now clear, and as a large estate is concerned, we will
+take care that no further obscurity shall rest over the affair."
+
+"The part connected with the estate is already secured," said John
+Effingham, looking at Eve with a smile. "An American can always make
+a will, and one that contains but a single bequest is soon written.
+Mine is executed, and Paul Effingham, my son by my marriage with
+Mildred Warrender, and lately known in the United States' Navy as
+Paul Powis, is duly declared my heir. This will suffice for all legal
+purposes, though we shall have large draughts of gossip to swallow."
+
+"Cousin Jack!"
+
+"Daughter Eve!"
+
+"Who has given cause for it?"
+
+"He who commenced one of the most sacred of his earthly duties, with
+an unjustifiable deception. The wisest way to meet it, will be to
+make our avowals of the relationship as open as possible."
+
+"I see no necessity, John, of entering into details," said Mr.
+Effingham; "you were married young, and lost your wife within a year
+of your marriage. She was a Miss Warrender, and the sister of Lady
+Dunluce; Paul and Ducie are declared cousins, and the former proves
+to be your son, of whose existence you were ignorant. No one will
+presume to question any of us, and it really strikes me that all
+rational people ought to be satisfied with this simple account of the
+matter."
+
+"Father!" exclaimed Eve, with her pretty little hands raised in the
+attitude of surprise, "in what capital even, in what part of the
+world, would such a naked account appease curiosity? Much less will
+it suffice here, where every human being, gentle or simple, learned
+or ignorant, refined or vulgar, fancies himself a constitutional
+judge of all the acts of all his fellow-creatures?"
+
+"We have at least the consolation of knowing that no revelations will
+make the matter any worse, or any better," said Paul, "as the gossips
+would tell their own tale, in every case, though its falsehood were
+as apparent as the noon-day sun. A gossip is essentially a liar, and
+truth is the last ingredient that is deemed necessary to his other
+qualifications; indeed, a well authenticated fact is a death-blow to
+a gossip. I hope, my dear sir, you will say no more than that I am
+your son, a circumstance much too precious to me to be omitted."
+
+John Effingham looked affectionately at the noble young man, whom he
+had so long esteemed and admired; and the tears forced themselves to
+his eyes, as he felt the supreme happiness that can alone gladden a
+parent's heart.
+
+Chapter XXVIII.
+
+  "For my part, I care not: I say little; but when the time comes,
+  there shall be smiles."--NYM.
+
+Although Paul Effingham was right, and Eve Effingham was also right,
+in their opinions of the art of gossiping, they both forgot one
+qualifying circumstance, that, arising from different causes,
+produces the same effect, equally in a capital and in a province. In
+the first, marvels form a nine days' wonder from the hurry of events;
+in the latter, from the hurry of talking. When it was announced in
+Templeton that Mr. John Effingham had discovered a son in Mr. Powis,
+as that son had conjectured, every thing but the truth was rumoured
+and believed, in connection with the circumstance. Of course it
+excited a good deal of a natural and justifiable curiosity and
+surprise in the trained and intelligent, for John Effingham had
+passed for a confirmed bachelor; but they were generally content to
+suffer a family to have feelings and incidents that were not to be
+paraded before a neighbourhood. Having some notions themselves of the
+delicacy and sanctity of the domestic affections, they were willing
+to respect the same sentiments in others. But these few excepted, the
+village was in a tumult of surmises, reports, contradictions,
+confirmations, rebutters, and sur-rebutters, for a fortnight. Several
+village _élégants_, whose notions of life were obtained in the
+valley in which they were born, and who had turned up their noses at
+the quiet, reserved, gentleman-like Paul, because he did not happen
+to suit their tastes, were disposed to resent his claim to be his
+father's son, as if it were an injustice done to their rights; such
+commentators on men and things uniformly bringing every thing down to
+the standard of serf. Then the approaching marriages at the Wigwam
+had to run the gauntlet, not only of village and county criticisms,
+but that of the mighty Emporium itself, as it is the fashion to call
+the confused and tasteless collection of flaring red brick houses,
+marten-box churches, and colossal taverns, that stands on the island
+of Manhattan; the discussion of marriages being a topic of never-
+ending interest in that well regulated social organization, after the
+subjects of dollars, lots, and wines, have been duly exhausted. Sir
+George Templemore was transformed into the Honourable Lord George
+Templemore, and Paul's relationship to Lady Dunluce was converted, as
+usual, into his being the heir apparent of a Duchy of that name;
+Eve's preference for a nobleman, as a matter of course, to the
+_aristocratical_ tastes imbibed during a residence in foreign
+countries; Eve, the intellectual, feminine, instructed Eve, whose
+European associations, while they had taught her to prize the
+refinement, grace, _retenue_, and tone of an advanced condition
+of society, had also taught her to despise its mere covering and
+glitter! But, as there is no protection against falsehood, so is
+there no reasoning with ignorance.
+
+A sacred few, at the head of whom were Mr. Steadfast Dodge and Mrs.
+Widow-Bewitched Abbott, treated the matter as one of greater gravity,
+and as possessing an engrossing interest for the entire community.
+
+"For my part, Mr. Dodge," said Mrs. Abbott, in one of their frequent
+conferences, about a fortnight after the _éclaircissement_ of
+the last chapter, "I do not believe that Paul Powis is Paul Effingham
+at all. You say that you knew him by the name of Blunt when he was a
+younger man?"
+
+"Certainly, ma'am. He passed universally by that name formerly, and
+it may be considered as at least extraordinary that he should have
+had so many aliases. The truth of the matter is, Mrs. Abbott, if
+truth could be come at, which I always contend is very difficult in
+the present state of the world--"
+
+"You never said a juster thing, Mr. Dodge!" interrupted the lady,
+feelings impetuous as hers seldom waiting for the completion of a
+sentence, "I never can get hold of the truth of any thing now; you
+may remember you insinuated that Mr. John Effingham himself was to be
+married to Eve, and, lo and behold! it turns out to be his son!"
+
+"The lady may have changed her mind, Mrs. Abbott: she gets the same
+estate with a younger man."
+
+"She's monstrous disagreeable, and I'm sure it will be a relief to
+the whole village when she is married, let it be to the father, or to
+the son. Now, do you know, Mr. Dodge, I have been in a desperate
+taking about one thing, and that is to find that, bony fie-dy, the
+two old Effinghams are not actually brothers! I knew that they
+_called_ each other cousin Jack and cousin Ned, and that Eve
+affected to call her uncle _cousin_ Jack, but then she has so
+many affectations, and the people are so foreign, that I looked upon
+all that as mere pretence; I said to myself a neighbourhood _ought_
+to know better about a man's family than he _can_ know himself,
+and the neighbourhood all declared they were brothers; and yet
+it turns out, after all, that they are only cousins!"
+
+"Yes, I do believe that, for once, the family was right in that
+matter, and the public mistaken."
+
+"Well, I should like to know who has a better right to be mistaken
+than the public, Mr. Dodge. This is a free country, and if the people
+can't sometimes be wrong, what is the mighty use of their freedom? We
+are all sinful wretches, at the best, and it is vain to look for any
+thing but vice from sinners."
+
+"Nay, my dear Mrs. Abbott, you are too hard on yourself, for every
+body allows that _you_ are as exemplary as you are devoted to
+your religious duties."
+
+"Oh! I was not speaking particularly of myself, sir; I am no egotist
+in such things, and wish to leave my own imperfections to the charity
+of my friends and neighbours. But, do you think, Mr. Dodge, that a
+marriage between Paul Effingham, for so I suppose he must be-called,
+and Eve Effingham, will be legal? Can't it be set aside, and if that
+should be the case, wouldn't the fortune go to the public?"
+
+"It _ought_ to be so, my dear ma'am, and I trust the day is not
+distant when it will be so. The people are beginning to understand
+their rights, and another century will not pass, before they will
+enforce them by the necessary penal statutes. We have got matters so
+now, that a man can no longer indulge in the aristocratic and selfish
+desire to make a will, and, take my word for it, we shall not stop
+until we bring every thing to the proper standard."
+
+The reader is not to suppose from his language that Mr. Dodge was an
+agrarian, or that he looked forward to a division of property, at
+some future day; for, possessing in his own person already, more than
+what could possibly fall to an individual share, he had not the
+smallest desire to lessen its amount by a general division. In point
+of fact he did not know his own meaning, except as he felt envy of
+all above him, in which, in truth, was to be found the whole secret
+of his principles, his impulses, and his doctrines. Any thing that
+would pull down those whom education, habits, fortune, or tastes, had
+placed in positions more conspicuous than his own, was, in his eyes,
+reasonable and just--as any thing that would serve him, in person,
+the same ill turn, would have been tyranny and oppression. The
+institutions of America, like every thing human, have their bad as
+well as their good side; and while we firmly believe in the relative
+superiority of the latter, as compared with other systems, we should
+fail of accomplishing the end set before us in this work, did we not
+exhibit, in strong colours, one of the most prominent consequences
+that has attended the entire destruction of factitious personal
+distinctions in the country, which has certainly aided in bringing
+out in bolder relief than common, the prevalent disposition in man to
+covet that which is the possession of another, and to decry merits
+that are unattainable.
+
+"Well, I rejoice to hear this," returned Mrs. Abbott, whose
+principles were of the same loose school as those of her companion,
+"for I think no one should have rights but those who have experienced
+religion, if you would keep vital religion in a country. There goes
+that old sea-lion, Truck, and his fishing associate, the commodore,
+with their lines and poles, as usual, Mr. Dodge; I beg you will call
+to them, for I long to hear what the first can have to say about his
+beloved Effinghams, now?"
+
+Mr. Dodge complied, and the navigator of the ocean and the navigator
+of the lake, were soon seated in Mrs. Abbott's little parlour, which
+might be styled the focus of gossip, near those who were so lately
+its sole occupants.
+
+"This is wonderful news, gentlemen," commenced Mrs. Abbott, as soon
+as the bustle of the entrance had subsided. "Mr. Powis is Mr.
+Effingham, and it seems that Miss Effingham is to become Mrs.
+Effingham. Miracles will never cease, and I look upon this as one of
+the most surprising of my time."
+
+"Just so, ma'am," said the commodore, winking his eye, and giving the
+usual flourish with a hand; "your time has not been that of a day
+neither, and Mr. Powis has reason to rejoice that he is the hero of
+such a history. For my part, I could not have been more astonished,
+were I to bring up the sogdollager with a trout-hook, having a cheese
+paring for the bait."
+
+"I understand," continued the lady, "that there are doubts after all,
+whether this miracle be really a true miracle. It is hinted that Mr.
+Powis is neither Mr. Effingham nor Mr. Powis, but that he is actually
+a Mr. Blunt. Do you happen to know any thing of the matter, Captain
+Truck?"
+
+"I have been introduced to him, ma'am, by all three names, and I
+consider him as an acquaintance in each character. I can assure you,
+moreover, that he is A, No. 1, on whichever tack you take him; a man
+who carries a weather helm in the midst of his enemies."
+
+"Well, I do not consider it a very great recommendation for one to
+have enemies, at all. Now, I dare say, Mr. Dodge, _you_ have not
+an enemy on earth!"
+
+"I should be sorry to think that I had, Mrs. Abbott. I am every man's
+friend, particularly the poor man's friend, and I should suppose that
+every man _ought_ to be my friend. I hold the whole human family
+to be brethren, and that they ought to live together as such."
+
+"Very true, sir; quite true--we _are_ all sinners, and ought to
+look favourably on each other's failings. It is no business of mine--
+I say it is no business of ours, Mr. Dodge, who Miss Eve Effingham
+marries; but were she _my_ daughter, I do think I should not
+like her to have three family names, and to keep her own in the
+bargain!"
+
+"The Effinghams hold their heads very much up, though it is not easy
+to see _why_; but so they do, and the more names the better,
+perhaps, for such people," returned the editor. "For my part, I treat
+them with condescension, just as I do every body else; for it is a
+rule with me, Captain Truck, to make use of the same deportment to a
+king on his throne, as I would to a beggar in the street."
+
+"Merely to show that you do not feel yourself to be above your
+betters. We have many such philosophers in this country."
+
+"Just so," said the commodore.
+
+"I wish I knew," resumed Mrs. Abbott; for there existed in her head,
+as well as in that of Mr. Dodge, such a total confusion on the
+subject of deportment, that neither saw nor felt the cool sarcasm of
+the old sailor; "I wish I knew, now, whether Eve Effingham has really
+been regenerated! What is your opinion, commodore?"
+
+"Re-what, ma'am," said the commodore, who was not conscious of ever
+having heard the word before; for, in his Sabbaths on the water,
+where he often worshipped God devoutly in his heart, the language of
+the professedly pious was never heard; "I can only say she is as
+pretty a skiff as floats, but I can tell you nothing about
+resuscitation--indeed, I never heard of her having been drowned."
+
+"Ah, Mrs. Abbott, the very best friends of the Effinghams will not
+maintain that they are pious. I do not wish to be invidious, or to
+say unneighbourly things; but were I upon oath, I could testify to a
+great many things, which would unqualifiedly show, that none of them
+have ever experienced."
+
+"Now, Mr. Dodge, you know how much I dislike scandal," the widow-
+bewitched cried affectedly, "and I cannot tolerate such a sweeping
+charge. I insist on the proofs of what you say, in which, no doubt,
+these gentlemen will join me."
+
+By proofs, Mrs. Abbott meant allegations.
+
+"Well, ma'am, since you insist on my _proving_ what I have said,
+you shall not be disappointed. In the first place, then, they _read_
+their family prayers out of a book."
+
+"Ay, ay," put in the captain; "but that merely shows they have some
+education; it is done every where."
+
+"Your pardon, sir; no people but the Catholics and the church people
+commit this impiety. The idea of _reading_ to the Deity, Mrs.
+Abbott, is particularly shocking to a pious soul."
+
+"As if the Lord stood in need of letters! _That_ is very bad, I
+allow; for at _family_ prayers, a form becomes mockery."
+
+"Yes, ma'am; but what do you think of cards?"
+
+"Cards!" exclaimed Mrs. Abbott, holding up her pious hands, in holy
+horror.
+
+"Even so; foul paste-board, marked with kings and queens," said the
+captain. Why this is worse than a common sin, being unqualifiedly
+anti-republican."
+
+"I confess I did not expect-this! I had heard that Eve Effingham was
+guilty of indiscretions, but I did not think she was so lost to
+virtue, as to touch a card. Oh! Eve Effingham; Eve Effingham, for
+what is your poor diseased soul destined!"
+
+"She dances, too, I suppose you know that," continued Mr. Dodge, who
+finding his popularity a little on the wane, had joined the meeting
+himself, a few weeks before, and who did not fail to manifest the
+zeal of a new convert.
+
+"Dances!" repeated Mrs. Abbott, in holy horror.
+
+"Real fi diddle de di!" echoed Captain Truck.
+
+"Just so," put in the commodore; "I have seen it with my own eyes.
+But, Mrs. Abbott, I feel bound to tell you that your own daughter--"
+
+"Biansy-Alzumy-Anne!" exclaimed the mother in alarm.
+
+"Just so; my-aunty-all-suit-me-anne, if that is her name. Do you
+know, ma'am, that I have seen your own blessed daughter, my-aunty-
+Anne, do a worse thing, even, than dancing!"
+
+"Commodore, you are awful! What _could_ a child of mine do that
+is worse than dancing?"
+
+"Why, ma'am, if you _will_ hear all, it is my duty to tell you.
+I saw aunty-Anne (the commodore was really ignorant of the girl's
+name) jump a skipping-rope, yesterday morning, between the hours of
+seven and eight. As I hope ever to see the sogdollager, again, ma'am,
+I did!"
+
+"And do you this as bad as dancing?"
+
+"Much worse, ma'am, to my notion. It is jumping about without music,
+and without any grace, either, particularly as it was performed by
+my-aunty-Anne."
+
+"You are given to light jokes. Jumping the skipping-rope is not
+forbidden in the bible."
+
+"Just so; nor is dancing, if I know any thing about it; nor, for that
+matter, cards."
+
+"But waste of time is; a sinful waste of time; and evil-passions, and
+all unrighteousness."
+
+"Just so. My-aunty-Anne was going to the pump for water--I dare say
+you sent her--and she was misspending her time; and as for evil
+passions, she did not enjoy the hop, until she and your neighbour's
+daughter had pulled each other's hair for the rope, as if they had
+been two she-dragons. Take my word for it, ma'am, it wanted for
+nothing to make it sin of the purest water, but a cracked fiddle."
+
+While the commodore was holding Mrs. Abbott at bay, in this manner,
+Captain Truck, who had given him a wink to that effect, was employed
+in playing off a practical joke at the expense of the widow. It was
+one of the standing amusements of these worthies, who had gotten to
+be sworn friends and constant associates, after they had caught as
+many fish as they wished, to retire to the favourite spring, light,
+the one his cigar, the other his pipe, mix their grog, and then
+relieve their ennui, when tired of discussing men and things, by
+playing cards on a particular stump. Now, it happens that the captain
+had the identical pack which had been used on all such occasions in
+his pocket, as was evident in the fact that the cards were nearly as
+distinctly marked on their backs, as on their faces. These cards he
+showed secretly to his companion, and when the attention of Mrs.
+Abbott was altogether engaged in expecting the terrible announcement
+of her daughter's errors, the captain slipped them, kings, queens and
+knaves, high, low, jack and the game, without regard to rank, into
+the lady's work-basket. As soon as this feat was successfully
+performed, a sign was given to the commodore that the conspiracy was
+effected, and that disputant in theology gradually began to give
+ground, while he continued to maintain that jumping the rope was a
+sin, though it might be one of a nominal class. There is little
+doubt, had he possessed a smattering of phrases, a greater command of
+biblical learning, and more zeal, that the fisherman might have
+established a new shade of the Christian faith; for, while mankind
+still persevere in disregarding the plainest mandates of God, as
+respects humility, the charities, and obedience, nothing seems to
+afford them more delight than to add to the catalogue of the offences
+against his divine supremacy. It was perhaps lucky for the commodore,
+who was capital at casting a pickerel line, but who usually settled
+his polemics with the fist, when hard pushed, that Captain Truck
+found leisure to come to the rescue.
+
+"I'm amazed, ma'am," said the honest packet-master, "that a woman of
+your sanctity should deny that jumping the rope is a sin, for I hold
+that point to have been settled by all our people, these fifty years.
+You will admit that the rope cannot be well-jumped without levity."
+
+"Levity, Captain Truck! I hope you do not insinuate that a daughter
+of mine discovers levity?"
+
+"Certainly, ma'am; she is called the best rope jumper in the village,
+I hear; and levity, or lightness of carriage, is the great requisite
+for skill in the art. Then there are 'vain repetitions' in doing the
+same thing over and over so often, and 'vain repetitions' are
+forbidden even in our prayers. I can call both father and mother to
+testify to that fact."
+
+"Well, this is news to me! I must speak to the minister about it."
+
+"Of the two, the skipping-rope is rather more sinful than dancing,
+for the music makes the latter easy; whereas, one has to force the
+spirit to enter into the other. Commodore, our hour has come, and we
+must make sail. May I ask the favour, Mrs. Abbott, of a bit of thread
+to fasten this hook afresh?"
+
+The widow-bewitched turned to her basket, and raising a piece of
+calico, to look for the thread "high, low, jack and the game," stared
+her in the face. When she bent her eyes towards her guests, she
+perceived all three gazing at the cards, with as much apparent
+surprise and curiosity, as if two of them knew nothing of their
+history.
+
+"Awful!" exclaimed Mrs. Abbott, shaking both hands,--"awful--awful--
+awful! The powers of darkness have been at work here!"
+
+"They seem to have been pretty much occupied, too," observed the
+captain, "for a better thumbed pack I never yet found in the
+forecastle of a ship."
+
+"Awful--awful--awful!--This is equal to the forty days in the
+wilderness, Mr. Dodge."
+
+"It is a trying cross, ma'am."
+
+"To my notion, now," said the captain, "those cards are not worse
+than the skipping-rope, though I allow that they might have been
+cleaner."
+
+But Mrs. Abbott was not disposed to view the matter so lightly. She
+saw the hand of the devil in the affair, and fancied it was a new
+trial offered to her widowed condition.
+
+"Are these actually cards!" she cried, like one who distrusted the
+evidence of her senses.
+
+"Just so, ma'am," kindly answered the commodore; "This is the ace of
+spades, a famous fellow to hold when you have the lead; and this is
+the Jack, which counts one, you know, when spades are trumps. I never
+saw a more thorough-working pack in my life."
+
+"Or a more thoroughly worked pack," added the captain, in a condoling
+manner. "Well, we are not all perfect, and I hope Mrs. Abbott will
+cheer up and look at this matter in a gayer point of view. For myself
+I hold that a skipping-rope is worse than the Jack of spades, Sundays
+or week days. Commodore, we shall see no pickerel to-day, unless we
+tear ourselves from this good company."
+
+Here the two wags took their leave, and retreated to the skiff; the
+captain, who foresaw an occasion to use them, considerately offering
+to relieve Mrs. Abbott from the presence of the odious cards,
+intimating that he would conscientiously see them fairly sunk in the
+deepest part of the lake.
+
+When the two worthies were at a reasonable distance from the shore,
+the commodore suddenly ceased rowing, made a flourish with his hand,
+and incontinently began to laugh, as if his mirth had suddenly broken
+through all restraint. Captain Truck, who had been lighting a cigar,
+commenced smoking, and, seldom indulging in boisterous merriment, he
+responded with his eyes, shaking his head from time to time, with
+great satisfaction, as thoughts more ludicrous than common came over
+his imagination.
+
+"Harkee, commodore," he said, blowing the smoke upward, and watching
+it with his eye until it floated away in a little cloud, "neither of
+us is a chicken. You have studied life on the fresh water, and I have
+studied life on the salt. I do not say which produces the best
+scholars, but I know that both make better Christians than the jack-
+screw system."
+
+"Just so. I tell them in the village that little is gained in the end
+by following the blind; that is my doctrine, sir."
+
+"And a very good doctrine it would prove, I make no doubt, were you
+to enter into it a little more fully--"
+
+"Well, sir, I can explain--"
+
+"Not another syllable is necessary. I know what you mean as well as
+if I said it myself, and, moreover, short sermons are always the
+best. You mean that a pilot ought to know where he is steering, which
+is perfectly sound doctrine. My own experience tells me, that if you
+press a sturgeon's nose with your foot, it will spring up as soon as
+it is loosened. Now the jack-screw will heave a great strain, no
+doubt; but the moment it is let up, down comes all that rests on it,
+again. This Mr. Dodge, I suppose you know, has been a passenger with
+me once or twice?"
+
+"I have heard as much--they say he was tigerish in the fight with the
+niggers--quite an out-and-outer."
+
+"Ay, I hear he tells some such story himself; but harkee, commodore,
+I wish to do justice to all men, and I find there is very little of
+it inland, hereaway. The hero of that day is about to marry your
+beautiful Miss Effingham; other men did their duty too, as, for
+instance, was the case with Mr. John Effingham; but Paul Blunt-Powis-
+Effingham finished the job. As for Mr. Steadfast Dodge, sir, I say
+nothing, unless it be to add that he was nowhere near _me_ in
+that transaction; and if any man felt like an alligator in Lent, on
+that occasion, it was your humble servant."
+
+"Which means that he was not nigh the enemy, I'll swear before a
+magistrate."
+
+"And no fear of perjury. Any one who saw Mr. John Effingham and Mr.
+Powis on that day, might have sworn that they were father and son,
+and any one who _did not see_ Mr. Dodge might have said at once,
+that he did not belong to their family. That is all, sir; I never
+disparage a passenger, and, therefore, shall say no more than merely
+to add, that Mr. Dodge is no warrior."
+
+"They say he has experienced religion, lately, as they call it."
+
+"It is high time, sir, for he had experienced sin quite long enough,
+according to my notion. I hear that the man goes up and down the
+country disparaging those whose shoe-ties he is unworthy to unloose,
+and that he has published some letters in his journal, that are as
+false as his heart; but let him beware, lest the world should see,
+some rainy day, an extract from a certain log-book belonging to a
+ship called the Montauk. I am rejoiced at this marriage after all,
+commodore, or marriages rather, for I understand that Mr. Paul
+Effingham and Sir George Templemore intend to make a double bowline
+of it to-morrow morning. All is arranged, and as soon as my eyes have
+witnessed that blessed sight, I shall trip for New-York again."
+
+"It is clearly made out then, that the young gentleman is Mr. John
+Effingham's son?"
+
+"As clear as the north-star in a bright night. The fellow who spoke
+to me at the Fun of Fire has put us in a way to remove the last
+doubt, if there were any doubt. Mr. Effingham himself, who is so
+cool-headed and cautious, says there is now sufficient proof to make
+it good in any court in America, That point may be set down as
+settled, and, for my part, I rejoice it is so, since Mr. John
+Effingham has so long passed for an old bachelor, that it is a credit
+to the corps to find one of them the father of so noble a son."
+
+Here the commodore dropped his anchor, and the two friends began to
+fish. For an hour neither talked much, but having obtained the
+necessary stock of perch, they landed at the favourite spring, and
+prepared a fry. While seated on the grass, alternating be tween the
+potations of punch, and the mastication of fish, these worthies again
+renewed the dialogue in their usual discursive, philosophical, and
+sentimental manner.
+
+"We are citizens of a surprisingly great country, commodore,"
+commenced Mr. Truck, after one of his heaviest draughts; "every body
+says it, from Maine to Florida, and what every body says must be
+true."
+
+"Just so, sir. I sometimes wonder how so great a country ever came to
+produce so little a man as myself."
+
+"A good cow may have a bad calf, and that explains the matter. Have
+you many as virtuous and pious women in this part of the world, as
+Mrs. Abbott?"
+
+"The hills and valleys are filled with them. You mean persons who
+have got so much religion that they have no room for any thing else?"
+
+"I shall mourn to my dying day, that you were not brought up to the
+sea! If you discover so much of the right material on fresh-water,
+what would you have been on salt? The people who suck in nutriment
+from a brain and a conscience like those of Mr. Dodge, too,
+commodore, must get, in time, to be surprisingly clear-sighted."
+
+"Just so; his readers soon overreach themselves. But it's of no great
+consequence, sir; the people of this part of the world keep nothing
+long enough to do much good, or much harm."
+
+"Fond of change, ha?"
+
+"Like unlucky fishermen, always ready to shift the ground. I don't
+believe, sir, that in all this region you can find a dozen graves of
+sons, that lie near their fathers. Every body seems to have a mortal
+aversion to stability,"
+
+"It is hard to love such a country, commodore!"
+
+"Sir, I never try to love it. God has given me a pretty sheet of
+water, that suits my fancy and wants, a beautiful sky, fine green
+mountains, and I am satisfied. One may love God, in such a temple,
+though he love nothing else."
+
+"Well, I suppose if you love nothing, nothing loves you, and no
+injustice is done."
+
+"Just, so, sir. Self has got to be the idol, though in the general
+scramble a man is sometimes puzzled to know whether he is himself, or
+one of the neighbours."
+
+"I wish I knew your political sentiments, commodore; you have been
+communicative on all subjects but that, and I have taken up the
+notion that you are a true philosopher."
+
+"I hold myself to be but a babe in swaddling-clothes compared to
+yourself, sir; but such as my poor opinions are, you are welcome to
+them. In the first place, then, sir, I have lived long enough on this
+water to know that every man is a lover of liberty in his own person,
+and that he has a secret distaste for it in the persons of other
+people. Then, sir, I have got to understand that patriotism means
+bread and cheese, and that opposition is every man for himself."
+
+"If the truth were known, I believe, commodore, you have buoyed out
+the channel!"
+
+"Just so. After being pulled about by the salt of the land, and using
+my freeman's privileges at their command, until I got tired of so
+much liberty, sir, I have resigned, and retired to private life,
+doing most of my own thinking out here on the Otsego-Water, like a
+poor slave as I am."
+
+"You ought to be chosen the next President!"
+
+"I owe my present emancipation, sir, to the sogdollager. I first
+began to reason about such a man as this Mr. Dodge, who has thrust
+himself and his ignorance together into the village, lately, as an
+expounder of truth, and a ray of light to the blind. Well, sir, I
+said to myself, if this man be the man I know him to be as a man, can
+he be any thing better as an editor?"
+
+"That was a home question put to yourself, commodore; how did you
+answer it?"
+
+"The answer was satisfactory, sir, to myself, whatever it might be to
+other people. I stopped his paper, and set up for myself. Just about
+that time the sogdollager nibbled, and instead of trying to be a
+great man, over the shoulders of the patriots and sages of the land,
+I endeavoured to immortalize myself by hooking him. I go to the
+elections now, for that I feel to be a duty, but instead of allowing
+a man like this Mr. Dodge to tell me how to vote, I vote for the man
+in public that I would trust in private."
+
+"Excellent! I honour you more and more every minute I pass in your
+society. We will now drink to the future happiness of those who will
+become brides and bridegrooms to-morrow. If all men were as
+philosophical and as learned as you, commodore, the human race would
+be in a fairer way than they are to-day."
+
+"Just so; I drink to them with all my heart. Is it not surprising,
+sir, that people like Mrs. Abbott and Mr. Dodge should have it in
+their power to injure such as those whose happiness we have just had
+the honour of commemorating in advance?"
+
+"Why, commodore, a fly may bite an elephant, if he can find a weak
+spot in his hide. I do not altogether understand the history of the
+marriage of John Effingham, myself; but we see the issue of it has
+been a fine son. Now I hold that when a man fairly marries, he is
+bound to own it, the same as any other crime; for he owes it to those
+who have not been as guilty as himself, to show the world that he no
+longer belongs to them."
+
+"Just so; but we have flies in this part of the world that will bite
+through the toughest hide."
+
+"That comes from there being no quarter-deck in your social ship,
+commodore. Now aboard of a well-regulated packet, all the thinking is
+done aft; they who are desirous of knowing whereabouts the vessel is,
+being compelled to wait till the observations are taken, or to sit
+down in their ignorance. The whole difficulty comes from the fact
+that sensible people live so far apart in this quarter of the world,
+that fools have more room than should fall to their share. You
+understand me, commodore?"
+
+"Just so," said the commodore, laughing, and winking. "Well, it is
+fortunate that there are some people who are not quite as weak-minded
+as some other people. I take it, Captain Truck, that you will be
+present at the wedding?"
+
+The captain now winked in his turn, looked around him to make sure no
+one was listening, and laying a finger on his nose, he answered, in a
+much lower key than was usual for him--
+
+"You can keep a secret, I know, commodore. Now what I have to say is
+not to be told to Mrs. Abbott, in order that it may be repeated and
+multiplied, but is to be kept as snug as your bait, in the bait-box."
+
+"You know your man, sir."
+
+"Well then, about ten minutes before the clock strikes nine, to-
+morrow morning, do you slip into the gallery of New St. Paul's, and
+you shall see beauty and modesty, when 'unadorned, adorned the most.'
+You comprehend?"
+
+"Just so," and the hand was flourished even more than usual.
+
+"It does not become us bachelors to be too lenient to matrimony, but
+I should be an unhappy man, were I not to witness the marriage of
+Paul Powis to Eve Effingham."
+
+Here both the worthies, "freshened the nip," as Captain Truck called
+it, and then the conversation soon got to be too philosophical and
+contemplative for this unpretending record of events and ideas.
+
+Chapter XXIX
+
+  "Then plainly know, my heart's dear love is set On the fair
+  daughter of rich Capulet; As mine on hers, so hers is set on mine;
+  And all combined, save what thou must confine By holy marriage."
+
+  ROMEO AND JULIET.
+
+The morning chosen for the nuptials of Eve and Grace arrived, and all
+the inmates of the Wigwam were early afoot, though the utmost care
+had been taken to prevent the intelligence of the approaching
+ceremony from getting into the village. They little knew, however,
+how closely they were watched; the mean artifices that were resorted
+to by some who called themselves their neighbours, to tamper with
+servants, to obtain food for conjecture, and to justify to themselves
+their exaggerations, falsehoods, and frauds. The news did leak out,
+as will presently be seen, and through a channel that may cause the
+reader, who is unacquainted with some of the peculiarities of
+American life, a little surprise.
+
+We have frequently alluded to Annette, the _femme de chambre_
+that had followed Eve from Europe, although we have had no occasion
+to dwell on her character, which was that of a woman of her class, as
+they are well known to exist in France. Annette was young, had
+bright, sparkling black eyes, was well made, and had the usual
+tournure and manner of a Parisian grisette. As it is the besetting
+weakness of all provincial habits to mistake graces for grace,
+flourishes for elegance, and exaggeration for merit, Annette soon
+acquired a reputation in her circle, as a woman of more than usual
+claims to distinction. Her attire was in the height of the fashion,
+being of Eve's cast-off clothes, and of the best materials, and
+attire is also a point that is not without its influence on those who
+are unaccustomed to the world.
+
+As the double ceremony was to take place before breakfast, Annette
+was early employed about the person of her young mistress, adorning
+it in the bridal robes. While she worked at her usual employment, the
+attendant appeared unusually agitated, and several times pins were
+badly pointed, and new arrangements had to supersede or to supply the
+deficiencies of her mistakes. Eve was always a model of patience, and
+she bore with these little oversights with a quiet that would have
+given Paul an additional pledge of her admirable self-command, as
+well as of a sweetness of temper that, in truth, raised her almost
+above the commoner feelings of mortality.
+
+"_Vous êtes un peu agitée, ce matin, ma bonne Annette_," she
+merely observed, when her maid had committed a blunder more material
+than common.
+
+"_J'espère que Mademoiselle a été contente de moi, jusqu' à
+present_," returned Annette, vexed with her own awkwardness, and
+speaking in the manner in which it is usual to announce an intention
+to quit a service.
+
+"Certainly, Annette, you have conducted yourself well, and are very
+expert in your _métier_. But why do you ask this question, just
+at this moment?"
+
+"_Parceque_--because--with mademoiselle's permission, I intended
+to ask for my _congé_."
+
+"_Congé_! Do you think of quitting me, Annette?"
+
+"It would make me happier than anything else to die in the service of
+mademoiselle, but we are all subject to our destiny"--the
+conversation was in French--"and mine compels me to cease my services
+as a _femme de chambre_."
+
+"This is a sudden, and for one in a strange country, an extraordinary
+resolution. May I ask, Annette, what you propose to do?"
+
+Here, the woman gave herself certain airs, endeavoured to blush, did
+look at the carpet with a studied modesty that might have deceived
+one who did not know the genus, and announced her intention to get
+married, too, at the end of the present month.
+
+"Married!" repeated Eve--"surely not to old Pierre, Annette!"
+
+"Pierre, Mademoiselle! I shall not condescend to look at Pierre.
+_Je vais me marier avec un avocat_."
+
+"_Un avocat_!"
+
+"_Oui, Mademoiselle_. I will marry myself with Monsieur
+Aristabule Bragg, if Mademoiselle shall permit."
+
+Eve was perfectly mute with astonishment, notwithstanding the proofs
+she had often seen of the wide range that the ambition of an American
+of a certain class allows itself. Of course, she remembered the
+conversation on the Point, and it would not have been in nature, had
+not a mistress who had been so lately wooed, felt some surprise at
+finding her discarded suitor so soon seeking consolation in the
+smiles of her own maid. Still her surprise was less than that which
+the reader will probably experience at this announcement; for, as has
+just been said, she had seen too much of the active and pliant
+enterprise of the lover, to feel much wonder at any of his moral
+_tours de force_. Even Eve, however, was not perfectly acquainted
+with the views and policy that had led Aristabulus to seek this
+consummation to his matrimonial schemes, which must be explained
+explicitly, in order that they may be properly understood.
+
+Mr. Bragg had no notion of any distinctions in the world, beyond
+those which came from money, and political success. For the first he
+had a practical deference that was as profound as his wishes for its
+enjoyments; and for the last he felt precisely the sort of reverence,
+that one educated under a feudal system, would feel for a feudal
+lord. The first, after several unsuccessful efforts, he had found
+unattainable by means of matrimony, and he turned his thoughts
+towards Annette, whom he had for some months held in reserve, in the
+event of his failing with Eve and Grace, for on both these heiresses
+had he entertained designs, as a _pis aller_. Annette was a
+dress-maker of approved taste, her person was sufficiently
+attractive, her broken English gave piquancy to thoughts of no great
+depth, she was of a suitable age, and he had made her proposals and
+been accepted, as soon as it was ascertained that Eve and Grace were
+irretrievably lost to him. Of course, the Parisienne did not hesitate
+an instant about becoming the wife of _un avocat;_ for,
+agreeably to her habits, matrimony was a legitimate means of
+bettering her condition in life. The plan was soon arranged. They
+were to be married as soon as Annette's month's notice had expired,
+and then they were to emigrate to the far west, where Mr. Bragg
+proposed to practise law, or keep school, or to go to Congress, or to
+turn trader, or to saw lumber, or, in short, to turn his hand to any
+thing that offered; while Annette was to help along with the _ménage_,
+by making dresses, and teaching French; the latter occupation
+promising to be somewhat peripatetic, the population being
+scattered, and few of the dwellers in the interior deeming it
+necessary to take more than a quarter's instruction in any of the
+higher branches of education; the object being to _study_, as it
+is called, and not to _know_. Aristabulus, who was filled with
+_go-aheadism_, would have shortened the delay, but this Annette
+positively resisted; her _esprit de corps_ as a servant, and all
+her notions of justice, repudiating the notion that the connexion
+which had existed so long between Eve and herself, was to be cut off
+at a moment's warning. So diametrically were the ideas of the
+_fiancés_ opposed to each other, on this point, that at one time it
+threatened a rupture, Mr. Bragg asserting the natural independence of
+man to a degree that would have rendered him independent of all
+obligations that were not effectually enacted by the law, and Annette
+maintaining the dignity of a European _femme de chambre,_ whose
+sense of propriety demanded that she should not quit her place
+without giving a month's warning. The affair was happily decided by
+Aristabulus's receiving a commission to tend a store, in the absence
+of its owner; Mr. Effingham, on a hint from his daughter, having
+profited by the annual expiration of the engagement, to bring their
+connexion to an end.
+
+This termination to the passion of Mr. Bragg would have afforded Eve
+a good deal of amusement at any other moment; but a bride cannot be
+expected to give too much of her attention to the felicity and
+prospects of those who have no natural or acquired claims to her
+affection. The cousins met, attired for the ceremony, in Mr.
+Effingham's room, where he soon came in person, to lead them to the
+drawing-room. It is seldom that two more lovely young women are
+brought together on similar occasions. As Mr. Effingham stood between
+them, holding a hand of each, his moistened eyes turned from one to
+the other in honest pride, and in an admiration that even his
+tenderness could not restrain. The _toilettes_ were as simple as
+the marriage ceremony will permit; for it was intended that there
+should be no unnecessary parade; and, perhaps, the delicate beauty of
+each of the brides was rendered the more attractive by this
+simplicity, as it has often been justly remarked, that the fair of
+this country are more winning in dress of a less conventional
+character, than when in the elaborate and regulated attire of
+ceremonies. As might have been expected, there was most of soul and
+feeling in Eve's countenance, though Grace wore an air of charming
+modesty and nature. Both were unaffected, simple and graceful, and we
+may add that both trembled as Mr. Effingham took their hands.
+
+"This is a pleasing and yet a painful hour," said that kind and
+excellent man; "one in which I gain a son, and lose a daughter."
+
+"And _I_, dearest uncle," exclaimed Grace, whose feelings
+trembled on her eye-lids, like the dew ready to drop from the leaf,
+"have _I_ no connexion with your feelings?"
+
+"You are the daughter that I lose, my child, for Eve will still
+remain with me. But Templemore has promised to be grateful, and I
+will trust his word."
+
+Mr. Effingham then embraced with fervour both the charming young
+women, who stood apparelled for the most important event of their
+lives, lovely in their youth, beauty, innocence, and modesty; and
+taking an arm of each, he led them below. John Effingham, the two
+bridegrooms, Captain Ducie, Mr. and Mrs. Bloomfield, Mrs. Hawker,
+Captain Truck, Mademoiselle Viefville, Annette, and Ann Sidley, were
+all assembled in the drawing-room, ready to receive them; and as soon
+as shawls were thrown around Eve and Grace, in order to conceal the
+wedding dresses, the whole party proceeded to the church.
+
+The distance between the Wigwam and New St. Paul's was very trifling,
+the solemn pines of the church-yard blending, from many points, with
+the gayer trees in the grounds of the former; and as the buildings in
+this part of the village were few, the whole of the bridal train
+entered the tower, unobserved by the eyes of the curious. The
+clergyman was waiting in the chancel, and as each of the young men
+led the object of his choice immediately to the altar, the double
+ceremony began without delay. At this instant Mr. Aristabulus Dodge
+and Mrs. Abbot advanced from the rear of the gallery, and coolly took
+their seats in its front. Neither belonged to this particular church,
+though, having discovered that the marriages were to take place that
+morning by means of Annette, they had no scruples on the score of
+delicacy about thrusting themselves forward on the occasion; for, to
+the latest moment, that publicity-principle which appeared to be
+interwoven with their very natures, induced them to think that
+nothing was so sacred as to be placed beyond the reach of curiosity.
+They entered the church, because the church they held to be a public
+place, precisely on the principle that others of their class conceive
+if a gate be blown open by accident, it removes all the moral
+defences against trespassers, as it removes the physical.
+
+The solemn language of the prayers and vows proceeded none the less
+for the presence of these unwelcome intruders; for, at that grave
+moment, all other thoughts were hushed in those that more properly
+belonged to the scene. When the clergyman made the usual appeal to
+know if any man could give a reason why those who stood before him
+should not be united in holy wedlock, Mrs. Abbott nudged Mr. Dodge,
+and, in the fulness of her discontent, eagerly inquired in a whisper,
+if it were not possible to raise some valid objection. Could she have
+had her pious wish, the simple, unpretending, meek, and _church_-going
+Eve, should never be married. But the editor was not a man to act
+openly in any thing, his particular province lying in insinuations
+and innuendoes. As a hint would not now be available, he determined
+to postpone his revenge to a future day. We say revenge, for
+Steadfast was of the class that consider any happiness, or
+advantage, in which they are not ample participators, wrongs done to
+themselves.
+
+That is a wise regulation of the church, which makes the marriage
+ceremony brief, for the intensity of the feelings it often creates
+would frequently become too powerful to be suppressed, were it
+unnecessarily prolonged. Mr. Effingham gave away both the brides, the
+one in the quality of parent, the other in that of guardian, and
+neither of the bridegrooms got the ring on the wrong finger. This is
+all we have to of the immediate scene at the altar. As soon as the
+benediction was pronounced, and the brides were released from the
+first embraces of their husbands, Mr. Effingham, without even kissing
+Eve, threw the shawls over their shoulders, and, taking an arm of
+each, he led them rapidly from the church, for he felt reluctant to
+suffer the holy feelings that were uppermost in his heart to be the
+spectacle of rude and obtrusive observers. At the door, he
+relinquished Eve to Paul, and Grace to Sir George, with a silent
+pressure of the hand of each, and signed for them to proceed towards
+the Wigwam. He was obeyed, and in less than half an hour from the
+time they had left the drawing-room, the whole party was again
+assembled in it.
+
+What a change had been produced in the situation of so many, in that
+brief interval!
+
+"Father!" Eve whispered, while Mr. Effingham folded her to his heart,
+the unbidden tears falling from both their eyes--"I am still thine!"
+
+"It would break my heart to think otherwise, darling. No, no--I have
+not lost a daughter, but have gained a son."
+
+"And what place am I to occupy in this scene of fondness?" inquired
+John Effingham, who had considerately paid his compliments to Grace
+first, that she might not feel forgotten at such a moment, and who
+had so managed that, she was now receiving the congratulations of the
+rest of the party; "am I to lose both son and daughter?"
+
+Eve, smiling sweetly through her tears, raised herself from her own
+father's arms, and was received in those of her husband's parent.
+After he had fondly kissed her forehead several times, without
+withdrawing from his bosom, she parted the rich hair on his forehead,
+passing her hand down his face, like an infant, and said softly--
+
+"Cousin Jack!"
+
+"I believe this must be my rank and estimation still Paul shall make
+no difference in our feeling; we will love each other as we have ever
+done."
+
+"Paul can be nothing new between you and me. You have always been a
+second father in my eyes, and in my heart, too, dear--dear cousin
+Jack."
+
+John Effingham pressed the beautiful, ardent, blushing girl to his
+bosom again; and as he did so, both felt, notwithstanding their
+language, that a new and dearer tie than ever bound them together.
+Eve now received the compliments of the rest of the party, when the
+two brides retired to change the dresses in which they had appeared
+at the altar, for their more ordinary attire.
+
+In her own dressing-room, Eve found Ann Sidley, waiting with
+impatience to pour out her feelings, the honest and affectionate
+creature being much too sensitive to open the floodgates of her
+emotions in the presence of third parties.
+
+"Ma'am--Miss Eve--Mrs. Effingham!" she exclaimed as soon as her young
+mistress entered, afraid of saying too much, now that her nursling
+had become a married woman.
+
+"My kind and good Nanny!" said Eve, taking her old nurse in her arms,
+their tears mingling in silence for near a minute. "You have seen
+your child enter on the last of her great earthly engagements, Nanny,
+and I know you pray that they may prove happy."
+
+"I do--I do--I do--ma'am--madam--Miss Eve--what am I to call you in
+future, ma'am?"
+
+"Call me Miss Eve, as you have done since my childhood, dearest
+Nanny."
+
+Nanny received this permission with delight, and twenty times that
+morning she availed herself of the permission; and she continued to
+use the term until, two years later, she danced a miniature Eve on
+her knee, as she had done its mother before her, when matronly rank
+began silently to assert its rights, and our present bride became
+Mrs. Effingham.
+
+"I shall not quit you, ma'am, now that you are married?" Ann Sidley
+timidly asked; for, although she could scarcely think such an event
+within the bounds of probability, and Eve had already more than once
+assured her of the contrary with her own tongue, still did she love
+to have assurance made doubly sure. "I hope nothing will ever happen
+to make me quit you, ma'am?"
+
+"Nothing of that sort, with my consent, ever shall happen, my
+excellent Nanny. And now that Annette is about to get married, I
+shall have more than the usual necessity for your services."
+
+"And Mamerzelle, ma'am?" inquired Nanny, with sparkling eyes; "I
+suppose she, too, will return to her own country, now you know every
+thing, and have no farther occasion for her?"
+
+"Mademoiselle Viefville will return to France in the autumn, but it
+will be with us all; for my dear father, cousin Jack, my husband--"
+Eve blushed as she pronounced the novel word--"and myself, not
+forgetting you my old nurse, will all sail for England, with Sir
+George and Lady Templemore, on our way to Italy, the first week in
+October."
+
+"I care not, ma'am, so that I go with you. I would rather we did not
+live in a country where I cannot understand all that the people say
+to you, but wherever you are will be my earthly paradise."
+
+Eve kissed the true-hearted woman, and, Annette entering, she changed
+her dress.
+
+The two brides met at the head of the great stairs, on their way back
+to the drawing-room. Eve was a little in advance, but, with a half-
+concealed smile, she gave way to Grace, curtsying gravely, and
+saying--
+
+"It does not become _me_ to precede Lady Templemore--I, who am
+only Mrs. Paul Effingham."
+
+"Nay, dear Eve, I am not so weak as you imagine. Do you not think I
+should have married him had he not been a baronet?"
+
+"Templemore, my dear coz, is a man any woman might love, and I
+believe, as firmly as I hope it sincerely, that he will make you
+happy."
+
+"And yet there is one woman who would not love him, Eve!"
+
+Eve looked steadily at her cousin for a moment, was startled, and
+then she felt gratified that Sir George had been so honest, for the
+frankness and manliness of his avowal was a pledge of the good faith
+and sincerity of his character. She took her cousin affectionately by
+the hand, and said--
+
+"Grace, this confidence is the highest compliment you can pay me, and
+it merits a return. That Sir George Templemore may have had a passing
+inclination for one who so little deserved it, is possibly true--but
+my affections were another's before I knew him."
+
+"You never would have married Templemore, Eve; he says himself, now,
+that you are quite too continental, as he calls it, to like an
+Englishman."
+
+"Then I shall take the first good occasion to undeceive him; for I do
+_like_ an Englishman, and he is the identical man."
+
+As few women are jealous on their wedding-day, Grace took this in
+good part, and they descended the stairs together, side by side,
+reflecting each other's happiness, in their timid but conscious
+smiles. In the great hall, they were met by the bridegrooms, and each
+taking the arm of him who had now become of so vast importance to
+her, they paced the room to and fro, until summoned to the _déjéuner
+à la fourchette_, which had been prepared under the especial
+superintendence of Mademoiselle Viefville, after the manner
+of her country.
+
+Wedding-days, like all formally prepared festivals, are apt to go off
+a little heavily. Such, however, was not the case with this, for
+every appearance of premeditation and preparation vanished with this
+meal. It is true the family did not quit the grounds, but, with this
+exception, ease and tranquil happiness reigned throughout. Captain
+Truck was alone disposed to be sentimental, and, more than once, as
+he looked about him, he expressed his doubts whether he had pursued
+the right course to attain happiness,
+
+"I find myself in a solitary category," he said, at the dinner-
+table, in the evening. "Mrs. Hawker, and both the Messrs.
+Effinghams, _have been_ married; every body else _is_ married, and I
+believe I must take refuge in saying that I _will be_ married, if I
+can now persuade any one to have me. Even Mr. Powis, my right-hand
+man, in all that African affair, has deserted me, and left me like a
+single dead pine in one of your clearings, or a jewel-block dangling
+at a yard-arm, without a sheave. Mrs. Bride--" the captain styled
+Eve thus, throughout the day, to the utter neglect of the claims of
+Lady Templemore--"Mrs. Bride, we will consider my forlorn condition
+more philosophically, when I shall have the honour to take you, and
+so many of this blessed party, back again to Europe, where I found
+you. Under your advice I think I might even yet venture."
+
+"And I am overlooked entirely," cried Mr. Howel, who had been invited
+to make one at the wedding-feast; "what is to become of me, Captain
+Truck, if this marrying mania go any further?"
+
+"I have long had a plan for your welfare, my dear sir, that I will
+take this opportunity to divulge; I propose, ladies and gentlemen,
+that we enlist Mr. Howel in our project for this autumn, and that we
+carry him with us to Europe. I shall be proud to have the honour of
+introducing him to his old friend, the island of Great Britain."
+
+"Ah! that is a happiness, I fear, that is not in reserve for me!"
+said Mr. Howel, shaking his head. "I have thought of these things, in
+my time, but age will now defeat any such hopes."
+
+"Age, Tom Howel!" said John Effingham; "you are but fifty, like Ned
+and myself. We were all boys together, forty years ago, and yet you
+find us, who have so lately returned, ready to take a fresh
+departure. Pluck up heart; there may be a steam-boat ready to bring
+you back, by the time you wish to return."
+
+"Never," said Captain Truck, positively. "Ladies and gentlemen, it is
+morally impossible that the Atlantic should ever be navigated by
+steamers. That doctrine I shall maintain to my dying day; but what
+need of a steamer, when we have packets like palaces?"
+
+"I did not know, captain, that you entertained so hearty a respect
+for Great Britain--it is encouraging, really, to find so generous a
+feeling toward the old island in one of her descendants. Sir George
+and Lady Templemore, permit me to drink to your lasting felicity."
+
+"Ay--ay--I entertain no ill-will to England, though her tobacco laws
+are none of the genteelest. But my wish to export you, Mr. Howel, is
+less from a desire to show you England, than to let you perceive that
+there are other countries in Europe--"
+
+"Other countries!--Surely you do not suppose I am so ignorant of
+geography, as to believe that there are no other countries in
+Europe--no such places as Hanover, Brunswick, and Brunswick
+Lunenberg, and Denmark; the sister of old George the Third married
+the king of that country; and Wurtemberg, the king of which married
+the Princess Royal--"
+
+"And Mecklenburg-Strelitz," added John Effingham, gravely, "a
+princess of which actually married George the Third _propriâ
+personâ_, as well as by proxy. Nothing can be plainer than your
+geography, Howel; but, in addition to these particular regions, our
+worthy friend the captain wishes you to know also, that there are
+such places as France, and Austria, and Russia, and Italy; though the
+latter can scarcely repay a man for the trouble of visiting it."
+
+"You have guessed my motive, Mr. John Effingham, and expressed it
+much more discreetly than I could possibly have done," cried the
+captain. "If Mr. Howel will do me the honour to take passage with me,
+going and coming, I shall consider the pleasure of his remarks on men
+and things, as one of the greatest advantages I ever possessed."
+
+"I do not know but I might be induced to venture as far as England,
+but not a foot farther."
+
+"_Pas à Paris!_" exclaimed Mademoiselle Viefville, who wondered
+why any rational being would take the trouble to cross the Atlantic,
+merely to see _Ce melancolique Londres;_ "you will go to _Paris_,
+for my sake, Monsieur Howel?"
+
+"For your sake, indeed, Mam'selle, I would do any thing, but hardly
+for my own. I confess I have thought of this, and I will think of it
+farther. I should like to see the King of England and the House of
+Lords, I confess, before I die."
+
+"Ay, and the Tower, and the Boar's-Head at East-Cheap, and the statue
+of the Duke of Wellington, and London Bridge, and Richmond Hill, and
+Bow Street, and Somerset House, and Oxford Road, and Bartlemy Fair,
+and Hungerford Market, and Charing-Cross--_old_ Charing-Cross,
+Tom Howel!"--added John Effingham, with a good-natured nod of the
+head.
+
+"A wonderful nation!" cried Mr. Howel, whose eyes sparkled as the
+other proceeded in his enumeration of wonders. "I do not think, after
+all, that I can die in peace, without seeing _some_ of these
+things--_all_ would be too much for me. How far is the Isle of
+Dogs, now, from St. Catherine's Docks, captain?"
+
+"Oh! but a few cables' lengths. If you will only stick to the ship
+until she is fairly docked, I will promise you a sight of the Isle of
+Dogs before you land, even. But then you must promise me to carry out
+no tobacco!"
+
+"No fear of me; I neither smoke nor chew, and it does not surprise me
+that a nation as polished as the English should have this antipathy
+to tobacco. And one might really see the Isle of Dogs before landing?
+It _is_ a wonderful country! Mrs. Bloomfield, will you ever be
+able to die tranquilly without seeing England?"
+
+"I hope, sir, whenever that event shall arrive, that it may be met
+tranquilly, let what may happen previously. I do confess, in common
+with Mrs. Effingham, a longing desire to see Italy; a wish that I
+believe she entertains from her actual knowledge, and which I
+entertain from my anticipations."
+
+"Now, this really surprises me. What _can_ Italy possess to
+repay one for the trouble of travelling so far?"
+
+"I trust, cousin Jack," said Eve, colouring at the sound of her own
+voice, for on that day of supreme happiness and intense emotions, she
+had got to be so sensitive as to be less self-possessed than common,
+"that our friend Mr. Wenham will not be forgotten, but that he may be
+invited to join the party."
+
+This representative of _la jeune Amérique_ was also present at
+the dinner, out of regard to his deceased father, who was a very old
+friend of Mr. Effingham's, and, being so favourably noticed by the
+bride, he did not fail to reply.
+
+"I believe an American has little to learn from any nation but his
+own," observed Mr. Wenham, with the complacency of the school to
+which he belonged, "although one might wish that all of this country
+should travel, in order that the rest of the world might have the
+benefit of the intercourse."
+
+"It is a thousand pities," said John Effingham, "that one of our
+universities, for instance, was not ambulant. Old Yale was so, in its
+infancy; but unlike most other creatures, it went about with greater
+ease to itself when a child, than it can move in manhood."
+
+"Mr. John Effingham loves to be facetious," said Mr. Wenham with
+dignity; for, while he was as credulous as could be wished, on the
+subject of American superiority, he was not quite as blind as the
+votaries of the Anglo-American school, who usually yield the control
+of all their faculties and common sense to their masters, on the
+points connected with their besetting weaknesses. "Every body is
+agreed, I believe, that the American imparts more than he receives,
+in his intercourse with Europeans."
+
+The smiles of the more experienced of this young man's listeners were
+well-bred and concealed, and the conversation turned to other
+subjects. It was easy to raise the laugh on such an occasion, and
+contrary to the usage of the Wigwam, where the men usually left the
+table with the other sex, Captain Truck, John Effingham, Mr.
+Bloomfield, and Mr. Howel, made what is called a night of it. Much
+delicious claret was consumed, and the honest captain was permitted
+to enjoy his cigar. About midnight he swore he had half a mind to
+write a letter to Mrs. Hawker, with an offer of his hand; as for his
+heart, that she well knew she had possessed for a long time.
+
+The next day, about the hour when the house was tranquil, from the
+circumstance that most of its inmates were abroad on their several
+avocations of boating, riding, shopping, or walking, Eve was in the
+library, her father having left it, a few minutes before, to mount
+his horse. She was seated at a table, writing a letter to an aged
+relative of her own sex, to communicate the circumstance of her
+marriage. The door was half open, and Paul appeared at it
+unexpectedly, coming in search of his young bride. His step had been
+so light, and so intently was our heroine engaged with her letter,
+that his approach was unnoticed, though it had now been a long time
+that the ear of Eve had learned to know his tread, and her heart to
+beat at its welcome sound. Perhaps a beautiful woman is never so
+winningly lovely as when, in her neat morning attire, she seems fresh
+and sweet as the new-born day. Eve had paid a little more attention
+to her toilette than usual even, admitting just enough of a properly
+selected jewelry, a style of ornament, that so singularly denotes the
+refinement of a gentlewoman, when used understandingly, and which so
+infallibly betrays vulgarity under other circumstances, while her
+attire had rather more than its customary finish, though it was
+impossible not to perceive, at a glance, that she was in an undress.
+The Parisian skill of Annette, on which Mr. Bragg based so many of
+his hopes of future fortune, had cut and fitted the robe to her
+faultlessly beautiful person, with a tact, or it might be truer to
+say a contact, so perfect, that it even left more charms to be
+imagined than it displayed, though the outline of the whole figure
+was that of the most lovely womanhood. But, notwithstanding the
+exquisite modelling of the whole form, the almost fairy lightness of
+the full, swelling, but small foot, about which nothing seemed lean
+and attenuated, the exquisite hand that appeared from among the
+ruffles of the dress, Paul stood longest in nearly breathless
+admiration of the countenance of his "bright and blooming bride."
+Perhaps there is no sentiment so touchingly endearing to a man, as
+that which comes over him as he contemplates the beauty, confiding
+faith, holy purity and truth that shine in the countenance of a
+young, unpractised, innocent woman, when she has so far overcome her
+natural timidity as to pour out her tenderness in his behalf, and to
+submit to the strongest impulses of her nature. Such was now the fact
+with Eve. She was writing of her husband, and, though her expressions
+were restrained by taste and education, they partook of her
+unutterable fondness and devotion. The tears stood in her eyes, the
+pen trembled in her hand, and she shaded her face as if to conceal
+the weakness from herself. Paul was alarmed, he knew not why, but Eve
+in tears was a sight painful to him. In a moment he was at her side,
+with an arm placed gently around her waist, and he drew her fondly
+towards his bosom.
+
+"Eve--dearest Eve!" he said--"what mean these tears?"
+
+The serene eye, the radiant blush, and the meek tenderness that
+rewarded his own burst of feeling, reassured the young husband, and,
+deferring to the sensitive modesty of so young a bride, he released
+hold, retaining only a hand.
+
+"It is happiness, Powis--nothing but excess of happiness, which makes
+us women weaker, I fear, than even sorrow."
+
+Paul kissed her hands, regarded her with an intensity of admiration,
+before which the eyes of Eve rose and fell, as if dazzled while
+meeting his looks, and yet unwilling to lose them; and then he
+reverted to the motive which had brought him to the library.
+
+"My father--_your_ father, that is now--"
+
+"Cousin Jack!"
+
+"Cousin Jack, if you will, has just made me a present, which is
+second only to the greater gift I received from your own excellent
+parent, yesterday, at the altar. See, dearest Eve, he has bestowed
+this lovely image of yourself on me; lovely, though still so far from
+the truth. And here is the miniature of my poor mother, also, to
+supply the place of the one carried away by the Arabs."
+
+Eve gazed long and wistfully at the beautiful features of this image
+of her husband's mother. She traced in them that pensive thought,
+that winning kindness, that had first softened her heart towards
+Paul, and her lips trembled as she pressed the insensible glass
+against them.
+
+"She must have been very handsome, Eve, and there is a look of
+melancholy tenderness in the face, that would seem almost to predict
+an unhappy blighting of the affections."
+
+"And yet this young, ingenuous, faithful woman entered on the solemn
+engagement we have just made, Paul, with as many reasonable hopes of
+a bright future as we ourselves!"
+
+"Not so, Eve--confidence and holy truth were wanting at the nuptials
+of my parents. When there is deception at the commencement of such a
+contract, it is not difficult to predict the end."
+
+"I do not think, Paul, you ever deceived; that noble heart of yours
+is too generous!"
+
+"If any thing can make a man worthy of such a love, dearest, it is
+the perfect and absorbing confidence with which your sex throw
+themselves on the justice and faith of ours. Did that spotless heart
+ever entertain a doubt of the worth of any living being on which It
+had set its affections?"
+
+"Of itself, often, and they say self-love lies at the bottom of all
+our actions."
+
+"You are the last person to hold this doctrine, beloved, for those
+who live most in your confidence declare that all traces of self are
+lost in your very nature."
+
+"Most in my confidence! My father--- my dear, kind father, has then
+been betraying his besetting weakness, by extolling the gift he has
+made."
+
+"Your kind, excellent father, knows too well the total want of
+necessity for any such thing. If the truth must be confessed, I have
+been passing a quarter of an hour with worthy Ann Sidley."
+
+"Nanny--dear old Nanny!--and you have been weak enough, traitor, to
+listen to the eulogiums of a nurse on her child!"
+
+"All praise of thee, my blessed Eve, is grateful to my ears, and who
+can speak more understandingly of those domestic qualities which lie
+at the root of domestic bliss, than those who have seen you in your
+most intimate life, from childhood down to the moment when you have
+assumed the duties of a wife?"
+
+"Paul, Paul, thou art beside thyself; too much learning hath made
+thee mad!"
+
+"I am not mad, most beloved and beautiful Eve, but blessed to a
+degree that might indeed upset a stronger reason."
+
+"We will now talk of other things," said Eve, raising his hand to her
+lips in respectful affection, and looking gratefully up into his fond
+and eloquent eyes; "I hope the feeling of which you so lately spoke
+has subsided, and that you no longer feel yourself a stranger in the
+dwelling of your own family."
+
+"Now that I can claim a right through you, I confess that my
+conscience is getting to be easier on this point. Have you been yet
+told of the arrangement that the older heads meditate in reference to
+our future means?"
+
+"I would not listen to my dear father when he wished to introduce the
+subject, for I found that it was a project that made distinctions
+between Paul Effingham and Eve Effingham, two that I wish,
+henceforth, to consider as one in all things."
+
+"In this, darling, you may do yourself injustice as well as me. But
+perhaps you may not wish _me_ to speak on the subject, neither."
+
+"What would my lord?"
+
+"Then listen, and the tale is soon told. We are each other's natural
+heirs. Of the name and blood of Effingham, neither has a relative
+nearer than the other, for, though but cousins in the third degree,
+our family is so small as to render the husband, in this case, the
+natural heir of the wife, and the wife the natural heir of the
+husband. Now your father proposes that his estates be valued, and
+that my father settle on you a sum of equal amount, which his wealth,
+will fully enable him to do, and that I become the possessor in
+reversion, of the lands that would otherwise have been yours."
+
+"You possess me, my heart, my affections, my duty; of what account is
+money after this!"
+
+"I perceive that you are so much and so truly woman, Eve, that we
+must arrange all this without consulting you at all."
+
+"Can I be in safer hands? A father that has always been too indulgent
+of my unreasonable wishes--a second parent that has only contributed
+too much to spoil me in the same thoughtless manner--and a----"
+
+"Husband," added Paul, perceiving that Eve hesitated at pronouncing
+to his face a name so novel though so endearing, "who will strive to
+do more than either in the same way."
+
+"Husband," she added, looking up into his face with a smile innocent
+as that of an infant, while the crimson tinge covered her forehead,
+"if the formidable word must be uttered, who is doing all he can to
+increase a self-esteem that is already so much greater than it ought
+to be."
+
+A light tap at the door caused Eve to start and look embarrassed,
+like one detected in a fault, and Paul to release the hand that he
+had continued to hold during the brief dialogue.
+
+"Sir--ma'am"--said the timid, meek voice of Ann Sidley, as she held
+the door ajar, without presuming to look into the room; "Miss Eve--
+Mr. Powis."
+
+"Enter, my good Nanny," said Eve, recovering her self-composure in a
+moment, the presence of her nurse always appearing to her as no more
+than a duplication of herself. "What is your wish?"
+
+"I hope I am not unreasonable, but I knew that Mr. Effingham was
+alone with you, here, and I wished--that is, ma'am,--Miss Eve--Sir--"
+
+"Speak your wishes, my good old nurse--am I not your own child, and
+is not this your own child's"--again Eve hesitated, blushed, and
+smiled, ere she pronounced the formidable word--"husband."
+
+"Yes, ma'am; and God be praised that it is so. I dreamt, it is now
+four years, Miss Eve; we were then travelling among the Denmarkers,
+and I dreamt that you were married to a great prince--"
+
+"But your dream has not come true, my good Nanny, and you see by this
+fact that it is not always safe to trust in dreams."
+
+"Ma'am, I do not esteem princes by the kingdoms and crowns, but by
+their qualities--and if Mr. Powis be not a prince, who is?"
+
+"That, indeed, changes the matter," said the gratified young wife;
+"and I believe, after all, dear Nanny, that I must become a convert
+to your theory of dreams."
+
+"While I must always deny it, good Mrs Sidley, if this is a specimen
+of its truth," said Paul, laughing. "But, perhaps this prince proved
+unworthy of Miss Eve, after all?"
+
+"Not he, sir; he made her a most kind and affectionate husband; not
+humouring all her idle wishes, if Miss Eve could have had such
+wishes, but cherishing her, and counselling her, and protecting her,
+showing as much tenderness for her as her own father, and as much
+love for her as I had myself."
+
+"In which case, my worthy nurse, he proved an invaluable husband,"
+said Eve, with glistening eyes--"and I trust, too, that he was
+considerate and friendly to you?"
+
+"He took me by the hand, the morning after the marriage, and said,
+Faithful Ann Sidley, you have nursed and attended my beloved when a
+child, and as a young lady; and I now entreat you will continue to
+wait on and serve her as a wife to your dying day. He did, indeed,
+ma'am; and I think I can now hear the very words he spoke so kindly.
+The dream, so far, has come good."
+
+"My faithful Ann," said Paul, smiling, and taking the hand of the
+nurse, "you have been all that is good and true to my best beloved,
+as a child, and as a young lady; and now I earnestly entreat you to
+continue to wait on her, and to serve her as _my_ wife, to your
+dying day."
+
+Nanny clapped her hands with a scream of delight, and bursting into
+tears, she exclaimed, as she hurried from the room,
+
+"It has all come true--it has all come true!"
+
+A pause of several minutes succeeded this burst of superstitious but
+natural feeling.
+
+"All who live near you appear to think you the common centre of their
+affections," Paul resumed; when his swelling heart permitted him to
+speak.
+
+"We have hitherto been a family of love--God grant it may always
+continue so."
+
+Another delicious silence, which lasted still longer than the other,
+followed. Eve then looked up into her husband's face with a gentle
+curiosity, and observed--
+
+"You have told me a great deal, Powis--explained all but one little
+thing, that, at the time, caused me great pain. Why did Ducie, when
+you were about to quit the Montauk together, so unceremoniously stop
+you, as you were about to get into the boat first; is the etiquette
+of a man-of-war so rigid as to justify so much rudeness, I had almost
+called it--?"
+
+"The etiquette of a vessel of war is rigid certainly, and wisely so.
+But what you fancied rudeness, was in truth a compliment. Among us
+sailors, it is the inferior who goes first _into_ a boat, and
+who _quits_ it last."
+
+"So much, then, for forming a judgment, ignorantly! I believe it is
+always safer to have no opinion, than to form one without a perfect
+knowledge of all the accompanying circumstances."
+
+"Let us adhere to this safe rule through life, dearest, and we may
+find its benefits. An absolute confidence, caution in drawing
+conclusions, and a just reliance on each other, may keep us as happy
+to the end of our married life, as we are at this blessed moment,
+when it is commencing under auspices so favourable as to seem almost
+providential."
+
+
+
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Home as Found, by James Fenimore Cooper</title>
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Home as Found, by James Fenimore Cooper</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Home as Found</p>
+<p>Author: James Fenimore Cooper</p>
+<p>Release Date: November 20, 2003  [eBook #10149]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Chatacter set encoding: iso-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOME AS FOUND***</p>
+<br />
+<center><b>E-text prepared by Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders</b></center>
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<h1>Home as Found.</h1>
+
+<h2>Sequel to "Homeward Bound."</h2>
+
+<h2 class="author">By J. Fenimore Cooper.</h2>
+
+
+
+<p align="center">    "Thou art perfect."<br />
+                PR. HON</p>
+
+
+
+<p align="center">Complete in one volume.</p>
+
+
+
+<p align="center">1871.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Preface</h2>
+
+
+
+<p>Those who have done us the favour to read "Homeward Bound" will at once
+perceive that the incidents of this book commence at the point where those
+of the work just mentioned ceased. We are fully aware of the disadvantage
+of dividing the interest of a tale in this manner; but in the present
+instance, the separation has been produced by circumstances over which the
+writer had very little control. As any one who may happen to take up this
+volume will very soon discover that there is other matter which it is
+necessary to know it may be as well to tell all such persons, in the
+commencement, therefore, that their reading will be bootless, unless they
+have leisure to turn to the pages of Homeward Bound for their cue.</p>
+
+<p>We remember the despair with which that admirable observer of men, Mr.
+Mathews the comedian, confessed the hopelessness of success, in his
+endeavours to obtain a sufficiency of prominent and distinctive features
+to compose an entertainment founded on American character. The whole
+nation struck him as being destitute of salient points, and as
+characterized by a respectable mediocrity, that, however useful it might
+be in its way, was utterly without poetry, humour, or interest to the
+observer. For one who dealt principally with the more conspicuous
+absurdities of his fellow-creatures, Mr. Mathews was certainly right; we
+also believe him to have been right in the main, in the general tenor of
+his opinion; for this country, in its ordinary aspects, probably presents
+as barren a field to the writer of fiction, and to the dramatist, as any
+other on earth; we are not certain that we might not say the most barren.
+We believe that no attempt to delineate ordinary American life, either on
+the stage, or in the pages of a novel, has been rewarded with success.
+Even those works in which the desire to illustrate a principle has been
+the aim, when the picture has been brought within this homely frame, have
+had to contend with disadvantages that have been commonly found
+insurmountable. The latter being the intention of this book, the task has
+been undertaken with a perfect consciousness of all its difficulties, and
+with scarcely a hope of success. It would be indeed a desperate
+undertaking, to think of making anything interesting in the way of a
+<i>Roman de Soci&eacute;t&eacute;</i> in this country; still useful glances may possibly be
+made even in that direction, and we trust that the fidelity of one or two
+of our portraits will be recognized by the looker-on, although they will
+very likely be denied by the sitters themselves.</p>
+
+<p>There seems to be a pervading principle in things, which gives an
+accumulating energy to any active property that may happen to be in the
+ascendant, at the time being.--Money produces money; knowledge is the
+parent of knowledge; and ignorance fortifies ignorance.--In a word, like
+begets like. The governing social evil of America is provincialism; a
+misfortune that is perhaps inseparable from her situation. Without a
+social capital, with twenty or more communities divided by distance and
+political barriers, her people, who are really more homogenous than any
+other of the same numbers in the world perhaps, possess no standard for
+opinion, manners, social maxims, or even language.</p>
+
+<p>Every man, as a matter of course, refers to his own particular experience,
+and praises or condemns agreeably to notions contracted in the circle of
+his own habits, however narrow, provincial, or erroneous they may happen
+to be. As a consequence, no useful stage can exist; for the dramatist who
+should endeavour to delineate the faults of society, would find a
+formidable party arrayed against him, in a moment, with no party to
+defend. As another consequence, we see individuals constantly assailed
+with a wolf-like ferocity, while society is everywhere permitted to pass
+unscathed.</p>
+
+<p>That the American nation is a great nation, in some particulars the
+greatest the world ever saw, we hold to be true, and are as ready to
+maintain as any one can be; but we are also equally ready to concede, that
+it is very far behind most polished nations in various essentials, and
+chiefly, that it is lamentably in arrears to its own avowed principles.
+Perhaps this truth will be found to be the predominant thought, throughout
+the pages of "Home As Found."</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<h1>Home as Found.</h1>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Chapter I.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>  "Good morrow, coz.<br />
+Good morrow, sweet Hero."</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>  SHAKSPEARE.</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>When Mr. Effingham determined to return home, he sent orders to his agent
+to prepare his town-house in New-York for his reception, intending to pass
+a month or two in it, then to repair to Washington for a few weeks, at the
+close of its season, and to visit his country residence when the spring
+should fairly open. Accordingly, Eve now found herself at the head of one
+of the largest establishments, in the largest American town, within an
+hour after she had landed from the ship. Fortunately for her, however, her
+father was too just to consider a wife, or a daughter, a mere upper
+servant, and he rightly judged that a liberal portion of his income should
+be assigned to the procuring of that higher quality of domestic service,
+which can alone relieve the mistress of a household from a burthen so
+heavy to be borne. Unlike so many of those around him, who would spend on
+a single pretending and comfortless entertainment, in which the
+ostentatious folly of one contended with the ostentatious folly of another
+a sum that, properly directed, would introduce order and system into a
+family for a twelvemonth, by commanding the time and knowledge of those
+whose study they had been, and who would be willing to devote themselves
+to such objects, and then permit their wives and daughters to return to
+the drudgery to which the sex seems doomed in this country, he first
+bethought him of the wants of social life before he aspired to its parade.
+A man of the world, Mr. Effingham possessed the requisite knowledge, and a
+man of justice, the requisite fairness, to permit those who depended on
+him so much for their happiness, to share equitably in the good things
+that Providence had so liberally bestowed on himself. In other words, he
+made two people comfortable, by paying a generous price for a housekeeper;
+his daughter, in the first place, by releasing her from cares that,
+necessarily, formed no more a part of her duties than it would be a part
+of her duty to sweep the pavement before the door; and, in the next place,
+a very respectable woman who was glad to obtain so good a home on so easy
+terms. To this simple and just expedient, Eve was indebted for being at
+the head of one of the quietest, most truly elegant, and best, ordered
+establishments in America, with no other demands on her time than that
+which was necessary to issue a few orders in the morning, and to examine a
+few accounts once a week.</p>
+
+<p>One of the first and the most acceptable of the visits that Eve received,
+was from her cousin, Grace Van Cortlandt, who was in the country at the
+moment of her arrival, but who hurried back to town to meet her old
+school-fellow and kinswoman, the instant she heard of her having landed.
+Eve Effingham and Grace Van Cortlandt were sisters' children, and had been
+born within a month of each other. As the latter was without father or
+mother, most of their time had been passed together, until the former was
+taken abroad, when a separation unavoidably ensued. Mr. Effingham ardently
+desired, and had actually designed, to take his niece with him to Europe,
+but her paternal grandfather, who was still living, objected his years and
+affection, and the scheme was reluctantly abandoned. This grandfather was
+now dead, and Grace had been left with a very ample fortune, almost
+entirely the mistress of her own movements.</p>
+
+<p>The moment of the meeting between these two warm-hearted and sincerely
+attached young women, was one of great interest and anxiety to both. They
+retained for each other the tenderest love, though the years that had
+separated them had given rise to so many new impressions and habits that
+they did not prepare themselves for the interview without apprehension.
+This interview took place about a week after Eve was established in Hudson
+Square, and at an hour earlier than was usual for the reception of visits.
+Hearing a carriage stop before the door, and the bell ring, our heroine
+stole a glance from behind a curtain and recognized her cousin as she
+alighted.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Qu'avez-vous, ma chere</i>?" demanded Mademoiselle Viefville, observing
+that her <i>&eacute;l&egrave;ve</i> trembled and grew pale.</p>
+
+<p>"It is my cousin, Miss Van Cortlandt--she whom I loved as a sister--we now
+meet for the first time in so many years!"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Bien</i>--<i>c'est une tr&egrave;s jolie jeune personne</i>!" returned the governess,
+taking a glance from the spot Eve had just quitted. "<i>Sur le rapport de la
+personne, ma chere, vous devriez &ecirc;tre contente, au moins</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"If you will excuse me, Mademoiselle, I will go down alone--I think I
+should prefer to meet Grace without witnesses in the first interview."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Tr&egrave;s volontiers. Elle est parente, et c'est bien naturel."</i></p>
+
+<p>Eve, on this expressed approbation, met her maid at the door, as she came
+to announce that <i>Mademoiselle de Cortlandt</i> was in the library, and
+descended slowly to meet her. The library was lighted from above by means
+of a small dome, and Grace had unconsciously placed herself in the very
+position that a painter would have chosen, had she been about to sit for
+her portrait. A strong, full, rich light fell obliquely on her as Eve
+entered, displaying her fine person and beautiful features to the very
+best advantage, and they were features and a person that are not seen
+every day even in a country where female beauty is so common. She was in a
+carriage dress, and her toilette was rather more elaborate than Eve had
+been accustomed to see, at that hour, but still Eve thought she had seldom
+seen a more lovely young creature. Some such thoughts, also, passed
+through the mind of Grace herself, who, though struck, with a woman's
+readiness in such matters, with the severe simplicity of Eve's attire, as
+well as with its entire elegance, was more struck with the charms of her
+countenance and figure. There was, in truth, a strong resemblance between
+them, though each was distinguished by an expression suited to her
+character, and to the habits of her mind.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Effingham!" said Grace, advancing a step to meet the lady who
+entered, while her voice was scarcely audible and her limbs trembled.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Van Cortlandt!" said Eve, in the same low, smothered tone.</p>
+
+<p>This formality caused a chill in both, and each unconsciously stopped and
+curtsied. Eve had been so much struck with the coldness of the American
+manner, during the week she had been at home, and Grace was so sensitive
+on the subject of the opinion of one who had seen so much of Europe, that
+there was great danger, at that critical moment, the meeting would
+terminate unpropitiously.</p>
+
+<p>Thus far, however, all had been rigidly decorous, though the strong
+feelings that were glowing in the bosoms of both, had been so completely
+suppressed. But the smile, cold and embarrassed as it was, that each gave
+as she curtsied, had the sweet character of her childhood in it, and
+recalled to both the girlish and affectionate intercourse of their younger
+days.</p>
+
+<p>"Grace!" said Eve, eagerly, advancing a step or two impetuously, and
+blushing like the dawn.</p>
+
+<p>"Eve!"</p>
+
+<p>Each opened her arms, and in a moment they were locked in a long and
+fervent embrace. This was the commencement of their former intimacy, and
+before night Grace was domesticated in her uncle's house. It is true that
+Miss Effingham perceived certain peculiarities about Miss Van Cortlandt,
+that she had rather were absent; and Miss Van Cortlandt would have felt
+more at her ease, had Miss Effingham a little less reserve of manner, on
+certain subjects that the latter had been taught to think interdicted.
+Notwithstanding these slight separating shades in character, however, the
+natural affection was warm and sincere; and if Eve, according to Grace's
+notions, was a little stately and formal, she was polished and courteous,
+and if Grace, according to Eve's notions, was a little too easy and
+unreserved, she was feminine and delicate.</p>
+
+<p>We pass over the three or four days that succeeded, during which Eve had
+got to understand something of her new position, and we will come at once
+to a conversation between the cousins, that will serve to let the reader
+more intimately into the opinions, habits and feelings of both, as well as
+to open the real subject of our narrative. This conversation took place in
+that very library which had witnessed their first interview, soon after
+breakfast, and while the young ladies were still alone.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose, Eve, you will have to visit the Green's.--They are Hajjis, and
+were much in society last winter."</p>
+
+<p>"Hajjis!--You surely do not mean, Grace, that they have been to Mecca?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all: only to Paris, my dear; that makes a Hajji in New-York."</p>
+
+<p>"And does it entitle the pilgrim to wear the green turban?" asked Eve,
+laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"To wear any thing, Miss Effingham; green, blue, or yellow, and to cause
+it to pass for elegance."</p>
+
+<p>"And which is the favourite colour with the family you have mentioned?"</p>
+
+<p>"It ought to be the first, in compliment to the name, but, if truth must
+be said, I think they betray an affection for all, with not a few of the
+half-tints in addition."</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid they are too <i>prononc&eacute;es</i> for us, by this description. I am
+no great admirer, Grace, of walking rainbows."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Too</i> Green, you would have said, had you dared; but you are a Hajji too,
+and even the Greens know that a Hajji never puns, unless, indeed, it might
+be one from Philadelphia. But you will visit these people?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, if they are in society and render it necessary by their own
+civilities."</p>
+
+<p>"They <i>are</i> in society, in virtue of their rights as Hajjis; but, as they
+passed three months at Paris, you probably know something of them."</p>
+
+<p>"They may not have been there at the same time with ourselves," returned
+Eve, quietly, "and Paris is a very large town. Hundreds of people come and
+go, that one never hears of. I do not remember those you have mentioned."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you may escape them, for, in my untravelled judgment, they are
+anything but agreeable, notwithstanding all they have seen, or pretend to
+have seen."</p>
+
+<p>"It is very possible to have been all over christendom, and to remain
+exceedingly disagreeable; besides one may see a great deal, and yet see
+very little of a good quality."</p>
+
+<p>A pause of two or three minutes followed, during which Eve read a note,
+and her cousin played with the leaves of a book.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I knew your real opinion of us, Eve," the last suddenly exclaimed.
+"Why not be frank with so near a relative; tell me honestly, now--are you
+reconciled to your country?"</p>
+
+<p>"You are the eleventh person who has asked me this question, which I find
+very extraordinary, as I have never quarrelled with my country."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, I do not mean exactly that. I wish to hear how our society has
+struck one who has been educated abroad."</p>
+
+<p>"You wish, then, for opinions that can have no great value, since my
+experience at home, extends only to a fortnight. But you have many books
+on the country, and some written by very clever persons; why not consult
+them?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! you mean the travellers. None of them are worth a second thought, and
+we hold them, one and all, in great contempt."</p>
+
+<p>"Of that I can have no manner of doubt, as one and all, you are constantly
+protesting it, in the highways and bye-ways. There is no more certain sign
+of contempt, than to be incessantly dwelling on its intensity!"</p>
+
+<p>Grace had great quickness, as well as her cousin, and though provoked at
+Eve's quiet hit, she had the good sense and the good nature to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps we do protest and disdain a little too strenuously for good
+taste, if not to gain believers; but surely, Eve, you do not support these
+travellers in all that they have written of us?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not in half, I can assure you. My father and cousin Jack have discussed
+them too often in my presence to leave me in ignorance of the very many
+political blunders they have made in particular."</p>
+
+<p>"Political blunders!--I know nothing of them, and had rather thought them
+right, in most of what they said about our politics. But, surely, neither
+your father nor Mr. John Effingham corroborates what they say of our
+society!"</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot answer for either, on that point."</p>
+
+<p>"Speak then for yourself. Do <i>you</i> think them right?"</p>
+
+<p>"You should remember, Grace, that I have not yet seen any society in
+New-York."</p>
+
+<p>"No society, dear!--Why you were at the Henderson's, and the Morgan's,
+and the Drewett's; three of the greatest <i>r&eacute;unions</i> that we have had in
+two winters!"'</p>
+
+<p>"I did not know that you meant those unpleasant crowds, by society."</p>
+
+<p>"Unpleasant crowds! Why, child, that <i>is</i> society, is it not?'</p>
+
+<p>"Not what I have been taught to consider such; I rather think it would be
+better to call it company."</p>
+
+<p>"And is not this what is called society in Paris?"</p>
+
+<p>"As far from it as possible; it may be an excrescence of society; one of
+its forms; but, by no means, society itself. It would be as true to call
+cards, which are sometimes introduced in the world, society, as to call a
+ball given in two small and crowded rooms, society. They are merely two of
+the modes in which idlers endeavour to vary their amusements."</p>
+
+<p>"But we have little else than these balls, the morning visits, and an
+occasional evening, in which there is no dancing."</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry to hear it; for, in that case, you can have no society."</p>
+
+<p>"And is it different at Paris--or Florence, or Rome?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very. In Paris there are many houses open every evening to which one can
+go, with little ceremony. Our sex appears in them, dressed according to
+what a gentleman I overheard conversing at Mrs. Henderson's would call
+their 'ulterior intentions,' for the night; some attired in the simplest
+manner, others dressed for concerts, for the opera, for court even; some
+on the way from a dinner, and others going to a late ball. All this matter
+of course variety, adds to the case and grace of the company, and coupled
+with perfect good manners, a certain knowledge of passing events, pretty
+modes of expression, an accurate and even utterance, the women usually
+find the means of making themselves agreeable. Their sentiment is
+sometimes a little heroic, but this one must overlook, and it is a taste,
+moreover, that is falling into disuse, as people read better books."</p>
+
+<p>"And you prefer this heartlessness, Eve, to the nature of your own
+country!"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know that quiet, <i>retenue</i>, and a good tone, are a whit more
+heartless than flirting, giggling and childishness. There may be more
+nature in the latter, certainly, but it is scarcely as agreeable, after
+one has fairly got rid of the nursery."</p>
+
+<p>Grace looked vexed, but she loved her cousin too sincerely to be angry, A
+secret suspicion that Eve was right, too, came in aid of her affection,
+and while her little foot moved, she maintained her good-nature, a task
+not always attainable for those who believe that their own "superlatives"
+scarcely reach to other people's "positives." At this critical moment,
+when there was so much danger of a jar in the feelings of these two young
+females, the library door opened and Pierre, Mr. Effingham's own man,
+announced--</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur Bragg."</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur who?" asked Eve, in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur Bragg," returned Pierre, in French, "desires to see
+Mademoiselle."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean my father,--I know no such person."</p>
+
+<p>"He inquired first for Monsieur, but understanding Monsieur was out, he
+next asked to have the honour of seeing Mademoiselle."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it what they call a <i>person</i> in England, Pierre?"</p>
+
+<p>Old Pierre smiled, as he answered--</p>
+
+<p>"He has the air, Mademoiselle, though he esteems himself a <i>personnage</i>,
+if I might take the liberty of judging."</p>
+
+<p>"Ask him for his card,--there must be a mistake, I think."</p>
+
+<p>While this short conversation took place, Grace Van Cortlandt was
+sketching a cottage with a pen, without attending to a word that was
+said. But, when Eve received the card from Pierre and read aloud, with the
+tone of surprise that the name would be apt to excite in a novice in the
+art of American nomenclature, the words "Aristabulus Bragg," her cousin
+began to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Who can this possibly be, Grace?--Did you ever hear of such a person, and
+what right can he have to wish to see me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Admit him, by all means; it is your father's land agent, and he may wish
+to leave some message for my uncle. You will be obliged to make his
+acquaintance, sooner or later, and it may as well be done now as at
+another time."</p>
+
+<p>"You have shown this gentleman into the front drawing-room, Pierre?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oui, Mademoiselle."</p>
+
+<p>"I will ring when you are wanted."</p>
+
+<p>Pierre withdrew, and Eve opened her secretary, out of which she took a
+small manuscript book, over the leaves of which she passed her fingers
+rapidly.</p>
+
+<p>"Here it is," she said, smiling, "Mr. Aristabulus Bragg, Attorney and
+Counsellor at Law, and the agent of the Templeton estate." This precious
+little work, you must understand, Grace, contains sketches of the
+characters of such persons as I shall be the most likely to see, by John
+Effingham, A.M. It is a sealed volume, of course, but there can be no harm
+in reading the part that treats of our present visiter, and, with your
+permission, we will have it in common.--'Mr. Aristabulus Bragg was born in
+one of the western counties of Massachusetts, and emigrated to New-York,
+after receiving his education, at the mature age of nineteen; at
+twenty-one he was admitted to the bar, and for the last seven years he has
+been a successful practitioner in all the courts of Otsego, from the
+justice's to the circuit. His talents are undeniable, as he commenced his
+education at fourteen and terminated it at twenty-one, the law-course
+included. This man is an epitome of all that is good and all that is bad,
+in a very large class of his fellow citizens. He is quick-witted, prompt
+in action, enterprising in all things in which he has nothing to lose, but
+wary and cautious in all things in which he has a real stake, and ready to
+turn not only his hand, but his heart and his principles to any thing that
+offers an advantage. With him, literally, "nothing is too high to be
+aspired to, nothing too low to be done." He will run for Governor, or for
+town-clerk, just as opportunities occur, is expert in all the <i>practices</i>
+of his profession, has had a quarter's dancing, with three years in the
+classics, and turned his attention towards medicine and divinity, before
+he finally settled down into the law. Such a compound of shrewdness,
+impudence, common-sense, pretension, humility, cleverness, vulgarity,
+kind-heartedness, duplicity, selfishness, law-honesty, moral fraud and
+mother wit, mixed up with a smattering of learning and much penetration in
+practical things, can hardly be described, as any one of his prominent
+qualities is certain to be met by another quite as obvious that is almost
+its converse. Mr. Bragg, in short, is purely a creature of circumstances,
+his qualities pointing him out for either a member of congress or a deputy
+sheriff, offices that he is equally ready to fill. I have employed him to
+watch over the estate of your father, in the absence of the latter, on the
+principle that one practised in tricks is the best qualified to detect and
+expose them, and with the certainty that no man will trespass with
+impunity, so long as the courts continue to tax bills of costs with their
+present liberality.' You appear to know the gentleman, Grace; is this
+character of him faithful?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know nothing of bills of costs and deputy sheriffs, but I do know that
+Mr. Aristabulus Bragg is an amusing mixture of strut, humility, roguery
+and cleverness. He is waiting all this time in the drawing-room, and you
+had better see him, as he may, now, be almost considered part of the
+family. You know he has been living in the house at Templeton, ever since
+he was installed by Mr. John Effingham. It was there I had the honour
+first to meet him,"</p>
+
+<p>"First!--Surely you have never seen him any where else!"</p>
+
+<p>"Your pardon, my dear. He never comes to town without honouring me with a
+call. This is the price I pay for having had the honour of being an inmate
+of the same house with him for a week."</p>
+
+<p>Eve rang the bell, and Pierre made his appearance.</p>
+
+<p>"Desire Mr. Bragg to walk into the library."</p>
+
+<p>Grace looked demure while Pierre was gone to usher in their visiter, and
+Eve was thinking of the medley of qualities John Effingham had assembled
+in his description, as the door opened, and the subject of her
+contemplation entered.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Monsieur Aristabule</i>" said Pierre, eyeing the card, but sticking at the
+first name.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Aristabulus Bragg was advancing with an easy assurance to make his bow
+to the ladies, when the more finished air and quiet dignity of Miss
+Effingham, who was standing, so far disconcerted him, as completely to
+upset his self-possession. As Grace had expressed it, in consequence of
+having lived three years in the old residence at Templeton, he had begun
+to consider himself a part of the family, and at home he never spoke of
+the young lady without calling her "Eve," or "Eve Effingham." But he found
+it a very different thing to affect familiarity among his associates, and
+to practise it in the very face of its subject; and, although seldom at a
+loss for words of some sort or another, he was now actually dumb-founded.
+Eve relieved his awkwardness by directing Pierre, with her eye, to hand a
+chair, and first speaking.</p>
+
+<p>"I regret that my father is not in," she said, by way of turning the visit
+from herself; "but he is to be expected every moment. Are you lately
+from Templeton?"</p>
+
+<p>Aristabulus drew his breath, and recovered enough of his ordinary tone of
+manner to reply with a decent regard to his character for self-command.
+The intimacy that he had intended to establish on the spot, was
+temporarily defeated, it is true, and without his exactly knowing how it
+had been effected; for it was merely the steadiness of the young lady,
+blended as it was with a polished reserve, that had thrown him to a
+distance he could not explain. He felt immediately, and with taste that
+did his sagacity credit, that his footing in this quarter was only to be
+obtained by unusually slow and cautious means. Still, Mr. Bragg was a man
+of great decision, and, in his way, of very far-sighted views; and,
+singular as it may seem, at that unpropitious moment, he mentally
+determined that, at no very distant day, he would make Miss Eve Effingham
+his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope Mr. Effingham enjoys good health," he said, with some such caution
+as a rebuked school-girl enters on the recitation of her task--"he enjoyed
+bad health I hear, (Mr. Aristabulus Bragg, though so shrewd, was far from
+critical in his modes of speech) when he went to Europe, and after
+travelling so far in such bad company, it would be no more than fair that
+he should have a little respite as he approaches home and old age."</p>
+
+<p>Had Eve been told that the man who uttered this nice sentiment, and that
+too in accents as uncouth and provincial as the thought was finished and
+lucid, actually presumed to think of her as his bosom companion, it is not
+easy to say which would have predominated in her mind, mirth or
+resentment. But Mr. Bragg was not in the habit of letting his secrets
+escape him prematurely, and certainly this was one that none but a wizard
+could have discovered without the aid of a direct oral or written
+communication.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you lately from Templeton?" repeated Eve a little surprised that the
+gentleman did not see fit to answer the question, which was the only one
+that, as it seemed to her, could have a common interest with them both.</p>
+
+<p>"I left home the day before yesterday," Aristabulus now deigned to reply.</p>
+
+<p>"It is so long since I saw our beautiful mountains and I was then so
+young, that I feel a great impatience to revisit them, though the pleasure
+must be deferred until spring."</p>
+
+<p>"I conclude they are the handsomest mountains in the known world, Miss
+Effingham!"</p>
+
+<p>"That is much more than I shall venture to claim for them; but, according
+to my imperfect recollection, and, what I esteem of far more importance,
+according to the united testimony of Mr. John Effingham and my father, I
+think they must be very beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>Aristabulus looked up, as if he had a facetious thing to say, and he even
+ventured on a smile, while he made his answer.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope Mr. John Effingham has prepared you for a great change in the
+house?"</p>
+
+<p>"We know that it has been repaired and altered under his directions. That
+was done at my father's request."</p>
+
+<p>"We consider it denationalized, Miss Effingham, there being nothing like
+it, west of Albany at least."</p>
+
+<p>"I should be sorry to find that my cousin has subjected us to this
+imputation," said Eve smiling--perhaps a little equivocally; "the
+architecture of America being generally so simple and pure. Mr. Effingham
+laughs at his own improvements, however, in which, he says, he has only
+carried out the plans of the original <i>artiste</i>, who worked very much in
+what was called the composite order.</p>
+
+<p>"You allude to Mr. Hiram Doolittle, a gentleman I never saw; though I hear
+he has left behind him many traces of his progress in the newer states.
+<i>Ex pede Herculem</i>, as we say, in the classics, Miss Effingham I believe
+it is the general sentiment that Mr. Doolittle's designs have been
+improved on, though most people think that the Grecian or Roman
+architecture, which is so much in use in America, would be more
+republican. But every body knows that Mr. John Effingham is not much of a
+republican."</p>
+
+<p>Eve did not choose to discuss her kinsman's opinions with Mr. Aristabulus
+Bragg, and she quietly remarked that she "did not know that the imitations
+of the ancient architecture, of which there are so many in the country,
+were owing to attachment to republicanism."</p>
+
+<p>"To what else can it be owing, Miss Eve?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure enough," said Grace Van Cortlandt; "it is unsuited to the materials,
+the climate, and the uses; and some very powerful motive, like that
+mentioned by Mr. Bragg, could alone overcome these obstacles."</p>
+
+<p>Aristabulus started from his seat, and making sundry apologies, declared
+his previous unconsciousness that Miss Van Cortlandt was present; all of
+which was true enough, as he had been so much occupied mentally, with her
+cousin, as not to have observed her, seated as she was partly behind a
+screen. Grace received the excuses favourably, and the conversation was
+resumed.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry that my cousin should offend the taste of the country," said
+Eve, "but as we are to live in the house, the punishment will fall
+heaviest on the offenders."</p>
+
+<p>"Do not mistake me, Miss Eve," returned Aristabulus, in a little alarm,
+for he too well understood the influence and wealth of John Effingham, not
+to wish to be on good terms with him; "do not mistake me, I admire the
+house, and know it to be a perfect specimen of a pure architecture in its
+way, but then public opinion is not yet quite up to it. I see all its
+beauties, I would wish you to know, but then there are many, a majority
+perhaps, who do not, and these persons think they ought to be consulted
+about such matters."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe Mr. John Effingham thinks less of his own work than you seem to
+think of it yourself, sir, for I have frequently heard him laugh at it, as
+a mere enlargement of the merits of the composite order. He calls it a
+caprice, rather than a taste: nor do I see what concern a majority, as you
+term them, can have with a house that does not belong to them."</p>
+
+<p>Aristabulus was surprised that any one could disregard a majority; for, in
+this respect, he a good deal resembled Mr. Dodge, though running a
+different career; and the look of surprise he gave was natural and open.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not mean that the public has a legal right to control the tastes of
+the citizen," he said, "but in a <i>republican</i> government, you undoubtedly
+understand, Miss Eve, it <i>will</i> rule in all things."</p>
+
+<p>"I can understand that one would wish to see his neighbour use good taste,
+as it helps to embellish a country; but the man who should consult the
+whole neighbourhood before he built, would be very apt to cause a
+complicated house to be erected, if he paid much respect to the different
+opinions he received; or, what is quite as likely, apt to have no house at
+all."</p>
+
+<p>"I think you are mistaken, Miss Effingham, for the public sentiment, just
+now, runs almost exclusively and popularly into the Grecian school. We
+build little besides temples for our churches, our banks, our taverns, our
+court-houses, and our dwellings. A friend of mine has just built a brewery
+on the model of the Temple of the Winds."</p>
+
+<p>"Had it been a mill, one might understand the conceit," said Eve, who now
+began to perceive that her visiter had some latent humour, though he
+produced it in a manner to induce one to think him any thing but a droll.
+"The mountains must be doubly beautiful, if they are decorated in the way
+you mention. I sincerely hope, Grace, that I shall find the hills as
+pleasant as they now exist in my recollection!"</p>
+
+<p>"Should they not prove to be quite as lovely as you imagine, Miss
+Effingham," returned Aristabulus, who saw no impropriety in answering a
+remark made to Miss Van Cortlandt, or any one else, "I hope you will have
+the kindness to conceal the fact from the world."</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid that would exceed my power, the disappointment would be so
+strong. May I ask why you show so much interest in my keeping so cruel a
+mortification to myself?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Miss Eve," said Aristabulus, looking grave, "I am afraid that <i>our</i>
+people would hardly bear the expression of such an opinion from <i>you</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"From <i>me!</i>--and why not from <i>me</i>, in particular?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it is because they think you have travelled, and have seen other
+countries."</p>
+
+<p>"And is it only those who have <i>not</i> travelled, and who have no means of
+knowing the value of what they say, that are privileged to criticise?"</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot exactly explain my own meaning, perhaps, but I think Miss Grace
+will understand me. Do you not agree with me, Miss Van Cortlandt, in
+thinking it would be safer for one who never saw any other mountains to
+complain of the tameness and monotony of our own, than for one who had
+passed a whole life among the Andes and the Alps?"</p>
+
+<p>Eve smiled, for she saw that Mr. Bragg was capable of detecting and
+laughing at provincial pride, even while he was so much under its
+influence; and Grace coloured, for she had the consciousness of having
+already betrayed some of this very silly sensitiveness, in her intercourse
+with her cousin, in connexion with other subjects. A reply was
+unnecessary, however, as the door just then opened, and John Effingham
+made his appearance. The meeting between the two gentlemen, for we suppose
+Aristabulus must be included in the category by courtesy, if not of
+right, was more cordial than Eve had expected to witness, for each really
+entertained a respect for the other, in reference to a merit of a
+particular sort; Mr. Bragg esteeming Mr. John Effingham as a wealthy and
+caustic cynic, and Mr. John Effingham regarding Mr. Bragg much as the
+owner of a dwelling regards a valuable house-dog. After a few moments of
+conversation, the two withdrew together, and just as the ladies were about
+to descend to the drawing-room, previously to dinner, Pierre announced
+that a plate had been ordered for the land agent.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Chapter II.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>  "I know that Deformed; he has been a vile thief this seven year he goes
+  up and down like a gentleman."</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>  MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>Eve, and her cousin, found Sir George Templemore and Captain Truck in the
+drawing-room, the former having lingered in New-York, with a desire to be
+near his friends, and the latter being on the point of sailing for Europe,
+in his regular turn. To these must be added Mr. Bragg and the ordinary
+inmates of the house, when the reader will get a view of the whole party.</p>
+
+<p>Aristabulus had never before sat down to as brilliant a table, and for the
+first time in his life, he saw candles lighted at a dinner; but he was not
+a man to be disconcerted at a novelty. Had he been a European of the same
+origin and habits, awkwardness would have betrayed him fifty times, before
+the dessert made its appearance; but, being the man he was, one who
+overlooked a certain prurient politeness that rather illustrated his
+deportment, might very well have permitted him to pass among the <i>oi
+polloi</i> of the world, were it not for a peculiar management in the way of
+providing for himself. It is true, he asked every one near him to eat of
+every thing he could himself reach, and that he used his knife as a
+coal-heaver uses a shovel; but the company he was in, though fastidious in
+its own deportment, was altogether above the silver-forkisms, and this
+portion of his demeanour, if it did not escape undetected, passed away
+unnoticed. Not so, however, with the peculiarity already mentioned as an
+exception. This touch of deportment, (or management, perhaps, is the
+better word,) being characteristic of the man, it deserves to be mentioned
+a little in detail.</p>
+
+<p>The service at Mr. Effingham's table was made in the quiet, but thorough
+manner that distinguishes a French dinner. Every dish was removed, carved
+by the domestics, and handed in turn to each guest. But there were a delay
+and a finish in this arrangement that suited neither Aristabulus's
+go-a-head-ism, nor his organ of acquisitiveness. Instead of waiting,
+therefore, for the more graduated movements of the domestics, he began to
+take care of himself, an office that he performed with a certain dexterity
+that he had acquired by frequenting ordinaries--a school, by the way, in
+which he had obtained most of his notions of the proprieties of the table.
+One or two slices were obtained in the usual manner, or by means of the
+regular service; and, then, like one who had laid the foundation of a
+fortune, by some lucky windfall in the commencement of his career, he
+began to make accessions, right and left, as opportunity offered. Sundry
+<i>entremets</i>, or light dishes that had a peculiarly tempting appearance,
+came first under his grasp. Of these he soon accumulated all within his
+reach, by taxing his neighbours, when he ventured to send his plate, here
+and there, or wherever he saw a dish that promised to reward his trouble.
+By such means, which were resorted to, however, with a quiet and
+unobtrusive assiduity that escaped much observation, Mr. Bragg contrived
+to make his own plate a sample epitome of the first course. It contained
+in the centre, fish, beef, and ham; and around these staple articles, he
+had arranged <i>croquettes, rognons, r&acirc;gouts</i>, vegetables, and other light
+things, until not only was the plate completely covered, but it was
+actually covered in double and triple layers; mustard, cold butter, salt,
+and even pepper, garnishing its edges. These different accumulations were
+the work of time and address, and most of the company had repeatedly
+changed their plates before Aristabulus had eaten a mouthful, the soup
+excepted. The happy moment when his ingenuity was to be rewarded, had now
+arrived, and the land agent was about to commence the process of
+mastication, or of deglutition rather, for he troubled himself very little
+with the first operation, when the report of a cork drew his attention
+towards the chaimpaigne. To Aristabulus this wine never came amiss, for,
+relishing its piquancy, he had never gone far enough into the science of
+the table to learn which were the proper moments for using it. As
+respected all the others at table, this moment had in truth arrived,
+though, as respected himself, he was no nearer to it, according to a
+regulated taste, than when he first took his seat. Perceiving that Pierre
+was serving it, however, he offered his own glass, and enjoyed a delicious
+instant, as he swallowed a beverage that much surpassed any thing he had
+ever known to issue out of the waxed and leaded nozles that, pointed like
+so many enemies' batteries, loaded with headaches and disordered stomachs,
+garnished sundry village bars of his acquaintance.</p>
+
+<p>Aristabulus finished his glass at a draught, and when he took breath, he
+fairly smacked his lips. That was an unlucky instant, his plate, burthened
+with all its treasures, being removed, at this unguarded moment; the man
+who performed the unkind office, fancying that a dislike to the dishes
+could alone have given rise to such an omnium-gatherum.</p>
+
+<p>It was necessary to commence <i>de novo</i>, but this could no longer be done
+with the first course, which was removed, and Aristabulus set-to, with
+zeal, forthwith, on the game. Necessity compelled him to eat, as the
+different dishes were offered; and, such was his ordinary assiduity with
+the knife and fork, that, at the end of the second remove, he had actually
+disposed of more food than any other person at table. He now began to
+converse, and we shall open the conversation at the precise point in the
+dinner, when it was in the power of Aristabulus to make one of the
+interlocutors.</p>
+
+<p>Unlike Mr. Dodge, he had betrayed no peculiar interest in the baronet,
+being a man too shrewd and worldly to set his heart on trifles of any
+sort; and Mr. Bragg no more hesitated about replying to Sir George
+Templemore, or Mr. Effingham, than he would have hesitated about answering
+one of his own nearest associates. With him age and experience formed no
+particular claims to be heard, and, as to rank, it is true he had some
+vague ideas about there being such a thing in the militia, but as it was
+unsalaried rank, he attached no great importance to it. Sir George
+Templemore was inquiring concerning the recording of deeds, a regulation
+that had recently attracted attention in England; and one of Mr.
+Effingham's replies contained some immaterial inaccuracy, which
+Aristabulus took occasion to correct, as his first appearance in the
+general discourse.</p>
+
+<p>"I ask pardon, sir," he concluded his explanations by saying, "but I ought
+to know these little niceties, having served a short part of a term as a
+county clerk, to fill a vacancy occasioned by a death."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean, Mr. Bragg, that you were employed to <i>write</i> in a county
+clerk's office," observed John Effingham, who so much disliked untruth,
+that he did not hesitate much about refuting it; or what he now fancied to
+be an untruth.</p>
+
+<p>"As county clerk, sir. Major Pippin died a year before his time was out,
+and I got the appointment. As regular a county clerk, sir, as there is in
+the fifty-six counties of New-York."</p>
+
+<p>"When I had the honour to engage you as Mr. Effingham's agent, sir,"
+returned the other, a little sternly, for he felt his own character for
+veracity involved in that of the subject of his selection, "I believe,
+indeed, that you were writing in the office, but I did not understand it
+was as <i>the</i> clerk."</p>
+
+<p>"Very true, Mr. John," returned Aristabulus, without discovering the least
+concern, "I was <i>then</i> engaged by my successor as <i>a</i> clerk; but a few
+months earlier, I filled the office myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Had you gone on, in the regular line of promotion, my dear sir," pithily
+inquired Captain Truck, "to what preferment would you have risen by this
+time?"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe I understand you, gentlemen," returned the unmoved Aristabulus,
+who perceived a general smile. "I know that some people are particular
+about keeping pretty much on the same level, as to office: but I hold to
+no such doctrine. If one good thing cannot be had, I do not see that it is
+a reason for rejecting another. I ran that year for sheriff, and finding I
+was not strong enough to carry the county, I accepted my successor's offer
+to write in the office, until something better might turn up."</p>
+
+<p>"You practised all this time, I believe, Mr. Bragg," observed John
+Effingham.</p>
+
+<p>"I did a little in that way, too, sir; or as much as I could. Law is flat
+with us, of late, and many of the attorneys are turning their attention to
+other callings."</p>
+
+<p>"And pray, sir," asked Sir George, "what is the favourite pursuit with
+most of them, just now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Some our way have gone into the horse-line; but much the greater portion
+are, just now, dealing in western cities.</p>
+
+<p>"In western cities!" exclaimed the baronet, looking as if he distrusted a
+mystification.</p>
+
+<p>"In such articles, and in mill-seats, and rail-road lines, and other
+expectations."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Bragg means that they are buying and selling lands on which it is
+hoped all these conveniences may exist, a century hence," explained John
+Effingham.</p>
+
+<p>"The <i>hope</i> is for next year, or next week, even, Mr. John," returned
+Aristabulus, with a sly look, "though you may be very right as to the
+<i>reality</i>. Great fortunes have been made on a capital of hopes, lately, in
+this country."</p>
+
+<p>"And have you been able, yourself, to resist these temptations?" asked Mr.
+Effingham. "I feel doubly indebted to you, sir, that you should have
+continued to devote your time to my interests, while so many better things
+were offering."</p>
+
+<p>"It was my duty, sir," said Aristabulus, bowing so much the lower, from
+the consciousness that he had actually deserted his post for some months,
+to embark in the western speculations that were then so active in the
+country, "not to say my pleasure. There are many profitable occupations in
+this country, Sir George, that have been overlooked in the eagerness to
+embark in the town-trade--"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Bragg does not mean trade in town, but trade in towns," explained
+John Effingham.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, the traffic in cities. I never come this way, without casting
+an eye about me, in order to see if there is any thing to be done that is
+useful; and I confess that several available opportunities have offered,
+if one had capital. Milk is a good business."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Le lait!</i>" exclaimed Mademoiselle Viefville, involuntarily.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'am, for ladies as well as gentlemen. Sweet potatoes I have heard
+well spoken of, and peaches are really making some rich men's fortunes."</p>
+
+<p>"All of which are honester and better occupations than the traffic in
+cities, that you have mentioned," quietly observed Mr. Effingham.</p>
+
+<p>Aristabulus looked up in a little surprise, for with him every thing was
+eligible that returned a good profit, and all things honest that the law
+did not actually punish. Perceiving, however, that the company was
+disposed to listen, and having, by this time, recovered the lost ground,
+in the way of food, he cheerfully resumed his theme.</p>
+
+<p>"Many families have left Otsego, this and the last summer, Mr. Effingham,
+as emigrants for the west. The fever has spread far and wide."</p>
+
+<p>"The fever! Is <i>old</i> Otsego," for so its inhabitants loved to call a
+county of half a century's existence, it being venerable by comparison,
+"is <i>old</i> Otsego losing its well established character for salubrity?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not allude to an animal fever, but to the western fever."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Ce pays de l'ouest, est-il bien malsain</i>?" whispered Mademoiselle
+Viefville.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Apparemment, Mademoiselle, sur plusieurs rapports."</i></p>
+
+<p>"The western fever has seized old and young, and it has carried off many
+active families from our part of the world," continued Aristabulus, who
+did not understand the little aside just mentioned, and who, of course,
+did not heed it; "most of the counties adjoining our own have lost a
+considerable portion of their population."</p>
+
+<p>"And they who have gone, do they belong to the permanent families, or are
+they merely the floating inhabitants?" inquired Mr. Effingham.</p>
+
+<p>"Most of them belong to the regular movers."</p>
+
+<p>"Movers!" again exclaimed Sir George--"is there any material part of your
+population who actually deserve this name?"</p>
+
+<p>"As much so as the man who shoes a horse ought to be called a smith, or
+the man who frames a house a carpenter," answered John Effingham.</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure," continued Mr. Bragg, "we have a pretty considerable leaven
+of them in our political dough, as well as in our active business. I
+believe, Sir George, that in England, men are tolerably stationary."</p>
+
+<p>"We love to continue for generations on the same spot. We love the tree
+that our forefathers planted, the roof that they built, the fire-side by
+which they sat, the sods that cover their remains."</p>
+
+<p>"Very poetical, and I dare say there are situations in life, in which such
+feelings come in without much effort. It must be a great check to business
+operations, however, in your part of the world, sir!"</p>
+
+<p>"Business operations!--what is business, as you term it, sir, to the
+affections, to the recollections of ancestry, and to the solemn feelings
+connected with history and tradition?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, sir, in the way of history, one meets with but few incumbrances in
+this country, but he may do very much as interest dictates, so far as that
+is concerned, at least. A nation is much to be pitied that is weighed down
+by the past, in this manner, since its industry and enterprize are
+constantly impeded by obstacles that grow out of its recollections.
+America may, indeed, be termed a happy and a free country, Mr. John
+Effingham, in this, as well as in all other things!"</p>
+
+<p>Sir George Templemore was too well-bred to utter all he felt at that
+moment, as it would unavoidably wound the feelings of his hosts, but he
+was rewarded for his forbearance by intelligent smiles from Eve and Grace,
+the latter of whom the young baronet fancied, just at that moment, was
+quite as beautiful as her cousin, and if less finished in manners, she
+had the most interesting <i>naivet&eacute;</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been told that most old nations have to struggle with difficulties
+that we escape," returned John Effingham, "though I confess this is a
+superiority on our part, that never before presented itself to my mind."</p>
+
+<p>"The political economists, and even the geographers have overlooked it,
+but practical men see and feel its advantages, every hour in the day. I
+have been told, Sir George Templemore, that in England, there are
+difficulties in running highways and streets through homesteads and
+dwellings; and that even a rail-road, or a canal, is obliged to make a
+curve to avoid a church-yard or a tomb-stone?"</p>
+
+<p>"I confess to the sin, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Our friend Mr. Bragg," put in John Effingham, "considers life as all
+<i>means</i> and no <i>end</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"An end cannot be got at without the means, Mr. John Effingham, as I trust
+you will, yourself, admit. I am for the end of the road, at least, and
+must say that I rejoice in being a native of a country in which as few
+impediments as possible exist to onward impulses. The man who should
+resist an improvement, in our part of the country, on account of his
+forefathers, would fare badly among his contemporaries."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you permit me to ask, Mr. Bragg, if you feel no local attachments
+yourself," enquired the baronet, throwing as much delicacy into the tones
+of his voice, as a question that he felt ought to be an insult to a man's
+heart, would allow--"if one tree is not more pleasant than another; the
+house you were born in more beautiful than a house into which you never
+entered; or the altar at which you have long worshipped, more sacred than
+another at which you never knelt?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing gives me greater satisfaction than to answer the questions of
+gentlemen that travel through our country," returned Aristabulus, "for I
+think, in making nations acquainted with each other, we encourage trade
+and render business more secure. To reply to your inquiry, a human being
+is not a cat, to love a locality rather than its own interests. I have
+found some trees much pleasanter than others, and the pleasantest tree I
+can remember was one of my own, out of which the sawyers made a thousand
+feet of clear stuff, to say nothing of middlings. The house I was born in
+was pulled down, shortly after my birth, as indeed has been its successor,
+so I can tell you nothing on that head; and as for altars, there are none
+in my persuasion."</p>
+
+<p>"The church of Mr. Bragg has stripped itself as naked as he would strip
+every thing else, if he could," said John Effingham. "I much question if
+he ever knelt even; much less before an altar."</p>
+
+<p>"We are of the standing order, certainly," returned Aristabulus, glancing
+towards the ladies to discover how they took his wit, "and Mr. John
+Effingham is as near right as a man need be, in a matter of faith. In the
+way of houses, Mr. Effingham, I believe it is the general opinion you
+might have done better with your own, than to have repaired it. Had the
+materials been disposed of, they would have sold well, and by running a
+street through the property, a pretty sum might have been realized."</p>
+
+<p>"In which case I should have been without a home, Mr. Bragg."</p>
+
+<p>"It would have been no great matter to get another on cheaper land. The
+old residence would have made a good factory, or an inn."</p>
+
+<p>"Sir, I <i>am</i> a cat, and like the places I have long frequented."</p>
+
+<p>Aristabulus, though not easily daunted, was awed by Mr. Effingham's
+manner, and Eve saw that her father's fine face had flushed. This
+interruption, therefore, suddenly changed the discourse, which has been
+recreated at some length, as likely to give the reader a better insight
+into a character that will fill some space in our narrative, than a more
+laboured description.</p>
+
+<p>"I trust your owners, Captain Truck," said John Effingham, by way of
+turning the conversation into another channel, "are fully satisfied with
+the manner in which you saved their property from the hands of the Arabs?"</p>
+
+<p>"Men, when money is concerned, are more disposed to remember how it was
+lost than how it was recovered, religion and trade being the two poles, on
+such a point," returned the old seaman, with a serious face. "On the
+whole, my dear sir, I have reason to be satisfied, however; and so long as
+you, my passengers and my friends, are not inclined to blame me, I shall
+feel as if I had done at least a part of my duty."</p>
+
+<p>Eve rose from table, went to a side-board and returned, when she
+gracefully placed before the master of the Montauk a rich and beautifully
+chased punch-bowl, in silver. Almost at the same moment, Pierre offered a
+salver that contained a capital watch, a pair of small silver tongs to
+hold a coal, and a deck trumpet, in solid silver.</p>
+
+<p>"These are so many faint testimonials of our feelings," said Eve--"and you
+will do us the favour to retain them, as evidences of the esteem created
+by skill, kindness, and courage."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear young lady!" cried the old tar, touched to the soul by the
+feeling with which Eve acquitted herself of this little duty, "my dear
+young lady--well, God bless you--God bless you all--you too, Mr. John
+Effingham, for that matter--and Sir George--that I should ever have taken
+that runaway for a gentleman and a baronet--though I suppose there are
+some silly baronets, as well as silly lords--retain them?"--glancing
+furiously at Mr. Aristabulus Bragg, "may the Lord forget me, in the
+heaviest hurricane, if I ever forget whence these things came, and why
+they were given."</p>
+
+<p>Here the worthy captain was obliged to swallow some wine, by way of
+relieving his emotions, and Aristabulus, profiting by the opportunity,
+coolly took the bowl, which, to use a word of his own, he <i>hefted</i> in his
+hand, with a view to form some tolerably accurate notion of its intrinsic
+value. Captain Truck's eye caught the action, and he reclaimed his
+property quite as unceremoniously as it had been taken away, nothing but
+the presence of the ladies preventing an outbreaking that would have
+amounted to a declaration of war.</p>
+
+<p>"With your permission, sir," said the captain, drily, after he had
+recovered the bowl, not only without the other's consent, but, in some
+degree, against his will; "this bowl is as precious in my eyes as if it
+were made of my father's bones."</p>
+
+<p>"You may indeed think so," returned the land-agent, "for its cost could
+not be less than a hundred dollars."</p>
+
+<p>"Cost, sir!--But, my dear young lady, let us talk of the real value. For
+what part of these things am I indebted to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"The bowl is my offering," Eve answered, smilingly, though a tear
+glistened in her eye, as she witnessed the strong unsophisticated feeling
+of the old tar. "I thought it might serve sometimes to bring me to your
+recollection, when it was well filled in honour of 'sweethearts and
+wives.'"</p>
+
+<p>"It shall--it shall, by the Lord; and Mr. Saunders needs look to it, if he
+do not keep this work as bright as a cruising frigate's bottom. To whom do
+I owe the coal-tongs?"</p>
+
+<p>"Those are from Mr. John Effingham, who insists that he will come nearer
+to your heart than any of us, though the gift be of so little cost."</p>
+
+<p>"He does not know me, my dear young lady--nobody ever got as near my heart
+as you; no, not even my own dear pious old mother. But I thank Mr. John
+Effingham from my inmost spirit, and shall seldom smoke without thinking
+of him. The watch I know is Mr. Effingham's, and I ascribe the trumpet to
+Sir George."</p>
+
+<p>The bows of the several gentlemen assured the captain he was right, and
+he shook each of them cordially by the hand, protesting, in the fulness of
+his heart, that nothing would give him greater pleasure than to be able to
+go through the same perilous scenes as those from which they had so lately
+escaped, in their good company again.</p>
+
+<p>While this was going on, Aristabulus, notwithstanding the rebuke he had
+received, contrived to get each article, in succession, into his hands,
+and by dint of poising it on a finger, or by examining it, to form some
+approximative notion of its inherent value. The watch he actually opened,
+taking as good a survey of its works as the circumstances of the case
+would very well allow.</p>
+
+<p>"I respect these things, sir, more than you respect your father's grave,"
+said Captain Truck sternly, as he rescued the last article from what he
+thought the impious grasp of Aristabulus again, "and cat or no cat, they
+sink or swim with me for the remainder of the cruise. If there is any
+virtue in a will, which I am sorry to say I hear there is not any longer,
+they shall share my last bed with me, be it ashore or be it afloat. My
+dear young lady, fancy all the rest, but depend on it, punch will be
+sweeter than ever taken from this bowl, and 'sweethearts and wives' will
+never be so honoured again."</p>
+
+<p>"We are going to a ball this evening, at the house of one with whom I am
+sufficiently intimate to take the liberty of introducing a stranger, and I
+wish, gentlemen," said Mr. Effingham, bowing to Aristabulus and the
+captain, by way of changing the conversation, "you would do me the favour
+to be of our party."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bragg acquiesced very cheerfully, and quite as a matter of course;
+while Captain Truck, after protesting his unfitness for such scenes, was
+finally prevailed on by John Effingham, to comply with the request also.
+The ladies remained at table but a few minutes longer, when they retired,
+Mr. Effingham having dropped into the old custom of sitting at the bottle,
+until summoned to the drawing-room, a usage that continues to exist in
+America, for a reason no better than the fact that it continues to exist
+in England;--it being almost certain that it will cease in New-York, the
+season after it is known to have ceased in London.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Chapter III.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>  "Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful!"</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>  SHAKSPEARE.</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>As Captain Truck asked permission to initiate the new coal-tongs by
+lighting a cigar, Sir George Templemore contrived to ask Pierre, in an
+aside, if the ladies would allow him to join them. The desired consent
+having been obtained, the baronet quietly stole from table, and was soon
+beyond the odours of the dining-room.</p>
+
+<p>"You miss the censer and the frankincense," said Eve, laughing, as Sir
+George entered the drawing-room; "but you will remember we have no church
+establishment, and dare not take such liberties with the ceremonials of
+the altar."</p>
+
+<p>"That is a short-lived custom with us, I fancy, though far from an
+unpleasant one. But you do me injustice in supposing I am merely running
+away from the fumes of the dinner."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no; we understand perfectly well that you have something to do with
+the fumes of flattery, and we will at once fancy all has been said that
+the occasion requires. Is not our honest old captain a jewel in his way?"</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my word, since you allow me to speak of your father's guests, I do
+not think it possible to have brought together two men who are so
+completely the opposites of each other, as Captain Truck and this Mr
+Aristabulus Bragg. The latter is quite the most extraordinary person in
+his way, it was ever my good fortune to meet with."</p>
+
+<p>"You call him a <i>person</i>, while Pierre calls him a <i>personnage;</i> I fancy
+he considers it very much as a matter of accident, whether he is to pass
+his days in the one character or in the other. Cousin Jack assures me,
+that, while this man accepts almost any duty that he chooses to assign
+him, he would not deem it at all a violation of the <i>convenances</i> to aim
+at the throne in the White House."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly with no hopes of ever attaining it!"</p>
+
+<p>"One cannot answer for that. The man must undergo many essential changes,
+and much radical improvement, before such a climax to his fortunes can
+ever occur; but the instant you do away with the claims of hereditary
+power, the door is opened to a new chapter of accidents. Alexander of
+Russia styled himself <i>un heureux accident</i>; and should it ever be our
+fortune to receive Mr. Bragg as President, we shall only have to term him
+<i>un malheureux accident</i>. I believe that will contain all the difference."</p>
+
+<p>"Your republicanism is indomitable, Miss Effingham, and I shall abandon
+the attempt to convert you to safer principles, more especially as I find
+you supported by both the Mr. Effinghams, who, while they condemn so much
+at home, seem singularly attached to their own system at the bottom."</p>
+
+<p>"They condemn, Sir George Templemore, because they know that perfection is
+hopeless, and because they feel it to be unsafe and unwise to eulogize
+defects, and they are attached, because near views of other countries have
+convinced them that, comparatively at last, bad as we are, we are still
+better than most of our neighbours."</p>
+
+<p>"I can assure you," said Grace, "that many of the opinions of Mr John
+Effingham, in particular, are not at all the opinions that are most in
+vogue here; he rather censures what we like, and likes what we censure.
+Even my dear uncle is thought to be a little heterodox on such subjects."</p>
+
+<p>"I can readily believe it," returned Eve, steadily. "These gentlemen,
+having become familiar with better things, in the way of the tastes, and
+of the purely agreeable, cannot discredit their own knowledge so much as
+to extol that which their own experience tells them is faulty, or condemn
+that which their own experience tells them is relatively good. Now, Grace,
+if you will reflect a moment, you will perceive that people necessarily
+like the best of their own tastes, until they come to a knowledge of
+better; and that they as necessarily quarrel with the unpleasant facts
+that surround them; although these facts, as consequences of a political
+system, may be much less painful than those of other systems of which they
+have no knowledge. In the one case, they like their own best, simply
+because it is their own best; and they dislike their own worst, because it
+is their own worst. We cherish a taste, in the nature of things, without
+entering into any comparisons, for when the means of comparison offer, and
+we find improvements, it ceases to be a taste at all; while to complain of
+any positive grievance, is the nature of man, I fear!"</p>
+
+<p>"I think a republic odious!"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Le republique est une horreur!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Grace thought a republic odious, without knowing any thing of any other
+state of society, and because it contained odious things; and Mademoiselle
+Viefville called a republic <i>une horreur</i>, because heads fell and anarchy
+prevailed in her own country, during its early struggles for liberty.
+Though Eve seldom spoke more sensibly, and never more temperately, than
+while delivering the foregoing opinions, Sir George Templemore doubted
+whether she had all that exquisite <i>finesse</i> and delicacy of features,
+that he had so much admired; and when Grace burst out in the sudden and
+senseless exclamation we have recorded, he turned towards her sweet and
+animated countenance, which, for the moment, he fancied the loveliest of
+the two.</p>
+
+<p>Eve Effingham had yet to learn that she had just entered into the most
+intolerant society, meaning purely as society, and in connexion with what
+are usually called liberal sentiments, in Christendom. We do not mean by
+this, that it would be less safe to utter a generous opinion in favour of
+human rights in America than in any other country, for the laws and the
+institutions become active in this respect, but simply, that the
+resistance of the more refined to the encroachments of the unrefined, has
+brought about a state of feeling--a feeling that is seldom just and never
+philosophical--which has created a silent, but almost unanimous bias
+against the effects of the institutions, in what is called the world. In
+Europe, one rarely utters a sentiment of this nature, under circumstances
+in which it is safe to do so at all, without finding a very general
+sympathy in the auditors; but in the circle into which Eve had now fallen,
+it was almost considered a violation of the proprieties. We do not wish to
+be understood as saying more than we mean, however, for we have no manner
+of doubt that a large portion of the dissentients even, are so idly, and
+without reflection; or for the very natural reasons already given by our
+heroine; but we do wish to be understood as meaning that such is the
+outward appearance which American society presents to every stranger, and
+to every native of the country too, on his return from a residence among
+other people. Of its taste, wisdom and safety we shall not now speak, but
+content ourselves with merely saying that the effect of Grace's
+exclamation on Eve was unpleasant, and that, unlike the baronet, she
+thought her cousin was never less handsome than while her pretty face was
+covered with the pettish frown it had assumed for the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>Sir George Templemore had tact enough to perceive there had been a slight
+jar in the feelings of these two young women, and he adroitly changed the
+conversation. With Eve he had entire confidence on the score of
+provincialisms, and, without exactly anticipating the part Grace would be
+likely to take in such a discussion, he introduced the subject of general
+society in New-York.</p>
+
+<p>"I am desirous to know," he said, "if you have your sets, as we have them
+in London and Paris. Whether you have your <i>Faubourg St. Germain</i> and your
+<i>Chauss&eacute;e d'Antin;</i> your Piccadilly, Grosvenor and Russel Squares."</p>
+
+<p>"I must refer you to Miss Van Cortlandt for an answer to that question,"
+said Eve.</p>
+
+<p>Grace looked up blushing, for there were both novelty and excitement in
+having an intelligent foreigner question her on such a subject.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know that I rightly understand the allusion," she said,
+"although I am afraid Sir George Templemore means to ask if we have
+distinctions in society?"</p>
+
+<p>"And why <i>afraid</i>, Miss Van Cortlandt?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because it strikes me such a question would imply a doubt of our
+civilization."</p>
+
+<p>"There are frequently distinctions made, when the differences are not
+obvious," observed Eve. "Even London and Paris are not above the
+imputation of this folly. Sir George Templemore, if I understand him,
+wishes to know if we estimate gentility by streets, and quality by
+squares."</p>
+
+<p>"Not exactly that either, Miss Effingham--but, whether among those, who
+may very well pass for gentlemen and ladies, you enter into the minute
+distinctions that are elsewhere found. Whether you have your exclusive,
+and your <i>&eacute;l&eacute;gants</i> and <i>&eacute;legantes</i>; or whether you deem all within the
+pale as on an equality."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Les femmes Americaines sont bien jolies!</i>" exclaimed Mademoiselle
+Viefville.</p>
+
+<p>"It is quite impossible that <i>coteries</i> should not form in a town of three
+hundred thousand souls."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not mean exactly even that. Is there no distinction between
+<i>coteries;</i> is not one placed by opinion, by a silent consent, if not by
+positive ordinances, above another?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, that to which Sir George Templemore alludes, is to be found,"
+said Grace, who gained courage to speak, as she found the subject getting
+to be more clearly within her comprehension. "All the old families, for
+instance, keep more together than the others; though it is the subject of
+regret that they are not more particular than they are."</p>
+
+<p>"Old families!" exclaimed Sir George Templemore, with quite as much stress
+as a well-bred man could very well lay on the words, in such
+circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>"Old families," repeated Eve, with all that emphasis which the baronet
+himself had hesitated about giving. "As old, at least, as two centuries
+can make them; and this, too, with origins beyond that period, like those
+of the rest of the world. Indeed, the American has a better gentility than
+common, as, besides his own, he may take root in that of Europe."</p>
+
+<p>"Do not misconceive me, Miss Effingham; I am fully aware that the people
+of this country are exactly like the people of all other civilized
+countries, in this respect; but my surprise is that, in a republic, you
+should have such a term even as that of 'old families.'"</p>
+
+<p>"The surprise has arisen, I must be permitted to say, from not having
+sufficiently reflected on the real state of the country. There are two
+great causes of distinction every where, wealth and merit. Now, if a race
+of Americans continue conspicuous in their own society, through either or
+both of these causes, for a succession of generations, why have they not
+the same claims to be considered members of old families, as Europeans
+under the same circumstances? A republican history is as much history as a
+monarchical history; and a historical name in one, is quite as much
+entitled to consideration, as a historical name in another. Nay, you admit
+this in your European republics, while you wish to deny it in ours."</p>
+
+<p>"I must insist on having proofs; if we permit these charges to be brought
+against us without evidence, Mademoiselle Viefville, we shall finally be
+defeated through our own neglect."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>C'est une belle illustration, celle de l'antiquit&eacute;</i>" observed the
+governess, in a matter of course tone.</p>
+
+<p>"If you insist on proof, what answer can you urge to the <i>Capponi</i>?
+'<i>Sonnez vos trompettes, et je vais faire sonner mes cloches</i>,'--or to the
+<i>Von Erlachs</i>, a family that has headed so many resistances to oppression
+and invasion, for five centuries?"</p>
+
+<p>"All this is very true," returned Sir George, "and yet I confess it is not
+the way in which it is usual with us to consider American society."</p>
+
+<p>"A descent from Washington, with a character and a social position to
+correspond, would not be absolutely vulgar, notwithstanding!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, if you press me so hard, I must appeal to Miss Van Cortlandt for
+succour."</p>
+
+<p>"On this point you will find no support in that quarter. Miss Van
+Cortlandt has an historical name herself, and will not forego an honest
+pride, in order to relieve one of the hostile powers from a dilemma."</p>
+
+<p>"While I admit that time and merit must, in a certain sense, place
+families in America in the same situation with families in Europe, I
+cannot see that it is in conformity with your institutions to lay the same
+stress on the circumstance."</p>
+
+<p>"In that we are perfectly of a mind, as I think the American has much the
+best reason to be proud of his family," said Eve, quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"You delight in paradoxes, apparently, this evening, Miss Effingham, for I
+now feel very certain you can hardly make out a plausible defence of this
+new position."</p>
+
+<p>"If I had my old ally, Mr. Powis, here," said Eve touching the fender
+unconsciously with her little foot, and perceptibly losing the animation
+and pleasantry of her voice, in tones that were gentler, if not
+melancholy, "I should ask him to explain this matter to you, for he was
+singularly ready in such replies. As he is absent, however, I will attempt
+the duty myself. In Europe, office, power, and consequently,
+consideration, are all hereditary; whereas, in this country, they are not,
+but they depend on selection. Now, surely, one has more reason to be proud
+of ancestors who have been chosen to fill responsible stations, than of
+ancestors who have filled them through the accidents, <i>heureux ou
+malkeureux</i>, of birth. The only difference between England and America, as
+respects family, is that you add positive rank to that to which we only
+give consideration. Sentiment is at the bottom of our nobility, and the
+great seal at the bottom of yours. And now, having established the fact
+that there are families in America, let us return whence we started, and
+enquire how far they have an influence in every-day society."</p>
+
+<p>"To ascertain which, we must apply to Miss Van Cortlandt."</p>
+
+<p>"Much less than they ought, if my opinion is to be taken," said Grace,
+laughing, "for the great inroad of strangers has completely deranged all
+the suitablenesses, in that respect."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet, I dare say, these very strangers do good," rejoined Eve. "Many
+of them must have been respectable in their native places, and ought to be
+an acquisition to a society that, in its nature, must be, Grace, <i>tant
+soit peu</i>, provincial."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" cried Grace, "I can tolerate any thing but the Hajjis!"</p>
+
+<p>"The what?" asked Sir George, eagerly--"will you suffer me to ask an
+explanation, Miss Van Cortlandt."</p>
+
+<p>"The Hajjis," repeated Grace laughing, though she blushed to the eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The baronet looked from one cousin to the other, and then turned an
+inquiring glance on Mademoiselle Viefville. The latter gave a slight
+shrug, and seemed to ask an explanation of the young lady's meaning
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>"A Hajji is one of a class, Sir George Templemore," Eve at length said,
+"to which you and I have both the honour of belonging."</p>
+
+<p>"No, not Sir George Templemore," interrupted Grace, with a precipitation
+that she instantly regretted; "he is not an American."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I, alone, of all present, have that honour. It means the pilgrimage
+to Paris, instead of Mecca; and the Pilgrim must be an American, instead
+of a Mahommedan."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, Eve, <i>you</i> are not a Hajji, neither."</p>
+
+<p>"Then there is some qualification with which I am not yet acquainted. Will
+you relieve our doubts, Grace, and let us know the precise character of
+the animal."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>You</i> stayed too long to be a Hajji--- one must get innoculated merely;
+not take the disease and become cured, to be a true Hajji."</p>
+
+<p>"I thank you, Miss Van Cortlandt, for this description," returned Eve in
+her quiet way. "I hope, as I have gone through the malady, it has not left
+me pitted."</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to see one of these Hajjis," cried Sir George.--"Are they
+of both sexes?"</p>
+
+<p>Grace laughed and nodded her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you point it out to me, should we be so fortunate as to encounter
+one this evening?"</p>
+
+<p>Again Grace laughed and nodded her head.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been thinking, Grace," said Eve, after a short pause, "that we may
+give Sir George Templemore a better idea of the sets about which he is so
+curious, by doing what is no more than a duty of our own, and by letting
+him profit by the opportunity. Mrs. Hawker receives this evening without
+ceremony; we have not yet sent our answer to Mrs. Jarvis, and might very
+well look in upon her for half an hour, after which we shall be in very
+good season for Mrs. Houston's ball."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely, Eve, you would not wish to take Sir George Templemore to such a
+house as that of Mrs. Jarvis!"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I</i> do not wish to take Sir George Templemore any where, for your Hajjis
+have opinions of their own on such subjects. But, as cousin Jack will
+accompany us, <i>he</i> may very well confer that important favour. I dare say,
+Mrs. Jarvis will not look upon it as too great a liberty."</p>
+
+<p>"I will answer for it, that nothing Mr. John Effingham can do will be
+thought <i>mal &agrave; propos</i> by Mrs. Jared Jarvis. His position in society is
+too well established, and hers is too equivocal, to leave any doubt on
+that head."</p>
+
+<p>"This, you perceive, settles the point of <i>c&ocirc;teries,</i>" said Eve to the
+baronet. "Volumes might be written to establish principles; but when one
+can do any thing he or she pleases, any where that he or she likes, it is
+pretty safe to say that he or she is privileged."</p>
+
+<p>"All very true, as to the fact, Miss Effingham; but I should like
+exceedingly to know the reason."</p>
+
+<p>"Half the time, such things are decided without a reason at all. You are a
+little exacting in requiring a reason in New-York for that which is done
+in London without even the pretence of such a thing. It is sufficient that
+Mrs. Jarvis will be delighted to see you without an invitation, and that
+Mrs. Houston would, at least, think it odd, were you to take the same
+liberty with her."</p>
+
+<p>"It follows," said Sir George, smiling, "that Mrs. Jarvis is much the most
+hospitable person of the two."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Eve, what shall be done with Captain Truck and Mr. Bragg?" asked
+Grace. "We cannot take <i>them</i> to Mrs. Hawker's!"</p>
+
+<p>"Aristabulus would, indeed, be a little out of place in such a house, but
+as for our excellent, brave, straight-forward, old captain, he is worthy
+to go any where. I shall be delighted to present <i>him</i> to Mrs. Hawker,
+myself."</p>
+
+<p>After a little consultation between the ladies, it was settled that
+nothing should be said of the two first visits to Mr. Bragg, but that Mr.
+Effingham should be requested to bring him to the ball, at the proper
+hour, and that the rest of the party should go quietly off to the other
+places, without mentioning their projects. As soon as this was arranged
+the ladies retired to dress, Sir George Templemore passing into the
+library to amuse himself with a book the while; where, however, he was
+soon joined by John Effingham. Here the former revived the conversation on
+distinctions in society, with the confusion of thought that usually marks
+a European's notions of such matters.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Chapter IV.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>  "Ready."<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;"And I."<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;"And I."<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;"Where shall we go?"</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>  MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>Grace Van Cortlant was the first to make her appearance after the retreat
+from the drawing-room. It has often been said that, pretty as the American
+females incontestably are, as a whole they appear better in
+<i>demi-toilette,</i> than when attired for a ball. With what would be termed
+high dress in other parts of the world, they are little acquainted; but
+reversing the rule of Europe, where the married bestow the most care on
+their personal appearance, and the single are taught to observe a rigid
+simplicity, Grace now seemed sufficiently ornamented in the eyes of the
+fastidious baronet, while, at the same time, he thought her less obnoxious
+to the criticism just mentioned, than most of her young countrywomen, in
+general.</p>
+
+<p>An <i>embonpoint</i> that was just sufficient to distinguish her from most of
+her companions, a fine colour, brilliant eyes, a sweet smile, rich hair,
+and such feet and hands as Sir George Templemore had, somehow--he scarcely
+knew how, himself--fancied could only belong to the daughters of peers and
+princes, rendered Grace so strikingly attractive this evening, that the
+young baronet began to think her even handsomer than her cousin. There was
+also a charm in the unsophisticated simplicity of Grace, that was
+particularly alluring to a man educated amidst the coldness and mannerism
+of the higher classes of England. In Grace, too, this simplicity was
+chastened by perfect decorum and <i>retenue</i> of deportment; the exuberance
+of the new school of manners not having helped to impair the dignity of
+her character, or to weaken the charm of diffidence. She was less finished
+in her manners than Eve, certainly; a circumstance, perhaps, that induced
+Sir George Templemore to fancy her a shade more simple, but she was never
+unfeminine or unladylike; and the term vulgar, in despite of all the
+capricious and arbitrary rules of fashion, under no circumstances, could
+ever be applied to Grace Van Cortlandt. In this respect, nature seemed to
+have aided her; for had not her associations raised her above such an
+imputation, no one could believe that she would be obnoxious to the
+charge, had her lot in life been cast even many degrees lower than it
+actually was.</p>
+
+<p>It is well known that, after a sufficient similarity has been created by
+education to prevent any violent shocks to our habits or principles, we
+most affect those whose characters and dispositions the least resemble our
+own. This was probably one of the reasons why Sir George Templemore, who,
+for some time, had been well assured of the hopelessness of his suit with
+Eve, began to regard her scarcely less lovely cousin, with an interest of
+a novel and lively nature. Quick-sighted and deeply interested in Grace's
+happiness, Miss Effingham had already detected this change in the young
+baronet's inclinations, and though sincerely rejoiced on her own account,
+she did not observe it without concern; for she understood better than
+most of her countrywomen, the great hazards of destroying her peace of
+mind, that are incurred by transplanting an American woman into the more
+artificial circles of the old world.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall rely on your kind offices, in particular, Miss Van Cortlandt, to
+reconcile Mrs. Jarvis and Mrs. Hawker to the liberty I am about to take,"
+cried Sir George, as Grace burst upon them in the library, in a blaze of
+beauty that, in her case, was aided by her attire; "and cold-hearted and
+unchristian-like women they must be, indeed, to resist such a mediator!"</p>
+
+<p>Grace was unaccustomed to adulation of this sort; for though the baronet
+spoke gaily, and like one half trifling, his look of admiration was too
+honest to escape the intuitive perception of woman. She blushed deeply,
+and then recovering herself instantly, said with a <i>naivet&eacute;</i> that had a
+thousand charms with her listener--</p>
+
+<p>"I do not see why Miss Effingham and myself should hesitate about
+introducing you at either place. Mrs. Hawker is a relative and an
+intimate--an intimate of mine, at least--and as for poor Mrs. Jarvis, she
+is the daughter of an old neighbour, and will be too glad to see us, to
+raise objections. I fancy any one of a certain--" Grace hesitated and
+laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Any one of a certain--?" said Sir George inquiringly.</p>
+
+<p>"Any one from this house," resumed the young lady, correcting the intended
+expression, "will be welcome in Spring street."</p>
+
+<p>"Pure, native aristocracy!" exclaimed the baronet with an air of affected
+triumph. "This you see, Mr. John Effingham, is in aid of my argument."</p>
+
+<p>"I am quite of your opinion," returned the gentleman addressed--"as much
+native aristocracy as you please, but no hereditary."</p>
+
+<p>The entrance of Eve and Mademoiselle Viefville interrupted this
+pleasantry, and the carriages being just then announced, John Effingham
+went in quest of Captain Truck, who was in the drawing-room with Mr.
+Effingham and Aristabulus.</p>
+
+<p>"I have left Ned to discuss trespass suits and leases with his
+land-agent," said John Effingham, as he followed Eve to the street-door.
+"By ten o'clock, they will have taxed a pretty bill of costs between
+them!"</p>
+
+<p>Mademoiselle Viefville followed John Effingham; Grace came next, and Sir
+George Templemore and the Captain brought up the rear. Grace wondered the
+young baronet did not offer her his arm, for she had been accustomed to
+receive this attention from the other sex, in a hundred situations in
+which it was rather an incumbrance than a service; while on the other
+hand, Sir George himself would have hesitated about offering such
+assistance, as an act of uncalled-for familiarity.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Van Cortlandt, being much in society, kept a chariot for her own use,
+and the three ladies took their seats in it, while the gentlemen took
+possession of Mr. Effingham's coach. The order was given to drive to
+Spring street, and the whole party proceeded.</p>
+
+<p>The acquaintance between the Effinghams and Mr. Jarvis had arisen from
+the fact of their having been near, and, in a certain sense, sociable
+neighbours in the country. Their town associations, however, were as
+distinct as if they dwelt in different hemispheres, with the exception of
+an occasional morning call, and, now and then, a family dinner given by
+Mr. Effingham. Such had been the nature of the intercourse previously to
+the family of the latter's having gone abroad, and there were symptoms of
+its being renewed on the same quiet and friendly footing as formerly. But
+no two beings could be less alike, in certain essentials, than Mr. Jarvis
+and his wife. The former was a plain pains-taking, sensible man of
+business, while the latter had an itching desire to figure in the world of
+fashion. The first was perfectly aware that Mr. Effingham, in education,
+habits, associations and manners, was, at least, of a class entirely
+distinct from his own; and without troubling himself to analyze causes,
+and without a feeling of envy, or unkindness of any sort, while totally
+exempt from any undue deference or unmanly cringing, he quietly submitted
+to let things take their course. His wife expressed her surprise that any
+one in New-York should presume to be <i>better</i> than themselves; and the
+remark gave rise to the following short conversation, on the very morning
+of the day she gave the party, to which we are now conducting the reader.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know, my dear, that any one does think himself our <i>better</i>?"
+demanded the husband.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do they not all visit us then!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you not visit everybody yourself? A pretty household we should
+have, if you did nothing but visit every one who lives even in this
+street!"</p>
+
+<p>"You surely would not have <i>me</i> visiting the grocers' wives at the
+corners, and all the other rubbish of the neighbourhood. What I mean is
+that all the people of a certain sort ought to visit all the other people
+of a certain sort, in the same town."</p>
+
+<p>"You surely will make an exception, at least on account of numbers. I saw
+number three thousand six hundred and fifty this very day on a cart, and
+if the wives of all these carmen should visit one another, each would have
+to make ten visits daily in order to get through with the list in a
+twelvemonth."</p>
+
+<p>"I have always bad luck in making you comprehend these things, Mr.
+Jarvis."</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid, my dear, it is because you do not very clearly comprehend
+them yourself. You first say that everybody ought to visit everybody, and
+then you insist on it, <i>you</i> will visit none but those you think good
+enough to be visited by Mrs. Jared Jarvis."</p>
+
+<p>"What I mean is, that no one in New-York has a right to think himself, or
+herself, better than ourselves."</p>
+
+<p>"Better?--In what sense better?"</p>
+
+<p>"In such a sense as to induce them to think themselves too good to visit
+us."</p>
+
+<p>"That may be your opinion, my dear, but others may judge differently. You
+clearly think yourself too good to visit Mrs. Onion, the grocer's wife,
+who is a capital woman in her way; and how do we know that certain people
+may not fancy we are not quite refined enough for them? Refinement is a
+positive thing, Mrs. Jarvis, and one that has much more influence on the
+pleasures of association than money. We may want a hundred little
+perfections that escape our ignorance, and which those who are trained to
+such matters deem essentials."</p>
+
+<p>"I never met with a man of so little social spirit, Mr. Jarvis! Really,
+you are quite unsuited to be a citizen of a republican country."</p>
+
+<p>"Republican!--I do not really see what republican has to do with the
+question. In the first place, it is a droll word for <i>you</i> to use in this
+sense at least; for, taking your own meaning of the term, you are as
+anti-republican as any woman I know. But a republic does not necessarily
+infer equality of condition, or even equality of rights,--it meaning
+merely the substitution of the right of the commonwealth for the right of
+a prince. Had you said a democracy there would have been some plausibility
+in using the word, though even then its application would have been
+illogical. If I am a freeman and a democrat, I hope I have the justice to
+allow others to be just as free and democratic as I am myself."</p>
+
+<p>"And who wishes the contrary?--all I ask is a claim to be considered a fit
+associate for anybody in this country--in these United States of America."</p>
+
+<p>"I would quit these United States of America next week, if I thought there
+existed any necessity for such an intolerable state of things."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Jarvis!--and you, too, one of the Committee of Tammany Hall!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mrs. Jarvis, and I one of the Committee of Tammany Hall! What, do
+you think I want the three thousand six hundred and fifty carmen running
+in and out of my house, with their tobacco saliva and pipes, all day
+long?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who is thinking of your carmen and grocers!--I speak now only of genteel
+people."</p>
+
+<p>"In other words, my dear, you are thinking only of those whom you fancy to
+have the advantage of you, and keep those who think of you in the same
+way, quite out of sight This is not my democracy and freedom. I believe
+that it requires two people to make a bargain, and although I may consent
+to dine with A----, if A---- will not consent to dine with me, there is an
+end of the matter."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, you have come to a case in point. You often dined with Mr. Effingham
+before he went abroad, and yet you would never allow me to ask Mr.
+Effingham to dine with us. That is what I call meanness."</p>
+
+<p>"It might be so, indeed, if it were done to save my money. I dined with
+Mr. Effingham because I like him; because he was an old neighbour; because
+he asked me, and because I found a pleasure in the quiet elegance of his
+table and society; and I did not ask him to dine with me, because I was
+satisfied he would be better pleased with such a tacit acknowledgement of
+his superiority in this respect, than by any bustling and ungraceful
+efforts to pay him in kind. Edward Effingham has dinners enough, without
+keeping a debtor and credit account with his guests, which is rather too
+New-Yorkish, even for me."</p>
+
+<p>"Bustling and ungraceful!" repeated Mrs. Jarvis, bitterly; "I do not know
+that you are at all more bustling and ungraceful than Mr. Effingham
+himself."</p>
+
+<p>"No, my dear, I am a quiet, unpretending man, like the great majority of
+my countrymen, thank God."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why talk of these sorts of differences in a country in which the law
+establishes none?"</p>
+
+<p>"For precisely the reason that I talk of the river at the foot of this
+street, or because there is a river. A thing may exist without there being
+a law for it. There is no law for building this house, and yet it is
+built. There is no law for making Dr. Verse a better preacher than Dr.
+Prolix, and yet he is a much better preacher; neither is there any law for
+making Mr. Effingham a more finished gentleman than I happen to be, and
+yet I am not fool enough to deny the fact. In the way of making out a bill
+of parcels, I will not turn my back to him, I can promise you."</p>
+
+<p>"All this strikes me as being very spiritless, and as particularly
+anti-republican," said Mrs. Jarvis, rising to quit the room; "and if the
+Effinghams do not come this evening, I shall not enter their house this
+winter. I am sure they have no right to pretend to be our betters, and I
+feel no disposition to admit the impudent claim."</p>
+
+<p>"Before you go, Jane, let me say a parting word," rejoined the husband,
+looking for his hat, "which is just this. If you wish the world to believe
+you the equal of any one, no matter whom, do not be always talking about
+it, lest they see you distrust the fact yourself. A positive thing will
+surely be seen, and they who have the highest claims are the least
+disposed to be always pressing them on the attention of the world. An
+outrage may certainly be done those social rights which have been
+established by common consent, and then it may be proper to resent it; but
+beware betraying a consciousness of your own inferiority, by letting every
+one see you are jealous of your station. 'Now, kiss me; here is the money
+to pay for your finery this evening, and let me see you as happy to
+receive Mrs. Jewett from Albion Place, as you would be to receive Mrs.
+Hawker herself."</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Hawker!" cried the wife, with a toss of her head, "I would not cross
+the street to invite Mrs. Hawker and all her clan." Which was very true,
+as Mrs. Jarvis was thoroughly convinced the trouble would be unavailing,
+the lady in question being as near the head of fashion in New-York, as it
+was possible to be in a town that, in a moral sense, resembles an
+encampment, quite as much as it resembles a permanent and a long-existing
+capital.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding a great deal of management on the part of Mrs. Jarvis to
+get showy personages to attend her entertainment, the simple elegance of
+the two carriages that bore the Effingham party, threw all the other
+equipages into the shade. The arrival, indeed, was deemed a matter of so
+much moment, that intelligence was conveyed to the lady, who was still at
+her post in the inner drawing-room, of the arrival of a party altogether
+superior to any thing that had yet appeared in her rooms. It is true, this
+was not expressed in words, but it was made sufficiently obvious by the
+breathless haste and the air of importance of Mrs. Jarvis' sister, who had
+received the news from a servant, and who communicated it <i>propri&acirc;
+person&acirc;</i> to the mistress of the house.</p>
+
+<p>The simple, useful, graceful, almost indispensable usage of announcing at
+the door, indispensable to those who receive much, and where there is the
+risk of meeting people known to us by name and not in person, is but
+little practised in America. Mrs. Jarvis would have shrunk from such an
+innovation, had she known that elsewhere the custom prevailed, but she was
+in happy ignorance on this point, as on many others that were more
+essential to the much-coveted social <i>&eacute;clat</i> at which she aimed. When
+Mademoiselle Viefville appeared, therefore, walking unsupported, as if she
+were out of leading-strings, followed by Eve and Grace and the gentlemen
+of their party, she at first supposed there was some mistake, and that her
+visitors had got into the wrong house; there being an opposition party in
+the neighbourhood.</p>
+
+<p>"What brazen people!" whispered Mrs. Abijah Gross, who having removed from
+an interior New-England village, fully two years previously, fancied
+herself <i>an fait</i> of all the niceties of breeding and social tact. "There
+are positively two young ladies actually walking about without gentlemen!"</p>
+
+<p>But it was not in the power of Mrs. Abijah Gross, with her audible whisper
+and obvious sneer and laugh, to put down two such lovely creatures as Eve
+and her cousin. The simple elegance of their attire, the indescribable air
+of polish, particularly in the former, and the surpassing beauty and
+modesty of mien of both, effectually silenced criticism, after this
+solitary outbreaking of vulgarity. Mrs. Jarvis recognized Eve and John
+Effingham, and her hurried compliments and obvious delight proclaimed to
+all near her, the importance she attached to their visit. Mademoiselle
+Viefville she had not recollected in her present dress, and even she was
+covered with expressions of delight and satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish particularly to present to you a friend that we all prize
+exceedingly," said Eve, as soon as there was an opportunity of speaking.
+"This is Captain Truck, the gentleman who commands the Montauk, the ship
+of which you have heard so much. Ah! Mr. Jarvis," offering a hand to him
+with sincere cordiality, for Eve had known him from childhood, and always
+sincerely respected him--"<i>you</i> will receive my friend with a cordial
+welcome, I am certain."</p>
+
+<p>She then explained to Mr. Jarvis who the honest captain was, when the
+former, first paying the proper respect to his other guests, led the old
+sailor aside, and began an earnest conversation on the subject of the
+recent passage.</p>
+
+<p>John Effingham presented the baronet, whom Mrs. Jarvis, out of pure
+ignorance of his rank in his own country, received with perfect propriety
+and self-respect.</p>
+
+<p>"We have very few people of note in town at present, I believe," said Mrs.
+Jarvis to John Effingham. "A great traveller, a most interesting man, is
+the only person of that sort I could obtain for this evening, and I shall
+have great pleasure in introducing you. He is there in that crowd, for he
+is in the greatest possible demand; he has seen so much.--Mrs. Snow, with
+your permission--really the ladies are thronging about him as if he were a
+Pawnee,--have the goodness to step a little this way, Mr. Effingham--Miss
+Effingham--Mrs. Snow, just touch his arm and let him know I wish to
+introduce a couple of friends.--Mr. Dodge, Mr. John Effingham, Miss
+Effingham, Miss Van Cortlandt. I hope you may succeed in getting him a
+little to yourselves, ladies, for he can tell you all about Europe--saw
+the king of France riding out to Nully, and has a prodigious knowledge of
+things on the other side of the water."</p>
+
+<p>It required a good deal of Eve's habitual self-command to prevent a smile,
+but she had the tact and discretion to receive Steadfast as an utter
+stranger. John Effingham bowed as haughtily as man can bow, and then it
+was whispered that he and Mr. Dodge were rival travellers. The distance of
+the former, coupled with an expression of countenance that did not invite
+familiarity, drove nearly all the company over to the side of Steadfast,
+who, it was soon settled, had seen much the most of the world, understood
+society the best, and had moreover travelled as far as Timbuctoo in
+Africa. The <i>client&egrave;le</i> of Mr. Dodge increased rapidly, as these reports
+spread in the rooms, and those who had not read the "delightful letters
+published in the Active Inquirer," furiously envied those who had enjoyed
+that high advantage.</p>
+
+<p>"It is Mr. Dodge, the great traveller," said one young lady, who had
+extricated herself from the crowd around the 'lion,' and taken a station
+near Eve and Grace, and who, moreover, was a 'blue' in her own set; "his
+beautiful and accurate descriptions have attracted great attention in
+England, and it is said they have actually been republished!"</p>
+
+<p>"Have you read them, Miss Brackett?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not the letters themselves, absolutely; but all the remarks on them in
+the last week's Hebdomad. Most delightful letters, judging from those
+remarks; full of nature and point, and singularly accurate in all their
+facts. In this respect they are invaluable, travellers do fall into such
+extraordinary errors!"</p>
+
+<p>"I hope, ma'am," said John Effingham, gravely, "that the gentleman has
+avoided the capital mistake of commenting on things that actually exist.
+Comments on its facts are generally esteemed by the people of a country,
+impertinent and unjust; and your true way to succeed, is to treat as
+freely as possible its imaginary peculiarities."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Brackett had nothing to answer to this observation, the Hebdomad
+having, among its other profundities, never seen proper to touch on the
+subject. She went on praising the "Letters," however, not one of which had
+she read, or would she read; for this young lady had contrived to gain a
+high reputation in her own <i>coterie</i> for taste and knowledge in books, by
+merely skimming the strictures of those who do not even skim the works
+they pretend to analyze.</p>
+
+<p>Eve had never before been in so close contact with so much flippant
+ignorance, and she could not but wonder at seeing a man like her kinsman
+overlooked, in order that a man like Mr. Dodge should be preferred. All
+this gave John Effingham himself no concern, but retiring a little from
+the crowd, he entered into a short conversation with the young baronet.</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to know your real opinions of this set," he said; "not that
+I plead guilty to the childish sensibility that is so common in all
+provincial circles to the judgments of strangers, but with a view to aid
+you in forming a just estimate of the real state of the country."</p>
+
+<p>"As I know the precise connexion between you and our host, there can be no
+objection to giving a perfectly frank reply. The women strike me as being
+singularly delicate and pretty; well dressed, too, I might add; but, while
+there is a great air of decency, there is very little high finish; and
+what strikes me as being quite odd, under such circumstances, scarcely any
+downright vulgarity, or coarseness."</p>
+
+<p>"A Daniel come to judgment! One who had passed a life here, would not have
+come so near the truth, simply because he would not have observed
+peculiarities, that require the means of comparison to be detected. You
+are a little too indulgent in saying there is no downright vulgarity; for
+some there is; though surprisingly little for the circumstances. But of
+the coarseness that would be so prominent elsewhere, there is hardly any.
+True, so great is the equality in all things, in this country, so direct
+the tendency to this respectable mediocrity, that what you now see here,
+to-night, may be seen in almost every village in the land, with a few
+immaterial exceptions in the way of furniture and other city appliances,
+and not much even in these."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, as a mediocrity, this is respectable though a fastidious
+taste might see a multitude of faults."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall not say that the taste would be merely fastidious, for much is
+wanting that would add to the grace and beauty of society, while much that
+is wanting would be missed only by the over-sophisticated. Those
+young-men, who are sniggering over some bad joke in the corner, for
+instance, are positively vulgar, as is that young lady who is indulging in
+practical coquetry; but, on the whole, there is little of this; and, even
+our hostess, a silly woman, devoured with the desire of being what neither
+her social position, education, habits nor notions fit her to be, is less
+obtrusive, bustling, and offensive, than a similar person, elsewhere."</p>
+
+<p>"I am quite of your way of thinking, and intended to ask you to account
+for it."</p>
+
+<p>"The Americans are an imitative people of necessity, and they are apt at
+this part of imitation, in particular. Then they are less artificial in
+all their practices, than older and more sophisticated nations; and this
+company has got that essential part of good breeding, simplicity, as it
+were <i>per force</i>. A step higher in the social scale, you will see less of
+it; for greater daring and bad models lead to blunders in matters that
+require to be exceedingly well done, if done at all. The faults here would
+be more apparent, by an approach near enough to get into the tone of mind,
+the forms of speech, and the attempts at wit."</p>
+
+<p>"Which I think we shall escape to-night, as I see the ladies are already
+making their apologies and taking leave. We must defer this investigation
+to another time."</p>
+
+<p>"It may be indefinitely postponed, as it would scarcely reward the trouble
+of an inquiry."</p>
+
+<p>The gentlemen now approached Mrs. Jarvis, paid their parting compliments,
+hunted up Captain Truck, whom they tore by violence from the good-natured
+hospitality of the master of the house, and then saw the ladies into their
+carriage. As they drove off, the worthy mariner protested that Mr. Jarvis
+was one of the honestest men he had ever met, and announced that he
+intended giving him a dinner on board the Montauk, the very next day.</p>
+
+<p>The dwelling of Mrs. Hawker was in Hudson Square; or in a portion of the
+city that the lovers of the grandiose are endeavouring to call St. John's
+Park; for it is rather an amusing peculiarity among a certain portion of
+the emigrants who have flocked into the Middle States, within the last
+thirty years, that they are not satisfied with permitting any family, or
+thing, to possess the name it originally enjoyed, if there exists the
+least opportunity to change it. There was but a carriage or two before the
+door, though the strong lights in the house showed that company had
+collected.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Hawker is the widow and the daughter of men of long established
+New-York families; she is childless, affluent, and universally respected
+where known, for her breeding, benevolence, good sense, and heart," said
+John Effingham, while the party was driving from one house to the other.
+"Were you to go into most of the sets of this town, and mention Mrs.
+Hawker's name, not one person in ten would know there is such a being in
+their vicinity; the <i>p&ecirc;le m&ecirc;le</i> of a migratory population keeping persons
+of her character and condition in life, quite out of view. The very
+persons who will prattle by the hour, of the establishments of Mrs. Peleg
+Pond, and Mrs. Jonah Twist, and Mrs. Abiram Wattles, people who first
+appeared on this island five or six years since, and, who having
+accumulated what to them are relatively large fortunes, have launched out
+into vulgar and uninstructed finery, would look with surprise at hearing
+Mrs. Hawker mentioned as one having any claims to social distinction. Her
+historical names are overshadowed in their minds by the parochial glories
+of certain local prodigies in the townships whence they emigrated; her
+manners would puzzle the comprehension of people whose imitation has not
+gone beyond the surface, and her polished and simple mind would find
+little sympathy among a class who seldom rise above a common-place
+sentiment without getting upon stilts."</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Hawker, then, is a lady," observed Sir George Templemore.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Hawker is a lady, in every sense of the word; by position,
+education, manners, association, mind, fortune and birth. I do not know
+that we ever had more of her class than exist to-day, but certainly we
+once had them more prominent in society."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose, sir," said Captain Truck, "that this Mrs. Hawker is of what is
+called the old school?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of a very ancient school, and one that is likely to continue, though it
+may not be generally attended."</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid, Mr. John Effingham, that I shall be like a fish out of water
+in such a house. I can get along very well with your Mrs. Jarvis, and with
+the dear young lady in the other carriage; but the sort of woman you have
+described, will be apt to jam a plain mariner like myself. What in nature
+should I do, now, if she should ask me to dance a minuet?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dance it agreeably to the laws of nature," returned John Effingham, as
+the carriages stopped.</p>
+
+<p>A respectable, quiet, and an aged black admitted the party, though even he
+did not announce the visiters, while he held the door of the drawing-room
+open for them, with respectful attention. Mrs. Hawker arose, and advanced
+to meet Eve and her companions, and though she kissed the cousins
+affectionately, her reception of Mademoiselle Viefville was so simply
+polite as to convince the latter she was valued on account of her
+services. John Effingham, who was ten or fifteen years the junior of the
+old lady, gallantly kissed her hand, when he presented his two male
+companions. After paying the proper attention to the greatest stranger,
+Mrs. Hawker turned to Captain Truck and said--</p>
+
+<p>"This, then, is the gentleman to whose skill and courage you all owe so
+much--<i>we</i> all owe so much, I might better have said--the commander of the
+Montauk?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have the honour of commanding that vessel, ma'am," returned Captain
+Truck, who was singularly awed by the dignified simplicity of his hostess,
+although her quiet, natural, and yet finished manner, which extended even
+to the intonation of the voice, and the smallest movement, were as unlike
+what he had expected as possible; "and with such passengers as she had
+last voyage I can only say, it is a pity that she is not better off for
+one to take care of her."</p>
+
+<p>"Your passengers give a different account of the matter, but, in order
+that I may judge impartially, do me the favour to take this chair, and let
+me learn a few of the particulars from yourself."</p>
+
+<p>Observing that Sir George Templemore had followed Eve to the other side of
+the room, Mrs. Hawker now resumed her seat, and, without neglecting any to
+attend to one in particular, or attending to one in a way to make him feel
+oppressed, she contrived, in a few minutes, to make the captain forget all
+about the minuet, and to feel much more at his ease than would have been
+the case with Mrs. Jarvis, in a month's intercourse.</p>
+
+<p>In the mean time, Eve had crossed the room to join a lady whose smile
+invited her to her side. This was a young, slightly framed female, of a
+pleasing countenance, but who would not have been particularly
+distinguished, in such a place, for personal charms. Still, her smile was
+sweet, her eyes were soft, and the expression of her face was what might
+almost be called illuminated As Sir George Templemore followed her, Eve
+mentioned his name to her acquaintance, whom she addressed as Mrs.
+Bloomfield.</p>
+
+<p>"You are bent on perpetrating further gaiety to-night," said the latter,
+glancing at the ball-dresses of the two cousins; "are you in the colours
+of the Houston faction, or in those of the Peabody."</p>
+
+<p>"Not in pea-green, certainly," returned Eve, laughing--"as you may see;
+but in simple white."</p>
+
+<p>"You intend then to be 'led a measure' at Mrs. Houston's. It were more
+suitable than among the other faction."</p>
+
+<p>"Is fashion, then, faction, in New-York?" inquired Sir George.</p>
+
+<p>"Fractions would be a better word, perhaps. But we have parties in almost
+every thing, in America; in politics, religion, temperance, speculations,
+and taste; why not in fashion?"</p>
+
+<p>"I fear we are not quite independent enough to form parties on such a
+subject," said Eve.</p>
+
+<p>"Perfectly well said, Miss Effingham; one must think a little originally,
+let it be ever so falsely, in order to get up a fashion. I fear we shall
+have to admit our insignificance on this point. You are a late arrival,
+Sir George Templemore?"</p>
+
+<p>"As lately as the commencement of this month; I had the honour of being a
+fellow-passenger with Mr. Effingham and his family."</p>
+
+<p>"In which voyage you suffered shipwreck, captivity, and famine, if half we
+hear be true."</p>
+
+<p>"Report has a little magnified our risks; we encountered some serious
+dangers, but nothing amounting to the sufferings you have mentioned."</p>
+
+<p>"Being a married woman, and having passed the crisis in which deception is
+not practised, I expect to hear truth again," said Mrs. Bloomfield,
+smiling. "I trust, however, you underwent enough to qualify you all for
+heroes and heroines, and shall content myself with knowing that you are
+here, safe and happy--if," she added, looking inquiringly at Eve, "one who
+has been educated abroad <i>can</i> be happy at home."</p>
+
+<p>"One educated abroad <i>may</i> be happy at home, though possibly not in the
+modes most practised by the world," said Eve firmly.</p>
+
+<p>"Without an opera, without a court, almost without society!"</p>
+
+<p>"An opera would be desirable, I confess; of courts I know nothing,
+unmarried females being cyphers in Europe; and I hope better things than
+to think I shall be without society."</p>
+
+<p>"Unmarried females are considered cyphers too, here, provided there be
+enough of them with a good respectable digit at their head. I assure you
+no one quarrels with the cyphers under such circumstances. I think, Sir
+George Templemore, a town like this must be something of a paradox to
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"Might I venture to inquire the reason for this opinion!"</p>
+
+<p>"Merely because it is neither one thing nor another. Not a capital, nor
+yet merely a provincial place; with something more than commerce in its
+bosom, and yet with that something hidden under a bushel. A good deal more
+than Liverpool, and a good deal less than London. Better even than
+Edinburgh, in many respects, and worse than Wapping, in others."</p>
+
+<p>"You have been abroad, Mrs. Bloomfield?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a foot out of my own country; scarcely a foot out of my own state. I
+have been at Lake George, the Falls, and the Mountain House; and, as one
+does not travel in a balloon, I saw some of the intermediate places. As
+for all else, I am obliged to go by report."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a pity Mrs. Bloomfield was not with us, this evening, at Mrs.
+Jarvis's," said Eve, laughing. "She might then have increased her
+knowledge, by listening to a few cantos from the epic of Mr. Dodge."</p>
+
+<p>"I have glanced at some of that author's wisdom," returned Mrs.
+Bloomfield, "but I soon found it was learning backwards. There is a
+never-failing rule, by which it is easy to arrive at a traveller's worth,
+in a negative sense, at least."</p>
+
+<p>"That is a rule which may be worth knowing," said the baronet, "as it
+would save much useless wear of the eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"When one betrays a profound ignorance of his own country, it is a fair
+presumption that he cannot be very acute in his observation of strangers.
+Mr. Dodge is one of these writers, and a single letter fully satisfied my
+curiosity. I fear, Miss Effingham, very inferior wares, in the way of
+manners, have been lately imported, in large quantities, into this
+country, as having the Tower mark on them."</p>
+
+<p>Eve laughed, but declared that Sir George Templemore was better qualified
+than herself to answer such a question.</p>
+
+<p>"We are said to be a people of facts, rather than a people of theories,"
+continued Mrs. Bloomfield, without attending to the reference of the young
+lady, "and any coin that offers passes, until another that is better,
+arrives. It is a singular, but a very general mistake, I believe, of the
+people of this country, in supposing that they can exist under the present
+r&eacute;gime, when others would fail, because their opinions keep even pace
+with, or precede the actual condition of society; whereas, those who have
+thought and observed most on such subjects, agree in thinking the very
+reverse to be the case."</p>
+
+<p>"This would be a curious condition for a government so purely
+conventional," observed Sir George, with interest, "and it certainly is
+entirely opposed to the state of things all over Europe."</p>
+
+<p>"It is so, and yet there is no great mystery in it after all. Accident has
+liberated us from trammels that still fetter you. We are like a vehicle on
+the top of a hill, which, the moment it is pushed beyond the point of
+resistance, rolls down of itself, without the aid of horses. One may
+follow with the team, and hook on when it gets to the bottom, but there is
+no such thing as keeping company with it until it arrives there."</p>
+
+<p>"You will allow, then, that there is a bottom?'</p>
+
+<p>"There is a bottom to every thing--to good and bad; happiness and misery;
+hope, fear, faith and charity; even to a woman's mind, which I have
+sometimes fancied the most bottomless thing in nature. There may,
+therefore, well be a bottom even to the institutions of America."</p>
+
+<p>Sir George listened with the interest with which an Englishman of his
+class always endeavours to catch a concession that he fancies is about to
+favour his own political predilections, and he felt encouraged to push the
+subject further.</p>
+
+<p>"And you think the political machine is rolling downwards towards this
+bottom?" he said, with an interest in the answer that, living in the quiet
+and forgetfulness of his own home, he would have laughed at himself for
+entertaining. But our sensibilities become quickened by collision, and
+opposition is known even to create love.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bloomfield was quick-witted, intelligent, cultivated and shrewd. She
+saw the motive at a glance, and, notwithstanding she saw and felt all its
+abuses, strongly attached to the governing principle of her country's
+social organization, as is almost universally the case with the strongest
+minds and most generous hearts of the nation, she was not disposed to let
+a stranger carry away a false impression of her sentiments on such a
+point.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever study logic, Sir George Templemore?" she asked, archly.</p>
+
+<p>"A little, though not enough I fear to influence my mode of reasoning, or
+even to leave me familiar with the terms."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I am not about to assail you with <i>sequiturs</i> and <i>non sequiturs</i>
+dialectics and all the mysteries of <i>Denk-Lehre,</i> but simply to remind you
+there is such a thing as the bottom of a subject. When I tell you we are
+flying towards the bottom of our institutions, it is in the intellectual
+sense, and not, as you have erroneously imagined, in an unintellectual
+sense. I mean that we are getting to understand them, which, I fear, we
+did not absolutely do at the commencement of the 'experiment.'"</p>
+
+<p>"But I think you will admit, that as the civilization of the country
+advances, some material changes must occur; your people cannot always
+remain stationary; they must either go backwards or forward."</p>
+
+<p>"Up or down, if you will allow me to correct your phraseology. The
+civilization of the country, in one sense at least, is retrogressive, and
+the people, as they cannot go 'up,' betray a disposition to go 'down.'"</p>
+
+<p>"You deal in enigmas, and I am afraid to think I understand you."</p>
+
+<p>"I mean, merely, that gallowses are fast disappearing, and that the
+people--<i>le peuple</i> you will understand--begin to accept money. In both
+particulars, I think there is a sensible change for the worse, within my
+own recollection."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bloomfield then changed her manner, and from using that light-hearted
+gaiety with which she often rendered her conversation <i>piquante</i>, and even
+occasionally brilliant, she became more grave and explicit. The subject
+soon turned to that of punishments, and few men could have reasoned more
+sensibly, justly or forcibly, on such a subject, than this slight and
+fragile-looking young woman. Without the least pedantry, with a beauty of
+language that the other sex seldom attains, and with a delicacy of
+discrimination, and a sentiment that were strictly feminine, she rendered
+a theme interesting, that, however important in itself, is forbidding,
+veiling all its odious and revolting features in the refinement and
+finesse of her own polished mind.</p>
+
+<p>Eve could have listened all night, and, at every syllable that fell from
+the lips of her friend, she felt a glow of triumph; for she was proud of
+letting an intelligent foreigner see that America did contain women worthy
+to be ranked with the best of other countries, a circumstance that they
+who merely frequented what is called the world, she thought might be
+reasonably justified in distrusting. In one respect, she even fancied Mrs.
+Bloomfield's knowledge and cleverness superior to those which she had so
+often admired in her own sex abroad. It was untrammelled, equally by the
+prejudices incident to a factitious condition of society, or by their
+reaction; two circumstances that often obscured the sense and candour of
+those to whom she had so often listened with pleasure in other countries.
+The singularly feminine tone, too, of all that Mrs. Bloomfield said or
+thought, while it lacked nothing in strength, added to the charm of her
+conversation, and increased the pleasure of those that listened.</p>
+
+<p>"Is the circle large to which Mrs. Hawker and her friends belong?" asked
+Sir George, as he assisted Eve and Grace to cloak, when they had taken
+leave. "A town which can boast of half-a-dozen such houses need not accuse
+itself of wanting society."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! there is but one Mrs. Hawker in New-York," answered Grace, "and not
+many Mrs. Bloomfields in the world. It would be too much to say, we have
+even half-a-dozen such houses."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you not been struck with the admirable tone of this drawing-room,"
+half whispered Eve. "It may want a little of that lofty ease that one sees
+among the better portion of the old <i>Princesses et Duchesses</i>, which is a
+relic of a school that, it is to be feared, is going out; but in its place
+there is a winning nature, with as much dignity as is necessary, and a
+truth that gives us confidence in the sincerity of those around us."</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my word, I think Mrs. Hawker quite fit for a Duchess."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean a <i>Duchesse</i>" said Eve, "and yet she is without the manner that
+we understand by such a word. Mrs. Hawker is a lady, and there can be no
+higher term."</p>
+
+<p>"She is a delightful old woman," cried John Effingham, "and if twenty
+years younger and disposed to change her condition, I should really be
+afraid to enter the house."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear sir," put in the captain, "I will make her Mrs. Truck to-morrow,
+and say nothing of years, if she could be content to take up with such an
+offer. Why, sir, she is no woman, but a saint in petticoats! I felt the
+whole time as if talking to my own mother, and as for ships, she knows
+more about them than I do!"</p>
+
+<p>The whole party laughed at the strength of the captain's admiration, and
+getting into the carriages proceeded to the last of the houses they
+intended visiting that night.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Chapter V.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>  "So turns she every man the wrong side out;<br />
+And never gives to truth and virtue, that<br />
+Which simpleness and merit purchaseth."</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>  MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>Mrs. Houston was what is termed a fashionable woman in New-York. She, too,
+was of a family of local note, though of one much less elevated in the
+olden time than that of Mrs. Hawker. Still her claims were admitted by the
+most fastidious on such points, for a few do remain who think descent
+indisputable to gentility; and as her means were ample, and her tastes
+perhaps superior to those of most around her, she kept what was thought a
+house of better tone than common, even in the highest circle. Eve had but
+a slight acquaintance with her; but in Grace's eyes, Mrs. Houston's was
+the place of all others that she thought might make a favourable
+impression on her cousin. Her wish that this should prove to be the case
+was so strong, that, as they drove towards the door, she could not forbear
+from making an attempt to prepare Eve for what she was to meet.</p>
+
+<p>"Although Mrs. Houston has a very large house for New-York, and lives in a
+uniform style, you are not to expect ante-chambers, and vast suites of
+rooms, Eve," said Grace; "such as you have been accustomed to see abroad."</p>
+
+<p>"It is not necessary, my dear cousin, to enter a house of four or five
+windows in front, to see it is not a house of twenty or thirty. I should
+be very unreasonable to expect an Italian palazzo, or a Parisian hotel, in
+this good town."</p>
+
+<p>"We are not old enough for that yet, Eve; a hundred years hence,
+Mademoiselle Viefville, such things may exist here."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Bien s&ucirc;r. C'est naturel.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"A hundred years hence, as the world tends, Grace, they are not likely to
+exist any where, except as taverns, or hospitals, or manufactories. But
+what have we to do, coz, with a century ahead of us? young as we both are,
+we cannot hope to live that time."</p>
+
+<p>Grace would have been puzzled to account satisfactorily to herself, for
+the strong desire she felt that neither of her companions should expect to
+see such a house as their senses so plainly told them did not exist in the
+place; but her foot moved in the bottom of the carriage, for she was not
+half satisfied with her cousin's answer.</p>
+
+<p>"All I mean. Eve," she said, after a pause, "is, that one ought not to
+expect in a town as new as this, the improvements that one sees in an
+older state of society."</p>
+
+<p>"And have Mademoiselle Viefville, or I, ever been so weak as to suppose,
+that New-York is Paris, or Rome, or Vienna?"</p>
+
+<p>Grace was still less satisfied, for, unknown to herself, she <i>had</i> hoped
+that Mrs. Houston's ball might be quite equal to a ball in either of those
+ancient capitals; and she was now vexed that her cousin considered it so
+much a matter of course that it should not be. But there was no time for
+explanations, as the carriage now stopped.</p>
+
+<p>The noise, confusion, calling out, swearing, and rude clamour before the
+house of Mrs. Houston, said little for the out-door part of the
+arrangements. Coachmen are nowhere a particularly silent and civil class;
+but the uncouth European peasants, who have been preferred to the honours
+of the whip in New-York, to the usual feelings of competition and
+contention, added that particular feature of humility which is known to
+distinguish "the beggar on horseback." The imposing equipages of our
+party, however, had that effect on most of these rude brawlers, which a
+display of wealth is known to produce on the vulgar-minded; and the ladies
+got into the house, through a lane of coachmen, by yielding a little to a
+<i>chevau de frise</i> of whips, without any serious calamity.</p>
+
+<p>"One hardly knows which is the most terrific," said Eve, involuntarily, as
+soon as the door closed on them--"the noise within, or the noise without!"</p>
+
+<p>This was spoken rapidly, and in French, to Mademoiselle Viefville, but
+Grace heard and understood it, and for the first time in her life, she
+perceived that Mrs. Houston's company was not composed of nightingales.
+The surprise is that the discovery should have come so late.</p>
+
+<p>"I am delighted at having got into this house," said Sir George, who,
+having thrown his cloak to his own servant, stood with the two other
+gentlemen waiting the descent of the ladies from the upper room, where
+the bad arrangements of the house compelled them to uncloak and to put
+aside their shawls, "as I am told it is the best house in town to see the
+other sex."</p>
+
+<p>"To <i>hear them</i>, would be nearer the truth, perhaps," returned John
+Effingham. "As for pretty women, one can hardly go amiss in New-York; and
+your ears now tell you, that they do not come into the world to be seen
+only."</p>
+
+<p>The baronet smiled, but he was too well bred to contradict or to assent.
+Mademoiselle Viefville, unconscious that she was violating the
+proprieties, walked into the rooms by herself, as soon as she descended,
+followed by Eve; but Grace shrank to the side of John Effingham, whose arm
+she took as a step necessary even to decorum.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Houston received her guests with ease and dignity. She was one of
+those females that the American world calls gay; in other words, she
+opened her own house to a very promiscuous society, ten or a dozen times
+in a winter, and accepted the greater part of the invitations she got to
+other people's. Still, in most other countries, as a fashionable woman,
+she would have been esteemed a model of devotion to the duties of a wife
+and a mother, for she paid a personal attention to her household, and had
+actually taught all her children the Lord's prayer, the creed, and the ten
+commandments. She attended church twice every Sunday, and only staid at
+home from the evening lectures, that the domestics might have the
+opportunity of going (which, by the way, they never did) in her stead.
+Feminine, well-mannered, rich, pretty, of a very positive social
+condition, and naturally kind-hearted and disposed to sociability, Mrs.
+Houston, supported by an indulgent husband, who so much loved to see
+people with the appearance of happiness, that he was not particular as to
+the means, had found no difficulty in rising to the pinnacle of fashion,
+and of having her name in the mouths of all those who find it necessary
+to talk of somebodies, in order that they may seem to be somebodies
+themselves. All this contributed to Mrs. Houston's happiness, or she
+fancied it did; and as every passion is known to increase by indulgence,
+she had insensibly gone on in her much-envied career until, as has just
+been said, she reached the summit.</p>
+
+<p>"These rooms are very crowded," said Sir George, glancing his eyes around
+two very pretty little narrow drawing-rooms, that were beautifully, not to
+say richly, furnished; "one wonders that the same contracted style of
+building should be so very general, in a town that increases as rapidly as
+this, and where fashion has no fixed abode, and land is so abundant."</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Bloomfield would tell you," said Eve, "that these houses are types
+of the social state of the country, in which no one is permitted to occupy
+more than his share of ground."</p>
+
+<p>"But there are reasonably large dwellings in the place. Mrs. Hawker has a
+good house, and your father's for instance, would be thought so, too, in
+London even; and yet I fancy you will agree with me in thinking that a
+good room is almost unknown in New-York."</p>
+
+<p>"I do agree with you, in this particular, certainly, for to meet with a
+good room, one must go into the houses built thirty years ago. We have
+inherited these snuggeries, however, England not having much to boast of
+in the way of houses."</p>
+
+<p>"In the way of town residences, I agree with you entirely, as a whole,
+though we have some capital exceptions. Still, I do not think we are quite
+as compact as this--do you not fancy the noise increased in consequence of
+its being so confined?"</p>
+
+<p>Eve laughed and shook her head quite positively.</p>
+
+<p>"What would it be if fairly let out!" she said. "But we will not waste the
+precious moments, but turn our eyes about us in quest of the <i>belles</i>.
+Grace, you who are so much at home, must be our cicerone, and tell us
+which are the idols we are to worship."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>D&icirc;tes moi premierement; que veut dire une belle &agrave; New-York?</i>" demanded
+Mademoiselle Viefville. "<i>Apparemment, tout le monde est joli.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"A <i>belle</i>, Mademoiselle," returned John Effingham, "is not necessarily
+beautiful, the qualifications for the character, being various and a
+little contradictory. One may be a <i>belle</i> by means of money, a tongue, an
+eye, a foot, teeth, a laugh, or any other separate feature, or grace;
+though no woman was ever yet a <i>belle</i>, I believe, by means of the head,
+considered collectively. But why deal in description, when the thing
+itself confronts us? The young lady standing directly before us, is a
+<i>belle</i> of the most approved stamp and silvery tone. Is it not Miss Ring,
+Grace?"</p>
+
+<p>The answer was in the affirmative, and the eyes of the whole party turned
+towards the subject of this remark. The young lady in question was about
+twenty, rather tall for an American woman, not conspicuously handsome, but
+like most around her of delicate features and frame, and with such a
+<i>physique</i>, as, under proper training, would have rendered her the <i>beau
+id&eacute;al</i> of feminine delicacy and gentleness. She had natural spirit,
+likewise, as appeared in her clear blue eye, and moreover she had the
+spirit to be a <i>belle</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Around this young creature were clustered no less than five young men,
+dressed in the height of the fashion, all of whom seemed to be entranced
+with the words that fell from her lips, and each of whom appeared anxious
+to say something clever in return. They all laughed, the lady most, and
+sometimes all spoke at once. Notwithstanding these outbreakings, Miss Ring
+did most of the talking, and once or twice, as a young man would gape
+after a most exhilarating show of merriment, and discover an inclination
+to retreat, she managed to recall him to his allegiance, by some remark
+particularly pertinent to himself, or his feelings.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Qui est cette dame?</i>" asked Mademoiselle Viefville, very much as one
+would put a similar question, on seeing a man enter a church during
+service with his hat on.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Elle est demoiselle</i>," returned Eve.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Quelle horreur!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, nay, Mademoiselle, I shall not allow you to set up France as
+immaculate on this point, neither--" said John Effingham, looking at the
+last speaker with an affected frown--"A young lady may have a tongue, and
+she may even speak to a young gentleman, and not be guilty of felony;
+although I will admit that five tongues are unnecessary, and that five
+listeners are more than sufficient, for the wisdom of twenty in
+petticoats."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>C'est une horreur!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say Miss Ring would think it a greater horror to be obliged to
+pass an evening in a row of girls, unspoken to, except to be asked to
+dance, and admired only in the distance. But let us take seats on that
+sofa, and then we may go beyond the pantomime, and become partakers in the
+sentiment of the scene."</p>
+
+<p>Grace and Eve were now led off to dance, and the others did as John
+Effingham had suggested. In the eyes of the <i>belle</i> and her admirers, they
+who had passed thirty were of no account, and our listeners succeeded in
+establishing themselves quietly within ear-shot--this was almost at
+duelling distance, too,--without at all interrupting the regular action of
+the piece. We extract a little of the dialogue, by way of giving a more
+dramatic representation of the scene.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think the youngest Miss Danvers beautiful?" asked the <i>belle</i>,
+while her eye wandered in quest of a sixth gentleman to "entertain," as
+the phrase is. "In my opinion, she is absolutely the prettiest female in
+Mrs. Houston's rooms this night."</p>
+
+<p>The young men, one and all, protested against this judgment, and with
+perfect truth, for Miss Ring was too original to point out charms that
+every one could see.</p>
+
+<p>"They say it will not be a match between her and Mr. Egbert, after every
+body has supposed it settled so long. What is your opinion, Mr. Edson?"</p>
+
+<p>This timely question prevented Mr. Edson's retreat, for he had actually
+got so far in this important evolution, as to have gaped and turned his
+back. Recalled, as it were by the sound of the bugle, Mr. Edson was
+compelled to say something, a sore affliction to him always.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I'm quite of your way of thinking; they have certainly courted too
+long to think of marrying."</p>
+
+<p>"I detest long courtships; they must be perfect antidotes to love; are
+they not, Mr. Moreland?"</p>
+
+<p>A truant glance of Mr. Moreland's eye was rebuked by this appeal, and
+instead of looking for a place of refuge, he now merely looked sheepish.
+He, however, entirely agreed with the young lady, as the surer way of
+getting out of the difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>"Pray, Mr. Summerfield, how do you like the last Hajji--Miss Eve
+Effingham? To my notion, she is prettyish, though by no means as well as
+her cousin, Miss Van Cortlandt, who is really rather good-looking."</p>
+
+<p>As Eve and Grace were the two most truly lovely young women in the rooms,
+this opinion, as well as the loud tone in which it was given, startled
+Mademoiselle Viefville quite as much as the subjects that the belle had
+selected for discussion. She would have moved, as listening to a
+conversation that was not meant for their ears; but John Effingham quietly
+assured her that Miss Ring seldom spoke in company without intending as
+many persons as possible to hear her.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Effingham is very plainly dressed for an only daughter" continued
+the young lady, "though that lace of her cousin's is real point! I'll
+engage it cost every cent of ten dollars a yard! They are both engaged to
+be married, I hear."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Ciel!</i>" exclaimed Mademoiselle Viefville.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! That is nothing," observed John Effingham coolly. "Wait a moment, and
+you'll hear that they have been privately married these six months, if,
+indeed, you hear no more."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course this is but an idle tale?" said Sir George Templemore with a
+concern, which, in despite of his good breeding, compelled him to put a
+question that, under other circumstances, would scarcely have been
+permissible.</p>
+
+<p>"As true as the gospel. But listen to the <i>bell</i>, it is <i>ringing</i> for the
+good of the whole parish."</p>
+
+<p>"The affair between Miss Effingham and Mr. Morpeth, who knew her abroad, I
+understand is entirely broken off; some say the father objected to Mr.
+Morpeth's want of fortune; others that the lady was fickle, while some
+accuse the gentleman of the same vice. Don't you think it shocking to
+jilt, in either sex, Mr. Mosely?"</p>
+
+<p>The <i>retiring</i> Mr. Mosely was drawn again within the circle, and was
+obliged to confess that he thought it was very shocking, in either sex, to
+jilt.</p>
+
+<p>"If I were a man," continued the <i>belle</i>, "I would never think of a young
+woman who had once jilted a lover. To my mind, it bespeaks a bad heart,
+and a woman with a bad heart cannot make a very amiable wife."</p>
+
+<p>"What an exceedingly clever creature she is," whispered Mr. Mosely to Mr.
+Moreland, and he now made up his mind to remain and be 'entertained' some
+time longer.</p>
+
+<p>"I think poor Mr. Morpeth greatly to be pitied; for no man would be so
+silly as to be attentive seriously to a lady without encouragement.
+Encouragement is the <i>ne plus ultra</i> of courtship; are you not of my
+opinion, Mr. Walworth?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Walworth was number five of the entertainees, and he did understand
+Latin, of which the young lady, though fond of using scraps, knew
+literally nothing. He smiled an assent, therefore, and the <i>belle</i>
+felicitated herself in having 'entertained' <i>him</i> effectually; nor was she
+mistaken.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, they say Miss Effingham had several affairs of the heart, while
+in Europe, but it seems she was unfortunate in them all."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mais, ceci est trop fort! Je ne peux plus &eacute;couter.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Mademoiselle, compose yourself. The crisis is not yet arrived, by
+any means."</p>
+
+<p>"I understand she still corresponds with a German Baron, and an Italian
+Marquis, though both engagements are absolutely broken off. Some people
+say she walks into company alone, unsupported by any gentleman, by way of
+announcing a firm determination to remain single for life."</p>
+
+<p>A common exclamation from the young men proclaimed their disapprobation;
+and that night three of them actually repeated the thing, as a well
+established truth, and two of the three, failing of something better to
+talk about, also announced that Eve was actually engaged to be married.</p>
+
+<p>"There is something excessively indelicate in a young lady's moving about
+a room without having a gentleman's arm to lean on! I always feel as if
+such a person was out of her place, and ought to be in the kitchen."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Miss Ring, what well-bred person does it?" sputtered Mr. Moreland.
+"No one ever heard of such a thing in good society. 'Tis quite shocking!
+Altogether unprecedented."</p>
+
+<p>"It strikes me as being excessively coarse!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! manifestly; quite rustic!" exclaimed Mr. Edson.</p>
+
+<p>"What can possibly be more vulgar?" added Mr. Walworth.</p>
+
+<p>"I never heard of such a thing among the right sort!" said Mr. Mosely.</p>
+
+<p>"A young lady who can be so brazen as to come into a room without a
+gentleman's arm to lean on, is, in my judgment at least, but indifferently
+educated, Hajji or no Hajji. Mr. Edson, have you ever felt the tender
+passion? I know you have been desperately in love, once, at least; do
+describe to me some of the symptoms, in order that I may know when I am
+seriously attacked myself by the disease."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mais, ceci est ridicule! L'enfant s'est sauv&eacute;e du Charenton de
+New-York.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"From the nursery rather, Mademoiselle; you perceive she does not yet know
+how to walk alone."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Edson now protested that he was too stupid to feel a passion as
+intellectual as love, and that he was afraid he was destined by nature to
+remain as insensible as a block.</p>
+
+<p>"One never knows, Mr. Edson," said the young lady, encouragingly. "Several
+of my acquaintances, who thought themselves quite safe, have been seized
+suddenly, and, though none have actually died, more than one has been
+roughly treated, I assure you."</p>
+
+<p>Here the young men, one and all, protested that she was excessively
+clever. Then succeeded a pause, for Miss Ring was inviting, with her eyes,
+a number six to join the circle, her ambition being dissatisfied with five
+entertainees, as she saw that Miss Trumpet, a rival belle, had managed to
+get exactly that number, also, in the other room. All the gentlemen
+availed themselves of the cessation in wit to gape, and Mr. Edson took the
+occasion to remark to Mr. Summerfield that he understood "lots had been
+sold in seven hundredth street that morning, as high as two hundred
+dollars a lot."</p>
+
+<p>The <i>quadrille</i> now ended, and Eve returned towards her friends. As she
+approached, the whole party compared her quiet, simple, feminine, and yet
+dignified air, with the restless, beau-catching, and worldly look of the
+belle, and wondered by what law of nature, or of fashion, the one could
+possibly become the subject of the other's comments. Eve never appeared
+better than that evening. Her dress had all the accuracy and finish of a
+Parisian toilette, being equally removed from exaggeration and neglect;
+and it was worn with the ease of one accustomed to be elegantly attired,
+and yet never decked with finery. Her step even was that of a lady, having
+neither the mincing tread of a Paris grisette, a manner that sometimes
+ascends even to the <i>bourgeoise</i> the march of a cockneyess, nor the tiptoe
+swing of a <i>belle</i>; but it was the natural though regulated step, of a
+trained and delicate woman. Walk alone she could certainly, and always
+did, except on those occasions of ceremony that demanded a partner. Her
+countenance, across which an unworthy thought had never left a trace, was
+an index, too, to the purity, high principles and womanly self-respect
+that controlled all her acts, and, in these particulars was the very
+reverse of the feverish, half-hoydenish half-affected expression of that
+of Miss Ring.</p>
+
+<p>"They may say what they please," muttered Captain Truck, who had been a
+silent but wondering listener of all that passed; "she is worth as many of
+them as could be stowed in the Montauk's lower hold."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Ring perceiving Eve approach, was desirous of saying something to
+her, for there was an <i>&eacute;clat</i> about a Hajji, after all, that rendered an
+acquaintance, or even an intimacy desirable, and she smiled and curtsied.
+Eve returned the salutation, but as she did not care to approach a group
+of six, of which no less than five were men, she continued to move towards
+her own party. This reserve compelled Miss Ring to advance a step or two,
+when Eve was obliged to stop Curtsying to her partner, she thanked him for
+his attention, relinquished his arm, and turned to meet the lady. At the
+same instant the five 'entertainees' escaped in a body, equally rejoiced
+at their release, and proud of their captivity.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been dying to come and speak to you, Miss Effingham," commenced
+Miss Ring, "but these <i>five</i> giants (she emphasized the word we have put
+in italics) so beset me, that escape was quite impossible. There ought to
+be a law that but one gentleman should speak to a lady at a time."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought there was such a law already;" said Eve, quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"You mean in good breeding; but no one thinks of those antiquated laws
+now-a-days. Are you beginning to be reconciled, a little, to your own
+country?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is not easy to effect a reconciliation where there has been no
+misunderstanding. I hope I have never quarrelled with my country, or my
+country with me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! it is not exactly that I mean. Cannot one need a reconciliation
+without a quarrel? What do you say to this, Mr. Edson?"</p>
+
+<p>Miss Ring having detected some symptoms of desertion in the gentleman
+addressed, had thrown in this question by way of recal; when turning to
+note its effect, she perceived that all of her <i>clientelle</i> had escaped. A
+look of surprise and mortification and vexation it was not in her power to
+suppress, and then came one of horror.</p>
+
+<p>"How conspicuous we have made ourselves, and it is all my fault!" she
+said, for the first time that evening permitting her voice to fall to a
+becoming tone. 'Why, here we actually are, two ladies conversing together,
+and no gentleman near us!"</p>
+
+<p>"Is that being conspicuous?" asked Eve, with a simplicity that was
+entirely natural.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure, Miss Effingham, one who has seen as much of society as you,
+can scarcely ask that question seriously. I do not think I have done so
+improper a thing, since I was fifteen; and, dear me! dear me! how to
+escape is the question. You have permitted your partner to go, and I do
+not see a gentleman of my acquaintance near us, to give me his arm!"</p>
+
+<p>"As your distress is occasioned by my company," said Eve, "it is
+fortunately in my power to relieve it." Thus saying, she quietly walked
+across the room, and took her seat next to Mademoiselle Viefville.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Ring held up her hands in amazement, and then fortunately perceiving
+one of the truants gaping at no great distance, she beckoned him to her
+side.</p>
+
+<p>"Have the goodness to give me your arm, Mr. Summerfield," she said, "I am
+dying to get out of this unpleasantly conspicuous situation; but you are
+the first gentleman that has approached me this twelvemonth. I would not
+for the world do so brazen a thing as Miss Effingham has just achieved;
+would you believe it, she positively went from this spot to her seat,
+quite alone!"</p>
+
+<p>"The Hajjis are privileged."</p>
+
+<p>"They make themselves so. But every body knows how bold and unwomanly the
+French females are. One could wish, notwithstanding, that our own people
+would not import their audacious usages into this country."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a thousand pities that Mr. Clay, in his compromise, neglected to
+make an exception against that article. A tariff on impudence would not be
+at all sectional."</p>
+
+<p>"It might interfere with the manufacture at home, notwithstanding," said
+John Effingham; for the lungs were strong, and the rooms of Mrs. Houston
+so small, that little was said that evening, which was not heard by any
+who chose to listen. But Miss Ring never listened, it being no part of the
+vocation of a <i>belle</i> to perform that inferior office, and sustained by
+the protecting arm of Mr. Summerfield, she advanced more boldly into the
+crowd, where she soon contrived to catch another group of even six
+"entertainees." As for Mr. Summerfield, he lived a twelvemonth on the
+reputation of the exceedingly clever thing he had just uttered.</p>
+
+<p>"There come Ned and Aristabulus," said John Effingham, as soon as the
+tones of Miss Ring's voice were lost in the din of fifty others, pitched
+to the same key. "<i>A present, Mademoiselle, je vais nous venger</i>."</p>
+
+<p>As John Effingham uttered this, he took Captain Truck by the arm, and went
+to meet his cousin and the land agent. The latter he soon separated from
+Mr. Effingham, and with this new recruit, he managed to get so near to
+Miss Ring as to attract her attention. Although fifty, John Effingham was
+known to be a bachelor, well connected, and to have twenty thousand a
+year. In addition, he was well preserved and singularly handsome, besides
+having an air that set all pretending gentility at defiance. These were
+qualities that no <i>belle</i> despised, and ill-assorted matches were,
+moreover, just coming into fashion in New-York. Miss Ring had an intuitive
+knowledge that he wished to speak to her, and she was not slow in offering
+the opportunity. The superior tone of John Effingham, his caustic wit and
+knowledge of the world, dispersed the five <i>beaux</i>, incontinently; these
+persons having a natural antipathy to every one of the qualities named.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you will permit me to presume on an acquaintance that extends back
+as far as your grandfather, Miss Ring," he said, "to present two very
+intimate friends; Mr. Bragg and Mr. Truck; gentlemen who will well reward
+the acquaintance."</p>
+
+<p>The lady bowed graciously, for it was a matter of conscience with her to
+receive every man with a smile. She was still too much in awe of the
+master of ceremonies to open her batteries of attack, but John Effingham
+soon relieved her, by affecting a desire to speak to another lady. The
+<i>belle</i> had now the two strangers to herself, and having heard that the
+Effinghams had an Englishman of condition as a companion, who was
+travelling under a false name, she fancied herself very clever in
+detecting him at once in the person of Aristabulus; while by the aid of a
+lively imagination, she thought Mr. Truck was his travelling Mentor, and a
+divine of the church of England. The incognito she was too well bred to
+hint at, though she wished both the gentlemen to perceive that a <i>belle</i>
+was not to be mystified in this easy manner. Indeed, she was rather
+sensitive on the subject of her readiness in recognizing a man of fashion
+under any circumstances, and to let this be known was her very first
+object, as soon as she was relieved from the presence of John Effingham.</p>
+
+<p>"You must be struck with the unsophisticated nature and the extreme
+simplicity of our society, Mr. Bragg," she said, looking at him
+significantly; "we are very conscious it is not what it might be, but do
+you not think it pretty well for beginners?"</p>
+
+<p>Now, Mr. Bragg had an entire consciousness that he had never seen any
+society that deserved the name before this very night, but he was
+supported in giving his opinions by that secret sense of his
+qualifications to fill any station, which formed so conspicuous a trait in
+his character, and his answer was given with an <i>&agrave;plomb</i> that would have
+added weight to the opinion of the veriest <i>&eacute;l&eacute;gant</i> of the <i>Chauss&eacute;e
+d'Antin.</i></p>
+
+<p>"It is indeed a good deal unsophisticated," he said, "and so simple that
+any body can understand it. I find but a single fault with this
+entertainment, which is, in all else, the perfection of elegance in my
+eyes, and that is, that there is too little room to swing the legs in
+dancing."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed!--I did not expect that--is it not the best usage of Europe, now,
+to bring a quadrille into the very minimum of space?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite the contrary, Miss. All good dancing requires evolutions. The
+dancing Dervishes, for instance would occupy quite as much space as both
+of these sets that are walking before us, and I believe it is now
+generally admitted that all good dancing needs room for the legs."</p>
+
+<p>"We necessarily get a little behind the fashions, in this distant country.
+Pray, sir, is it usual for ladies to walk alone in society?"</p>
+
+<p>"Woman was not made to move through life alone, Miss," returned
+Aristabulus with a sentimental glance of the eye, for he never let a good
+opportunity for preferment slip through his fingers, and, failing of Miss
+Effingham, or Miss Van Cortlandt, of whose estates and connections he had
+some pretty accurate notions, it struck him Miss Ring might, possibly, be
+a very eligible connection, as all was grist that came to his mill; "this
+I believe, is an admitted truth."</p>
+
+<p>"By life you mean matrimony, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Miss, a man always means matrimony, when he speaks to a young lady."</p>
+
+<p>This rather disconcerted Miss Ring, who picked her nosegay, for she was
+not accustomed to hear gentlemen talk to ladies of matrimony, but ladies
+to talk to gentlemen. Recovering her self-possession, however, she said
+with a promptitude that, did the school to which she belonged infinite
+credit,--</p>
+
+<p>"You speak, sir, like one having experience."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, Miss; I have been in love ever since I was ten years old; I
+may say I was born in love, and hope to die in love."</p>
+
+<p>This a little out-Heroded Herod, but the <i>belle</i> was not a person to be
+easily daunted on such a subject. She smiled graciously, therefore, and
+continued the conversation with renewed spirit.</p>
+
+<p>"You travelled gentleman get odd notions," she said, "and more
+particularly on such subjects. I always feel afraid to discuss them with
+foreigners, though with my own countrymen I have few reserves. Pray, Mr.
+Truck, are you satisfied with America?--Do you find it the country you
+expected to see?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, marm;" for so they pronounced this word in the river, and the
+captain cherished his first impressions; "when we sailed from Portsmouth.
+I expected that the first land we should make would be the Highlands of
+Navesink; and, although a little disappointed, I have had the satisfaction
+of laying eyes on it at last."</p>
+
+<p>"Disappointment, I fear, is the usual fate of those who come from the
+other side. Is this dwelling of Mrs. Houston's equal to the residence of
+an English nobleman, Mr. Bragg?"</p>
+
+<p>"Considerably better, Miss, especially in the way of republican comfort."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Ring, like all <i>belles</i>, detested the word republican, their vocation
+being clearly to exclusion, and she pouted a little affectedly.</p>
+
+<p>"I should distrust the quality of such comfort, sir," she said, with
+point; "but, are the rooms at all comparable with the rooms in Apsley
+House, for instance?"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Miss, Apsley House is a toll-gate lodge, compared to this
+mansion! I doubt if there be a dwelling in all England half as
+magnificent--indeed, I cannot imagine any thing more brilliant and rich."</p>
+
+<p>Aristabulus was not a man to do things by halves, and it was a point of
+honour with him to know something of every thing. It is true he no more
+could tell where Apsley House is, or whether it was a tavern or a gaol,
+than he knew half the other things on which he delivered oracular
+opinions; but when it became necessary to speak, he was not apt to balk
+conversation from any ignorance, real or affected. The opinion he had just
+given, it is true, had a little surpassed Miss Ring's hopes; for the next
+thing, in her ambition to being a <i>belle</i>, and of "entertaining"
+gentlemen, was to fancy she was running her brilliant career in an orbit
+of fashion that lay parallel to that of the "nobility and gentry" of Great
+Britain.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, this surpasses my hopes," she said, "although I was aware we are
+nearly on a level with the more improved tastes of Europe: still, I
+thought we were a little inferior to that part of the world, yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Inferior, Miss! That is a word that should never pass your lips; you are
+inferior to nothing, whether in Europe or America, Asia or Africa."</p>
+
+<p>As Miss Ring had been accustomed to do most of the flattering herself, as
+behoveth a <i>belle</i>, she began to be disconcerted with the directness of
+the compliments of Aristabulus, who was disposed to 'make hay while the
+sun shines;' and she turned, in a little confusion, to the captain, by way
+of relief; we say confusion, for the young lady, although so liable to be
+misunderstood, was not actually impudent, but merely deceived in the
+relations of things; or, in other words, by some confusion in usages, she
+had hitherto permitted herself to do that in society, which female
+performers sometimes do on the stage; enact the part of a man.</p>
+
+<p>"You should tell Mr. Bragg, sir," she said, with an appealing look at the
+captain, "that flattery is a dangerous vice, and one altogether unsuited
+to a Christian."</p>
+
+<p>"It is, indeed, marm, and one that I never indulge in. No one under my
+orders, can accuse me of flattery."</p>
+
+<p>By 'under orders,' Miss Ring understood curates and deacons; for she was
+aware the church of England had clerical distinctions of this sort, that
+are unknown in America.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope, sir, you do not intend to quit this country without favouring us
+with a discourse."</p>
+
+<p>"Not I, marm--I am discoursing pretty much from morning till night, when
+among my own people, though I own that this conversing rather puts me out
+of my reckoning. Let me get my foot on the planks I love, with an
+attentive audience, and a good cigar in my mouth, and I'll hold forth with
+any bishop in the universe."</p>
+
+<p>"A cigar!" exclaimed Miss Ring, in surprise. "Do gentlemen of your
+profession use cigars when on duty!"</p>
+
+<p>"Does a parson take his fees? Why, Miss, there is not a man among us, who
+does not smoke from morning till night."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely not on Sundays!"</p>
+
+<p>"Two for one, on those days, more than on any other."</p>
+
+<p>"And your people, sir, what do they do, all this time?'</p>
+
+<p>"Why, marm, most of them chew; and those that don't, if they cannot find a
+pipe, have a dull time of it. For my part, I shall hardly relish the good
+place itself, if cigars are prohibited."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Ring was surprised; but she had heard that the English clergy were
+more free than our own, and then she had been accustomed to think every
+thing English of the purest water. A little reflection reconciled her to
+the innovation; and the next day, at a dinner party, she was heard
+defending the usage as a practice that had a precedent in the ancient
+incense of the altar. At the moment, however, she was dying to impart her
+discoveries to others; and she kindly proposed to the captain and
+Aristabulus to introduce them to some of her acquaintances, as they must
+find it dull, being strangers, to know no one. Introductions and cigars
+were the captain's hobbies, and he accepted the offer with joy,
+Aristabulus uniting cordially in the proposition, as, he fancied he had a
+right, under the Constitution of the United States of America, to be
+introduced to every human being with whom he came in contact.</p>
+
+<p>It is scarcely necessary to say how much the party with whom the two
+neophytes in fashion had come, enjoyed all this, though they concealed
+their amusement under the calm exterior of people of the world. From Mr.
+Effingham the mystification was carefully concealed by his cousin, as the
+former would have felt it due to Mrs. Houston, a well-meaning, but silly
+woman, to put an end to it. Eve and Grace laughed, as merry girls would
+be apt to laugh, at such an occurrence, and they danced the remainder of
+the evening with lighter hearts than ever. At one, the company retired in
+the same informal manner, as respects announcements and the calling of
+carriages, as that in which they had entered; most to lay their drowsy
+heads on their pillows, and Miss Ring to ponder over the superior manners
+of a polished young Englishman, and to dream of the fragrance of a sermon
+that was preserved in tobacco.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Chapter VI.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>  "Marry, our play is the most lamentable<br />
+Comedy, and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisby."</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>  PETER QUINCE.</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>Our task in the way of describing town society will soon be ended. The
+gentlemen of the Effingham family had been invited to meet Sir George
+Templemore at one or two dinners, to which the latter had been invited in
+consequence of his letters, most of which were connected with his
+pecuniary arrangements. As one of these entertainments was like all the
+rest of the same character, a very brief account of it will suffice to let
+the reader into the secret of the excellence of the genus.</p>
+
+<p>A well-spread board, excellent viands, highly respectable cookery, and
+delicious wines, were every where met. Two rows of men clad in dark
+dresses, a solitary female at the head of the table, or, if fortunate,
+with a supporter of the same sex near her, invariably composed the
+<i>convives</i>. The exaggerations of a province were seen ludicrously in one
+particular custom. The host, or perhaps it might have been the hostess,
+had been told there should be a contrast between the duller light of the
+reception-room, and the brilliancy of the table, and John Effingham
+actually hit his legs against a stool, in floundering through the obscurity
+of the first drawing-room he entered on one of the occasions in question.</p>
+
+<p>When seated at table, the first great duty of restauration performed, the
+conversation turned on the prices of lots, speculations in towns, or the
+currency. After this came the regular assay of wines, during which it was
+easy to fancy the master of the house a dealer, for he usually sat either
+sucking a syphon or flourishing a cork-screw. The discourse would now have
+done credit to the annual meeting and dinner of the German exporters,
+assembled at Rudesheim to bid for the article.</p>
+
+<p>Sir George was certainly on the point of forming a very erroneous judgment
+concerning the country, when Mr. Effingham extricated him from this set,
+and introduced him properly into his own. Here, indeed, while there was
+much to strike a European as peculiar, and even provincial, the young
+baronet fared much better. He met with the same quality of table, relieved
+by an intelligence that was always respectable, and a manliness of tone
+which, if not unmixed, had the great merit of a simplicity and nature that
+are not always found in more sophisticated circles. The occasional
+incongruities struck them all, more than the positive general faults and
+Sir George Templemore did justice to the truth, by admitting frankly, the
+danger he had been in of forming a too hasty opinion.</p>
+
+<p>All this time, which occupied a month, the young baronet got to be more and
+more intimate in Hudson Square, Eve gradually becoming more frank and
+unreserved with him, as she grew sensible that he had abandoned his hopes
+of success with herself, and Grace gradually more cautious and timid, as
+she became conscious of his power to please, and the interest he took in
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>It might have been three days after the ball at Mrs. Houston's that most
+of the family was engaged to look in on a Mrs. Legend, a lady of what was
+called a literary turn, Sir George having been asked to make one of their
+party. Aristabulus was already returned to his duty in the country, where
+we shall shortly have occasion to join him, but an invitation had been
+sent to Mr. Truck, under the general, erroneous impression of his real
+character.</p>
+
+<p>Taste, whether in the arts, literature, or any thing else, is a natural
+impulse, like love. It is true both may be cultivated and heightened by
+circumstances, but the impulses must be voluntary, and the flow of
+feeling, or of soul, as it has become a law to style it, is not to be
+forced, or commanded to come and go at will. This is the reason that all
+premeditated enjoyments connected with the intellect, are apt to baffle
+expectations, and why academies, literary clubs, coteries and dinners are
+commonly dull. It is true that a body of clever people may be brought
+together, and, if left to their own impulses, the characters of their mind
+will show themselves; wit will flash, and thought will answer thought
+spontaneously; but every effort to make the stupid agreeable, by giving a
+direction of a pretending intellectual nature to their efforts, is only
+rendering dullness more conspicuous by exhibiting it in contrast with what
+it ought to be to be clever, as a bad picture is rendered the more
+conspicuous by an elaborate and gorgeous frame.</p>
+
+<p>The latter was the fate of most of Mrs. Legend's literary evenings, at
+which it was thought an illustration to understand even one foreign
+language. But, it was known that Eve was skilled in most of the European
+tongues, and, the good lady, not feeling that such accomplishments are
+chiefly useful as a means, looked about her in order to collect a set,
+among whom our heroine might find some one with whom to converse in each
+of her dialects. Little was said about it, it is true, but great efforts
+were made to cause this evening to be memorable in the annals of
+<i>conversazioni</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In carrying out this scheme, nearly all the wits, writers, artists and
+<i>literati</i>, as the most incorrigible members of the book clubs were
+styled, in New-York, were pressingly invited to be present. Aristabulus
+had contrived to earn such a reputation for the captain, on the night of
+the ball, that he was universally called a man of letters, and an article
+had actually appeared in one of the papers, speaking of the literary
+merits of the "Hon. and Rev. Mr. Truck, a gentleman travelling in our
+country, from whose liberality and just views, an account of our society
+was to be expected, that should, at last, do justice to our national
+character." With such expectations, then, every true American and
+Americaness, was expected to be at his or her post, for the solemn
+occasion. It was a rally of literature, in defence of the
+institutions--no, not of the institutions, for they were left to take care
+of themselves--but of the social character of the community.</p>
+
+<p>Alas! it is easier to feel high aspirations on such subjects, in a
+provincial town, than to succeed; for merely calling a place an Emporium,
+is very far from giving it the independence, high tone, condensed
+intelligence and tastes of a capital. Poor Mrs. Legend, desirous of having
+all the tongues duly represented, was obliged to invite certain dealers in
+gin from Holland, a German linen merchant from Saxony, an Italian
+<i>Cavaliero</i>, who amused himself in selling beads, and a Spanish master,
+who was born in Portugal, all of whom had just one requisite for
+conversation in their respective languages, and no more. But such
+assemblies were convened in Paris, and why not in New-York?</p>
+
+<p>We shall not stop to dwell on the awful sensations with which Mrs. Legend
+heard the first ring at her door, on the eventful night in question. It
+was the precursor of the entrance of Miss Annual, as regular a devotee of
+letters as ever conned a primer. The meeting was sentimental and
+affectionate. Before either had time, however, to disburthen her mind of
+one half of its prepared phrases, ring upon ring proclaimed more company,
+and the rooms were soon as much sprinkled with talent, as a modern novel
+with jests. Among those who came first, appeared all the foreign corps,
+for the refreshments entered as something into the account with them;
+every blue of the place, whose social position in the least entitled her
+to be seen in such a house, Mrs. Legend belonging quite positively to good
+society.</p>
+
+<p>The scene that succeeded was very characteristic. A professed genius does
+nothing like other people, except in cases that require a display of
+talents. In all minor matters he, or she, is <i>sui generis</i>; for sentiment
+is in constant ebullition in their souls; this being what is meant by the
+flow of that part of the human system.</p>
+
+<p>We might here very well adopt the Homeric method, and call the roll of
+heroes and heroines, in what the French would term a <i>catalogue
+raisonn&eacute;e</i>; but our limits compel us to be less ambitions, and to adopt a
+simpler mode of communicating facts. Among the ladies who now figured in
+the drawing-room of Mrs. Legend, besides Miss Annual, were Miss Monthly,
+Mrs. Economy, S.R.P., Marion, Longinus, Julietta, Herodotus, D.O.V.E., and
+Mrs. Demonstration; besides many others of less note; together with at
+least a dozen female Hajjis, whose claims to appear in such society were
+pretty much dependent on the fact, that having seen pictures and statues
+abroad, they necessarily must have the means of talking of them at home.
+The list of men was still more formidable in numbers, if not in talents.
+At its head stood Steadfast Dodge, Esquire, whose fame as a male Hajji had
+so far swollen since Mrs Jarvis's <i>r&eacute;union</i>, that, for the first time in
+his life, he now entered one of the better houses of his own country.
+Then there were the authors of "Lapis Lazuli," "The Aunts," "The
+Reformed," "The Conformed," "The Transformed," and "The Deformed;" with
+the editors of "The Hebdomad," "The Night Cap," "The Chrysalis," "The Real
+Maggot," and "The Seek no Further;" as also, "Junius," "Junius Brutus,"
+"Lucius Junius Brutus," "Captain Kant," "Florio," the 'Author of the
+History of Billy Linkum Tweedle', the celebrated Pottawattamie Prophet,
+"Single Rhyme," a genius who had prudently rested his fame in verse, on a
+couplet composed of one line; besides divers <i>amateurs</i> and
+<i>connoisseurs</i>, Hajjis, who <i>must</i> be men of talents, as they had acquired
+all they knew, very much as American Eclipse gained his laurels on the
+turf; that is to say, by a free use of the whip and spur.</p>
+
+<p>As Mrs. Legend sailed about her rooms amid such a circle, her mind
+expanded, her thoughts diffused themselves among her guests on the
+principle of Animal Magnetism, and her heart was melting with the tender
+sympathies of congenial tastes. She felt herself to be at the head of
+American talents, and, in the secret recesses of her reason, she
+determined that, did even the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah menace her native
+town, as some evil disposed persons had dared to insinuate might one day
+be the case, here was enough to save it from destruction.</p>
+
+<p>It was just as the mistress of the mansion had come to this consoling
+conclusion, that the party from Hudson Square rang. As few of her guests
+came in carriages, Mrs. Legend, who heard the rolling of wheels, felt
+persuaded that the lion of the night was now indeed at hand; and with a
+view to a proper reception, she requested the company to divide itself
+into two lines, in order that he might enter, as it were, between lanes of
+genius.</p>
+
+<p>It may be necessary to explain, at this point of our narrative, that John
+Effingham was perfectly aware of the error which existed in relation to
+the real character of Captain Truck, wherein he thought great injustice
+had been done the honest seaman; and, the old man intending to sail for
+London next morning, had persuaded him to accept this invitation, in order
+that the public mind might be disabused in a matter of so much importance.
+With a view that this might be done naturally and without fuss, however,
+he did not explain the mistake to his nautical friend, believing it most
+probable that this could be better done incidentally, as it were, in the
+course of the evening; and feeling certain of the force of that wholesome
+apothegm, which says that "truth is powerful and must prevail" "If this be
+so," added John Effingham, in his explanations to Eve, "there can be no
+place where the sacred quality will be so likely to assert itself, as in a
+galaxy of geniuses, whose distinctive characteristic is 'an intuitive
+perception of things in their real colours."</p>
+
+<p>When the door of Mrs. Legend's drawing-room opened, in the usual noiseless
+manner, Mademoiselle Viefville, who led the way, was startled at finding
+herself in the precise situation of one who is condemned to run the
+gauntlet. Fortunately, she caught a glimpse of Mrs. Legend, posted at the
+other end of the proud array, inviting her, with smiles, to approach. The
+invitation had been to a "<i>literary f&ecirc;te</i>," and Mademoiselle Viefville was
+too much of a Frenchwoman to be totally disconcerted at a little scenic
+effect on the occasion of a <i>f&ecirc;te</i> of any sort. Supposing she was now a
+witness of an American ceremony for the first time, for the want of
+<i>representation</i> in the country had been rather a subject of animadversion
+with her, she advanced steadily towards the mistress of the house,
+bestowing smile for smile, this being a part of the <i>programme</i> at which a
+<i>Parisienne</i> was not easily outdone. Eve followed, as usual, <i>sola</i>; Grace
+came next; then Sir George; then John Effingham; the captain bringing up
+the rear. There had been a friendly contest, for the precedency, between
+the two last, each desiring to yield it to the other on the score of
+merit; but the captain prevailed, by declaring "that he was navigating an
+unknown sea, and that he could do nothing wiser than to sail in the wake
+of so good a pilot as Mr. John Effingham."</p>
+
+<p>As Hajjis of approved experience, the persons who led the advance in this
+little procession, were subjects of a proper attention and respect; but as
+the admiration of mere vulgar travelling would in itself be vulgar, care
+was taken to reserve the condensed feeling of the company for the
+celebrated English writer and wit, who was known to bring up the rear.
+This was not a common house, in which dollars had place, or <i>belles</i>
+rioted, but the temple of genius; and every one felt an ardent desire to
+manifest a proper homage to the abilities of the established foreign
+writer, that should be in exact proportion to their indifference to the
+twenty thousand a year of John Effingham, and to the nearly equal amount
+of Eve's expectations.</p>
+
+<p>The personal appearance of the honest tar was well adapted to the
+character he was thus called on so unexpectedly to support. His hair had
+long been getting grey, but the intense anxiety of the chase, of the
+wreck, and of his other recent adventures, had rapidly, but effectually,
+increased this mark of time; and his head was now nearly as white as snow.
+The hale, fresh, red of his features, which was in truth the result of
+exposure, might very well pass for the tint of port, and his tread, which
+had always a little of the quarterdeck swing about it, might quite easily
+be mistaken by a tyro, for the human frame staggering under a load of
+learning. Unfortunately for those who dislike mystifications, the captain
+had consulted John Effingham on the subject of the toilette, and that kind
+and indulgent friend had suggested the propriety of appearing in black
+small-clothes for the occasion, a costume that he often wore himself of an
+evening. Reality, in this instance, then, did not disappoint expectation,
+and the burst of applause with which the captain was received, was
+accompanied by a general murmur in commendation of the admirable manner in
+which he "looked the character."</p>
+
+<p>"What a Byronic head," whispered the author of "The Transformed" to
+D.O.V.E.; "and was there ever such a curl of the lip, before, to mortal
+man!"</p>
+
+<p>The truth is, the captain had thrust his tobacco into "an aside," as a
+monkey is known to <i>empocher</i> a spare nut, or a lump of sugar.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think him Byronic?--To my eye, the cast of his head is
+Shaksperian, rather; though I confess there is a little of Milton about
+the forehead!"</p>
+
+<p>"Pray," said Miss Annual, to Lucius Junius Brutus, "which is commonly
+thought to be the best of his works; that on a--a--a,--or that on
+e--e--e?"</p>
+
+<p>Now, so it happened, that not a soul in the room, but the lion himself,
+had any idea what books he had written, and he knew only of some fifteen
+or twenty log-books. It was generally understood, that he was a great
+English writer, and this was more than sufficient.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe the world generally prefers the a--a--a," said Lucius Junius
+Brutus; "but the few give a decided preference to the e--e--e----"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! out of all question preferable!" exclaimed half a dozen, in hearing.</p>
+
+<p>"With what a classical modesty he pays his compliments to Mrs. Legend,"
+observed "S. R. P."--"One can always tell a man of real genius, by his
+<i>tenu</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>"He is so English!" cried Florio. "Ah! <i>they</i> are the only people, after
+all!"</p>
+
+<p>This Florio was one of those geniuses who sigh most for the things that
+they least possess.</p>
+
+<p>By this time Captain Truck had got through with listening to the
+compliments of Mrs. Legend, when he, was seized upon by a circle of rabid
+literati, who badgered him with questions concerning his opinions,
+notions, inferences, experiences, associations, sensations, sentiments and
+intentions, in a way that soon threw the old man into a profuse
+perspiration. Fifty times did he wish, from the bottom of his soul, that
+soul which the crowd around him fancied dwelt so nigh in the clouds, that
+he was seated quietly by the side of Mrs. Hawker, who, he mentally swore,
+was worth all the <i>literati</i> in Christendom. But fate had decreed
+otherwise, and we shall leave him to his fortune, for a time, and return
+to our heroine and her party.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as Mrs. Legend had got through with her introductory compliments
+to the captain, she sought Eve and Grace, with a consciousness that a few
+civilities were now their due.</p>
+
+<p>"I fear, Miss Effingham, after the elaborate <i>soir&eacute;es</i> of the literary
+circles in Paris, you will find our <i>r&eacute;unions</i> of the same sort, a little
+dull; and yet I flatter myself with having assembled most of the talents
+of New-York on this memorable occasion, to do honour to your friend. Are
+you acquainted with many of the company?"</p>
+
+<p>Now, Eve had never seen nor ever heard of a single being in the room, with
+the exception of Mr. Dodge and her own party, before this night, although
+most of them had been so laboriously employed in puffing each other into
+celebrity, for many weary years; and, as for elaborate <i>soir&eacute;es</i>, she
+thought she had never seen one half as elaborate as this of Mrs. Legend's.
+As it would not very well do, however, to express all this in words, she
+civilly desired the lady to point out to her some of the most
+distinguished of the company.</p>
+
+<p>"With the greatest pleasure, Miss Effingham," Mrs. Legend taking pride in
+dwelling on the merits of her guests.--"This heavy, grand-looking
+personage, in whose air one sees refinement and modesty at a glance, is
+Captain Kant, the editor of one of our most decidedly pious newspapers.
+His mind is distinguished for its intuitive perception of all that is
+delicate, reserved and finished in the intellectual world, while, in
+opposition to this quality, which is almost feminine, his character is
+just as remarkable for its unflinching love of truth. He was never known
+to publish a falsehood, and of his foreign correspondence, in particular,
+he is so exceedingly careful, that he assures me he has every word of it
+written under his own eye."</p>
+
+<p>"On the subject of his religious scruples," added John Effingham, "he is
+so fastidiously exact, that I hear he 'says grace' over every thing that
+goes <i>from</i> his press, and 'returns thanks' for every thing that comes
+<i>to</i> it."</p>
+
+<p>"You know him, Mr. Effingham, by this remark? Is he not, truly, a man of a
+vocation?"</p>
+
+<p>"That, indeed, he is, ma'am. He may be succinctly said to have a newspaper
+mind, as he reduces every thing in nature or art to news, and commonly
+imparts to it so much of his own peculiar character, that it loses all
+identity with the subjects to which it originally belonged. One scarcely
+knows which to admire most about this man, the atmospheric transparency of
+his motives, for he is so disinterested as seldom even to think of paying
+for a dinner when travelling, and yet so conscientious as always to say
+something obliging of the tavern as soon as he gets home--his rigid regard
+to facts; or the exquisite refinement and delicacy that he imparts to
+every thing he touches. Over all this, too, he throws a beautiful halo of
+morality and religion, never even prevaricating in the hottest discussion,
+unless with the unction of a saint!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you happen to know Florio?" asked Mrs. Legend, a little distrusting
+John Effingham's account of Captain Kant.</p>
+
+<p>"If I do, it must indeed be by accident. What are his chief
+characteristics, ma'am?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sentiment, pathos, delicacy, and all in rhyme, too. You no doubt, have
+heard of his triumph over Lord Byron, Miss Effingham?"</p>
+
+<p>Eve was obliged to confess that it was new to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Byron wrote an ode to Greece, commencing with 'The Isles of Greece!
+the Isles of Greece!' a very feeble line, as any one will see, for it
+contained a useless and an unmeaning repetition."</p>
+
+<p>"And you might add vulgar, too, Mrs. Legend," said John Effingham, "since
+it made a palpable allusion to all those vulgar incidents that associate
+themselves in the mind, with these said common-place isles. The arts,
+philosophy, poetry, eloquence, and even old Homer, are brought
+unpleasantly to one's recollection, by such an indiscreet invocation."</p>
+
+<p>"So Florio thought, and, by way of letting the world perceive the
+essential difference between the base and the pure coin, <i>he</i> wrote an ode
+on England, which commenced as such an ode <i>should</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you happen to recollect any of it, ma'am?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only the first line, which I greatly regret, as the rhyme is Florio's
+chief merit. But this line is, of itself, sufficient to immortalize a
+man."</p>
+
+<p>"Do not keep us in torment, dear Mrs. Legend, but let us have it, of
+heaven's sake!"</p>
+
+<p>"It began in this sublime strain, sir--'Beyond the wave!--Beyond the
+wave!' Now, Miss Effingham, that is what <i>I</i> call poetry!"</p>
+
+<p>"And well you may, ma'am," returned the gentleman, who perceived Eve could
+scarce refrain from breaking out in a very unsentimental manner--"So much
+pathos."</p>
+
+<p>"And so sententious and flowing!"</p>
+
+<p>"Condensing a journey of three thousand miles, as it might be, into three
+words, and a note of admiration. I trust it was printed with a note of
+admiration, Mrs. Legend?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, with two--one behind each wave--and such waves, Mr. Effingham!"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, ma'am, you may say so. One really gets a grand idea of them,
+England lying beyond each."</p>
+
+<p>"So much expressed in so few syllables!"</p>
+
+<p>"I think I see every shoal, current, ripple, rock, island, and whale,
+between Sandy Hook and the Land's End."</p>
+
+<p>"He hints at an epic."</p>
+
+<p>"Pray God he may execute one. Let him make haste, too, or he may get
+'behind the age,' 'behind the age.'"</p>
+
+<p>Here the lady was called away to receive a guest.</p>
+
+<p>"Cousin Jack!"</p>
+
+<p>"Eve Effingham?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you not sometimes fear offending?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a woman who begins with expressing her admiration of such a sublime
+thing as this. You are safe with such a person, any where short of a tweak
+of the nose."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mais, tout ceci est bien dr&ocirc;le!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"You never were more mistaken in your life, Mademoiselle; every body here
+looks upon it as a matter of life and death."</p>
+
+<p>The new guest was Mr. Pindar, one of those careless, unsentimental
+fellows, that occasionally throw off an ode that passes through
+Christendom, as dollars are known to pass from China to Norway, and yet,
+who never fancied spectacles necessary to his appearance, solemnity to his
+face, nor <i>soir&eacute;es</i> to his renown. After quitting Mrs. Legend, he
+approached Eve, to whom he was slightly known, and accosted her.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the region of taste, Miss Effingham," he said, with a shrug of
+the jaw, if such a member can shrug; "and I do not wonder at finding you
+here."</p>
+
+<p>He then chatted pleasantly a moment, with the party, and passed on, giving
+an ominous gape, as he drew nearer to the <i>oi polloi</i> of literature. A
+moment after appeared Mr. Gray, a man who needed nothing but taste in the
+public, and the encouragement that would follow such a taste, to stand
+at, or certainty near, the head of the poets of our own time. He, too,
+looked shily at the galaxy, and took refuge in a corner. Mr. Pith
+followed; a man whose caustic wit needs only a sphere for its exercise,
+manners to portray, and a society with strong points about it to
+illustrate, in order to enrol his name high on the catalogue of satirists.
+Another ring announced Mr. Fun, a writer of exquisite humour, and of
+finished periods, but who, having perpetrated a little too much sentiment,
+was instantly seized upon by all the ultra ladies who were addicted to the
+same taste in that way, in the room.</p>
+
+<p>These persons came late, like those who had already been too often dosed
+in the same way, to be impatient of repetitions. The three first soon got
+together in a corner, and Eve fancied they were laughing at the rest of
+the company; whereas, in fact, they were merely laughing at a bad joke of
+their own; their quick perception of the ludicrous having pointed out a
+hundred odd combinations and absurdities, that would have escaped duller
+minds.</p>
+
+<p>"Who, in the name of the twelve Caesars, has Mrs. Legend got to lionize,
+yonder, with the white summit and the dark base?' asked the writer of
+odes.</p>
+
+<p>"Some English pamphleteer, by what I can learn," answered he of satire;
+"some fellow who has achieved a pert review, or written a Minerva
+Pressism, and who now flourishes like a bay tree among us. A modern
+Horace, or a Juvenal on his travels."</p>
+
+<p>"Fun is well badgered," observed Mr. Gray.--"Do you not see that Miss
+Annual, Miss Monthly, and that young alphabet D.O.V.E., have got him
+within the circle of their petticoats, where he will be martyred on a
+sigh?"</p>
+
+<p>"He casts tanging looks this way; he wishes you to go to his rescue,
+Pith."</p>
+
+<p>"I!--Let him take his fill of sentiment! I am no homoepathist in such
+matters. Large doses in quick succession will soonest work a cure. Here
+comes the lion and he breaks loose from his cage, like a beast that has
+been poked up with sticks."</p>
+
+<p>"Good evening, gentlemen," said Captain Truck, wiping his face intensely,
+and who having made his escape from a throng of admirers, took refuge in
+the first port that offered. "You seem to be enjoying yourselves here in a
+rational and agreeable way. Quite cool and refreshing in this corner."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet we have no doubt that both our reason and our amusement will
+receive a large increase from the addition of your society, sir," returned
+Mr. Pith.--"Do us the favour to take a seat, I beg of you, and rest
+yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"With all my heart, gentlemen; for, to own the truth, these ladies make
+warm work about a stranger. I have just got out of what I call a
+category."</p>
+
+<p>"You appear to have escaped with life, sir," observed Pindar, taking a
+cool survey of the other's person.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, thank God, I have done that, and it is pretty much all," answered
+the captain, wiping his face. "I served in the French war--Truxtun's war,
+as we call it--and I had a touch with the English in the privateer trade,
+between twelve and fifteen; and here, quite lately, I was in an encounter
+with the savage Arabs down on the coast of Africa; and I account them all
+as so much snow-balling, compared with the yard-arm and yard-arm work of
+this very night. I wonder if it is permitted to try a cigar at these
+conversation-onies, gentlemen?"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe it is, sir," returned Pindar, coolly. "Shall I help you to a
+light?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Mr. Truck!" cried Mrs. Legend, following the chafed animal to his
+corner, as one would pursue any other runaway, "instinct has brought you
+into this good company. You are, now, in the very focus of American
+talents."</p>
+
+<p>"Having just escaped from the focus of American talons," whispered Pith.</p>
+
+<p>"I must be permitted to introduce you myself. Mr. Truck, Mr. Pindar--Mr.
+Pith--- Mr. Gray--gentlemen, you must be so happy to be acquainted, being,
+as it were, engaged in the same pursuits!"</p>
+
+<p>The captain rose and shook each of the gentlemen cordially by the hand,
+for he had, at least, the consolation of a great many introductions that
+night. Mrs. Legend disappeared to say something to some other prodigy.</p>
+
+<p>"Happy to meet you, gentlemen," said the captain "In what trade do you
+sail?"</p>
+
+<p>"By whatever name we may call it," answered Mr. Pindar--"we can scarcely
+be said to go before the wind."</p>
+
+<p>"Not in the Injee business, then, or the monsoons would keep the
+stun'sails set, at least."</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir.--But yonder is Mr. Moccasin, who has lately set up, <i>secundum
+artem</i>, in the Indian business, having written two novels in that way
+already, and begun a third."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you all regularly employed, gentlemen?"</p>
+
+<p>"As regularly as inspiration points," said Mr. Pith. "Men of our
+occupation must make fair weather of it, or we had better be doing
+nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"So I often tell my owners, but 'go ahead' is the order. When I was a
+youngster, a ship remained in port for a fair wind; but, now, she goes to
+work and makes one. The world seems to get young, as I get old."</p>
+
+<p>"This is a <i>rum litterateur</i>," Gray whispered to Pindar.</p>
+
+<p>"It is an obvious mystification," was the answer; "poor Mrs. Legend has
+picked up some straggling porpoise, and converted him, by a touch of her
+magical wand, into a Boanerges of literature. The thing is as clear as
+day, for the worthy fellow smells of tar and cigar smoke. I perceive that
+Mr. Effingham is laughing out of the corner of his eyes, and will step
+across the room, and get the truth, in a minute."</p>
+
+<p>The rogue was as good as his word, and was soon back again, and contrived
+to let his friends understand the real state of the case. A knowledge of
+the captain's true character encouraged this trio in the benevolent
+purpose of aiding the honest old seaman in his wish to smoke, and Pith
+managed to give him a lighted paper, without becoming an open accessary to
+the plot.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you take a cigar yourself, sir," said the captain, offering his box
+to Mr. Pindar.</p>
+
+<p>"I thank you, Mr. Truck, I never smoke, but am a profound admirer of the
+flavour. Let me entreat you to begin as soon as possible."</p>
+
+<p>Thus encouraged, Captain Truck drew two or three whiffs, when the rooms
+were immediately filled with the fragrance of a real Havana. At the first
+discovery, the whole literary pack went off on the scent. As for Mr. Fun,
+he managed to profit by the agitation that followed, in order to escape to
+the three wags in the corner, who were enjoying the scene, with the
+gravity of so many dervishes.</p>
+
+<p>"As I live," cried Lucius Junius Brutus, "there is the author of
+a--a--a--actually smoking a cigar!--How excessively <i>piquant!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Do my eyes deceive me, or is not that the writer of e--e--e--fumigating
+us all!" whispered Miss Annual.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, this cannot certainly be right," put in Florio, with a dogmatical
+manner. "All the periodicals agree that smoking is ungenteel in England."</p>
+
+<p>"You never were more mistaken, dear Florio," replied D.O.V.E. in a cooing
+tone. "The very last novel of society has a chapter in which the hero and
+heroine smoke in the declaration scene."</p>
+
+<p>"Do they, indeed!--That alters the case. Really, one would not wish to get
+behind so great a nation, nor yet go much before it. Pray, Captain Kant,
+what do your friends in Canada say; is, or is not smoking permitted in
+good society there? the Canadians must, at least, be ahead of us."</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all, sir," returned the editor in his softest tones; "it is
+revolutionary and jacobinical."</p>
+
+<p>But the ladies prevailed, and, by a process that is rather peculiar to
+what may be called a "credulous" state of society, they carried the day.
+This process was simply to make one fiction authority for another. The
+fact that smoking was now carried so far in England, that the clergy
+actually used cigars in the pulpits, was affirmed on the authority of Mr.
+Truck himself, and, coupled with his present occupation, the point was
+deemed to be settled. Even Florio yielded, and his plastic mind soon saw a
+thousand beauties in the usage, that had hitherto escaped it. All the
+literati drew round the captain in a circle, to enjoy the spectacle,
+though the honest old mariner contrived to throw out such volumes of
+vapour as to keep them at a safe distance. His four demure-looking
+neighbours got behind the barrier of smoke, where they deemed themselves
+entrenched against the assaults of sentimental petticoats, for a time, at
+least.</p>
+
+<p>"Pray, Mr. Truck," inquired S.R.P., "is it commonly thought in the English
+literary circles, that Byron was a developement of Shakspeare, or
+Shakspeare a shadowing forth of Byron?"</p>
+
+<p>"Both, marm," said the captain, with a coolness that would have done
+credit to Aristabulus, for he had been fairly badgered into impudence,
+profiting by the occasion to knock the ashes off his cigar; "all incline
+to the first opinion, and most to the last."</p>
+
+<p>"What finesse!" murmured one. "How delicate!" whispered a second. "A
+dignified reserve!" ejaculated a third. "So English!" exclaimed Florio.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think, Mr. Truck," asked D.O.V.E. "that the profane songs of
+Little have more pathos than the sacred songs of Moore; or that the
+sacred songs of Moore have more sentiment than the profane songs of
+Little?"</p>
+
+<p>"A good deal of both, marm, and something to spare. I think there is
+little in one, and more in the other."</p>
+
+<p>"Pray, sir," said J.R.P., "do you pronounce the name of Byron's
+lady-love, Guy-kee-oh-<i>ly</i>, or, Gwy-ky-o-<i>lee</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"That depends on how the wind is. If on shore, I am apt to say 'oh-lee;'
+and if off shore, 'oh-lie.'"</p>
+
+<p>"That's capital!" cried Florio, in an extasy of admiration. "What man in
+this country could have said as crack a thing as that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed it is very witty," added Miss Monthly--"what does it mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mean! More than is seen or felt by common minds. Ah! the English are
+truly a great nation!--How delightfully he smokes!"</p>
+
+<p>"I think he is much the most interesting man we have had out here,"
+observed Miss Annual, "since the last bust of Scott!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ask him, dear D.O.V.E.," whispered Julietta, who was timid, from the
+circumstance of never having published, "which he thinks the most ecstatic
+feeling, hope or despair?"</p>
+
+<p>The question was put by the more experienced lady, according to request,
+though she first said, in a hurried tone, to her youthful sister--"you can
+have felt but little, child, or you would know that it is despair, as a
+matter of course."</p>
+
+<p>The honest captain, however, did not treat the matter so lightly, for he
+improved the opportunity to light a fresh cigar, throwing the still
+smoking stump into Mrs. Legend's grate, through a lane of literati, as he
+afterwards boasted, as coolly as he could have thrown it overboard, under
+other circumstances. Luckily for his reputation for sentiment, he mistook
+"ecstatic," a word he had never heard before, for "erratic;" and
+recollecting sundry roving maniacs that he had seen, he answered
+promptly--</p>
+
+<p>"Despair, out and out."</p>
+
+<p>"I knew it," said one.</p>
+
+<p>"It's in nature," added a second.</p>
+
+<p>"All can feel its truth," rejoined a third.</p>
+
+<p>"This point may now be set down as established," cried Florio, "and I hope
+no more will be said about it."</p>
+
+<p>"This is encouragement to the searchers after truth," put in Captain Kant.</p>
+
+<p>"Pray, Hon. and Rev. Mr. Truck," asked Lucius Junius Brutus, at the joint
+suggestion of Junius Brutus and Brutus, "does the Princess Victoria
+smoke?"</p>
+
+<p>"If she did not, sir, where would be the use in being a princess. I
+suppose you know that all the tobacco seized in England, after a deduction
+to informers, goes to the crown."</p>
+
+<p>"I object to this usage," remarked Captain Kant, "as irreligious, French,
+and tending to <i>sans-culotteism</i>. I am willing to admit of this
+distinguished instance as an exception; but on all other grounds, I shall
+maintain that it savours of infidelity to smoke. The Prussian government,
+much the best of our times, never smokes."</p>
+
+<p>"This man thinks he has a monopoly of the puffing, himself," Pindar
+whispered into the captain's ear; "whiff away, my dear sir, and you'll
+soon throw him into the shade."</p>
+
+<p>The captain winked, drew out his box, lighted another cigar, and, by way
+of reply to the envious remark, he put one in each corner of his mouth,
+and soon had both in full blast, a state in which he kept them for near a
+minute.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the very picturesque of social enjoyment," exclaimed Florio,
+holding up both hands in a glow of rapture. "It is absolutely Homeric, in
+the way of usages! Ah! the English are a great nation!"</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to know excessively if there was really such a person as
+Baron Mun-chaw-sen?" said Julietta, gathering courage from the success of
+her last question.</p>
+
+<p>"There was, Miss," returned the captain, through his teeth, and nodding
+his head in the affirmative. "A regular traveller, that; and one who knew
+him well, swore to me that he hadn't related one half of what befel him."</p>
+
+<p>"How very delightful to learn this from the highest quarter!" exclaimed
+Miss Monthly.</p>
+
+<p>"Is Gatty (Goethe) really dead?" inquired Longinus, "or, is the account we
+have had to that effect, merely a metaphysical apotheosis of his mighty
+soul?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dead, marm--stone dead--dead as a door-nail," returned the captain, who
+saw a relief in killing as many as possible.</p>
+
+<p>"You have been in France, Mr. Truck, beyond question?" observed Lucius
+Junius Brutus, in the way one puts a question.</p>
+
+<p>"France!--I was in France before I was ten years old. I know every foot of
+the coast, from Havre de Grace to Marseilles."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you then have the goodness to explain to us whether the soul of
+Chat-<i>to</i>-bri-<i>ong</i> is more expanded than his reason, or his reason more
+expanded than his soul?"</p>
+
+<p>Captain Truck had a very tolerable notion of Baron Munchausen and of his
+particular merits; but Chateaubriant was a writer of whom he knew nothing.
+After pondering a moment, and feeling persuaded that a confession of
+ignorance might undo him; for the old man had got to be influenced by the
+atmosphere of the place; he answered coolly--</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Chat-<i>to</i>-bri-<i>ong</i>, is it you mean?--As whole-souled a fellow as I
+know. All soul, sir, and lots of reason, besides."</p>
+
+<p>"How simple and unaffected!"</p>
+
+<p>"Crack!" exclaimed Florio.</p>
+
+<p>"A thorough Jacobin!" growled Captain Kant, who was always offended when
+any one but himself took liberties with the truth.</p>
+
+<p>Here the four wags in the corner observed that head went to head in the
+crowd, and that the rear rank of the company began to disappear, while
+Mrs. Legend was in evident distress. In a few minutes, all the Romans were
+off; Florio soon after vanished, grating his teeth in a poetical frenzy;
+and even Captain Kant, albeit so used to look truth in the face, beat a
+retreat. The alphabet followed, and even the Annual and the Monthly
+retired, with leave-takings so solemn and precise, that poor Mrs. Legend
+was in total despair.</p>
+
+<p>Eve, foreseeing something unpleasant, had gone away first, and, in a few
+minutes, Mr. Dodge, who had been very active in the crowd, whispering and
+gesticulating, made his bow also. The envy of this man had, in fact,
+become so intolerable, that he had let the cat out of the bag. No one now
+remained but the party entrenched behind the smoke, and the mistress of
+the house. Pindar solemnly proposed to the captain that they should go and
+enjoy an oyster-supper, in company; and, the proposal being cordially
+accepted, they rose in a body, to take leave.</p>
+
+<p>"A most delightful evening, Mrs. Legend," said Pindar, with perfect truth,
+"much the pleasantest I ever passed in a house, where one passes so many
+that are agreeable."</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot properly express my thanks for the obligation you have conferred
+by making me acquainted with Mr. Truck," added Gray. "I shall cultivate it
+as far as in my power, for a more capital fellow never breathed."</p>
+
+<p>"Really, Mrs. Legend, this has been a Byronic night!" observed Pith, as he
+made his bow. "I shall long remember it, and I think it deserves to be
+commemorated in verse"</p>
+
+<p>Fun endeavoured to look sympathetic and sentimental, though the spirit
+within could scarcely refrain from grinning in Mrs. Legend's face. He
+stammered out a few compliments, however, and disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, good night, marm," said Captain Truck, offering his hand cordially.
+"This has been a pleasant evening, altogether, though it was warm work at
+first. If you like ships, I should be glad to show you the Montauk's
+cabins when we get back; and if you ever think of Europe, let me recommend
+the London line as none of the worst. We'll try to make you comfortable,
+and trust to me to choose a state-room, a thing I am experienced in."</p>
+
+<p>Not one of the wags laughed until they were fairly confronted with the
+oysters. Then, indeed, they burst out into a general and long fit of
+exuberant merriment, returning to it, between the courses from the
+kitchen, like the <i>refrain</i> of a song. Captain Truck, who was uncommonly
+well satisfied with himself, did not understand the meaning of all this
+boyishness, but he has often declared since, that a heartier or a funnier
+set of fellows he never fell in with, than his four companions proved to
+be that night.</p>
+
+<p>As for the literary <i>soir&eacute;e</i>, the most profound silence has been
+maintained concerning it, neither of the wits there assembled having seen
+fit to celebrate it in rhyme, and Florio having actually torn up an
+impromptu for the occasion, that he had been all the previous day writing.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Chapter VII.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>  "There is a history in all men's lives,<br />
+Figuring the nature of the times deceased,<br />
+The which observed, a man may prophesy<br />
+With a near aim, of the main chance of things,<br />
+As yet not come to life."</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>  KING HENRY VI</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>The following morning the baronet breakfasted in Hudson Square. While at
+table, little was said concerning the events of the past night, though
+sundry smiles were exchanged, as eye met eye, and the recollection of the
+mystification returned. Grace alone looked grave, for she had been
+accustomed to consider Mrs. Legend a very discriminating person, and she
+had even hoped that most of those who usually figured in her rooms, were
+really the clever persons they laid claim to be.</p>
+
+<p>The morning was devoted to looking at the quarter of the town which is
+devoted to business, a party having been made for that express purpose
+under the auspices of John Effingham. As the weather was very cold,
+although the distances were not great, the carriages were ordered, and
+they all set off about noon.</p>
+
+<p>Grace had given up expecting a look of admiration from Eve in behalf of
+any of the lions of New-York, her cousin having found it necessary to tell
+her, that, in a comparative sense at least, little was to be said in
+behalf of these provincial wonders. Even Mademoiselle Viefville, now that
+the freshness, of her feelings were abated, had dropped quietly down into
+a natural way of speaking of these things; and Grace, who was
+quick-witted, soon discovered that when she did make any allusions to
+similar objects in Europe, it was always to those that existed in some
+country town. A silent convention existed, therefore, to speak no more on
+such subjects; or if any thing was said, it arose incidentally and as
+inseparable from the regular thread of the discourse.</p>
+
+<p>When in Wall street, the carriages stopped and the gentlemen alighted. The
+severity of the weather kept the ladies in the chariot, where Grace
+endeavoured to explain things as well as she could to her companions.</p>
+
+<p>"What are all these people running after, so intently?" inquired
+Mademoiselle Viefville, the conversation being in French, but which we
+shall render freely into English, for the sake of the general reader.</p>
+
+<p>"Dollars, I believe, Mademoiselle; am I right, Grace?"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe you are," returned Grace, laughing, "though I know little more
+of this part of the town than yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Quelle foule</i>! Is that building filled with dollars, into which the
+gentlemen are now entering? Its steps are crowded."</p>
+
+<p>"That is the <i>Bourse</i>, Mademoiselle, and it ought to be well lined, by the
+manner in which some who frequent it live. Cousin Jack and Sir George are
+going into the crowd, I see."</p>
+
+<p>We will leave the ladies in their seats, a few minutes, and accompany the
+gentlemen on their way into the Exchange.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall now show you, Sir George Templemore," said John Effingham, "what
+is peculiar to this country, and what, if properly improved, it is truly
+worth a journey across the ocean to see. You have been at the Royal
+Exchange in London, and at the <i>Bourse</i> of Paris, but you have never
+witnessed a scene like that which I am about to introduce you to. In
+Paris, you have beheld the unpleasant spectacle of women gambling publicly
+in the funds; but it was in driblets, compared to what you will see here."</p>
+
+<p>While speaking, John Effingham led the way upstairs into the office of one
+of the most considerable auctioneers. The walls were lined with maps,
+some representing houses, some lots, some streets, some entire towns.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the focus of what Aristabulus Bragg calls the town trade," said
+John Effingham, when fairly confronted with all these wonders. "Here,
+then, you may suit yourself with any species of real estate that heart can
+desire. If a villa is wanted, there are a dozen. Of farms, a hundred are
+in market; that is merely half-a-dozen streets; and here are towns, of
+dimensions and value to suit purchasers."</p>
+
+<p>"Explain this; it exceeds comprehension."</p>
+
+<p>"It is simply what it professes to be. Mr. Hammer, do us the favour to
+step this way. Are you selling to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not much, sir. Only a hundred or two lots on this island, and some six or
+eight farms, with one western village."</p>
+
+<p>"Can you tell us the history of this particular piece of property, Mr.
+Hammer?"</p>
+
+<p>"With great pleasure, Mr. Effingham; we know you to have means, and hope
+you may be induced to purchase. This was the farm of old Volkert Van
+Brunt, five years since, off of which he and his family had made a
+livelihood for more than a century, by selling milk. Two years since, the
+sons sold it to Peter Feeler for a hundred an acre; or for the total sum
+of five thousand dollars. The next spring Mr. Feeler sold it to John
+Search, as keen a one as we have, for twenty-five thousand. Search sold
+it, at private sale, to Nathan Rise for fifty thousand, the next week, and
+Rise had parted with it, to a company, before the purchase, for a hundred
+and twelve thousand cash. The map ought to be taken down, for it is now
+eight months since we sold it out in lots, at auction, for the gross sum
+of three hundred thousand dollars. As we have received our commission, we
+look at that land as out of the market, for a time."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you other property, sir, that affords the same wonderful history of
+a rapid advance in value?" asked the baronet.</p>
+
+<p>"These walls are covered with maps of estates in the same predicament.
+Some have risen two or three thousand per cent. within five years, and
+some only a few hundred. There is no calculating in the matter, for it is
+all fancy."</p>
+
+<p>"And on what is this enormous increase in value founded?--Does the town
+extend to these fields?"</p>
+
+<p>"It goes much farther, sir; that is to say, on paper. In the way of
+houses, it is still some miles short of them. A good deal depends on what
+you <i>call</i> a thing, in this market. Now, if old Volkert Van Brunt's
+property had been still called a farm, it would have brought a farm price;
+but, as soon as it was surveyed into lots and mapped--"</p>
+
+<p>"Mapped!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir; brought into visible lines, with feet and inches. As soon as it
+was properly mapped, it rose to its just value. We have a good deal of the
+bottom of the sea that brings fair prices in consequence of being well
+mapped."</p>
+
+<p>Here the gentlemen expressed their sense of the auctioneer's politeness,
+and retired.</p>
+
+<p>"We will now go into the sales-room," said John Effingham, "where you
+shall judge of the spirit, or <i>energy</i>, as it is termed, which, at this
+moment, actuates this great nation."</p>
+
+<p>Descending, they entered a crowd, where scores were eagerly bidding
+against each other, in the fearful delusion of growing rich by pushing a
+fancied value to a point still higher. One was purchasing ragged rocks,
+another the bottom of rivers, a third a bog, and all on the credit of
+maps. Our two observers remained some time silent spectators of the scene.</p>
+
+<p>"When I first entered that room," said John Effingham, as they left the
+place, "it appeared to me to be filled with maniacs. Now, that I have
+been in it several times, the impression is not much altered."</p>
+
+<p>"And all those persons are hazarding their means of subsistence on the
+imaginary estimate mentioned by the auctioneer?"</p>
+
+<p>"They are gambling as recklessly as he who places his substance on the
+cast of the die. So completely has the mania seized every one, that the
+obvious truth, a truth which is as apparent as any other law of nature,
+that nothing can be sustained without a foundation, is completely
+overlooked, and he who should now proclaim, in this building, principles
+that bitter experience will cause every man to feel, within the next few
+years, would be happy if he escaped being stoned. I have witnessed many
+similar excesses in the way of speculations; but never an instance as
+gross, as wide-spread, and as alarming as this."</p>
+
+<p>"You apprehend serious consequences, then, from the reaction?"</p>
+
+<p>"In that particular, we are better off than older nations, the youth and
+real stamina of the country averting much of the danger; but I anticipate
+a terrible blow, and that the day is not remote when this town will awake
+to a sense of its illusion. What you see here is but a small part of the
+extravagance that exists, for it pervades the whole community, in one
+shape or another. Extravagant issues of paper-money, inconsiderate credits
+that commence in Europe; and extend throughout the land, and false notions
+as to the value of their possessions, in men who five years since had
+nothing, has completely destroyed the usual balance of things, and money
+has got to be so completely the end of life, that few think of it as a
+means. The history of the world, probably, cannot furnish a parallel
+instance, of an extensive country that is so absolutely under this malign
+influence, as is the fact with our own at this present instant. All
+principles are swallowed up in the absorbing desire for gain; national
+honour, permanent security, the ordinary rules of society, law, the
+constitution, and every thing that is usually so dear to men, are
+forgotten, or are perverted, in order to sustain this unnatural condition
+of things."</p>
+
+<p>"This is not only extraordinary, but it is fearful!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is both. The entire community is in the situation of a man who is in
+the incipient stages of an exhilarating intoxication, and who keeps
+pouring down glass after glass, in the idle notion that he is merely
+sustaining nature in her ordinary functions. This wide-spread infatuation
+extends from the coast to the extremest frontiers of the west; for, while
+there is a justifiable foundation for a good deal of this fancied
+prosperity, the true is so interwoven with the false, that none but the
+most observant can draw the distinction, and, as usual, the false
+predominates."</p>
+
+<p>"By your account, sir, the tulip mania of Holland was trifling compared to
+this?"</p>
+
+<p>"That was the same in principle as our own, but insignificant in extent.
+Could I lead you through these streets, and let you into the secret of the
+interests, hopes, infatuations and follies that prevail in the human
+breast, you, as a calm spectator, would be astonished at the manner in
+which your own species can be deluded. But let us move, and something may
+still occur to offer an example."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Effingham--I beg pardon--Mr. Effingham," said a very
+gentlemanly-looking merchant, who was walking about the hall of the
+exchange, "what do you think now of our French quarrel?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have told you, Mr. Bale, all I have to say on that subject. When in
+France, I wrote you that it was not the intention of the French government
+to comply with the treaty; you have since seen this opinion justified in
+the result; you have the declaration of the French minister of state,
+that, without an apology from this government, the money will not be paid;
+and I have given it as my opinion, that the vane on yonder steeple will
+not turn more readily than all this policy will be abandoned, should any
+thing occur in Europe to render it necessary, or could the French ministry
+believe it possible for this country to fight for a principle. These are
+my opinions, in all their phases, and you may compare them with facts and
+judge for yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"It is all General Jackson, sir--all that monster's doings. But for his
+message, Mr. Effingham, we should have had the money long ago."</p>
+
+<p>"But for his message, or some equally decided step, Mr. Bale, you would
+never have it."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, my dear sir, I know your intentions, but I fear you are prejudiced
+against that excellent man, the King of France! Prejudice, Mr. Effingham,
+is a sad innovator on justice."</p>
+
+<p>Here Mr. Bale shook his head, laughed, and disappeared in the crowd,
+perfectly satisfied that John Effingham was a prejudiced man, and that he,
+himself, was only liberal and just.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, that is a man who wants for neither abilities nor honesty, and yet
+he permits his interests, and the influence of this very speculating
+mania, to overshadow all his sense of right, facts plain as noon-day, and
+the only principles that can rule a country in safety."</p>
+
+<p>"He apprehends war, and has no desire to believe even facts, so long as
+they serve to increase the danger."</p>
+
+<p>"Precisely so; for even prudence gets to be a perverted quality, when men
+are living under an infatuation like that which now exists. These men live
+like the fool who says there is no death."</p>
+
+<p>Here the gentlemen rejoined the ladies, and the carriages drove through a
+succession of narrow and crooked streets, that were lined with warehouses
+filled with the products of the civilized world.</p>
+
+<p>"Very much of all this is a part of the same lamentable illusion," said
+John Effingham, as the carriages made their way slowly through the
+encumbered streets. "The man who sells his inland lots at a profit,
+secured by credit, fancies himself enriched, and he extends his manner of
+living in proportion; the boy from the country becomes a merchant, or what
+is here called a merchant, and obtains a credit in Europe a hundred times
+exceeding his means, and caters to these fancied wants; and thus is every
+avenue of society thronged with adventurers, the ephemera of the same
+wide-spread spirit of reckless folly. Millions in value pass out of these
+streets, that go to feed the vanity of those who fancy themselves wealthy,
+because they hold some ideal pledges for the payment of advances in price
+like those mentioned by the auctioneer, and which have some such security
+for the eventual payment, as one can find in <i>calling</i> a thing, that is
+really worth a dollar, worth a hundred."</p>
+
+<p>"Are the effects of this state of things apparent in your ordinary
+associations?"</p>
+
+<p>"In every thing. The desire to grow suddenly rich has seized on all
+classes. Even women and clergymen are infected, and we exist under the
+active control of the most corrupting of all influences--'the love of
+money.' I should despair of the country altogether, did I not feel certain
+that the disease is too violent to last, and entertain a hope that the
+season of calm reflection and of repentance, that is to follow, will be in
+proportion to its causes."</p>
+
+<p>After taking this view of the town, the party returned to Hudson Square,
+where the baronet dined, it being his intention to go to Washington on the
+following day. The leave-taking in the evening was kind and friendly; Mr.
+Effingham, who had a sincere regard for his late fellow-traveller,
+cordially inviting him to visit him in the mountains in June.</p>
+
+<p>As Sir George took his leave, the bells began to ring for a fire. In
+New-York one gets so accustomed to these alarms, that near an hour had
+passed before any of the Effingham family began to reflect on the long
+continuance of the cries. A servant was then sent out to ascertain the
+reason, and his report made the matter more serious than usual.</p>
+
+<p>We believe that, in the frequency of these calamities, the question lies
+between Constantinople and New-York. It is a common occurrence for twenty
+or thirty buildings to be burnt down, in the latter place, and for the
+residents of the same ward to remain in ignorance of the circumstance,
+until enlightened on the fact by the daily prints; the constant repetition
+of the alarms hardening the ear and the feelings against the appeal. A
+fire of greater extent than common, had occurred only a night or two
+previously to this; and a rumour now prevailed, that the severity of the
+weather, and the condition of the hoses and engines, rendered the present
+danger double. On hearing this intelligence, the Messrs. Effinghams
+wrapped themselves up in their over-coats, and went together into the
+streets.</p>
+
+<p>"This seems something more than usual, Ned," said John Effingham, glancing
+his eye upward at the lurid vault, athwart which gleams of fiery light
+began to shine; "the danger is not distant, and it seems serious."</p>
+
+<p>Following the direction of the current, they soon found the scene of the
+conflagration, which was in the very heart of those masses of warehouses,
+or stores, that John Effingham had commented on, so lately. A short street
+of high buildings was already completely in flames, and the danger of
+approaching the enemy, added to the frozen condition of the apparatus, the
+exhaustion of the firemen from their previous efforts, and the intense
+coldness of the night, conspired to make the aspect of things in the
+highest degree alarming.</p>
+
+<p>The firemen of New-York have that superiority over those of other places,
+that the veteran soldier obtains over the recruit. But the best troops can
+be appalled, and, on this memorable occasion, these celebrated firemen,
+from a variety of causes, became for a time, little more than passive
+spectators of the terrible scene.</p>
+
+<p>There was an hour or two when all attempts at checking the conflagration
+seemed really hopeless, and even the boldest and the most persevering
+scarcely knew which way to turn, to be useful. A failure of water, the
+numerous points that required resistance, the conflagration extending in
+all directions from a common centre, by means of numberless irregular and
+narrow streets, and the impossibility of withstanding the intense heat, in
+the choked passages, soon added despair to the other horrors of the scene.</p>
+
+<p>They who stood the fiery masses, were freezing on one side with the
+Greenland cold of the night, while their bodies were almost blistered with
+the fierce flames on the other. There was something frightful in this
+contest of the elements, nature appearing to condense the heat within its
+narrowest possible limits, as if purposely to increase its fierceness. The
+effects were awful; for entire buildings would seem to dissolve at their
+touch, as the forked flames enveloped them in sheets of fire.</p>
+
+<p>Every one being afoot, within sound of the alarm, though all the more
+vulgar cries had ceased, as men would deem it mockery to cry murder in a
+battle, Sir George Templemore met his friends, on the margin of this sea
+of fire. It was now drawing towards morning, and the conflagration was at
+its height, having already laid waste a nucleus of <i>blocks</i>, and it was
+extending by many lines, in every possible direction.</p>
+
+<p>"Here is a fearful admonition for those who set their hearts on riches,"
+observed Sir George Templemore, recalling the conversation of the previous
+day. "What, indeed, are the designs of man, as compared with the will of
+Providence!"</p>
+
+<p>"I foresee that this is <i>le commencement de la fin</i>," returned John
+Effingham. "The destruction is already so great, as to threaten to bring
+down with it the usual safe-guards against such losses, and one pin
+knocked out of so frail and delicate a fabric, the whole will become
+loose, and fall to pieces."</p>
+
+<p>"Will nothing be done to arrest the flames?"</p>
+
+<p>"As men recover from the panic, their plans will improve and their
+energies will revive. The wider streets are already reducing the fire
+within more certain limits, and they speak of a favourable change of wind.
+It is thought five hundred buildings have already been consumed, in
+scarcely half a dozen hours."</p>
+
+<p>That Exchange, which had so lately resembled a bustling temple of Mammon,
+was already a dark and sheeted ruin, its marble walls being cracked,
+defaced, tottering, or fallen. It lay on the confines of the ruin, and our
+party was enabled to take their position near it, to observe the scene.
+All in their immediate vicinity was assuming the stillness of desolation,
+while the flushes of fierce light in the distance marked the progress of
+the conflagration. Those who knew the localities, now began to speak of
+the natural or accidental barriers, such as the water, the slips, and the
+broader streets, as the only probable means of arresting the destruction.
+The crackling of the flames grew distant fast, and the cries of the
+firemen were now scarcely audible.</p>
+
+<p>At this period in the frightful scene, a party of seamen arrived, bearing
+powder, in readiness to blow up various buildings, in the streets that
+possessed of themselves, no sufficient barriers to the advance of the
+flame. Led by their officers, these gallant fellows, carrying in their
+arms the means of destruction, moved up steadily to the verge of the
+torrents of fire, and planted their kegs; laying their trains with the
+hardy indifference that practice can alone create, and with an
+intelligence that did infinite credit to their coolness. This deliberate
+courage was rewarded with complete success, and house crumbled to pieces
+after house under the dull explosions, happily without an accident.</p>
+
+<p>From this time the flames became less ungovernable, though the day dawned
+and advanced, and another night succeeded, before they could be said to be
+got fairly under. Weeks, and even months passed, however, ere the
+smouldering ruins ceased to send up smoke, the fierce element continuing
+to burn, like a slumbering volcano, as it might be in the bowels of the
+earth.</p>
+
+<p>The day that succeeded this disaster, was memorable for the rebuke it gave
+the rapacious longing for wealth. Men who had set their hearts on gold,
+and who prided themselves on their possession, and on that only, were made
+to feel its insanity; and they who had walked abroad as gods, so lately,
+began to experience how utterly insignificant are the merely rich, when
+stripped of their possessions. Eight hundred buildings containing fabrics
+of every kind, and the raw material in various forms, had been destroyed,
+as it were in the twinkling of an eye.</p>
+
+<p>A faint voice was heard from the pulpit, and there was a moment when those
+who remembered a better state of things, began to fancy that principles
+would once more assert their ascendency, and that the community would, in
+a measure, be purified. But this expectation ended in disappointment, the
+infatuation being too wide-spread and corrupting, to be stopped by even
+this check, and the rebuke was reserved for a form that seems to depend on
+a law of nature, that of causing a vice to bring with it its own
+infallible punishment.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Chapter VIII.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>  "First, tell me, have you ever been at Pisa."</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>  SHAKSPEARE.</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>The conflagration alluded to, rather than described, in the proceeding
+chapter, threw a gloom over the gaieties of New-York, if that ever could
+be properly called gay, which was little more than a strife in prodigality
+and parade, and leaves us little more to say of the events of the winter.
+Eve regretted very little the interruption to scenes in which she had
+found no pleasure, however much she lamented the cause; and she and Grace
+passed the remainder of the season quietly, cultivating the friendship of
+such women as Mrs. Hawker and Mrs. Bloomfield, and devoting hours to the
+improvement of their minds and tastes, without ever again venturing
+however, within the hallowed precincts of such rooms as those of Mrs.
+Legend.</p>
+
+<p>One consequence of a state of rapacious infatuation, like that which we
+have just related, is the intensity of selfishness which smothers all
+recollection of the past, and all just anticipations of the future, by
+condensing life, with its motives and enjoyments, into the present moment.
+Captain Truck, therefore, was soon forgotten, and the literati, as that
+worthy seaman had termed the associates of Mrs. Legend, remained just as
+vapid, as conceited, as ignorant, as imitative, as dependent, and as
+provincial as ever.</p>
+
+<p>As the season advanced, our heroine began to look with longings towards
+the country. The town life of an American offers little to one accustomed
+to a town life in older and more permanently regulated communities; and
+Eve was already heartily weary of crowded and noisy balls, (for a few were
+still given;) <i>belles</i>, the struggles of an uninstructed taste, and a
+representation in which extravagance was so seldom relieved by the
+elegance and convenience of a condition of society, in which more
+attention is paid to the fitness of things.</p>
+
+<p>The American spring is the least pleasant of its four seasons, its
+character being truly that of "winter lingering in the lap of May." Mr.
+Effingham, who the reader will probably suspect, by this time, to be a
+descendant of a family of the same name, that we have had occasion to
+introduce into another work, had sent orders to have his country residence
+prepared for the reception of our party; and it was with a feeling of
+delight that Eve stepped on board a steam-boat to escape from a town that,
+while it contains so much that is worthy of any capital, contains so much
+more that is unfit for any place, in order to breathe the pure air, and to
+enjoy the tranquil pleasare of the country. Sir George Templemore had
+returned from his southern journey, and made one of the party, by express
+arrangement.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Eve," said Grace Van Cortlandt, as the boat glided along the
+wharves, "if it were any person but you, I should feel confident of having
+something to show that <i>would</i> extort admiration."</p>
+
+<p>"You are safe enough, in that respect, for a more imposing object in its
+way, than this very vessel, eye of mine, never beheld. It is positively
+the only thing that deserves the name of magnificent I have yet seen,
+since our return,--unless, indeed, it may be magnificent projects."</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad, dear coz, there is this one magnificent object, then, to
+satisfy a taste so fastidious."</p>
+
+<p>As Grace's little foot moved, and her voice betrayed vexation, the whole
+party smiled; for the whole party, while it felt the justice of Eve's
+observation, saw the real feeling that was at the bottom of her cousin's
+remark. Sir George, however, though he could not conceal from himself the
+truth of what had been said by the one party, and the weakness betrayed
+by the other had too much sympathy for the provincial patriotism of one so
+young and beautiful, not to come to the rescue.</p>
+
+<p>"You should remember, Miss Van Cortlandt," he said, "that Miss Effingham
+has not had the advantage yet of seeing the Delaware, Philadelphia, the
+noble bays of the south, nor so much that is to be found out of the single
+town of New-York."</p>
+
+<p>"Very true, and I hope yet to see her a sincere penitent for all her
+unpatriotic admissions against her own country. <i>You</i> have seen the
+Capitol, Sir George Templemore; is it not, truly, one of the finest
+edifices of the world?"</p>
+
+<p>"You will except St. Peter's, surely, my child," observed Mr. Effingham,
+smiling, for he saw that the baronet was embarrassed to give a ready
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>"And the Cathedral at Milan," said Eve, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Et le Louvre</i>!" cried Mademoiselle Viefville, who had some such
+admiration for every thing Parisian, as Eve had for every thing American.</p>
+
+<p>"And, most especially, the north-east corner of the south-west end of the
+north-west wing of Versailles," said John Effingham, in his usual dry
+manner.</p>
+
+<p>"I see you are all against me," Grace rejoined, "but I hope, one day, to
+be able to ascertain for myself the comparative merits of things. As
+nature makes rivers, I hope the Hudson, at least, will not be found
+unworthy of your admiration, gentlemen and ladies."</p>
+
+<p>"You are safe enough, there, Grace," observed Mr Effingham; "for few
+rivers, perhaps no river, offers so great and so pleasing a variety, in so
+short a distance, as this."</p>
+
+<p>It was a lovely, bland morning, in the last week of May; and the
+atmosphere was already getting the soft hues of summer, or assuming the
+hazy and solemn calm that renders the season so quiet and soothing, after
+the fiercer strife of the elements. Under such a sky, the Palisadoes, in
+particular, appeared well; for, though wanting in the terrific grandeur of
+an Alpine nature, and perhaps disproportioned to the scenery they adorned,
+they were bold and peculiar.</p>
+
+<p>The great velocity of the boat added to the charm of the passage, the
+scene scarce finding time to pall on the eye; for, no sooner was one
+object examined in its outlines, than it was succeeded by another.</p>
+
+<p>"An extraordinary taste is afflicting this country, in the way of
+architecture," said Mr. Effingham, as they stood gazing at the eastern
+shore; "nothing but a Grecian temple being now deemed a suitable residence
+for a man, in these classical times. Yonder is a structure, for instance,
+of beautiful proportions, and, at this distance, apparently of a precious
+material, and yet it seems better suited to heathen worship than to
+domestic comfort."</p>
+
+<p>"The malady has infected, the whole nation," returned his cousin, "like
+the spirit of speculation. We are passing from one extreme to the other,
+in this, as in other things. One such temple, well placed in a wood, might
+be a pleasant object enough, but to see a river lined with them, with
+children trundling hoops before their doors, beef carried into their
+kitchens, and smoke issuing, moreover, from those unclassical objects
+chimnies, is too much even of a high taste; one might as well live in a
+fever. Mr. Aristabulus Bragg, who is a wag in his way, informs me that
+there is one town in the interior that has actually a market-house on the
+plan of the Parthenon!"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Il Cupo di Bove</i> would be a more suitable model for such a structure,"
+said Eve, smiling. "But I think I have heard that the classical taste of
+our architects is any thing but rigid."</p>
+
+<p>"This <i>was</i> the case, rather than <i>is</i>" returned John Effingham, "as
+witness all these temples. The country has made a quick and a great <i>pas,
+en avant</i>, in the way of the fine arts, and the fact shows what might be
+done with so ready a people, under a suitable direction. The stranger who
+comes among us is apt to hold the art of the nation cheap, but, as all
+things are comparative, let him inquire into its state ten years since,
+and look at it to-day. The fault just now, is perhaps to consult the books
+too rigidly, and to trust too little to invention; for no architecture,
+and especially no domestic architecture, can ever be above serious
+reproach, until climate, the uses of the edifice, and the situation, are
+respected as leading considerations. Nothing can be uglier, <i>per se</i>, than
+a Swiss cottage, or any thing more beautiful under its precise
+circumstances. As regards these mushroom temples, which are the offspring
+of Mammon, let them be dedicated to whom they may, I should exactly
+reverse the opinion, and say, that while nothing can be much more
+beautiful, <i>per se</i>, nothing can be in worse taste, than to put them where
+they are."</p>
+
+<p>"We shall have an opportunity of seeing what Mr. John Effingham can do in
+the way of architecture," said Grace, who loved to revenge some of her
+fancied wrongs, by turning the tables on her assailant, "for I understand
+he has been improving on the original labours of that notorious Palladio,
+Master Hiram Doolittle!"</p>
+
+<p>The whole party laughed, and every eye was turned on the gentleman alluded
+to, expecting his answer.</p>
+
+<p>"You will remember, good people," answered the accused by implication,
+"that my plans were handed over to me from my great predecessor, and that
+they were originally of the composite order. If, therefore, the house
+should turn out to be a little complex and mixed, you will do me the
+justice to remember this important fact. At all events, I have consulted
+comfort; and that I would maintain, in the face of Vitruvius himself, is a
+<i>sine qu&acirc; non</i> in domestic architecture."</p>
+
+<p>"I took a run into Connecticut the other day," said Sir George
+Templemore, "and, at a place called New Haven, I saw the commencement of a
+taste that bids fair to make a most remarkable town. It is true, you
+cannot expect structures of much pretension in the way of cost and
+magnitude in this country, but, so far as fitness and forms are concerned,
+if what I hear be true, and the next fifty years do as much in proportion
+for that little city, as I understand has been done in the last five, it
+will be altogether a wonder in its way. There are some abortions, it is
+true, but there are also some little jewels."</p>
+
+<p>The baronet was rewarded for this opinion, by a smile from Grace, and the
+conversation changed. As the boat approached the mountains, Eve became
+excited, a very American state of the system by the way, and Grace still
+more anxious.</p>
+
+<p>"The view of that bluff is Italian;" said our heroine, pointing down the
+river at a noble headland of rock, that loomed grandly in the soft haze of
+the tranquil atmosphere. "One seldom sees a finer or a softer outline on
+the shores of the Mediterranean itself."</p>
+
+<p>"But the Highlands, Eve!" whispered the uneasy Grace. "We are entering the
+mountains."</p>
+
+<p>The river narrowed suddenly, and the scenery became bolder, but neither
+Eve nor her father expressed the rapture that Grace expected.</p>
+
+<p>"I must confess, Jack," said the mild, thoughtful Mr. Effingham, "that
+these rocks strike my eyes as much less imposing than formerly. The
+passage is fine, beyond question, but it is hardly grand scenery."</p>
+
+<p>"You never uttered a juster opinion, Ned, though after your eye loses some
+of the forms of the Swiss and Italian lakes, and of the shores of Italy,
+you will think better of these. The Highlands are remarkable for their
+surprises, rather than for their grandeur, as we shall presently see. As
+to the latter, it is an affair of feet and inches, and is capable of
+arithmetical demonstration. We have often been on lakes, beneath beetling
+cliffs of from three to six thousand feet in height; whereas, here, the
+greatest elevation is materially less than two. But, Sir George
+Templemore, and you, Miss Effingham, do me the favour to combine your
+cunning, and tell me whence this stream cometh, and whither we are to
+go?"</p>
+
+<p>The boat had now approached a point where the river was narrowed to a
+width not much exceeding a quarter of a mile, and in the direction in
+which it was steering, the water seemed to become still more contracted
+until they were lost in a sort of bay, that appeared to be closed by high
+hills, through which, however, there were traces of something like a
+passage.</p>
+
+<p>"The land in that direction looks as if it had a ravine-like entrance,"
+said the baronet; "and yet it is scarcely possible that a stream like this
+can flow there!"</p>
+
+<p>"If the Hudson truly passes through those mountains," said Eve, "I will
+concede all in its favour that you can ask, Grace."</p>
+
+<p>"Where else can it pass?" demanded Grace, exultingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure enough--I see no other place, and that seems insufficient."</p>
+
+<p>The two strangers to the river now looked curiously around them, in every
+direction. Behind them was a broad and lake-like basin, through which they
+had just passed; on the left, a barrier of precipitous hills, the
+elevation of which was scarcely less than a thousand feet; on their right,
+a high but broken country, studded with villas, farm-houses, and hamlets;
+and in their front the deep but equivocal bay mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>"I see no escape!" cried the baronet, gaily, "unless indeed, it be by
+returning."</p>
+
+<p>A sudden and broad sheer of the boat caused him to turn to the left, and
+then they whirled round an angle of the precipice, and found themselves in
+a reach of the river, between steep declivities, running at right angles
+to their former course.</p>
+
+<p>"This is one of the surprises of which I spoke," said John Effingham,
+"and which render the highlands so <i>unique</i>; for, while the Rhine is very
+sinuous, it has nothing like this."</p>
+
+<p>The other travellers agreed in extolling this and many similar features of
+the scenery, and Grace was delighted; for, warm-hearted, affectionate, and
+true, Grace loved her country like a relative or a friend, and took an
+honest pride in hearing its praises. The patriotism of Eve, if a word of a
+meaning so lofty can be applied to feelings of this nature, was more
+discriminating from necessity, her tastes having been formed in a higher
+school, and her means of comparison being so much more ample. At West
+Point they stopped for the night, and here every body was in honest
+raptures; Grace, who had often visited the place before, being actually
+the least so of the whole party.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Eve, I know that you <i>do</i> love your country," she said, as she
+slipped an arm affectionately through that of her cousin. "This is feeling
+and speaking like an American girl, and as Eve Effingham should!"</p>
+
+<p>Eve laughed, but she had discovered that the provincial feeling was so
+strong in Grace, that its discussion would probably do no good. She dwelt,
+therefore, with sincere eloquence on the beauties of the place, and for
+the first time since they had met, her cousin felt as if there was no
+longer any point of dissension between them.</p>
+
+<p>The following morning was the first of June, and it was another of those
+drowsy, dreamy days, that so much aid a landscape. The party embarked in
+the first boat that came up, and as they entered Newburgh bay, the triumph
+of the river was established. This is a spot, in sooth, that has few
+equals in any region, though Eve still insisted that the excellence of the
+view was in its softness rather than in its grandeur. The country-houses,
+or boxes, for few could claim to be much more, were neat, well placed,
+and exceedingly numerous. The heights around the town of Newburgh, in
+particular, were fairly dotted with them, though Mr. Effingham shook his
+head as he saw one Grecian temple appear after another.</p>
+
+<p>"As we recede from the influence of the vulgar architects," he said, "we
+find imitation taking the place of instruction. Many of these buildings
+are obviously disproportioned, and then, like vulgar pretension of any
+sort, Grecian architecture produces less pleasure than even Dutch."</p>
+
+<p>"I am surprised at discovering how little of a Dutch character remains in
+this state," said the baronet; "I can scarcely trace that people in any
+thing, and yet, I believe, they had the moulding of your society, having
+carried the colony through its infancy."</p>
+
+<p>"When you know us better, you will be surprised at discovering how little
+of any thing remains a dozen years," returned John Effingham. "Our towns
+pass away in generations like their people, and even the names of a place
+undergo periodical mutations, as well as every thing else. It is getting
+to be a predominant feeling in the American nature, I fear, to love
+change."</p>
+
+<p>"But, cousin Jack, do you not overlook causes, in your censure. That a
+nation advancing as fast as this in wealth and numbers, should desire
+better structures than its fathers had either the means or the taste to
+build, and that names should change with persons, are both things quite in
+rule."</p>
+
+<p>"All very true, though it does not account for the peculiarity I mean.
+Take Templeton, for instance; this little place has not essentially
+increased in numbers, within my memory, and yet fully one-half its names
+are new. When he reaches his own home, your father will not know even the
+names of one-half his neighbours. Not only will he meet with new faces,
+but he will find new feelings, new opinions in the place of traditions
+that he may love, an indifference to every thing but the present moment,
+and even those who may have better feelings, and a wish to cherish all
+that belongs to the holier sentiments of man, afraid to utter them, lest
+they meet with no sympathy."
+
+"No cats, as Mr. Bragg would say."</p>
+
+<p>"Jack is one who never paints <i>en beau</i>," said Mr. Effingham. "I should be
+very sorry to believe that a dozen short years can have made all these
+essential changes in my neighbourhood."</p>
+
+<p>"A dozen years, Ned! You name an age. Speak of three or four, if you wish
+to find any thing in America where you left it! The whole country is in
+such a constant state of mutation, that I can only liken it to that game
+of children, in which as one quits his corner, another runs into it, and
+he that finds no corner to get into, is the laughing-stock of the others.
+Fancy that dwelling the residence of one man from childhood to old age;
+let him then quit it for a year or two, and on his return he would find
+another in possession, who would treat him as an impertinent intruder,
+because he had been absent two years. An American 'always,' in the way of
+usages, extends no further back than eighteen months. In short, every
+thing is condensed into the present moment; and services, character, for
+evil as well as good unhappily, and all other things, cease to have
+weight, except as they influence the interests of the day."</p>
+
+<p>"This is the colouring of a professed cynic," observed Mr. Effingham,
+smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"But the law, Mr. John Effingham," eagerly inquired the baronet--"surely
+the law would not permit a stranger to intrude in this manner on the
+rights of an owner."</p>
+
+<p>"The law-<i>books</i> would do him that friendly office, perhaps, but what is a
+precept in the face of practices so ruthless. '<i>Les absents out toujours
+tort</i>,' is a maxim of peculiar application in America."</p>
+
+<p>"Property is as secure in this country as in any other, Sir George; and
+you will make allowances for the humours of the present annotator."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, Ned; I hope you will find every thing <i>couleur de rose</i>, as
+you appear to expect. You will get quiet possession of your house, it is
+true, for I have put a Cerberus in it, that is quite equal to his task,
+difficult as it may be, and who has quite as much relish for a bill of
+costs, as any squatter can have for a trespass; but without some such
+guardian of your rights, I would not answer for it, that you would not be
+compelled to sleep in the highway."</p>
+
+<p>"I trust Sir George Templemore knows how to make allowances for Mr. John
+Effingham's pictures," cried Grace, unable to refrain from expressing her
+discontent any longer.</p>
+
+<p>A laugh succeeded, and the beauties of the river again attracted their
+attention. As the boat continued to ascend, Mr. Effingham triumphantly
+affirmed that the appearance of things more than equalled his
+expectations, while both Eve and the baronet declared that a succession of
+lovelier landscapes could hardly be presented to the eye.</p>
+
+<p>"Whited sepulchres!" muttered John Effingham--"all outside. Wait until
+you get a view of the deformity within."</p>
+
+<p>As the boat approached Albany, Eve expressed her satisfaction in still
+stronger terms; and Grace was made perfectly happy, by hearing her and Sir
+George declare that the place entirely exceeded their expectations.</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad to find, Eve, that you are so fast recovering your American
+feelings," said her beautiful cousin, after one of those expressions of
+agreeable disappointment, as they were seated at a late dinner, in an inn.
+"You have at last found words to praise the exterior of Albany; and I
+hope, by the time we return, you will be disposed to see New-York with
+different eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"I expected to see a capital in New-York, Grace, and in this I have been
+grievously disappointed. Instead of finding the tastes, tone,
+conveniences, architecture, streets, churches, shops, and society of a
+capital, I found a huge expansion of common-place things, a commercial
+town, and the most mixed and the least regulated society, that I had ever
+met with. Expecting so much, where so little was found, disappointment was
+natural. But in Albany, although a political capital, I knew the nature of
+the government too well, to expect more than a provincial town; and in
+this respect, I have found one much above the level of similar places in
+other parts of the world. I acknowledge that Albany has as much exceeded
+my expectations in one sense, as New-York has fallen short of them in
+another."</p>
+
+<p>"In this simple fact, Sir George Templemore," said Mr. Effingham, "you may
+read the real condition of the country. In all that requires something
+more than usual, a deficiency; in all that is deemed an average, better
+than common. The tendency is to raise every thing that is elsewhere
+degraded to a respectable height, when there commences an attraction of
+gravitation that draws all towards the centre; a little closer too than
+could be wished perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, ay, Ned; this is very pretty, with your attractions and gravitations;
+but wait and judge for yourself of this average, of which you now speak so
+complacently.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, John, I borrowed the image from you; if it be not accurate, I shall
+hold you responsible for its defects."</p>
+
+<p>"They tell me," said Eve, "that all American villages are the towns in
+miniature; children dressed in hoops and wigs. Is this so, Grace?"</p>
+
+<p>"A little; there is too much desire to imitate the towns, perhaps, and
+possibly too little feeling for country life."</p>
+
+<p>"This is a very natural consequence, after all, of people's living
+entirely in such places," observed Sir George Templemore. "One sees much
+of this on the continent of Europe, because the country population is
+purely a country population; and less of it in England, perhaps, because
+those who are at the head of society, consider town and country as very
+distinct things."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>La campagne est vraiment d&eacute;licieuse en Am&eacute;rique</i>," exclaimed
+Mademoiselle Viefville, in whose eyes the whole country was little more
+than <i>campagne</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning, our travellers proceeded by the way of Schenectady,
+whence they ascended the beautiful valley of the Mohawk, by means of a
+canal-boat, the cars that now rattle along its length not having commenced
+their active flights, at that time. With the scenery, every one was
+delighted; for while it differed essentially from that the party had
+passed through the previous day, it was scarcely less beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>At a point where the necessary route diverged from the direction of the
+canal, carriages of Mr. Effingham's were in readiness to receive the
+travellers, and here they were also favoured by the presence of Mr. Bragg,
+who fancied such an attention might be agreeable to the young ladies, as
+well as to his employer.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Chapter IX.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>  "Tell me, where is fancy bred--<br />
+Or in the heart, or in the head?<br />
+How begot, how nourished?"</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>  SONG IN SHAKSPEARE.</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>The travellers were several hours ascending into the mountains, by a
+country road that could scarcely be surpassed by a French wheel-track of
+the same sort, for Mademoiselle Viefville protested, twenty times in the
+course of the morning, that it was a thousand pities Mr. Effingham had not
+the privilege of the <i>corv&eacute;e</i>, that he might cause the approach to his
+<i>terres</i> to be kept in better condition. At length they reached the
+summit, a point where the waters began to flow south, when the road became
+tolerably level. From this time their progress became more rapid, and they
+continued to advance two or three hours longer at a steady pace.</p>
+
+<p>Aristabulus now informed his companions that, in obedience to instructions
+from John Effingham, he had ordered the coachmen to take a road that led a
+little from the direct line of their journey, and that they had now been
+travelling for some time on the more ancient route to Templeton.</p>
+
+<p>"I was aware of this," said Mr. Effingham, "though ignorant of the reason.
+We are on the great western turnpike."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, sir, and all according to Mr. John's request. There would have
+been a great saving in distance, and agreeably to my notion, in
+horse-flesh, had we quietly gone down the banks of the lake."</p>
+
+<p>"Jack will explain his own meaning," returned Mr. Effingham, "and he has
+stopped the other carriage, and alighted with Sir George,--a hint, I
+fancy, that we are to follow their example."</p>
+
+<p>Sure enough, the second carriage was now stopped, and Sir George hastened
+to open its door.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. John Effingham, who acts as cicerone," cried the baronet, "insists
+that every one shall put <i>pied &aacute; terre</i> at this precise spot, keeping the
+important reason still a secret, in the recesses of his own bosom."</p>
+
+<p>The ladies complied, and the carriages were ordered to proceed with the
+domestics, leaving the rest of the travellers by themselves, apparently in
+the heart of a forest.</p>
+
+<p>"It is to be hoped, Mademoiselle, there are no banditti in America," said
+Eve, as they looked around them at the novel situation in which they were
+placed, apparently by a pure caprice of her cousin.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Ou des sauvages</i>," returned the governess, who, in spite of her ordinary
+intelligence and great good sense, had several times that day cast uneasy
+and stolen glances into the bits of dark wood they had occasionally
+passed.</p>
+
+<p>"I will ensure your purses and your scalps, <i>mesdames</i>," cried John
+Effingham gaily, "on condition that you will follow me implicitly; and by
+way of pledge for my faith, I solicit the honour of supporting
+Mademoiselle Viefville on this unworthy arm."</p>
+
+<p>The governess laughingly accepted the conditions, Eve took the arm of her
+father, and Sir George offered his to Grace; Aristabulus, to his surprise,
+being left to walk entirely alone. It struck him, however, as so
+singularly improper that a young lady should be supported on such an
+occasion by her own father, that he frankly and gallantly proposed to Mr.
+Effingham to relieve him of his burthen, an offer that was declined with
+quite as much distinctness as it was made.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose cousin Jack has a meaning to his melodrama," said Eve, as they
+entered the forest, "and I dare say, dearest father, that you are behind
+the scenes, though I perceive determined secrecy in your face."</p>
+
+<p>"John may have a cave to show us, or some tree of extraordinary height;
+such things existing in the country."</p>
+
+<p>"We are very confiding, Mademoiselle, for I detect treachery in every face
+around us. Even Miss Van Cortlandt has the air of a conspirator, and seems
+to be in league with something or somebody. Pray Heaven, it be not with
+wolves."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Des loups</i>!" exclaimed Mademoiselle Viefville, stopping short, with a
+mien so alarmed as to excite a general laugh--"<i>est ce qu'il y a des loups
+et des sangliers dans cette for&ecirc;t</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, Mademoiselle," returned her companion--"this is only barbarous
+America, and not civilized France. Were we in <i>le departement de la
+Seine</i>, we might apprehend some such dangers, but being merely in the
+mountains of Otsego, we are reasonably safe."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Je l'esp&egrave;re</i>," murmured the governess, as she reluctantly and
+distrustfully proceeded, glancing her eyes incessantly to the right and
+left. The path now became steep and rather difficult; so much so, indeed,
+as to indispose them all to conversation. It led beneath the branches of
+lofty pines, though there existed, on every side of them, proofs of the
+ravages man had committed in that noble forest. At length they were
+compelled to stop for breath, after having ascended considerably above the
+road they had left.</p>
+
+<p>"I ought to have said that the spot where we entered on this path, is
+memorable in the family history," observed John Effingham, to Eve--"for it
+was the precise spot where one of our predecessors lodged a shot in the
+shoulder of another."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I know precisely where we are!" cried our heroine, "though I cannot
+yet imagine why we are led into this forest, unless it be to visit some
+spot hallowed by a deed of Natty Bumppo's!"</p>
+
+<p>"Time will solve this mystery, as well as all others. Let us proceed."</p>
+
+<p>Again they ascended, and, after a few more minutes of trial, they reached
+a sort of table-land, and drew near an opening in the trees, where a small
+circle had evidently been cleared of its wood, though it was quite small
+and untilled. Eve looked curiously about her, as did all the others to
+whom the place was novel, and she was lost in doubt.</p>
+
+<p>"There seems to be a void beyond us," said the baronet--- "I rather think
+Mr. John Effingham has led us to the verge of a view."</p>
+
+<p>At this suggestion the party moved on in a body, and were well rewarded
+for the toil of the ascent, by a <i>coup d'oeil</i> that was almost Swiss in
+character and beauty.</p>
+
+<p>"Now do I know where we are," exclaimed Eve, clasping her hands in
+rapture--"this is the 'Vision,' and yonder, indeed, is our blessed home!"</p>
+
+<p>The whole artifice of the surprise was exposed, and after the first bursts
+of pleasure had subsided, all to whom the scene was novel felt, that they
+would not have missed this <i>piquante</i> introduction to the valley of the
+Susquehannah, on any account. That the reader may understand the cause of
+so much delight, and why John Effingham had prepared this scene for his
+friends, we shall stop to give a short description of the objects that
+first met the eyes of the travellers.</p>
+
+<p>It is known that they were in a small open spot in a forest, and on the
+verge of a precipitous mountain. The trees encircled them on every side
+but one, and on that lay the panorama, although the tops of tall pines,
+that grew in lines almost parallel to the declivity, rose nearly to a
+level with the eye. Hundreds of feet beneath them, directly in front, and
+stretching leagues to the right, was a lake embedded in woods and hills.
+On the side next the travellers, a fringe of forest broke the line of
+water; tree tops that intercepted the view of the shores; and on the
+other, high broken hills, or low mountains rather, that were covered with
+farms, beautifully relieved by patches of wood, in a way to resemble the
+scenery of a vast park, or a royal pleasure ground, limited the landscape.
+High valleys lay among these uplands, and in every direction comfortable
+dwellings dotted the fields. The contrast between the dark hues of the
+evergreens, with which all the heights near the water were shaded, was in
+soft contrast to the livelier green of the other foliage, while the
+meadows and pastures were luxuriant with a verdure unsurpassed by that of
+England. Bays and points added to the exquisite outline of the glassy lake
+on this shore, while one of the former withdrew towards the north-west, in
+a way to leave the eye doubtful whether it was the termination of the
+transparent sheet or not. Towards the south, bold, varied, but cultivated
+hills, also bounded the view, all teeming with the fruits of human labour,
+and yet all relieved by pieces of wood, in the way already mentioned, so
+as to give the entire region the character of park scenery. A wide, deep,
+even valley, commenced at the southern end of the lake, or nearly opposite
+to the stand of our travellers, and stretched away south, until concealed
+by a curvature in the ranges of the mountains. Like all the mountain-tops,
+this valley was verdant, peopled, wooded in places, though less abundantly
+than the hills, and teeming with the signs of life. Roads wound through
+its peaceful retreats, and might be traced working their way along the
+glens, and up the weary ascents of the mountains, for miles, in every
+direction.</p>
+
+<p>At the northern termination of this lovely valley, and immediately on the
+margin of the lake, lay the village of Templeton, immediately under the
+eyes of the party. The distance, in an air line, from their stand to the
+centre of the dwellings, could not be much less than a mile, but the air
+was so pure, and the day so calm, that it did not seem so far. The
+children and even the dogs were seen running about the streets, while the
+shrill cries of boys at their gambols, ascended distinctly to the ear.</p>
+
+<p>As this was the Templeton of the Pioneers, and the progress of society
+during half a century is connected with the circumstance, we shall give
+the reader a more accurate notion of its present state, than can be
+obtained from incidental allusions. We undertake the office more readily
+because this is not one of those places that shoot up in a day, under the
+unnatural efforts of speculation, or which, favoured by peculiar
+advantages in the way of trade, becomes a precocious city, while the
+stumps still stand in its streets; but a sober county town, that has
+advanced steadily, <i>pari passu</i> with the surrounding country, and offers a
+fair specimen of the more regular advancement of the whole nation, in its
+progress towards civilization.</p>
+
+<p>The appearance of Templeton, as seen from the height where it is now
+exhibited to the reader, was generally beautiful and map-like. There might
+be a dozen streets, principally crossing each other at right-angles,
+though sufficiently relieved from this precise delineation, to prevent a
+starched formality. Perhaps the greater part of the buildings were painted
+white, as is usual in the smaller American towns; though a better taste
+was growing in the place, and many of the dwellings had the graver and
+chaster hues of the grey stones of which they were built. A general air of
+neatness and comfort pervaded the place, it being as unlike a continental
+European town, south of the Rhine, in this respect, as possible, if indeed
+we except the picturesque bourgs of Switzerland. In England, Templeton
+would be termed a small market-town, so far as size was concerned; in
+France, a large <i>bourg</i>; while in America it was, in common parlance, and
+legal appellation, styled a village.</p>
+
+<p>Of the dwellings of the place, fully twenty were of a quality that denoted
+ease in the condition of their occupants, and bespoke the habits of those
+accustomed to live in a manner superior to the <i>oi polloi</i> of the human
+race. Of these, some six or eight had small lawns, carriage sweeps, and
+the other similar appliances of houses that were not deemed unworthy of
+the honour of bearing names of their own. No less than five little
+steeples, towers, or belfries, for neither word is exactly suitable to the
+architectural prodigies we wish to describe, rose above the roofs,
+denoting the sites of the same number of places of worship; an American
+village usually exhibiting as many of these proofs of liberty of
+conscience--<i>caprices of conscience</i> would perhaps be a better term--as
+dollars and cents will by any process render attainable. Several light
+carriages, such as were suitable to a mountainous country, were passing to
+and fro in the streets; and, here and there, a single-horse vehicle was
+fastened before the door of a shop, or a lawyer's office, denoting the
+presence of some customer, or client, from among the adjacent hills.</p>
+
+<p>Templeton was not sufficiently a thoroughfare to possess one of those
+monstrosities, a modern American tavern, or a structure whose roof should
+overtop that of all its neighbours. Still its inns were of respectable
+size, well piazzaed, to use a word of our own invention, and quite enough
+frequented.</p>
+
+<p>Near the centre of the place, in grounds of rather limited extent, still
+stood that model of the composite order, which owed its existence to the
+combined knowledge and taste, in the remoter ages of the region, of Mr.
+Richard Jones and Mr. Hiram Doolittle. We will not say that it had been
+modernized, for the very reverse was the effect, in appearance at least;
+but, it had since undergone material changes, under the more instructed
+intelligence of John Effingham.</p>
+
+<p>This building was so conspicuous by position and size, that as soon as
+they had taken in glimpses of the entire landscape, which was not done
+without constant murmurs of pleasure, every eye became fastened on it, as
+the focus of interest. A long and common silence denoted how general was
+this feeling, and the whole party took seats on stumps and fallen trees
+before a syllable was uttered, after the building had attracted their
+gaze. Aristabulus alone permitted his look to wander, and he was curiously
+examining the countenance of Mr. Effingham, near whom he sate, with a
+longing to discover whether the expression was that of approbation, or of
+disapprobation, of the fruits of his cousin's genius.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. John Effingham has considerably regenerated and revivified, not to
+say transmogrified, the old dwelling," he said, cautiously using terms
+that might have his own opinion of the changes doubtful. "The work of his
+hand has excited some speculation, a good deal of inquiry, and a little
+conversation, throughout the country. It has almost produced an
+excitement!"</p>
+
+<p>"As my house came to me from my father," said Mr. Effingham, across whose
+mild and handsome face a smile was gradually stealing, "I knew its
+history, and when called on for an explanation of its singularities, could
+refer all to the composite order. But, you, Jack, have supplanted all
+this, by a style of your own, for which I shall be compelled to consult
+the authorities for explanations."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you dislike my taste, Ned?--To my eye, now, the structure has no bad
+appearance from this spot!"</p>
+
+<p>"Fitness and comfort are indispensable requisites for domestic
+architecture, to use your own argument. Are you quite sure that yonder
+castellated roof, for instance, is quite suited to the deep snows of these
+mountains?"</p>
+
+<p>John Effingham whistled, and endeavoured to look unconcerned, for he well
+knew that the very first winter had demonstrated the unsuitableness of his
+plans for such a climate. He had actually felt disposed to cause the whole
+to be altered privately, at his own expense; but, besides feeling certain
+his cousin would resent a liberty that inferred his indisposition to pay
+for his own buildings, he had a reluctance to admit, in the face of the
+whole country, that he had made so capital a mistake, in a branch of art
+in which he prided himself rather more than common; almost as much as his
+predecessor in the occupation, Mr. Richard Jones.</p>
+
+<p>"If you are not pleased with your own dwelling, Ned," he answered, "you
+can have, at least, the consolation of looking at some of your neighbours'
+houses, and of perceiving that they are a great deal worse off. Of all
+abortions of this sort, to my taste, a Grecian abortion is the worst--mine
+is only Gothic, and that too, in a style so modest, that I should think it
+might pass unmolested."</p>
+
+<p>It was so unusual to see John Effingham on the defensive, that the whole
+party smiled, while Aristabulus who stood in salutary fear of his caustic
+tongue, both smiled and wondered.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, do not mistake me, John," returned the proprietor of the edifice
+under discussion--"it is not your <i>taste</i> that I call in question, but
+your provision against the seasons. In the way of mere outward show, I
+really think you deserve high praise, for you have transformed a very ugly
+dwelling into one that is almost handsome, in despite of proportions and
+the necessity of regulating the alterations by prescribed limits. Still, I
+think, there is a little of the composite left about even the exterior."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope, cousin Jack, you have not innovated on the interior," cried Eve;
+"for I think I shall remember that, and nothing is more pleasant than the
+<i>cattism</i> of seeing objects that you remember in childhood--pleasant, I
+mean, to those whom the mania of mutation has not affected."</p>
+
+<p>"Do not be alarmed, Miss Effingham," replied her kinsman, with a
+pettishness of manner that was altogether extraordinary, in a man whose
+mien, in common, was so singularly composed and masculine; "you will find
+all that you knew, when a kitten, in its proper place. I could not rake
+together, again, the ashes of Queen Dido, which were scattered to the four
+winds of Heaven, I fear; nor could I discover a reasonably good bust of
+Homer; but respectable substitutes are provided, and some of them have the
+great merit of puzzling all beholders to tell to whom they belong, which I
+believe was the great characteristic of most of Mr. Jones's invention."</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad to see, cousin Jack, that you have, at least, managed to give a
+very respectable 'cloud-colour' to the whole house."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, it lay between that and an invisible green," the gentleman answered,
+losing his momentary spleen in his natural love of the ludicrous--"but
+finding that the latter would be only too conspicuous in the droughts that
+sometimes prevail in this climate, I settled down into the yellowish drab,
+that is, indeed, not unlike some of the richer volumes of the clouds."</p>
+
+<p>"On the whole, I think you are fairly entitled, as Steadfast Dodge,
+Esquire, would say, to 'the meed of our thanks.'"</p>
+
+<p>"What a lovely spot!" exclaimed Mr. Effingham, who had already ceased to
+think of his own dwelling, and whose eye was roaming over the soft
+landscape, athwart which the lustre of a June noontide was throwing its
+richest glories. "This is truly a place where one might fancy repose and
+content were to be found for the evening of a troubled life."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, I have seldom looked upon a more bewitching scene," answered the
+baronet. "The lakes of Cumberland will scarce compete with this!"</p>
+
+<p>"Or that of Brienz, or Lungeren, or Nemi," said Eve, smiling in a way that
+the other understood to be a hit at his nationality.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>C'est charmant!</i>" murmured Mademoiselle Viefville. "<i>On pense &agrave;
+l'&eacute;ternit&eacute;, dans une telle calme!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"The farm you can see lying near yonder wood, Mr. Effingham," coolly
+observed Aristabulus, "sold last spring for thirty dollars the acre, and
+was bought for twenty, the summer-before!"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Chacun &agrave; son gout!</i>" said Eve.</p>
+
+<p>"And yet, I fear, this glorious scene is marred by the envy, rapacity,
+uncharitableness, and all the other evil passions of man!" continued the
+more philosophical Mr. Effingham. "Perhaps, it were better as it was so
+lately, when it lay in the solitude and peace of the wilderness, the
+resort of birds and beasts."</p>
+
+<p>"Who prey on each other, dearest father, just as the worst of our own
+species prey on their fellows."</p>
+
+<p>"True, child--true. And yet, I never gaze on one of these scenes of holy
+calm, without wishing that the great tabernacle of nature might be
+tenanted only by those who have a feeling for its perfection."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you see the lady," said Aristabulus, "that is just coming out on the
+lawn, in front of the 'Wig-wam?'" for that was the name John Effingham had
+seen fit to give the altered and amended abode. "Here, Miss Effingham,
+more in a line with the top of the pine beneath us."</p>
+
+<p>"I see the person you mean; she seems to be looking in this direction."</p>
+
+<p>"You are quite right, miss; she knows that we are to stop on the Vision,
+and no doubt sees us. That lady is your father's cook, Miss Effingham, and
+is thinking of the late breakfast that has been ordered to be in readiness
+against our arrival."</p>
+
+<p>Eve concealed her amusement, for, by this time, she had discovered that
+Mr. Bragg had a way peculiar to himself, or at least to his class, of
+using many of the commoner words of the English language. It would perhaps
+be expecting too much of Sir George Templemore, not to expect him to
+smile, on such an occasion.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" exclaimed Aristabulus, pointing towards the lake, across which
+several skiffs were stealing, some in one direction, and some in another,
+"there is a boat out, that I think must contain the poet."</p>
+
+<p>"Poet!" repeated John Effingham. "Have we reached that pass at Templeton?"</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, Mr. John Effingham, you must have very contracted notions of the
+place, if you think a poet a great novelty in it. Why, sir, we have
+caravans of wild beasts, nearly every summer!"</p>
+
+<p>"This is, indeed, a step in advance, of which I was ignorant. Here then,
+in a region, that so lately was tenanted by beasts of prey, beasts are
+already brought as curiosities. You perceive the state of the country in
+this fact, Sir George Templemore."</p>
+
+<p>"I do indeed; but I should like to hear from Mr Bragg, what sort of
+animals are in these caravans?"</p>
+
+<p>"All sorts, from monkeys to elephants. The last had a rhinoceros."</p>
+
+<p>"Rhinoceros!--Why there was but one, lately, in all Europe. Neither the
+Zoological Gardens, nor the <i>Jardin des Plantes</i>, had a rhinoceros! I
+never saw but one, and that was in a caravan at Rome, that travelled
+between St. Petersburgh and Naples."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, we have rhinoceroses here;--and monkeys, and zebras, and
+poets, and painters, and congressmen, and bishops, and governors, and all
+other sorts of creatures."</p>
+
+<p>"And who may the particular poet be, Mr. Bragg," Eve asked, "who honours
+Templeton, with his presence just at this moment?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is more than I can tell you, miss, for, though some eight or ten of
+us have done little else than try to discover his name for the last week,
+we have not got even as far as that one fact. He and the gentleman who
+travels with him, are both uncommonly close on such matters, though I
+think we have some as good catechisers in Templeton, as can be found any
+where within fifty miles of us!"</p>
+
+<p>"There is another gentleman with him--do you suspect them both of being
+poets?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, Miss, the other is the waiter of the poet; that we know, as he
+serves him at dinner, and otherwise superintends his concerns; such as
+brushing his clothes, and keeping his room in order."</p>
+
+<p>"This is being in luck for a poet, for they are of a class that are a
+little apt to neglect the decencies. May I ask why you suspect the master
+of being a poet, if the man be so assiduous?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what else can he be? In the first place, Miss Effingham, he has no
+name."</p>
+
+<p>"That is a reason in point," said John Effingham "very few poets having
+names."</p>
+
+<p>"Then he is out on the lake half his time, gazing up at the 'Silent
+Pine,' or conversing with the 'Speaking Rocks,' or drinking at the 'Fairy
+Spring.'"</p>
+
+<p>"All suspicious, certainly; especially the dialogue with the rocks; though
+not absolutely conclusive."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Mr. John Effingham, the man does not take his food like other
+people. He rises early, and is out on the water, or up in the forest, all
+the morning, and then returns to eat his breakfast in the middle of the
+forenoon; he goes into the woods again, or on the lake, and comes back to
+dinner, just as I take my tea."</p>
+
+<p>"This settles the matter. Any man who presumes to do all this, Mr. Bragg,
+deserves to be called by some harder name, even, than that of a poet.
+Pray, sir, how long has this eccentric person been a resident of
+Templeton?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hist--there he is, as I am a sinner; and it was not he and the other
+gentlemen that were in the boat."</p>
+
+<p>The rebuked manner of Aristabulus, and the dropping of his voice, induced
+the whole party to look in the direction of his eye, and, sure enough, a
+gentleman approached them, in the dress a man of the world is apt to
+assume in the country, an attire of itself that was sufficient to attract
+comment in a place where the general desire was to be as much like town as
+possible, though it was sufficiently neat and simple. He came from the
+forest, along the table-land that crowned the mountain for some distance,
+following one of the foot-paths that the admirers of the beautiful
+landscape have made all over that pleasant wood. As he came out into the
+cleared spot, seeing it already in possession of a party, he bowed, and
+was passing on, with a delicacy that Mr. Bragg would be apt to deem
+eccentric, when suddenly stopping, he gave a look of intense and eager
+interest at the whole party, smiled, advanced rapidly nearer, and
+discovered his entire person.</p>
+
+<p>"I ought not to be surprised," he said, as he advanced so near as to
+render doubt any longer impossible, "for I knew you were expected, and
+indeed waited for your arrival, and yet this meeting has been so
+unexpected as to leave me scarcely in possession of my faculties."</p>
+
+<p>It is needless to dwell upon the warmth and number of the greetings. To
+the surprise of Mr. Bragg, his poet was not only known, but evidently much
+esteemed by all the party, with the exception of Miss Van Cortlandt, to
+whom he was cordially presented by the name of Mr. Powis. Eve managed, by
+an effort of womanly pride, to suppress the violence of her emotions, and
+the meeting passed off as one of mutual surprise and pleasure, without any
+exhibition of unusual feeling to attract comment.</p>
+
+<p>"We ought to express our wonder at finding you here before us, my dear
+young friend," said Mr. Effingham, still holding Paul's hand
+affectionately between his own; "and, even now, that my own eyes assure me
+of the fact, I can hardly believe you would arrive at New-York, and quit
+it, without giving us the satisfaction of seeing you."</p>
+
+<p>"In that, sir, you are not wrong; certainly nothing could have deprived me
+of that pleasure, but the knowledge that it would not have been agreeable
+to yourselves. My sudden appearance here, however, will be without
+mystery, when I tell you that I returned from England, by the way of
+Quebec, the Great Lakes, and the Falls, having been induced by my friend
+Ducie to take that route, in consequence of his ship's being sent to the
+St. Lawrence. A desire for novelty, and particularly a desire to see the
+celebrated cataract, which is almost <i>the</i> lion of America, did the rest."</p>
+
+<p>"We are glad to have you with us on any terms, and I take it as
+particularly kind, that you did not pass my door. You have been here some
+days?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite a week. On reaching Utica I diverged from the great route to see
+this place, not anticipating the pleasure of meeting you here so early;
+but hearing you were expected, I determined to remain, with a hope, which
+I rejoice to find was not vain, that you would not be sorry to see an old
+fellow-traveller again."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Effingham pressed his hands warmly again, before he relinquished them;
+an assurance of welcome that Paul received with thrilling satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been in Templeton almost long enough," the young man resumed,
+laughing, "to set up as a candidate for the public favour, if I rightly
+understand the claims of a denizen. By what I can gather from casual
+remarks, the old proverb that 'the new broom sweeps clean' applies with
+singular fidelity throughout all this region.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you a copy of your last ode, or a spare epigram, in your pocket?"
+inquired John Effingham.</p>
+
+<p>Paul looked surprised, and Aristabulus, for a novelty, was a little
+dashed. Paul looked surprised, as a matter of course, for, although he had
+been a little annoyed by the curiosity that is apt to haunt a village
+imagination, since his arrival in Templeton, he did not in the least
+suspect that his love of a beautiful nature had been imputed to devotion
+to the muses. Perceiving, however, by the smiles of those around him, that
+there was more meant than was expressed, he had the tact to permit the
+explanation to come from the person who had put the question, if it were
+proper it should come at all.</p>
+
+<p>"We will defer the great pleasure that is in reserve," continued John
+Effingham, "to another time. At present, it strikes me that the lady of
+the lawn is getting to be impatient, and the <i>d&eacute;jeuner &agrave; la fourchette</i>,
+that I have had the precaution to order, is probably waiting our
+appearance. It must be eaten, though under the penalty of being thought
+moon-struck rhymers by the whole State. Come, Ned; if you are sufficiently
+satisfied with looking at the Wigwam in a bird's-eye view, we will descend
+and put its beauties to the severer test of a close examination."</p>
+
+<p>This proposal was readily accepted, though all tore themselves from that
+lovely spot with reluctance, and not until they had paused to take another
+look.</p>
+
+<p>"Fancy the shores of this lake lined with villas." said Eve,
+"church-towers raising their dark heads among these hills; each mountain
+crowned with a castle, or a crumbling ruin, and all the other accessories
+of an old state of society, and what would then be the charms of the
+view!"</p>
+
+<p>"Less than they are to-day, Miss Effingham," said Paul Powis; "for though
+poetry requires--you all smile, is it forbidden to touch on such
+subjects?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all, so it be done in wholesome rhymes," returned the baronet.
+"You ought to know that you are expected even to speak in doggerel."</p>
+
+<p>Paul ceased, and the whole party walked away from the place, laughing and
+light-hearted.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Chapter X.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>  "It is the spot, I came to seek,<br />
+My father's ancient burial place--</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>  "It is the spot--I know it well,<br />
+Of which our old traditions tell."</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>  BRYANT.</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>From the day after their arrival in New-York, or that on which the account
+of the arrests by the English cruiser had appeared in the journals, little
+had been said by any of our party concerning Paul Powis, or of the
+extraordinary manner in which he had left the packet, at the very moment
+she was about to enter her haven. It is true that Mr. Dodge, arrived at
+Dodgeopolis, had dilated on the subject in his hebdomadal, with divers
+additions and conjectures of his own, and this, too, in a way to attract,
+a good deal of attention in the interior; but, it being a rule with those
+who are supposed to dwell at the fountain of foreign intelligence, not to
+receive any thing from those who ought not to be better informed than
+themselves, the Effinghams and their friends had never heard of his
+account of the matter.</p>
+
+<p>While all thought the incident of the sudden return extraordinary, no one
+felt disposed to judge the young man harshly. The gentlemen knew that
+military censure, however unpleasant, did not always imply moral
+unworthiness; and as for the ladies, they retained too lively a sense of
+his skill and gallantry, to wish to imagine evil on grounds so slight and
+vague. Still, it had been impossible altogether to prevent the obtrusion
+of disagreeable surmises, and all now sincerely rejoiced at seeing their
+late companion once more among them, seemingly in a state of mind that
+announced neither guilt nor degradation.</p>
+
+<p>On quitting the mountain, Mr. Effingham, who had a tender regard for
+Grace, offered her his arm as he would have given it to a second daughter,
+leaving Eve to the care of John Effingham. Sir George attended to
+Mademoiselle Viefville, and Paul walked by the side of our heroine and her
+cousin, leaving Aristabulus to be what he himself called a "miscellaneous
+companion;" or, in other words, to thrust himself into either set, as
+inclination or accident might induce. Of course the parties conversed as
+they walked, though those in advance would occasionally pause to say a
+word to those in the rear; and, as they descended, one or two changes
+occurred to which we may have occasion to allude.</p>
+
+<p>"I trust you have had pleasant passages," said John Effingham to Paul, as
+soon as they were separated in the manner just mentioned. "Three trips
+across the Atlantic in so short a time would be hard duty to a landsman,
+though you, as a sailor, will probably think less of it."</p>
+
+<p>"In this respect I have been fortunate; the Foam, as we know from
+experience, being a good traveller, and Ducie is altogether a fine fellow
+and an agreeable messmate. You know I had him for a companion both going
+and coming."</p>
+
+<p>This was said naturally; and, while it explained so little directly, it
+removed all unpleasant uncertainty, by assuring his listeners that he had
+been on good terms at least, with the person who had seemed to be his
+pursuer. John Effingham, too, well understood that no one messed with the
+commander of a vessel of war, in his own ship, who was, in any way,
+thought to be an unfit associate.</p>
+
+<p>"You have made a material circuit to reach us, the distance by Quebec
+being nearly a fourth more than the direct road."</p>
+
+<p>"Ducie desired it so strongly, that I did not like to deny him. Indeed, he
+made it a point, at first, to obtain permission to land me at New-York,
+where he had found me, as he said; but to this I would not listen, as I
+feared it might interfere with his promotion, of which he stood so good a
+chance, in consequence of his success in the affair of the money. By
+keeping constantly before the eyes of his superiors, on duty of interest,
+I thought his success would be more certain."</p>
+
+<p>"And has his government thought his perseverance in the chase worthy of
+such a reward?"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed it has. He is now a post, and all owing to his good luck and
+judgment in that affair; though in his country, rank in private life does
+no harm to one in public life."</p>
+
+<p>Eve liked the emphasis that Paul laid on "his country," and she thought
+the whole remark was made in a spirit that an Englishman would not be apt
+to betray.</p>
+
+<p>"Has it ever occurred to you," continued John Effingham, "that our sudden
+and unexpected separation, has caused a grave neglect of duty in me, if
+not in both of us?"</p>
+
+<p>Paul looked surprised, and, by his manner, he demanded an explanation.</p>
+
+<p>"You may remember the sealed package of poor Mr. Monday, that we were to
+open together on our arrival in New-York, and on the contents of which, we
+were taught to believe depended the settling of some important private
+rights. I gave that package to you, at the moment it was received, and, in
+the hurry of leaving us, you overlooked the circumstance."</p>
+
+<p>"All very true, and to my shame I confess that, until this instant, the
+affair has been quite forgotten by me. I had so much to occupy my mind
+while in England, that it was not likely to be remembered, and then the
+packet itself has scarce been in my possession since the day I left you,"</p>
+
+<p>"It is not lost, I trust!" said John Effingham quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Surely not--it is safe, beyond a question, in the writing-desk in which I
+deposited it. But the moment we got to Portsmouth, Ducie and myself
+proceeded to London together, and, as soon as he had got through at the
+Admiralty, we went into Yorkshire, where we remained, much occupied with
+private matters of great importance to us both, while his ship was docked;
+and then it became necessary to make sundry visits to our relations--"</p>
+
+<p>"Relations!" repeated Eve involuntarily, though she did not cease to
+reproach herself for the indiscretion, during the rest of the walk.</p>
+
+<p>"Relations--" returned Paul, smiling. "Captain Ducie and myself are
+cousins-german, and we made pilgrimages together, to sundry family
+shrines. This duty occupied us until a few days before we sailed for
+Quebec. On reaching our haven, I left the ship to visit the great lakes
+and Niagara, leaving most of my effects with Ducie, who has promised to
+bring them on with himself, when he followed on my track, as he expected
+soon to do, on his way to the West Indies, where he is to find a frigate.
+He owed me this attention, as he insisted, on account of having induced
+me to go so far out of my way, with so much luggage, to oblige him. The
+packet is, unluckily, left behind with the other things."</p>
+
+<p>"And do you expect Captain Ducie to arrive in this country soon?--The
+affair of the packet ought not to be neglected much longer, for a promise
+to a dying man is doubly binding, as it appeals to all our generosity.
+Rather than neglect the matter much longer, I would prefer sending a
+special messenger to Quebec."</p>
+
+<p>"That will be quite unnecessary, as, indeed, it would be useless. Ducie
+left Quebec yesterday, and has sent his and my effects direct to New-York,
+under the care of his own steward. The writing-case, containing other
+papers that are of interest to us both, he has promised not to lose sight
+of, but it will accompany him on the same tour, as that I have just made;
+for, he wishes to avail himself of this opportunity to see Niagara and the
+lakes, also: he is now on my track, and will notify me by letter of the
+day he will be in Utica, in order that we may meet on the line of the
+canal, near this place, and proceed to New-York, in company."</p>
+
+<p>His companions listened to this brief statement with an intense interest,
+with which the packet of poor Mr. Monday, however, had very little
+connection. John Effingham called to his cousin, and, in a few words,
+stated the circumstances as they had just been related to himself, without
+adverting to the papers of Mr. Monday, which was an affair that he had
+hitherto kept to himself.</p>
+
+<p>"It will be no more than a return of civility, if we invite Captain Ducie
+to diverge from his road, and pass a few days with us, in the mountains,"
+he added. "At what precise time do you expect him to pass, Powis?"</p>
+
+<p>"Within the fortnight. I feel certain he would be glad to pay his
+respects to this party, for he often expressed his sincere regrets at
+having been employed on a service that exposed the ladies to so much peril
+and delay."</p>
+
+<p>"Captain Ducie is a near kinsman of Mr. Powis, dear father," added Eve, in
+a way to show her parent, that the invitation would be agreeable to
+herself, for Mr. Effingham was so attentive to the wishes of his daughter,
+as never to ask a guest to his house, that he thought would prove
+disagreeable to its mistress.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall do myself the pleasure to write to Captain Ducie, this evening,
+urging him to honour us with his company," returned Mr. Effingham. "We
+expect other friends in a few days, and I hope he will not find his time
+heavy on his hands, while in exile among us. Mr. Powis will enclose my
+note in one of his letters, and will, I trust, second the request by his
+own solicitations."</p>
+
+<p>Paul made his acknowledgments, and the whole party proceeded, though the
+interruption caused such a change in the <i>figure</i> of the promenade, as to
+leave the young man the immediate escort of Eve. The party, by this time,
+had not only reached the highway, but it had again diverged from it, to
+follow the line of an old and abandoned wheel-track, that descended the
+mountain, along the side of the declivity, by a wilder and more perilous
+direction than suited a modern enterprise; it having been one of those
+little calculated and rude roads, that the first settlers of a country are
+apt to make, before there are time and means to investigate and finish to
+advantage. Although much more difficult and dangerous than its successor,
+as a highway, this relic of the infant condition of the country was by far
+the most retired and beautiful; and pedestrians continued to use it, as a
+common foot-path to the Vision. The seasons had narrowed its surface, and
+the second growth had nearly covered it with their branches, shading it
+like an arbour; and Eve expressed her delight with its wildness and
+boldness, mingled, as both were, with so pleasant a seclusion, as they
+descended along a path as safe and convenient as a French <i>all&eacute;e</i>.
+Glimpses were constantly obtained of the lake and the village, while they
+proceeded; and altogether, they who were strangers to the scenery, were
+loud in its praises.</p>
+
+<p>"Most persons, who see this valley for the first time," observed
+Aristabulus, "find something to say in its favour; for my part, I consider
+it as rather curious myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Curious!" exclaimed Paul; "that gentleman is, at least, singular in the
+choice of his expressions."</p>
+
+<p>"You have met him before to-day," said Eve, laughing, for Eve was now in a
+humour to laugh at trifles. "This we know, since he had prepared us to
+meet a poet, where we only find an old friend."</p>
+
+<p>"Only, Miss Effingham!--Do you estimate poets so high, and old friends so
+low?"</p>
+
+<p>"This extraordinary person, Mr. Aristabulus Bragg, really deranges all
+one's notions and opinions in such a manner, as to destroy even the usual
+signification of words, I believe. He seems so much in, and yet so much
+out of his place; is both so <i>rus&eacute;</i>, and so unpractised; so unfit for what
+he is, and so ready at every thing, that I scarcely know how to apply
+terms in any matter with which he has the smallest connection. I fear he
+has persecuted you since your arrival in Templeton?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all; I am so much acquainted with men of his cast, that I have
+acquired a tact in managing them. Perceiving that he was disposed to
+suspect me of a disposition to 'poetize the lake,' to use his own term, I
+took care to drop a couple of lines, roughly written off, like a hasty and
+imperfect effusion, where I felt sure he would find them, and have been
+living for a whole week on the fame thereof."</p>
+
+<p>"You do indulge in such tastes, then?" said Eve smiling a little saucily.</p>
+
+<p>"I am as innocent of such an ambition, as of wishing to marry the heiress
+of the British throne, which, I believe, just now, is the goal of all the
+Icaruses of our own time. I am merely a rank plagiarist--for the rhyme, on
+the fame of which I have rioted for a glorious week, was two lines of
+Pope's, an author so effectually forgotten in these palmy days of
+literature, in which all knowledge seems so condensed into the productions
+of the last few years, that a man might almost pass off an entire classic
+for his own, without the fear of detection. It was merely the first
+couplet of the Essay on Man, which, fortunately, having an allusion to the
+'pride of Kings,' would pass for original, as well as excellent, in
+nineteen villages in twenty in America, in these piping times of
+ultra-republicanism. No doubt Mr. Bragg thought a eulogy on the 'people'
+was to come next, to be succeeded by a glorious picture of Templeton and
+its environs."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know that I ought to admit these hits at liberty from a
+foreigner," said Eve, pretending to look graver than she felt; for never
+before, in her life, had our heroine so strong a consciousness of
+happiness, as she had experienced that very morning.</p>
+
+<p>"Foreigner, Miss Effingham!--And why a foreigner?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, you know your own pretended cosmopolitism; and ought not the cousin
+of Captain Ducie to be an Englishman?"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall not answer for the <i>ought</i>, the simple fact being a sufficient
+reply to the question. The cousin of Captain Ducie is <i>not</i> an Englishman;
+nor, as I see you suspect, has he ever served a day in the British navy,
+or in any other navy than that of his native land."</p>
+
+<p>"This is indeed taking us by surprise, and that most agreeably," returned
+Eve, looking up at him with undisguised pleasure, while a bright glow
+crimsoned her face. "We could not but feel an interest in one who had so
+effectually served us; and both my father and Mr. John Effingham----"</p>
+
+<p>"Cousin Jack--" interrupted the smiling Paul.</p>
+
+<p>"Cousin Jack, then, if you dislike the formality I used; both my father
+and cousin Jack examined the American navy registers for your name,
+without success, as I understood, and the inference that followed was fair
+enough, I believe you will admit."</p>
+
+<p>"Had they looked at a register of a few years' date, they would have met
+with better luck. I have quitted the service, and am a sailor only in
+recollections. For the last few years, like yourselves, I have been a
+traveller by land as well as by water."</p>
+
+<p>Eve said no more, though every syllable that the young man uttered was
+received by attentive ears, and retained with a scrupulous fidelity of
+memory. They walked some distance in silence, until they reached the
+grounds of a house that was beautifully placed on the side of the
+mountain, near a lovely wood of pines. Crossing these grounds, until they
+reached a terrace in front of the dwelling, the village of Templeton lay
+directly in their front, perhaps a hundred feet beneath them, and yet so
+near, as to render the minutest object distinct. Here they all stopped to
+take a more distinct view of a place that had so much interest with most
+of the party.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you are sufficiently acquainted with the localities to act as
+cicerone," said Mr. Effingham to Paul. "In a visit of a week to this
+village, you have scarcely overlooked the Wigwam."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I ought to hesitate, or rather ought to blush to own it,"
+answered the young man, discharging the latter obligation by colouring to
+his temples; "but curiosity has proved so much stronger than manners, that
+I have been induced to trespass so far on the politeness of this
+gentleman, as to gain an admission to your dwelling, in and about which
+more of my time has been passed than has probably proved agreeable to its
+inmates."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope the gentleman will not speak of it," said Aristabulus. "In this
+country, we live pretty much in common, and with me it is a rule, when a
+gentleman drops in, whether stranger or neighbour, to show him the
+civility to ask him to take off his hat."</p>
+
+<p>"It appears to me," said Eve, willing to change the conversation, "that
+Templeton has an unusual number of steeples; for what purpose can so small
+a place possibly require so many buildings of that nature?"</p>
+
+<p>"All in behalf of orthodoxy, Miss Eve," returned Aristabulus, who
+conceived himself to be the proper person to answer such interrogatories.
+"There is a shade of opinion beneath every one of those steeples."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean, sir, that there are as many shades of faith in Templeton, as
+I now see buildings that have the appearance of being devoted to religious
+purposes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Double the number, Miss, and some to spare, in the bargain; for you see
+but five meeting-houses, and the county-buildings, and we reckon seven
+regular hostile denominations in the village, besides the diversities of
+sentiment on trifles. This edifice that you perceive here, in a line with
+the chimneys of the first house, is New St. Paul's, Mr. Grant's old
+church, as orthodox a house, in its way, as there is in the diocese, as
+you may see by the windows. This is a gaining concern, though there has
+been some falling off of late, in consequence of the clergyman's having
+caught a bad cold, which has made him a little hoarse; but I dare say he
+will get over it, and the church ought not to be abandoned on that
+account, serious as the matter undoubtedly is, for the moment. A few of us
+are determined to back up New St. Paul's in this crisis, and I make it a
+point to go there myself, quite half the time."</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad we have so much of your company," said Mr. Effingham "for that
+is our own church, and in it my daughter was baptized. But, do you divide
+your religious opinions in halves, Mr. Bragg?"</p>
+
+<p>"In as many parts, Mr. Effingham, as there are denominations in the
+neighbourhood, giving a decided preference to New St. Paul's,
+notwithstanding, under the peculiar circumstances, particularly to the
+windows. The dark, gloomy-looking building, Miss, off in the distance,
+yonder, is the Methodist affair, of which not much need be said; Methodism
+flourishing but little among us since the introduction of the New Lights,
+who have fairly managed to out-excite them, on every plan they can invent.
+I believe, however, they stick pretty much to the old doctrine, which, no
+doubt, is one great reason of their present apathetic state; for the
+people do love novelties."</p>
+
+<p>"Pray, sir, what building is this nearly in a line with New St. Paul's,
+and which resembles it a little, in colour and form?"</p>
+
+<p>"Windows excepted; it has two rows of regular square-topped windows, Miss,
+as you may observe. That is the First Presbyterian, or the old standard; a
+very good house, and a pretty good faith, too, as times go. I make it a
+point to attend there, at least once every fortnight; for change is
+agreeable to the nature of man. I will say, Miss, that my preference, so
+far as I have any, however, is for New St. Paul's, and I have experienced
+considerable regrets, that these Presbyterians have gained a material
+advantage over us, in a very essential point, lately."</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry to hear this, Mr. Bragg; for, being an Episcopalian myself,
+and having great reliance on the antiquity and purity of my church, I
+should be sorry to find it put in the wrong by any other."</p>
+
+<p>"I fear we must give that point up, notwithstanding, for these
+Presbyterians have entirely outwitted the church people in that matter."</p>
+
+<p>"And what is the point in which we have been so signally worsted?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Miss, their new bell weighs quite a hundred more than that of New
+St. Paul's, and has altogether the best sound. I know very well that this
+advantage will not avail them any thing to boast of, in the last great
+account; but it makes a surprising difference in the state of probation.
+You see the yellowish looking building across the valley, with a heavy
+wall around it, and a belfry? That, in its regular character, is the
+county court-house, and gaol; but, in the way of religion, it is used
+pretty much miscellaneously."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean, really, sir, that divine service is ever actually performed
+in it, or that persons of all denominations are occasionally tried there?"</p>
+
+<p>"It would be truer to say that all denominations occasionally try the
+court-house," said Aristabulus, simpering; "for I believe it has been used
+in this way by every shade of religion short of the Jews. The Gothic tower
+in wood, is the building of the Universalists; and the Grecian edifice,
+that is not yet painted, the Baptists. The Quakers, I believe, worship
+chiefly at home, and the different shades of the Presbyterians meet, in
+different rooms, in private houses, about the place."</p>
+
+<p>"Are there then shades of difference in the denominations, as well as all
+these denominations?" asked Eve, in unfeigned surprise; "and this, too, in
+a population so small?"</p>
+
+<p>"This is a free county, Miss Eve, and freedom loves variety. 'Many men,
+many minds.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite true, sir," said Paul; "but here are many minds among few men. Nor
+is this all; agreeably to your own account, some of these men do not
+exactly know their own minds. But, can you explain to us what essential
+points are involved in all these shades of opinion?"</p>
+
+<p>"It would require a life, sir, to understand the half of them. Some say
+that excitement is religion, and others, that it is contentment. One set
+cries up practice, and another cries out against it. This man maintains
+that he will be saved if he does good, and that man affirms that if he
+only does good, he will be damned; a little evil is necessary to
+salvation, with one shade of opinion, while another thinks a man is never
+so near conversion as when he is deepest in sin."</p>
+
+<p>"Subdivision is the order of the day," added John Effingham; "every county
+is to be subdivided that there may be more county towns, and county
+offices; every religion decimated, that there may be a greater variety and
+a better quality of saints."</p>
+
+<p>Aristabulus nodded his head, and he would have winked, could he have
+presumed to take such a liberty with a man he held as much in habitual
+awe, as John Effingham.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Monsieur</i>," inquired Mademoiselle Viefville, "is there no <i>&eacute;glise</i>, no
+<i>v&eacute;ritable &eacute;glise</i>, in Templeton?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, Madame, several," returned Aristabulus, who would as soon think
+of admitting that he did not understand the meaning of <i>v&eacute;ritable &eacute;glise</i>,
+as one of the sects he had been describing would think of admitting that
+it was not infallible in its interpretation of Christianity--"several; but
+they are not be seen from this particular spot."</p>
+
+<p>"How much more picturesque would it be, and even christian-like in
+appearance, at least," said Paul, could these good people consent to unite
+in worshipping God!--and how much does it bring into strong relief, the
+feebleness and ignorance of man, when you see him splitting hairs about
+doctrines, under which he has been told, in terms as plain as language can
+make it, that he is simply required to believe in the goodness and power
+of a Being whose nature and agencies exceed his comprehension."</p>
+
+<p>"All very true," cried John Effingham, "but what would become of liberty
+of conscience in such a case? Most men, now-a-days, understand by faith, a
+firm reliance on their own opinions!"</p>
+
+<p>"In that case, too," put in Aristabulus, "we should want this handsome
+display of churches to adorn our village. There is good comes of it; for
+any man would be more likely to invest in a place that has five churches,
+than in a place with but one. As it is, Templeton has as beautiful a set
+of churches as any village I know."</p>
+
+<p>"Say, rather, sir, a set of castors; for a stronger resemblance to
+vinegar-cruets and mustard-pots, than is borne by these architectural
+prodigies, eye never beheld."</p>
+
+<p>"It is, nevertheless, a beautiful thing, to see the high pointed roof of
+the house of God, crowning an assemblage of houses, as one finds it in
+other countries," said Eve, "instead of a pile of tavern, as is too much
+the case in this dear home of ours."</p>
+
+<p>When this remark was uttered, they descended the step that led from the
+terrace, and proceeded towards the village. On reaching the gate of the
+Wigwam, the whole party stood confronted with that offspring of John
+Effingham's taste; for so great had been his improvements on the original
+production of Hiram Doolittle, that externally, at least, that
+distinguished architect could no longer have recognized the fruits of his
+own talents.</p>
+
+<p>"This is carrying out to the full, John, the conceits of the composite
+order," observed Mr. Effingham, drily.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be sorry, Ned, if you dislike your house, as it is amended and
+corrected."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear cousin Jack," cried Eve, "it is an odd jumble of the Grecian and
+Gothic. One would like to know your authorities for such a liberty."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think of the <i>fa&ccedil;ade</i> of the cathedral of Milan, Miss,"
+laying emphasis on the last words, in imitation of the manner of Mr.
+Bragg. "Is it such a novelty to see the two styles blended; or is
+architecture so pure in America, that you think I have committed the
+unpardonable sin."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, nothing that is out of rule ought to strike one, in a country where
+imitation governs in all things immaterial, and originality unsettles all
+things sacred and dear."</p>
+
+<p>"By way of punishment for that bold speech, I wish I had left the old
+rookery in the state I found it, that its beauties might have greeted your
+eyes, instead of this uncouth pile, which seems so much to offend them.
+Mademoiselle Viefville, permit me to ask how you like that house?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mais, c'est un petit chateau</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Un ch&acirc;teau, Effinghamis&eacute;,</i>" said Eve, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Effinghamis&eacute; si vous voulez, ma ch&egrave;re; pourtant c'est un ch&acirc;teau</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"The general opinion in this part of the country is," said Aristabulus,
+"that Mr. John Effingham has altered the building on the plan of some
+edifice of Europe, though I forget the name of the particular temple; it
+is not, however, the Parthenon, nor the temple of Minerva."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope, at least," said Mr. Effingham, leading the way up a little lawn,
+"it will not turn out to be the Temple of the Winds."</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Chapter XI.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>  "Nay, I'll come; if I lose a scruple of this sport, let me be oiled to
+  death with melancholy."--SHAKSPEARE.</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>The progress of society in America, has been distinguished by several
+peculiarities that do not so properly belong to the more regular and
+methodical advances of civilization in other parts of the world. On the
+one hand, the arts of life, like Minerva, who was struck out of the
+intellectual being of her father at a blow, have started full-grown into
+existence, as the legitimate inheritance of the colonists, while, on the
+other, every thing tends towards settling down into a medium, as regards
+quality, a consequence of the community-character of the institutions.
+Every thing she had seen that day, had struck Eve as partaking of this
+mixed nature, in which, while nothing was vulgar, little even approached
+to that high standard, that her European education had taught her to
+esteem perfect. In the Wigwam, however, as her father's cousin had seen
+fit to name the family dwelling, there was more of keeping, and a closer
+attention to the many little things she had been accustomed to consider
+essential to comfort and elegance, and she was better satisfied with her
+future home, than with most she had seen since her return to America.</p>
+
+<p>As we have described the interior of this house, in another work, little
+remains to be said on the subject, at present; for, while John Effingham
+had completely altered its external appearance, its internal was not much
+changed. It is true, the cloud-coloured covering had disappeared, as had
+that stoop also, the columns of which were so nobly upheld by their
+super-structure; the former having given place to a less obtrusive roof,
+that was regularly embattled, and the latter having been swallowed up by a
+small entrance tower, that the new architect had contrived to attach to
+the building with quite as much advantage to it, in the way of comfort, as
+in the way of appearance. In truth, the Wigwam had none of the more
+familiar features of a modern American dwelling of its class. There was
+not a column about it, whether Grecian, Roman, or Egyptian; no Venetian
+blinds; no verandah or piazza; no outside paint, nor gay blending of
+colours. On the contrary, it was a plain old structure, built with great
+solidity, and of excellent materials, and in that style of respectable
+dignity and propriety, that was perhaps a little more peculiar to our
+fathers than it is peculiar to their successors, our worthy selves. In
+addition to the entrance tower, or porch, on its northern front, John
+Effingham had also placed a prettily devised conceit on the southern, by
+means of which the abrupt transition from an inner room to the open air
+was adroitly avoided. He had, moreover, removed the "firstly" of the
+edifice, and supplied its place with a more suitable addition that
+contained some of the offices, while it did not disfigure the building, a
+rare circumstance in an architectural after-thought.</p>
+
+<p>Internally, the Wigwam had gradually been undergoing improvements, ever
+since that period, which, in the way of the arts, if not in the way of
+chronology, might be termed the dark ages of Otsego. The great hall had
+long before lost its characteristic decoration of the severed arm of Wolf,
+a Gothic paper that was better adapted to the really respectable
+architecture of the room being its substitute; and even the urn that was
+thought to contain the ashes of Queen Dido, like the pitcher that goes
+often to the well, had been broken in a war of extermination that had been
+carried on against the cobwebs by a particularly notable housekeeper. Old
+Homer, too, had gone the way of all baked clay. Shakspeare, himself, had
+dissolved into dust, "leaving not a wreck behind;" and of Washington and
+Franklin, even, indigenous as they were, there remained no vestiges.
+Instead of these venerable memorials of the past, John Effingham, who
+retained a pleasing recollection of their beauties as they had presented
+themselves to his boyish eyes, had bought a few substitutes in a New-York
+shop, and <i>a</i> Shakspeare, and <i>a</i> Milton, and <i>a</i> C&aelig;sar, and <i>a</i> Dryden,
+and <i>a</i> Locke, as the writers of heroic so beautifully express it, were
+now seated in tranquil dignity on the old medallions that had held their
+illustrious predecessors. Although time had, as yet, done little for this
+new collection in the way of colour, dust and neglect were already
+throwing around them the tint of antiquity.</p>
+
+<p>"The lady," to use the language of Mr. Bragg, who did the cooking of the
+Wigwam, having every thing in readiness, our party took their seats at the
+breakfast table, which was spread in the great hall, as soon as each had
+paid a little attention to the <i>toilette</i>. As the service was neither very
+scientific, nor sufficiently peculiar, either in the way of elegance or of
+its opposite quality, to be worthy of notice, we shall pass it over in
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>"One will not quite so much miss European architecture in this house,"
+said Eve, as she took her seat at table, glancing an eye at the spacious
+and lofty room, in which they were assembled; "here is at least size and
+its comforts, if not elegance."</p>
+
+<p>"Had you lost all recollection of this building, my child?" inquired her
+father, kindly; "I was in hopes you would feel some of the happiness of
+returning home, when you again found yourself beneath its roof!"</p>
+
+<p>"I should greatly dislike to have all the antics I have been playing in my
+own dressing-room exposed," returned Eve, rewarding the parental
+solicitude of her father by a look of love, "though Grace, between her
+laughing and her tears, has threatened me with such a disgrace. Ann Sidley
+has also been weeping, and, as even Annette, always courteous and
+considerate, has shed a few tears in the way of sympathy, you ought not to
+imagine that I have been altogether so stoical as not to betray some
+feeling, dear father. But the paroxysm is past, and I am beginning to
+philosophize. I hope, cousin Jack, you have not forgotten that the
+drawing-room is a lady's empire!"</p>
+
+<p>"I have respected your rights, Miss Effingham, though, with a wish to
+prevent any violence to your tastes, I have caused sundry antediluvian
+paintings and engravings to be consigned to the--"</p>
+
+<p>"Garret?" inquired Eve, so quickly as to interrupt the speaker.</p>
+
+<p>"Fire," coolly returned her cousin. "The garret is now much too good for
+them; that part of the house being converted into sleeping-rooms for the
+maids. Mademoiselle Annette would go into hysterics, were she to see the
+works of art, that satisfied the past generation of masters in this
+country, in too close familiarity with her Louvre-ized eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Point du tout, monsieur</i>," said Mademoiselle Viefville, innocently;
+"<i>Annette a du gout dans son metier sans doute</i>, but she is too well bred
+to expect <i>impossibilit&eacute;s.</i> No doubt she would have conducted herself with
+decorum."</p>
+
+<p>Every body laughed, for much light-heartedness prevailed at that board,
+and the conversation continued.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be satisfied if Annette escape convulsions," Eve added, "a
+refined taste being her weakness; and, to be frank, what I recollect of
+the works you mention, is not of the most flattering nature."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet," observed Sir George, "nothing has surprised me more than the
+respectable state of the arts of engraving and painting in this country.
+It was unlooked for, and the pleasure has probably been in proportion to
+the surprise."</p>
+
+<p>"In that you are very right, Sir George Templemore," John Effingham
+answered; "but the improvement is of very recent date. He who remembers an
+American town half a century ago, will see a very different thing in an
+American town of to-day; and this is equally true of the arts you mention,
+with the essential difference that the latter are taking a right direction
+under a proper instruction, while the former are taking a wrong direction,
+under the influence of money, that has no instruction. Had I left much of
+the old furniture, or any of the old pictures in the Wigwam, we should
+have had the bland features of Miss Effingham in frowns, instead of
+bewitching smiles, at this very moment."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet I have seen fine old furniture in this country, cousin Jack."</p>
+
+<p>"Very true; though not in this part of it. The means of conveyance were
+wanting half a century since, and few people risk finery of any sort on
+corduroys. This very house had some respectable old things, that were
+brought here by dint of money, and they still remain; but the eighteenth
+century in general, may be set down as a very dark antiquity in all this
+region."</p>
+
+<p>When the repast was over, Mr. Effingham led his guests and daughter
+through the principal apartments, sometimes commending, and sometimes
+laughing, at the conceits of his kinsman. The library was a good sized
+room; good sized at least for a country in which domestic architecture, as
+well as public architecture, is still in the chrysalis state. Its walls
+were hung with an exceedingly pretty gothic paper, in green, but over each
+window was a chasm in the upper border; and as this border supplied the
+arches, the unity of the entire design was broken in no less than four
+places, that being the precise number of the windows. The defect soon
+attracted the eye of Eve, and she was not slow in demanding an
+explanation.</p>
+
+<p>"The deficiency is owing to an American accident," returned her cousin;
+"one of those calamities of which you are fated to experience many, as the
+mistress of an American household. No more of the border was to be bought
+in the country, and this is a land of shops and not of <i>fabricants</i>. At
+Paris, Mademoiselle, one would send to the paper-maker for a supply; but,
+alas! he that has not enough of a thing with us, is as badly off as if he
+had none. We are consumers, and not producers of works of art. It is a
+long way to send to France for ten or fifteen feet of paper hangings, and
+yet this must be done, or my beautiful gothic arches will remain forever
+without their key-stones!"</p>
+
+<p>"One sees the inconvenience of this," observed Sir George--"we feel it,
+even in England, in all that relates to imported things."</p>
+
+<p>"And we, in nearly all things, but food."</p>
+
+<p>"And does not this show that America can never become a manufacturing
+country?" asked the baronet, with the interest an intelligent Englishman
+ever feels in that all-absorbing question. "If you cannot manufacture an
+article as simple as that of paper-hangings, would it not be well to turn
+your attention, altogether, to agriculture?"</p>
+
+<p>As the feeling of this interrogatory was much more apparent than its
+logic, smiles passed from one to the other, though John Effingham, who
+really had a regard for Sir George, was content to make an evasive reply,
+a singular proof of amity, in a man of his caustic temperament.</p>
+
+<p>The survey of the house, on the whole, proved satisfactory to its future
+mistress, who complained, however, that it was furnished too much like a
+town residence.</p>
+
+<p>"For," she added, "you will remember, cousin Jack, that our visits here
+will be something like a <i>villeggiatura</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, my fair lady; it will not be long before your Parisian and
+Roman tastes will be ready to pronounce the whole country a
+<i>villeggiatura!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"This is the penalty, Eve, one pays for being a Hajji," observed Grace,
+who had been closely watching the expression of the others' countenances;
+for, agreeably to her view of things, the Wigwam wanted nothing to render
+it a perfect abode. "The things that <i>we</i> enjoy, <i>you</i> despise."</p>
+
+<p>"That is an argument, my dear coz, that would apply equally well, as a
+reason for preferring brown sugar to white."</p>
+
+<p>"In coffee, certainly, Miss Eve," put in the attentive Aristabulus, who
+having acquired this taste, in virtue of an economical mother, really
+fancied it a pure one. "Every body, in these regions, prefers the brown in
+coffee."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Oh, mon p&egrave;re et ma m&egrave;re, comme je vous en veux,</i>" said Eve, without
+attending to the nice distinctions of Mr. Bragg, which savoured a little
+too much of the neophyte in cookery, to find favour in the present
+company, "<i>comme je vous en veux</i> for having neglected so many beautiful
+sites, to place this building in the very spot it occupies."</p>
+
+<p>"In that respect, my child, we may rather be grateful at finding so
+comfortable a house, at all. Compared with the civilization that then
+surrounded it, this dwelling was a palace at the time of its erection;
+bearing some such relation to the humbler structures around it, as the
+<i>ch&acirc;teau</i> bears to the cottage. Remember that brick had never before been
+piled on brick, in the walls of a house, in all this region, when the
+Wigwam was constructed. It is the Temple of Neptune of Otsego, if not of
+all the surrounding counties."</p>
+
+<p>Eve pressed to her lips the hand she was holding in both her own, and they
+all passed out of the library into another room. As they came in front of
+the hall windows, a party of apprentice-boys were seen coolly making their
+arrangements to amuse themselves with a game of ball, on the lawn directly
+in front of the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Surely, Mr. Bragg," said the owner of the Wigwam, with more displeasure
+in his voice than was usual for one of his regulated mind, "you do not
+countenance this liberty?"</p>
+
+<p>"Liberty, sir!--I am an advocate for liberty wherever I can find it. Do
+you refer to the young men on the lawn, Mr. Effingham?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly to them, sir; and permit me to say, I think they might have
+chosen a more suitable spot for their sports. They are mistaking
+<i>liberties</i> for liberty I fear."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, sir, I believe they have <i>always</i> played ball in that precise
+locality."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Always</i>!--I can assure you this is a great mistake. What private family,
+placed as we are in the centre of a village, would allow of an invasion of
+its privacy in this rude manner? Well may the house be termed a Wigwam, if
+this whooping is to be tolerated before its door."</p>
+
+<p>"You forget, Ned," said John Effingham, with a sneer, "that an American
+<i>always</i> means just eighteen months. <i>Antiquity</i> is reached in five
+lustres, and the dark ages at the end of a human life. I dare say these
+amiable young gentlemen, who enliven their sports with so many agreeable
+oaths, would think you very unreasonable and encroaching to presume to
+tell them they are unwelcome."</p>
+
+<p>"To own the truth, Mr. John, it <i>would</i> be downright unpopular."</p>
+
+<p>"As I cannot permit the ears of the ladies to be offended with these rude
+brawls, and shall never consent to have grounds that are so limited, and
+which so properly belong to the very privacy of my dwelling, invaded in
+this coarse manner, I beg, Mr. Bragg, that you will, at once, desire these
+young men to pursue their sports somewhere else."</p>
+
+<p>Aristabulus received this commission with a very ill grace; for, while his
+native sagacity told him that Mr. Effingham was right, he too well knew
+the loose habits that had been rapidly increasing in the country during
+the last ten years, not to foresee that the order would do violence to all
+the apprentices' preconceived notions of their immunities; for, as he had
+truly stated, things move at so quick a pace in America, and popular
+feeling is so arbitrary, that a custom of a twelve months' existence is
+deemed sacred, until the public, itself, sees fit to alter it. He was
+reluctantly quitting the party, on his unpleasant duty, when Mr.
+Effingham turned to a servant, who belonged to the place, and bade him go
+to the village barber, and desire him to come to the Wigwam to cut his
+hair; Pierre, who usually performed that office for him, being busied in
+unpacking trunks.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind, Tom," said Aristabulus obligingly, as he took up his hat; "I
+am going into the street, and will give the message to Mr. Lather."</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot think, sir, of employing you on such a duty," hastily interposed
+Mr. Effingham, who felt a gentleman's reluctance to impose an unsuitable
+office on any of his dependants--"Tom, I am sure, will do me the favour."</p>
+
+<p>"Do not name it, my dear sir; nothing makes me happier than to do these
+little errands, and, another time, you can do as much for me."</p>
+
+<p>Aristabulus now went his way more cheerfully, for he determined to go
+first to the barber, hoping that some expedient might suggest itself, by
+means of which he could coax the apprentices from the lawn, and thus
+escape the injury to his popularity, that he so much dreaded. It is true,
+these apprentices were not voters, but then some of them speedily would
+be, and all of them, moreover, had <i>tongues</i>, an instrument Mr. Bragg held
+in quite as much awe as some men dread salt-petre. In passing the
+ball-players, he called out in a wheedling tone to their ringleader, a
+notorious street brawler--</p>
+
+<p>"A fine time for sport, Dickey; don't you think there would be more room
+in the broad street than on this crowded lawn, where you lose your ball so
+often in the shrubbery?"</p>
+
+<p>"This place will do, on a pinch," bawled Dickey--"though it might be
+better. If it warn't for that plagued house, we couldn't ask for a better
+ball-ground."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see," put in another, "what folks built a house just in that
+spot for; it has spoilt the very best play-ground in the village."</p>
+
+<p>"Some people have their notions as well as others," returned Aristabulus;
+"but, gentlemen, if I were in your place, I would try the street; I feel
+satisfied you would find it much the most agreeable and convenient."</p>
+
+<p>The apprentices thought differently, however, or they were indisposed to
+the change; and so they recommenced their yells, their oaths, and their
+game. In the mean while, the party in the house continued their
+examination of John Effingham's improvements; and when this was completed,
+they separated, each to his or her own room.</p>
+
+<p>Aristabulus soon reappeared on the lawn; and, approaching the
+ball-players, he began to execute his commission, as he conceived, in good
+earnest. Instead of simply saying, however, that it was disagreeable to
+the owner of the property to have such an invasion on his privacy, and
+thus putting a stop to the intrusion for the future as well as at the
+present moment, he believed some address necessary to attain the desired
+end.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Dickey," he said, "there is no accounting for tastes; but, in my
+opinion, the street would be a much better place to play ball in than this
+lawn. I wonder gentlemen of your observation should be satisfied with so
+cramped a play-ground!"</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you, Squire Bragg, this will do," roared Dickey; "we are in a
+hurry, and no way particular; the bosses will be after us in half an hour.
+Heave away, Sam."</p>
+
+<p>"There are so many fences hereabouts," continued Aristabulus, with an air
+of indifference; "it's true the village trustees say there <i>shall be no
+ball-playing in the street</i>, but I conclude you don't much mind what
+<i>they</i> think or threaten."</p>
+
+<p>"Let them sue for that, if they like," bawled a particularly amiable
+blackguard, called Peter, who struck his ball as he spoke, quite into the
+principal street of the village. "Who's a trustee, that he should tell
+gentlemen where they are to play ball!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure enough," said Aristabulus, "and, now, by following up that blow, you
+can bring matters to an issue. I think the law very oppressive, and you
+can never have so good an opportunity to bring things to a crisis.
+Besides, it is very aristocratic to play ball among roses and dahlias."</p>
+
+<p>The bait took; for what apprentice--American apprentice, in
+particular--can resist an opportunity of showing how much he considers
+himself superior to the law? Then it had never struck any of the party
+before, that it was vulgar and aristocratic to pursue the sport among
+roses, and one or two of them actually complained that they had pricked
+their fingers, in searching for the ball.</p>
+
+<p>"I know Mr. Effingham will be very sorry to have you go," continued
+Aristabulus, following up his advantage; "but gentlemen cannot always
+forego their pleasures for other folks."</p>
+
+<p>"Who's Mr. Effingham, I would like to know?" cried Joe Wart. "If he wants
+people to play ball on his premises, let him cut down his roses. Come,
+gentlemen, I conform to Squire Bragg, and invite you all to follow me into
+the street."</p>
+
+<p>As the lawn was now evacuated, <i>en masse</i>, Aristabulus proceeded with
+alacrity to the house, and went into the library, where Mr. Effingham was
+patiently waiting his return.</p>
+
+<p>"I am happy to inform you, sir," commenced the ambassador, "that the
+ball-players have adjourned; and as for Mr. Lather, he declines your
+proposition."</p>
+
+<p>"Declines my proposition!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir; he dislikes to come; for he thinks it will be altogether a poor
+operation. His notion is, that if it be worth his while to come up to the
+Wigwam to cut your hair, it may be worth your while to go down to the
+shop, to have it cut. Considering the matter in all its bearings,
+therefore, he concludes he would rather not engage in the transaction at
+all."</p>
+
+<p>"I regret, sir, to have consented to your taking so disagreeable a
+commission, and regret it the more, now I find that the barber is disposed
+to be troublesome."</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all, sir. Mr. Lather is a good man, in his way, and particularly
+neighbourly. By the way, Mr. Effingham, he asked me to propose to let him
+take down your garden fence, in order that he may haul some manure on his
+potato patch, which wants it dreadfully, he says."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, sir. I cannot possibly object to his hauling his manure, even
+through this house, should he wish it. He is so very valuable a citizen,
+and one who knows his own business so well, that I am only surprised at
+the moderation of his request."</p>
+
+<p>Here Mr. Effingham rose, rang the bell for Pierre, and went to his own
+room, doubting, in his own mind, from all that he had seen, whether this
+was really the Templeton he had known in his youth, and whether he was in
+his own house or not.</p>
+
+<p>As for Aristabulus, who saw nothing out of rule, or contrary to his own
+notions of propriety, in what had passed, he hurried off to tell the
+barber, who was so ignorant of the first duty of his trade, that he was at
+liberty to pull down Mr. Effingham's fence, in order to manure his own
+potato patch.</p>
+
+<p>Lest the reader should suppose we are drawing caricatures, instead of
+representing an actual condition of society, it may be necessary to
+explain that Mr. Bragg was a standing candidate for popular favour; that,
+like Mr. Dodge, he considered every thing that presented itself in the
+name of the public, as sacred and paramount, and that so general and
+positive was his deference for majorities, that it was the bias of his
+mind to think half-a-dozen always in the right, as opposed to one,
+although that one, agreeably to the great decision of the real majority of
+the entire community, had not only the law on his side, but all the
+abstract merits of the disputed question. In short, to such a pass of
+freedom had Mr. Bragg, in common with a large class of his countrymen,
+carried his notions, that he had really begun to imagine liberty was all
+means and no end.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Chapter XII.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>  "In sooth, thou wast in very gracious fooling last night, when thou
+  spokest of Pigrogromotus, of the Vapians passing the equinoctial of
+  Queubus; 't was very good i' faith."--SIR ANDREW AGUE-CHEEK.</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>The progress of society, it has just been said, in what is termed a "new
+country," is a little anomalous. At the commencement of a settlement,
+there is much of that sort of kind feeling and mutual interest, which men
+are apt to manifest towards each other, when they are embarked in an
+enterprise of common hazards. The distance that is unavoidably inseparable
+from education, habits and manners, is lessened by mutual wants and mutual
+efforts; and the gentleman, even while he may maintain his character and
+station, maintains them with that species of good-fellowship and
+familiarity, that marks the intercourse between the officer and the
+soldier, in an arduous campaign. Men, and even women, break bread
+together, and otherwise commingle, that, in different circumstances, would
+be strangers; the hardy adventures and rough living of the forest,
+apparently lowering the pretensions of the man of cultivation and mere
+mental resources, to something very near the level of those of the man of
+physical energy, and manual skill. In this rude intercourse, the parties
+meet, as it might be, on a sort of neutral ground, one yielding some of
+his superiority, and the other laying claims to an outward show of
+equality, that he secretly knows, however, is the result of the peculiar
+circumstances in which he is placed. In short, the state of society is
+favourable to the claims of mere animal force, and unfavourable to those
+of the higher qualities.</p>
+
+<p>This period may be termed, perhaps, the happiest of the first century of a
+settlement. The great cares of life are so engrossing and serious, that
+small vexations are overlooked, and the petty grievances that would make
+us seriously uncomfortable in a more regular state of society, are taken
+as matters of course, or laughed at as the regular and expected incidents
+of the day. Good-will abounds; neighbour comes cheerfully to the aid of
+neighbour; and life has much of the reckless gaiety, careless association,
+and buoyant merriment of childhood. It is found that they who have passed
+through this probation, usually look back to it with regret, and are fond
+of dwelling on the rude scenes and ridiculous events that distinguish the
+history of a new settlement, as the hunter is known to pine for the
+forest.</p>
+
+<p>To this period of fun, toil, neighbourly feeling and adventure, succeeds
+another, in which society begins to marshal itself, and the ordinary
+passions have sway. Now it is, that we see the struggles for place, the
+heart-burnings and jealousies of contending families, and the influence of
+mere money. Circumstances have probably established the local superiority
+of a few beyond all question, and the conditioese serves as a goal
+for the rest to aim at. The learned professions, the ministry included, or
+what, by courtesy, are so called, take precedence, as a matter of course,
+next to wealth, however, when wealth is at all supported by appearances.
+Then commence those gradations of social station, that set institutions at
+defiance, and which as necessarily follow civilization, as tastes and
+habits are a consequence of indulgence.</p>
+
+<p>This is, perhaps, the least inviting condition of society that belongs to
+any country that can claim to be free and removed from barbarism. The
+tastes are too uncultivated to exercise any essential influence; and when
+they do exist, it is usually with the pretension and effort that so
+commonly accompany infant knowledge. The struggle is only so much the more
+severe, in consequence of the late <i>p&egrave;le m&egrave;le</i>, while men lay claim to a
+consideration that would seem beyond their reach, in an older and more
+regulated community. It is during this period that manners suffer the
+most, since they want the nature and feeling of the first condition, while
+they are exposed to the rudest assaults of the coarse-minded and vulgar;
+for, as men usually defer to a superiority that is long established, there
+being a charm about antiquity that is sometimes able to repress the
+passions, in older communities the marshalling of time quietly regulates
+what is here the subject of strife.</p>
+
+<p>What has just been said, depends on a general and natural principle,
+perhaps; but the state of society we are describing has some features
+peculiar to itself. The civilization of America, even in its older
+districts, which supply the emigrants to the newer regions, is unequal;
+one state possessing a higher level than another. Coming as it does, from
+different parts of this vast country, the population of a new settlement,
+while it is singularly homogenous for the circumstances, necessarily
+brings with it its local peculiarities. If to these elements be added a
+sprinkling of Europeans of various nations and conditions, the effects of
+the commingling, and the temporary social struggles that follow, will
+occasion no surprise.</p>
+
+<p>The third and last condition of society in a "new country," is that in
+which the influence of the particular causes enumerated ceases, and men
+and things come within the control of more general and regular laws. The
+effect, of course, is to leave the community possession of a civilization
+that conforms to that of the whole region, be it higher or be it lower,
+and with the division into castes that are more or less rigidly
+maintained, according to circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>The periods, as the astronomers call the time taken in a celestial
+revolution, of the two first of these epochs in the history of a
+settlement, depend very much on its advancement in wealth and in numbers.
+In some places, the pastoral age, or that of good fellowship, continues
+for a whole life, to the obvious retrogression of the people, in most of
+the higher qualities, but to their manifest advantage, however, in the
+pleasures of the time being; while, in others, it passes away rapidly,
+like the buoyant animal joys, that live their time, between fourteen and
+twenty.</p>
+
+<p>The second period is usually of longer duration, the migratory habits of
+the American people keeping society more unsettled than might otherwise
+prove to be the case. It may be said never to cease entirely until the
+great majority of the living generation are natives of the region, knowing
+no other means of comparison than those under which they have passed their
+days. Even when this is the case, there is commonly so large an infusion
+of the birds of passage, men who are adventurers in quest of advancement,
+and who live without the charities of a neighbourhood, as they may be said
+almost to live without a home, that there is to be found, for a long time,
+a middle state of society, during which it may well be questioned whether
+a community belongs to the second or to the third of the periods named.</p>
+
+<p>Templeton was properly in this equivocal condition, for while the third
+generation of the old settlers were in active life, so many passers-by
+came and went, that the influence of the latter nearly neutralized that of
+time and the natural order of things. Its population was pretty equally
+divided between the descendants of the earlier inhabitants, and those who
+flitted like swallows and other migratory birds. All of those who had
+originally entered the region in the pride of manhood, and had been active
+in converting the wilderness into the abodes of civilized men, if they had
+not been literally gathered to their fathers, in a physical sense had been
+laid, the first of their several races, beneath those sods that were to
+cover the heads of so many of their descendants. A few still remained
+among those who entered the wilderness in young manhood, but the events of
+the first period we have designated, and which we have imperfectly
+recorded in another work, were already passing into tradition. Among these
+original settlers some portion of the feeling that had distinguished their
+earliest communion with their neighbours yet continued, and one of their
+greatest delights was to talk of the hardships and privations of their
+younger days, as the veteran loves to discourse of his marches, battles,
+scars, and sieges. It would be too much to say that these persons viewed
+the more ephemeral part of the population with distrust, for their
+familiarity with changes accustomed them to new faces; but they had a
+secret inclination for each other, preferred those who could enter the
+most sincerely into their own feelings, and naturally loved that communion
+best, where they found the most sympathy. To this fragment of the
+community belonged nearly all there was to be found of that sort of
+sentiment which is connected with locality; adventure, with them,
+supplying the place of time; while the natives of the spot, wanting in the
+recollections that had so many charms for their fathers, were not yet
+brought sufficiently within the influence of traditionary interest, to
+feel that hallowed sentiment in its proper force. As opposed in feeling to
+these relics of the olden time, were the birds of passage so often named,
+a numerous and restless class, that, of themselves, are almost sufficient
+to destroy whatever there is of poetry, or of local attachment, in any
+region where they resort.</p>
+
+<p>In Templeton and its adjacent district, however, the two hostile
+influences might be said to be nearly equal, the descendants of the
+fathers of the country beginning to make a manly stand against the looser
+sentiment, or the want of sentiment, that so singularly distinguishes the
+migratory bands. The first did begin to consider the temple in which their
+fathers had worshipped more hallowed than strange altars; the sods that
+covered their fathers' heads more sacred than the clods that were upturned
+by the plough; and the places of their childhood and childish sports
+dearer than the highway trodden by a nameless multitude.</p>
+
+<p>Such, then, were the elements of the society into which we have now
+ushered the reader, and with which it will be our duty to make him better
+acquainted, as we proceed in the regular narration of the incidents of our
+tale.</p>
+
+<p>The return of the Effinghams, after so long an absence, naturally produced
+a sensation in so small a place, and visiters began to appear in the
+Wigwam as soon as propriety would allow. Many false rumours prevailed,
+quite as a matter of course; and Eve, it was reported, was on the point of
+being married to no less than three of the inmates of her father's house,
+within the first ten days, viz: Sir George Templemore, Mr. Powis, and Mr.
+Bragg; the latter story taking its rise in some precocious hopes that had
+escaped the gentleman himself, in the "excitement" of helping to empty a
+bottle of bad Breton wine, that was dignified with the name of champagne.
+But these tales revived and died so often, in a state of society in which
+matrimony is so general a topic with the young of the gentler sex, that
+they brought with them their own refutation.</p>
+
+<p>The third day, in particular, after the arrival of our party, was a
+reception day at the Wigwam; the gentlemen and ladies making it a point to
+be at home and disengaged, after twelve o'clock, in order to do honour to
+their guests. One of the first who made his appearance was a Mr. Howel, a
+bachelor of about the same age as Mr. Effingham, and a man of easy
+fortune and quiet habits. Nature had done more towards making Mr. Howel a
+gentleman, than either cultivation or association; for he had passed his
+entire life, with very immaterial exceptions, in the valley of Templeton,
+where, without being what could be called a student, or a scholar, he had
+dreamed away his existence in an indolent communication with the current
+literature of the day. He was fond of reading, and being indisposed to
+contention, or activity of any sort, his mind had admitted the impressions
+of what he perused, as the stone receives a new form by the constant fall
+of drops of water. Unfortunately for Mr. Howel, he understood no language
+but his mother tongue; and, as all his reading was necessarily confined to
+English books, he had gradually, and unknown to himself, in his moral
+nature at least, got to be a mere reflection of those opinions,
+prejudices, and principles, if such a word can properly be used for such a
+state of the mind, that it had suited the interests or passions of England
+to promulgate by means of the press. A perfect <i>bonne foi</i> prevailed in
+all his notions; and though a very modest man by nature, so very certain
+was he that his authority was always right, that he was a little apt to be
+dogmatical on such points as he thought his authors appeared to think
+settled. Between John Effingham and Mr. Howel, there were constant
+amicable skirmishes in the way of discussion; for, while the latter was so
+dependent, limited in knowledge by unavoidable circumstances, and disposed
+to an innocent credulity, the first was original in his views, accustomed
+to see and think for himself, and, moreover, a little apt to estimate his
+own advantages at their full value.</p>
+
+<p>"Here comes our good neighbour, and my old school-fellow, Tom Howel." said
+Mr. Effingham, looking out at a window, and perceiving the person
+mentioned crossing the little lawn in front of the house, by following a
+winding foot-path--"as kind-hearted a man, Sir George Templemore, as
+exists; one who is really American, for he has scarcely quitted the county
+half-a-dozen times in his life, and one of the honestest fellows of my
+acquaintance."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," put in John Effingham, "as real an American as any man can be, who
+uses English spectacles for all he looks at, English opinions for all he
+says, English prejudices for all he condemns, and an English palate for
+all he tastes. American, quotha! The man is no more American than the
+Times' newspaper, or Charing Cross! He actually made a journey to New-York
+last war, to satisfy himself with his own eyes that a Yankee frigate had
+really brought an Englishman into port."</p>
+
+<p>"His English predilections will be no fault in my eyes," said the baronet,
+smiling--"and I dare say we shall be excellent friends."</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure Mr. Howel is a very agreeable man," added Grace--"of all in
+your Templeton <i>c&ocirc;terie</i>, he is my greatest favourite."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I foresee a tender intimacy between Templemore and Howel," rejoined
+John Effingham; "and sundry wordy wars between the latter and Miss
+Effingham."</p>
+
+<p>"In this you do me injustice, cousin Jack. I remember Mr. Howel well, and
+kindly; for he was ever wont to indulge my childish whims, when a girl."</p>
+
+<p>"The man is a second Burchell, and, I dare say never came to the Wigwam
+when you were a child, without having his pockets stuffed with cakes, or
+<i>bonbons</i>."</p>
+
+<p>The meeting was cordial, Mr. Howel greeting the gentlemen like a warm
+friend, and expressing great delight at the personal improvements that had
+been made in Eve, between the ages of eight and twenty. John Effingham was
+no more backward than the others, for he, too, liked their simple-minded,
+kind-hearted, but credulous neighbour.</p>
+
+<p>"You are welcome back--you are welcome back," added Mr. Howel, blowing
+his nose, in order to conceal the tears that were gathering in his eyes.
+"I did think of going to New-York to meet you, but the distance at my time
+of life is very serious. Age, gentlemen, seems to be a stranger to you."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet we, who are both a few months older than yourself, Howel,"
+returned Mr. Effingham, kindly, "have managed to overcome the distance you
+have just mentioned, in order to come and see <i>you!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, you are great travellers, gentlemen, very great travellers, and are
+accustomed to motion.--Been quite as far as Jerusalem, I hear!"</p>
+
+<p>"Into its very gates, my good friend; and I wish, with all my heart, we
+had had you in our company. Such a journey might cure you of the
+home-malady."</p>
+
+<p>"I am a fixture, and never expect to look upon the ocean, now. I did, at
+one period of my life, fancy such an event might happen, but I have
+finally abandoned all hope on that subject. Well, Miss Eve, of all the
+countries in which you have dwelt, to which do you give the preference?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think Italy is the general favourite," Eve answered, with a friendly
+smile; "although there are some agreeable things peculiar to almost every
+country."</p>
+
+<p>"Italy!--Well, that astonishes me a good deal! I never knew there was any
+thing particularly interesting about Italy! I should have expected <i>you</i>
+to say, England."</p>
+
+<p>"England is a fine country, too, certainly; but it wants many things that
+Italy enjoys."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, what?" said Mr. Howel, shifting his legs from one knee to the
+other, in order to be more convenient to listen, or, if necessary, to
+object. "What <i>can</i> Italy possess, that England does not enjoy in a still
+greater degree?"</p>
+
+<p>"Its recollections, for one thing, and all that interest which time and
+great events throw around a region."</p>
+
+<p>"And is England wanting in recollections and great events? Are there not
+the Conqueror? or, if you will, King Alfred? and Queen Elizabeth, and
+Shakspeare--think of Shakspeare, young lady--and Sir Walter Scott, and the
+Gun-Powder Plot; and Cromwell, Oliver Cromwell, my dear Miss Eve; and
+Westminster Abbey, and London Bridge, and George IV., the descendant of a
+line of real kings,--what, in the name of Heaven, can Italy possess, to
+equal the interest one feels in such things as these?'</p>
+
+<p>"They are very interesting no doubt;" said Eve, endeavouring not to
+smile--"but Italy has its relics of former ages too; you forget the
+C&aelig;sars."</p>
+
+<p>"Very good sort of persons for barbarous times, I dare say, but what can
+they be to the English monarchs? I would rather look upon a <i>bon&acirc; fide</i>
+English king, than see all the C&aelig;sars that ever lived. I never can think
+any man a real king but the king of England!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not King Solomon!" cried John Effingham.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! he was a Bible king, and one never thinks of them. Italy!
+well, this I did not expect from your father's daughter! Your
+great-great-great-grandfather must have been an Englishman born, Mr,
+Effingham?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have reason to think he was, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"And Milton, and Dryden, and Newton, and Locke! These are prodigious
+names, and worth all the C&aelig;sars put together. And Pope, too; what have
+they got in Italy to compare to Pope?"</p>
+
+<p>"They have at least <i>the</i> Pope," said Eve, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"And, then, there are the Boar's Head in East-Cheap; and the Tower; and
+Queen Anne, and all the wits of her reign; and--and--and Titus Oates; and
+Bosworth field; and Smithfield, where the martyrs were burned, and a
+thousand more spots and persons of intense interest in Old England!"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite true," said John Effingham, with an air of sympathy--"but, Howel,
+you have forgotten Peeping Tom of Coventry, and the climate!"</p>
+
+<p>"And Holyrood-House; and York-Minster; and St Paul's;" continued the
+worthy Mr. Howel, too much bent on a catalogue of excellencies, that to
+him were sacred, to heed the interruption, "and, above all, Windsor
+Castle. What is there in the world to equal Windsor Castle as a royal
+residence?"</p>
+
+<p>Want of breath now gave Eve an opportunity to reply, and she seized it
+with an eagerness that she was the first to laugh at herself, afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>"Caserta is no mean house, Mr. Howel; and, in my poor judgment, there is
+more real magnificence in its great stair-case, than in all Windsor Castle
+united, if you except the chapel."</p>
+
+<p>"But, St. Paul's!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, St. Peter's may be set down, quite fairly, I think, for its
+<i>pendant</i> at least."</p>
+
+<p>"True, the Catholics <i>do</i> say so;" returned Mr. Howel, with the
+deliberation one uses when he greatly distrusts his own concession; "but I
+have always considered it one of their frauds. I don't think there <i>can </i>
+be any thing finer than St. Paul's. Then there are the noble ruins of
+England! <i>They</i>, you must admit, are unrivalled."</p>
+
+<p>"The Temple of Neptune, at P&aelig;stum, is commonly thought an interesting
+ruin, Mr. Howel."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, for a <i>temple</i>, I dare say; though I do not remember to have
+ever heard of it before. But no temple can ever compare to a ruined
+<i>abbey</i> /"</p>
+
+<p>"Taste is an arbitrary thing, Tom Howel, as you and I know when as boys we
+quarrelled about the beauty of our ponies," said Mr. Effingham, willing to
+put an end to a discussion that he thought a little premature, after so
+long an absence. "Here are two young friends who shared the hazards of our
+late passage with us, and to whom, in a great degree, we owe our present
+happy security, and I am anxious to make you acquainted with them. This
+is our countryman, Mr. Powis, and this is an English friend, who, I am
+certain, will be happy to know so warm an admirer of his own country--Sir
+George Templemore."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Howel had never before seen a titled Englishman, and he was taken so
+much by surprise that he made his salutations rather awkwardly. As both
+the young men, however, met him with the respectful ease that denotes
+familiarity with the world, he soon recovered his self-possession.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you have brought back with you a sound American heart, Miss Eve,"
+resumed the guest, as soon as this little interruption had ceased. "We
+have had sundry rumours of French Marquisses, and German Barons; but I
+have, all along, trusted too much to your patriotism to believe you would
+marry a foreigner."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you except Englishmen," cried Sir George, gaily: "we are almost
+the same people."</p>
+
+<p>"I am proud to hear you say so, sir. Nothing flatters me more than to be
+thought English; and I certainly should not have accused Miss Effingham of
+a want of love of country, had----"</p>
+
+<p>"She married half-a-dozen Englishmen," interrupted John Effingham, who saw
+that the old theme was in danger of being revived. "But, Howel, you have
+paid me no compliments on the changes in the house. I hope they are to
+your taste."</p>
+
+<p>"A little too French, Mr. John."</p>
+
+<p>"French!--There is not a French feature in the whole animal. What has put
+such a notion into your head?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is the common opinion, and I confess I should like the building better
+were it less continental."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, my old friend, it is a nondescript--original--Effingham upon
+Doolittle, if you will; and, as for models, it is rather more <i>English</i>
+than any thing else."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mr. John, I am glad to hear this, for I do confess to a
+disposition rather to like the house. I am dying to know, Miss Eve, if
+you saw all our distinguished contemporaries when in Europe?--<i>That</i> to
+me, would be one of the greatest delights of travelling!"</p>
+
+<p>"To say that we saw them <i>all</i>, might be too much; though we certainly did
+meet with many."</p>
+
+<p>"Scott, of course."</p>
+
+<p>"Sir Walter we had the pleasure of meeting, a few times, in London."</p>
+
+<p>"And Southey, and Coleridge, and Wordsworth, and Moore, and Bulwer, and
+D'Israeli, and Rogers, and Campbell, and the grave of Byron, and Horace
+Smith, and Miss Landon, and Barry Cornwall, and--"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Cum multis aliis</i>" put in John Effingham, again, by way of arresting the
+torrent of names. "Eve saw many of these, and, as Tubal told Shylock, 'we
+often came where we did hear' of the rest. But you say nothing, friend
+Tom, of Goethe, and Tieck, and Schlegel, and La Martine, Chateaubriant,
+Hugo, Delavigne, Mickiewicz, Nota, Manzoni, Niccolini, &amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c.
+&amp;c."</p>
+
+<p>Honest, well-meaning Mr. Howel, listened to the catalogue that the other
+ran volubly over, in silent wonder; for, with the exception of one or two
+of these distinguished men, he had never even heard of them; and, in the
+simplicity of his heart, unconsciously to himself, he had got to believe
+that there was no great personage still living, of whom he did not know
+something.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, here comes young Wenham, by way of preserving the equilibrium,"
+resumed John Effingham, looking out of a window--"I rather think you must
+have forgotten him, Ned, though you remember his father, beyond question."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Effingham and his cousin went out into the hall to receive the new
+guest, with whom the latter had become acquainted while superintending the
+repairs of the Wigwam.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wenham was the son of a successful lawyer in the county, and, being
+an only child, he had also succeeded to an easy independence. His age,
+however, brought him rather into the generation to which Eve belonged,
+than into that of the father; and, if Mr. Howel was a reflection, or
+rather a continuation, of all the provincial notions that America
+entertained of England forty years ago, Mr. Wenham might almost be said to
+belong to the opposite school, and to be as ultra-American, as his
+neighbour was ultra-British.--If there is <i>lajeune France</i>, there is also
+<i>la jeune Amerique</i>, although the votaries of the latter march with less
+hardy steps than the votaries of the first. Mr. Wenham fancied himself a
+paragon of national independence, and was constantly talking of American
+excellencies, though the ancient impressions still lingered in his moral
+system, as men look askance for the ghosts which frightened their
+childhood on crossing a church-yard in the dark. John Effingham knew the
+<i>penchant </i> of the young man, and when he said that he came happily to
+preserve the equilibrium, he alluded to this striking difference in the
+characters of their two friends.</p>
+
+<p>The introductions and salutations over, we shall resume the conversation
+that succeeded in the drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>"You must be much gratified, Miss Effingham," observed Mr. Wenham, who,
+like a true American, being a young man himself, supposed it <i>de rigueur</i>
+to address a young lady in preference to any other present,--"with the
+great progress made by <i>our</i> country since you went abroad."</p>
+
+<p>Eve simply answered that her extreme youth, when she left home, had
+prevented her from retaining any precise notions on such subjects.</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say it is all very true," she added, "but one, like myself, who
+remembers only older countries, is, I think, a little more apt to be
+struck with the deficiencies, than with what may, in truth, be
+improvements, though they still fall short of excellence."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wenham looked vexed, or indignant would be a better word, but he
+succeeded in preserving his coolness--a thing that is not always easy to
+one of provincial habits and provincial education, when he finds his own
+<i>beau id&eacute;al</i> lightly estimated by others.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Effingham must discover a thousand imperfections." said Mr. Howel,
+"coming, as she does, directly from England. That music, now,"--alluding
+to the sounds of a flute that were heard through the open windows, coming
+from the adjacent village--"must be rude enough to her ear, after the
+music of London."</p>
+
+<p>"The <i>street</i> music of London is certainly among the best, if not the very
+best, in Europe," returned Eve, with a glance of the eye at the baronet,
+that caused him to smile, "and I think this fairly belongs to the class,
+being so freely given to the neighbourhood."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you read the articles signed Minerva, in the Hebdomad, Miss
+Effingham," inquired Mr. Wenham, who was determined to try the young lady
+on a point of sentiment, having succeeded so ill in his first attempt to
+interest her--"they are generally thought to be a great acquisition to
+American literature."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Wenham, you are a fortunate man," interposed Mr. Howel, "if you
+can find any literature in America, to add to, or to substract from.
+Beyond almanacs, reports of cases badly got up, and newspaper verses, I
+know nothing that deserves such a name."</p>
+
+<p>"We may not print on as fine paper, Mr. Howel, or do up the books in as
+handsome binding as other people," said Mr. Wenham, bridling and looking
+grave, "but so far as sentiments are concerned, or sound sense, American
+literature need turn its back on no literature of the day."</p>
+
+<p>"By the way, Mr. Effingham, you were in Russia; did you happen to see the
+Emperor?"</p>
+
+<p>"I had that pleasure, Mr. Howel."</p>
+
+<p>"And is he really the monster we have been taught to believe him?".</p>
+
+<p>"Monster!" exclaimed the upright Mr. Effingham, fairly recoiling a step in
+surprise. "In what sense a monster, my worthy friend? surely not in a
+physical?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know that. I have somehow got the notion he is any thing but
+handsome. A mean, butchering, bloody-minded looking little chap, I'll
+engage."</p>
+
+<p>"You are libelling one of the finest-looking men of the age."</p>
+
+<p>"I think I would submit it to a jury. I cannot believe, after what I have
+read of him in the English publications, that he is so very handsome."</p>
+
+<p>"But, my good neighbour, these English publications must be wrong;
+prejudiced perhaps, or even malignant."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I am not the man to be imposed on in that way. Besides, what motive
+could an English writer have for belying an Emperor of Russia?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure enough, what motive!" exclaimed John Effingham.--"You have your
+answer, Ned!"</p>
+
+<p>"But you will remember, Mr. Howel," Eve interposed, "that we have <i>seen</i>
+the Emperor Nicholas."</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say, Miss Eve, that your gentle nature was disposed to judge him
+as kindly as possible; and, then, I think most Americans, ever since the
+treaty of Ghent, have been disposed to view all Russians too favourably.
+No, no; I am satisfied with the account of the English; they live much
+nearer to St. Petersburg than we do, and they are more accustomed, too, to
+give accounts of such matters."</p>
+
+<p>"But living nearer, Tom Howel," cried Mr. Effingham, with unusual
+animation, "in such a case, is of no avail, unless one lives near enough
+to see with his own eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"Well--well--my good friend, we will talk of this another time. I know
+your disposition to look at every body with lenient eyes. I will now wish
+you all a good morning, and hope soon to see you again. Miss Eve, I have
+one word to say, if you dare trust yourself with a youth of fifty, for a
+minute, in the library."</p>
+
+<p>Eve rose cheerfully, and led the way to the room her father's visiter had
+named. When within it, Mr. Howel shut the door carefully, and then with a
+sort of eager delight, he exclaimed--</p>
+
+<p>"For heaven's sake, my dear young lady, tell me who are these two strange
+gentlemen in the other room."</p>
+
+<p>"Precisely the persons my father mentioned, Mr. Howel; Mr. Paul Powis, and
+Sir George Templemore."</p>
+
+<p>"Englishmen, of course!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sir George Templemore is, of course, as you say, but we may boast of Mr.
+Powis as a countryman."</p>
+
+<p>"Sir George Templemore!--What a superb-looking young fellow!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes," returned Eve, laughing; "he, at least, you will admit is a
+handsome man."</p>
+
+<p>"He is wonderful!--The other, Mr.--a--a--a--I forget what you called
+him--he is pretty well too; but this Sir George is a princely youth."</p>
+
+<p>"I rather think a majority of observers would give the preference to the
+appearance of Mr. Powis," said Eve, struggling to be steady, but
+permitting a blush to heighten her colour, in despite of the effort.</p>
+
+<p>"What could have induced him to come up among these mountains--an English
+baronet!" resumed Mr. Howel, without thinking of Eve's confusion. "Is he a
+real lord?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only a little one, Mr. Howel. You heard what my father said of our having
+been fellow-travellers."</p>
+
+<p>"But what <i>does</i> he think of us. I am dying to know what such a man
+<i>really</i> thinks of us?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is not always easy to discover what such men <i>really</i> think; although
+I am inclined to believe that he is disposed to think rather favourably of
+some of us."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, of you, and your father, and Mr. John. You have travelled, and are
+more than half European; but what <i>can</i> he think of those who have never
+left America?"</p>
+
+<p>"Even of some of those," returned Eve, smiling, "I suspect he thinks
+partially."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I am glad of that. Do you happen to know his opinion of the Emperor
+Nicholas?"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed. I do not remember to have heard him mention the Emperor's name;
+nor do I think he has ever seen him."</p>
+
+<p>"That is extraordinary! Such a man should have seen every thing, and know
+every thing; but I'll engage, at the bottom, he does know all about him.
+If you happen to have any old English newspapers, as wrappers, or by any
+other accident, let me beg them of you. I care not how old they are. An
+English journal fifty years old, is more interesting than one of ours wet
+from the press."</p>
+
+<p>Eve promised to send him a package, when they shook hands and parted. As
+she was crossing the hall, to rejoin the party, John Effingham stopped
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"Has Howel made proposals?" the gentleman inquired, in an affected
+whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"None, cousin Jack, beyond an offer to read the old English newspapers I
+can send him."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, Tom Howel will swallow all the nonsense that is <i>timbr&eacute; &agrave;
+Londres</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"I confess a good deal of surprise at finding a respectable and
+intelligent man so weak-minded as to give credit to such authorities, or
+to form his serious opinions on information derived from such sources."</p>
+
+<p>"You may be surprised, Eve, at hearing so frank avowals of the weakness;
+but, as for the weakness itself, you are now in a country for which
+England does all the thinking, except on subjects that touch the current
+interests of the day."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, I will not believe this! If it were true, how came we independent
+of her--where did we get spirit to war against her."</p>
+
+<p>"The man who has attained his majority is independent of his father's
+legal control, without being independent of the lessons he was taught when
+a child. The soldier sometimes mutinies, and after the contest is over, he
+is usually the most submissive man of the regiment."</p>
+
+<p>"All this to me is very astonishing! I confess that a great deal has
+struck me unpleasantly in this way, since our return; especially in
+ordinary society; but I never could have supposed it had reached to the
+pass in which I see it existing in our good neighbour Howel."</p>
+
+<p>"You have witnessed one of the effects, in a matter of no great moment to
+ourselves; but, as time and years afford the means of observation and
+comparison, you will perceive the effects in matters of the last moment,
+in a national point of view. It is in human nature to undervalue the
+things with which we are familiar, and to form false estimates of those
+which are remote, either by time, or by distance. But, go into the
+drawing-room, and, in young Wenham, you will find one who fancies himself
+a votary of a new school, although his prejudices and mental dependence
+are scarcely less obvious than those of poor Tom Howel."</p>
+
+<p>The arrival of more company, among whom were several ladies, compelled Eve
+to defer an examination of Mr. Wenham's peculiarities to another
+opportunity. She found many of her own sex, whom she had left children,
+grown into womanhood, and not a few of them at a period of life when they
+should be cultivating their physical and moral powers, already oppressed
+with the cares and feebleness that weigh so heavily on the young American
+wife.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Chapter XIII.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>  "Nay we must longer kneel; I am a suitor."</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>  QUEEN KATHERINE.</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>The Effinghams were soon regularly domesticated, and the usual civilities
+had been exchanged. Many of their old friends resumed their ancient
+intercourse, and some new acquaintances were made. The few first visits
+were, as usual, rather labored and formal; but things soon took their
+natural course, and, as the ease of country life was the aim of the
+family, the temporary little bustle was quickly forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>The dressing-room of Eve overlooked the lake, and, about a week after her
+arrival, she was seated in it enjoying that peculiarly lady-like luxury,
+which is to be found in the process of having another gently disposing of
+the hair. Annette wielded the comb, as usual, while Ann Sidley, who was
+unconsciously jealous that any one should be employed about her darling,
+even in this manner, though so long accustomed to it, busied herself in
+preparing the different articles of attire that she fancied her young
+mistress might be disposed to wear that morning. Grace was also in the
+room, having escaped from the hands of her own maid, in order to look into
+one of those books which professed to give an account of the extraction
+and families of the higher classes of Great Britain, a copy of which Eve
+happened to possess, among a large collection of books, <i>Allmanachs de
+Gotha</i>, Court Guides, and other similar works that she had found it
+convenient to possess as a traveller.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! here it is," said Grace, in the eagerness of one who is suddenly
+successful after a long and vexatious search.</p>
+
+<p>"Here is what, coz?"</p>
+
+<p>Grace coloured, and she could have bitten her tongue for its
+indiscretion, but, too ingenuous to deceive, she reluctantly told the
+truth.</p>
+
+<p>"I was merely looking for the account of Sir George Templemore's family;
+it is awkward to be domesticated with one, of whose family we are utterly
+ignorant."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you found the name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I see he has two sisters, both of whom are married, and a brother
+who is in the Guards. But--"</p>
+
+<p>"But what, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"His title is not so <i>very</i> old."</p>
+
+<p>"The title of no Baronet <i>can</i> be very old, the order having been
+instituted in the reign of James I."</p>
+
+<p>"I did not know that. His ancestor was created a baronet in 1701, I see.
+Now, Eve--"</p>
+
+<p>"Now, what, Grace?"</p>
+
+<p>"We are both--" Grace would not confine the remark to herself--"we are
+both of older families than this! You have even a much higher English
+extraction; and I think I can claim for the Van Cortlandts more antiquity
+than one that dates from 1701!"</p>
+
+<p>"No one doubts it, Grace; but what do you wish me to understand by this?
+Are we to insist on preceding Sir George, in going through a door?"</p>
+
+<p>Grace blushed to the eyes, and yet she laughed, involuntarily.</p>
+
+<p>"What nonsense! No one thinks of such things in America."</p>
+
+<p>"Except at Washington, where, I am told, 'Senators' ladies' do give
+themselves airs. But you are quite right, Grace; women have no rank in
+America, beyond their general social rank, as ladies or no ladies, and we
+will not be the first to set an example of breaking the rule. I am afraid
+our blood will pass for nothing, and that we must give place to the
+baronet, unless, indeed, he recognizes the rights of the sex."</p>
+
+<p>"You know I mean nothing so silly. Sir George Templemore does not seem to
+think of rank at all; even Mr. Powis treats him, in all respects, as an
+equal, and Sir George seems to admit it to be right."</p>
+
+<p>Eve's maid, at the moment, was twisting her hair, with the intention to
+put it up; but the sudden manner in which her young mistress turned to
+look at Grace, caused Annette to relinquish her grasp, and the shoulders
+of the beautiful and blooming girl were instantly covered with the
+luxuriant tresses.</p>
+
+<p>"And why should <i>not</i> Mr. Powis treat Sir George Templemore as one every
+way his equal, Grace?" she asked, with an impetuosity unusual in one so
+trained in the forms of the world.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Eve, one is a baronet, and the other is but a simple gentleman."</p>
+
+<p>Eve Effingham sat silent for quite a minute. Her little foot moved, and
+she had been carefully taught, too, that a lady-like manner, required that
+even this beautiful portion of the female frame should be quiet and
+unobtrusive. But America did not contain two of the same sex, years, and
+social condition, less alike in their opinions, or it might be said their
+prejudices, than the two cousins. Grace Van Cortlandt, of the best blood
+of her native land, had unconsciouslv imbibed in childhood, the notions
+connected with hereditary rank, through the traditions of colonial
+manners, by means of novels, by hearing the vulgar reproached or condemned
+for their obtrusion and ignorance, and too often justly reproached and
+condemned, and by the aid of her imagination, which contributed to throw a
+gloss and brilliancy over a state of things that singularly gains by
+distance. On the other hand, with Eve, every thing connected with such
+subjects was a matter of fact. She had been thrown early into the highest
+associations of Europe; she had not only seen royalty on its days of gala
+and representation, a mere raree-show that is addressed to the senses, or
+purely an observance of forms that may possibly have their meaning, but
+which can scarcely be said to have their reasons, but she had lived long
+and intimately among the high-born and great, and this, too, in so many
+different countries, as to have destroyed the influence of the particular
+nation that has transmitted so many of its notions to America as
+heir-looms. By close observation, she knew that arbitrary and political
+distinctions made but little difference between men of themselves; and so
+far from having become the dupe of the glitter of life, by living so long
+within its immediate influence, she had learned to discriminate between
+the false and the real, and to perceive that which was truly respectable
+and useful, and to know it from that which was merely arbitrary and
+selfish. Eve actually fancied that the position of an American gentleman
+might readily become, nay that it <i>ought</i> to be the highest of all human
+stations, short of that of sovereigns. Such a man had no social superior,
+with the exception of those who actually ruled, in her eyes, and this fact
+she conceived, rendered him more than noble, as nobility is usually
+graduated. She had been accustomed to see her father and John Effingham
+moving in the best circles of Europe, respected for their information and
+independence, undistinguished by their manners, admired for their personal
+appearance, manly, courteous, and of noble bearing and principles, if not
+set apart from the rest of mankind by an arbitrary rule connected with
+rank. Rich, and possessing all the habits that properly mark refinement,
+of gentle extraction, of liberal attainments, walking abroad in the
+dignity of manhood, and with none between them and the Deity, Eve had
+learned to regard the gentlemen of her race as the equals in station of
+any of their European associates, and as the superiors of most, in every
+thing that is essential to true distinction. With her, even titular
+princes and dukes had no estimation, merely as princes and dukes; and, as
+her quick mind glanced over the long catalogue of artificial social
+gradations and she found Grace actually attaching an importance to the
+equivocal and purely conventional condition of an English baronet, a
+strong sense of the ludicrous connected itself with the idea.</p>
+
+<p>"A simple gentleman, Grace!" she repeated slowly after her cousin; "and is
+not a simple gentleman, a simple <i>American</i> gentleman, the equal of any
+gentleman on earth--of a poor baronet, in particular?"</p>
+
+<p>"Poor baronet, Eve!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dear, <i>poor</i> baronet; I know fully the extent and meaning of what I
+say. It is true, we do not know as much of Mr. Powis' family," and here
+Eve's colour heightened, though she made a mighty effort to be steady and
+unmoved, "as we might; but we know he is an <i>American</i>; that, at least, is
+something; and we see he is a gentleman; and what American gentleman, a
+real American gentleman, <i>can</i> be the inferior of an English baronet?
+Would your uncle, think you; would cousin Jack; proud, lofty-minded cousin
+Jack, think you, Grace, consent to receive so paltry a distinction as a
+baronetcy, were our institutions to be so far altered as to admit of such
+social classifications?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what would they be, Eve, if not baronets?"</p>
+
+<p>"Earls, Counts, Dukes, nay Princes! These are the designations of the
+higher classes of Europe, and such titles, or those that are equivalent,
+would belong to the higher classes here."</p>
+
+<p>"I fancy that Sir George Templemore would not be persuaded to admit all
+this!"</p>
+
+<p>"If you had seen Miss Eve, surrounded and admired by princes, as I have
+seen her, Miss Grace," said Ann Sidley, "you would not think any simple
+Sir George half good enough for her."</p>
+
+<p>"Our good Nanny means, <i>a</i> Sir George," interrupted Eve, laughing, "and
+not <i>the</i> Sir George in question. But, seriously, dearest coz, it depends
+more on ourselves, and less on others, in what light they are to regard
+us, than is commonly supposed. Do you not suppose there are families in
+America who, if disposed to raise any objections beyond those that are
+purely personal, would object to baronets, and the wearers of red ribands,
+as unfit matches for their daughters, on the ground of rank? What an
+absurdity would it be, for <i>a</i> Sir George, or <i>the</i> Sir George either, to
+object to a daughter of a President of the United States for instance, on
+account of station; and yet I'll answer for it, <i>you</i> would think it no
+personal honour, if Mr. Jackson had a son, that he should, propose to my
+dear father for you. Let us respect ourselves properly, take care to be
+truly ladies and gentlemen, and so far from titular rank's being necessary
+to us, before a hundred lustres are past, we shall bring all such
+distinctions into discredit, by showing that they are not necessary to any
+one important interest, or to true happiness and respectability any
+where."</p>
+
+<p>"And do you not believe, Eve, that Sir George Templemore thinks of the
+difference in station between us?"</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot answer for that," said Eve, calmly. "The man is naturally
+modest; and, it is possible, when he sees that we belong to the highest
+social condition of a great country, he may regret that such has not been
+his own good fortune in his native land; especially, Grace, since he has
+known <i>you</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Grace blushed, looked pleased, delighted even, and yet surprised. It is
+unnecessary to explain the causes of the three first expressions of her
+emotions; but the last may require a short examination. Nothing but time
+and a change of circumstances, can ever raise a province or a provincial
+town to the independent state of feeling that so strikingly distinguishes
+a metropolitan country, or a capital. It would be as rational to expect
+that the inhabitants of the nursery should disregard the opinions of the
+drawing-room, as to believe that the provincial should do all his own
+thinking. Political dependency, moreover, is much more easily thrown
+aside than mental dependency. It is not surprising, therefore, that Grace
+Van Cortlandt, with her narrow associations, general notions of life,
+origin, and provincial habits, should be the very opposite of Eve, in all
+that relates to independence of thought, on subjects like those that they
+were now discussing. Had Grace been a native of New England, even, she
+would have been less influenced by the mere social rank of the baronet
+than was actually the case; for, while the population of that part of the
+Union feel more of the general subserviency to Great Britain than the
+population of any other portion of the republic, they probably feel less
+of it, in this particular form, from the circumstance that their colonial
+habits were less connected with the aristocratical usages of the mother
+country. Grace was allied by blood, too, with the higher classes of
+England, as, indeed, was the fact with most of the old families among the
+New York gentry; and the traditions of her race came in aid of the
+traditions of her colony, to continue the profound deference she felt for
+an English title. Eve might have been equally subjected to the same
+feelings, had she not been removed into another sphere at so early a
+period of life, where she imbibed the notions already mentioned--notions
+that were quite as effectually rooted in her moral system, as those of
+Grace herself could be in her own.</p>
+
+<p>"This is a strange way of viewing the rank of a baronet, Eve!" Grace
+exclaimed, as soon as she had a little recovered from the confusion caused
+by the personal allusion. "I greatly question if you can induce Sir George
+Templemore to see his own position with your eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"No, my dear; I think he will be much more likely to regard, not only
+that, but most other things, with the eyes of another person. We will now
+talk of more agreeable things, however; for I confess, when I do dwell on
+titles, I have a taste for the more princely appellations; and that a
+simple <i>chevalier</i> can scarce excite a feeling that such is the theme."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, Eve," interrupted Grace, with spirit, "an <i>English</i> baronet <i>is</i>
+noble. Sir George Templemore assured me that, as lately as last evening.
+The heralds, I believe, have quite recently established that fact to their
+own satisfaction."</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad of it, dear," returned Eve, with difficulty refraining from
+gaping, "as it will be of great importance to them, in their own eyes. At
+all events, I concede that Sir George Templemore, knight, or baronet, big
+baron or little baron, is a noble fellow; and what more can any reasonable
+person desire. Do you know, sweet coz, that the Wigwam will be full to
+overflowing next week?--that it will be necessary to light our
+council-fire, and to smoke the pipe of many welcomes?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have understood Mr. Powis, that his kinsman, Captain Ducie, will arrive
+on Monday."</p>
+
+<p>"And Mrs. Hawker will come on Tuesday, Mr. and Mrs. Bloomfield on
+Wednesday, and honest, brave straight-forward, literati-hating Captain
+Truck, on Thursday, at the latest. We shall be a large country-circle, and
+I hear the gentlemen talking of the boats and other amusements. But I
+believe my father has a consultation in the library, at which he wishes us
+to be present; we will join him, if you please."</p>
+
+<p>As Eve's toilette was now completed, the two ladies rose, and descended
+together to join the party below. Mr. Effingham was standing at a table
+that was covered with maps, while two or three respectable-looking men,
+master-mechanics, were at his side. The manners of these men were quiet,
+civil, and respectful, having a mixture of manly simplicity, with a proper
+deference for the years and station of the master of the house; though all
+but one, wore their hats. The one who formed the exception, had become
+refined by a long intercourse with this particular family; and his
+acquired taste had taught him that, respect for himself, as well as for
+decency, rendered it necessary to observe the long-established rules of
+decorum, in his intercourse with others. His companions, though without a
+particle of coarseness, or any rudeness of intention, were less decorous,
+simply from a loose habit, that is insensibly taking the place of the
+ancient laws of propriety in such matters, and which habit, it is to be
+feared, has a part of its origin in false and impracticable political
+notions, that have been stimulated by the arts of demagogues. Still, not
+one of the three hardworking, really civil, and even humane men, who now
+stood covered in the library of Mr. Effingham, was probably conscious of
+the impropriety of which he was guilty, or was doing more than insensibly
+yielding to a vicious and vulgar practice.</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad you have come, my love," said Mr. Effingham, as his daughter
+entered the room, "for I find I need support in maintaining my own
+opinions here. John is obstinately silent; and, as for all these other
+gentlemen, I fear they have decidedly taken sides against me."</p>
+
+<p>"You can usually count on my support, dearest father, feeble as it may be.
+But what is the disputed point to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is a proposition to alter the interior of the church, and our
+neighbour Gouge has brought the plans, on which, as he says, he has lately
+altered several churches in the county. The idea is, to remove the pews
+entirely, converting them into what are called 'slips,' to lower the
+pulpit, and to raise the floor, amphitheatre fashion."</p>
+
+<p>"Can there be a sufficient reason for this change?" demanded Eve, with
+surprise. "Slips! The word has a vulgar sound even, and savours of a
+useless innovation. I doubt its orthodoxy."</p>
+
+<p>"It is very popular, Miss Eve," answered Aristabulus, advancing from a
+window, where he had been whispering assent. "This fashion takes
+universally and is getting to prevail in all denominations."</p>
+
+<p>Eve turned involuntarily, and to her surprise she perceived that the
+editor of the Active Inquirer was added to their party. The salutations,
+on the part of the young lady, were distant and stately, while Mr. Dodge,
+who had not been able to resist public opinion, and had actually parted
+with his moustachios, simpered, and wished to have it understood by the
+spectators, that he was on familiar terms with all the family.</p>
+
+<p>"It may be popular, Mr. Bragg," returned Eve, as soon as she rose from her
+profound curtsey to Mr. Dodge; "but it can scarcely be said to be seemly.
+This is, indeed, changing the order of things, by elevating the sinner,
+and depressing the saint."</p>
+
+<p>"You forget, Miss Eve, that under the old plan, the people could not see;
+they were kept unnaturally down, if one can so express it, while nobody
+had a good look-out but the parson and the singers in the front row of the
+gallery. This was unjust."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not conceive, sir, that a good look-out, as you term it, is at all
+essential to devotion, or that one cannot as well listen to instruction
+when beneath the teacher, as when above him."</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon me, Miss;" Eve recoiled, as she always did, when Mr. Bragg used
+this vulgar and contemptuous mode of address; "we put no body up or down;
+all we aim it is a just equality--to place all, as near as possible, on a
+level."</p>
+
+<p>Eve gazed about her in wonder; and then she hesitated a moment, as if
+distrusting her ears.</p>
+
+<p>"Equality! Equality with what? Surely not with the ordained ministers of
+the church, in the performance of their sacred duties! Surely not with the
+Deity!"</p>
+
+<p>"We do not look at it exactly in this light, ma'am. The people build the
+church, <i>that</i> you will allow, Miss Effingham; even <i>you</i> will allow
+<i>this</i>, Mr. Effingham."</p>
+
+<p>Both the parties appealed to, bowed a simple assent to so plain a
+proposition, but neither spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, the people building the church very naturally ask themselves for
+what purpose it was built?"</p>
+
+<p>"For the worship of God," returned Eve with a steady solemnity of manner
+that a little abashed even the ordinarily indomitable and self-composed
+Aristabulus.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Miss; for the worship of God and the accommodation of the public."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," added Mr. Dodge; "for the public accommodation and for public
+worship;" laying due emphasis on the adjectives.</p>
+
+<p>"Father, you, at least, will never consent to this?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not readily, my love. I confess it shocks all my notions of propriety to
+see the sinner, even when he professes to be the most humble and penitent,
+thrust himself up ostentatiously, as if filled only with his own self-love
+and self-importance."</p>
+
+<p>"You will allow, Mr. Effingham," rejoined Aristabulus, "that churches are
+built to accommodate the public, as Mr. Dodge has so well remarked."</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir; they are built for the worship of God, as my daughter has so
+well remarked."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir; that, too, I grant you"</p>
+
+<p>"As secondary to the main object--the public convenience, Mr. Bragg
+unquestionably means;" put in John Effingham, speaking for the first time
+that morning on the subject.</p>
+
+<p>Eve turned quickly, and looked towards her kinsman. He was standing near
+the table, with folded arms, and his fine face expressing all the sarcasm
+and contempt that a countenance so singularly calm and gentleman-like,
+could betray.</p>
+
+<p>"Cousin Jack," she said earnestly, "this ought not to be."</p>
+
+<p>"Cousin Eve, nevertheless this will be."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely not--surely not! Men can never so far forget appearances as to
+convert the temple of God into a theatre, in which the convenience of the
+spectators is the one great object to be kept in view!"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>You</i> have travelled, sir," said John Effingham, indicating by his eye
+that he addressed Mr. Dodge, in particular, "and must have entered places
+of worship in other parts of the world. Did not the simple beauty of the
+manner in which all classes, the great and the humble, the rich and the
+poor, kneel in a common humility before the altar, strike you agreeably,
+on such occasions; in Catholic countries, in particular?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bless me! no, Mr. John Effingham. I was disgusted at the meanness of
+their rites, and really shocked at the abject manner in which the people
+knelt on the cold damp stones, as if they were no better than beggars."</p>
+
+<p>"And were they not beggars?" asked Eve, with almost a severity of tone:
+"ought they not so to consider themselves, when petitioning for mercy of
+the one great and omnipotent God?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Miss Effingham, the people <i>will</i> rule; and it is useless to pretend
+to tell them that they shall not have the highest seats in the church as
+well as in the state. Really, I can see no ground why a parson should be
+raised above his parishioners. The new-order churches consult the public
+convenience, and place every body on a level, as it might be. Now, in old
+times, a family was buried in its pew; it could neither see nor be seen;
+and I can remember the time when I could just get a look of our
+clergyman's wig, for he was an old-school man; and as for his
+fellow-creatures, one might as well be praying in his own closet. I must
+say I am a supporter of liberty, if it be only in pews."</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry, Mr. Dodge," answered Eve, mildly, "you did not extend your
+travels into the countries of the Mussulmans, where most Christian sects
+might get some useful notions concerning the part of worship, at least,
+that is connected with appearances. There you would have seen no seats,
+but sinners bowing down in a mass, on the cold stones, and all thoughts of
+cushioned pews and drawing-room conveniences unknown. We Protestants have
+improved on our Catholic forefathers in this respect; and the innovation
+of which you now speak, in my eyes is an irreverent, almost a sinful,
+invasion of the proprieties of the temple."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Miss Eve, this comes from substituting forms for the substance of
+things," exclaimed the editor. "For my part, I can say, I was truly
+shocked with the extravagancies I witnessed, in the way of worship, in
+most of the countries I visited. Would you think it, Mr. Bragg, rational
+beings, real <i>bon&acirc; fide</i> living men and women, kneeling on the stone
+pavement, like so many camels in the Desert," Mr. Dodge loved to draw his
+images from the different parts of the world he had seen, "ready to
+receive the burthens of their masters; not a pew, not a cushion, not a
+single comfort that is suitable to a free and intelligent being, but every
+thing conducted in the most abject manner, as if accountable human souls
+were no better than so many mutes in a Turkish palace."</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to mention this in the Active Inquirer," said Aristabulus.</p>
+
+<p>"All in good time, sir; I have many things in reserve, among which I
+propose to give a few remarks, I dare say they will be very worthless
+ones, on the impropriety of a rational being's ever kneeling. To my
+notion, gentlemen and ladies, God never intended an American to kneel."</p>
+
+<p>The respectable mechanics who stood around the table did not absolutely
+assent to this proposition, for one of them actually remarked that "he saw
+no great harm in a man's kneeling to the Deity;" but they evidently
+inclined to the opinion that the new-school of pews was far better than
+the old.</p>
+
+<p>"It always appears to me, Miss Effingham," said one, "that I hear and
+understand the sermon better in one of the low pews, than in one of the
+old high-backed things, that look so much like pounds."</p>
+
+<p>"But can you withdraw into yourself better, sir? Can you more truly devote
+all your thoughts, with a suitable singleness of heart, to the worship of
+God?"</p>
+
+<p>"You mean in the prayers, now, I rather conclude?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, sir, I mean in the prayers and the thanksgivings."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, we leave them pretty much to the parson; though I will own it is not
+quite as easy leaning on the edge of one of the new-school pews as on one
+of the old. They are better for sitting, but not so good for standing. But
+then the sitting posture at prayers is quite coming into favour among our
+people, Miss Effingham, as well as among yours. The sermon is the main
+chance, after all."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," observed Mr. Gouge, "give me good, strong preaching, any day, in
+preference to good praying. A man may get along with second-rate prayers,
+but he stands in need of first-rate preaching."</p>
+
+<p>"These gentlemen consider religion a little like a cordial on a cold day,"
+observed John Effingham, "which is to be taken in sufficient doses to make
+the blood circulate. They are not the men to be <i>pounded</i> in pews, like
+lost sheep, not they?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. John will always have his say;" one remarked: and then Mr. Effingham
+dismissed the party, by telling them he would think of the matter.</p>
+
+<p>When the mechanics were gone, the subject was discussed at some length
+between those that remained--all the Effinghams agreeing that they would
+oppose the innovation, as irreverent in appearance, unsuited to the
+retirement and self-abasement that best comported with prayer, and opposed
+to the delicacy of their own habits; while Messrs. Bragg and Dodge
+contended to the last that such changes were loudly called for by the
+popular sentiment--- that it was unsuited to the dignity of a man to be
+'pounded,' even in a church--and virtually, that a good, 'stirring'
+sermon, as they called it, was of far more account, in public worship,
+than all the prayers and praises that could issue from the heart or
+throat.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Chapter XIV.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>  "We'll follow Cade--we'll follow Cade."</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>  MOB.</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>"The views of this Mr. Bragg, and of our old fellow-traveller, Mr. Dodge,
+appear to be peculiar on the subject of religious forms," observed Sir
+George Templemore, as he descended the little lawn before the Wigwam, in
+company with the three ladies, Paul Powis, and John Effingham, on their
+way to the lake. "I should think it would be difficult to find another
+Christian, who objects to kneeling at prayer."</p>
+
+<p>"Therein you are mistaken, Templemore," answered Paul; "for this country,
+to say nothing of one sect which holds it in utter abomination, is filled
+with them. Our pious ancestors, like neophytes, ran into extremes, on the
+subject of forms, as well as in other matters. When you go to
+Philadelphia, Miss Effingham, you will see an instance of a most ludicrous
+nature--ludicrous, if there were not something painfully revolting mingled
+with it--of the manner in which men can strain at a gnat and swallow a
+camel; and which, I am sorry to say, is immediately connected with our
+own church."</p>
+
+<p>It was music to Eve's ears, to hear Paul Powis speak of his pious
+ancestors, as being American, and to find him so thoroughly identifying
+himself with her own native land; for, while condemning so many of its
+practices, and so much alive to its absurdities and contradictions, our
+heroine had seen too much of other countries, not to take an honest pride
+in the real excellencies of her own. There was, also, a soothing pleasure
+in hearing him openly own that he belonged to the same church as herself.</p>
+
+<p>"And what is there ridiculous in Philadelphia, in particular, and in
+connection with our own church?" she asked. "I am not so easily disposed
+to find fault where the venerable church is concerned."</p>
+
+<p>"You know that the Protestants, in their horror of idolatry, discontinued,
+in a great degree, the use of the cross, as an outward religious symbol;
+and that there was probably a time when there was not a single cross to be
+seen in the whole of a country that was settled by those who made a
+profession of love for Christ, and a dependence on his expiation, the
+great business of their lives?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly. We all know our predecessors were a little over-rigid and
+scrupulous on all the points connected with outward appearances."</p>
+
+<p>"They certainly contrived to render the religious rites as little pleasing
+to the senses as possible, by aiming at a sublimation that peculiarly
+favours spiritual pride and a pious conceit. I do not know whether
+travelling has had the same effect on you, as it has produced on me; but I
+find all my inherited antipathies to the mere visible representation of
+the cross, superseded by a sort of solemn affection for it, as a symbol,
+when it is plain, and unaccompanied by any of those bloody and minute
+accessories that are so often seen around it in Catholic countries. The
+German Protestants, who usually ornament the altar with a cross, first
+cured me of the disrelish I imbibed, on this subject, in childhood."</p>
+
+<p>"We, also, I think, cousin John, were agreeably struck with the same usage
+in Germany. From feeling a species of nervousness at the sight of a cross,
+I came to love to see it; and I think you must have undergone a similar
+change; for I have discovered no less than three among the ornaments of
+the great window of the entrance tower, at the Wigwam."</p>
+
+<p>"You might have discovered one, also, in every door of the building,
+whether great or small, young lady. Our pious ancestors, as Powis calls
+them, much of whose piety, by the way, was any thing but meliorated with
+spiritual humility or Christian charity, were such ignoramuses as to set
+up crosses in every door they built, even while they veiled their eyes in
+holy horror whenever the sacred symbol was seen in a church."</p>
+
+<p>"Every door!" exclaimed the Protestants of the party.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, literally every door, I might almost say certainly every panelled
+door that was constructed twenty years since. I first discovered the
+secret of our blunder, when visiting a castle in France, that dated back
+from the time of the crusade. It was a <i>ch&acirc;teau</i> of the Montmorencies,
+that had passed into the hands of the Cond&eacute; family by marriage; and the
+courtly old domestic, who showed me the curiosities, pointed out to me the
+stone <i>croix</i> in the windows, which has caused the latter to be called
+<i>crois&eacute;es</i>, as a pious usage of the crusaders. Turning to a door, I saw
+the same crosses in the wooden stiles; and if you cast an eye on the first
+humble door that you may pass in this village, you will detect the same
+symbol staring you boldly in the face, in the very heart of a population
+that would almost expire at the thoughts of placing such a sign of the
+beast on their very thresholds."</p>
+
+<p>The whole party expressed their surprise; but the first door they passed
+corroborated this account, and proved the accuracy of John Effingham's
+statements. Catholic zeal and ingenuity could not have wrought more
+accurate symbols of this peculiar sign of the sect; and yet, here they
+stood, staring every passenger in the face, as if mocking the ignorant and
+exaggerated pretension which would lay undue stress on the minor points of
+a religion, the essence of which was faith and humility.</p>
+
+<p>"And the Philadelphia church?" said Eve, quickly, so soon as her curiosity
+was satisfied on the subject of the door; "I am now more impatient than
+ever, to learn what silly blunder we have also committed there."</p>
+
+<p>"Impious would almost be a better term," Paul answered. "The only church
+spire that existed for half a century, in that town, was surmounted by a
+<i>mitre</i>, while the <i>cross</i> was studiously rejected!"</p>
+
+<p>A silence followed; for there is often more true argument in simply
+presenting the facts of a case, than in all the rhetoric and logic that
+could be urged, by way of auxiliaries. Every one saw the egregious folly,
+not to say presumption, of the mistake; and at the moment, every one
+wondered how a common-sense community could have committed so indecent a
+blunder. We are mistaken. There was an exception to the general feeling in
+the person of Sir George Templemore. To his church-and-state notions, and
+anti-catholic prejudices, which were quite as much political as religious,
+there was every thing that was proper, and nothing that was wrong, in
+rejecting a cross for a mitre.</p>
+
+<p>"The church, no doubt, was Episcopal, Powis," he remarked, "and it was not
+Roman. What better symbol than the mitre could be chosen?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now I reflect, it is not so very strange," said Grace, eagerly, "for you
+will remember, Mr. Effingham, that Protestants attach the idea of idolatry
+to the cross, as it is used by Catholics."</p>
+
+<p>"And of bishops, peers in parliament, church and state, to a mitre."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but the church in question I have seen; and it was erected before
+the war of the revolution. It was an English rather than an American
+church."</p>
+
+<p>"It was, indeed, an English church, rather than an American; and
+Templemore is very right to defend it, mitre and all."</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say, a bishop officiated at its altar?"</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say--nay, I know, he did; and, I will add, he would rather that
+the mitre were two hundred feet in the air, than down on his own simple,
+white-haired, apostolical-looking head. But enough of divinity for the
+morning; yonder is Tom with the boat, let us to our oars."</p>
+
+<p>The party were now on the little wharf that served as a village-landing,
+and the boatman mentioned lay off, in waiting for the arrival of his fare.
+Instead of using him, however, the man was dismissed; the gentlemen
+preferring to handle the oars themselves. Aquatic excursions were of
+constant occurrence in the warm months, on that beautifully limpid sheet
+of water, and it was the practice to dispense with the regular boatmen,
+whenever good oarsmen were to be found among the company.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the light buoyant skiff was brought to the side of the wharf,
+the whole party embarked; and Paul and the baronet taking the oars, they
+soon urged the boat from the shore.</p>
+
+<p>"The world is getting to be too confined for the adventurous spirit of the
+age," said Sir George, as he and his companion pulled leisurely along,
+taking the direction of the eastern shore, beneath the forest-clad cliffs
+of which the ladies had expressed a wish to be rowed; "here are Powis and
+myself actually rowing together on a mountain lake of America, after
+having boated as companions on the coast of Africa, and on the margin of
+the Great Desert. Polynesia, and Terra Australis, may yet see us in
+company, as hardy cruisers."</p>
+
+<p>"The spirit of the age is, indeed, working wonders in the way you mean,"
+said John Effingham. "Countries of which our fathers merely read, are
+getting to be as familiar as our own homes to their sons; and, with you,
+one can hardly foresee to what a pass of adventure the generation or two
+that will follow us may not reach."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Vraiment, c'est fort extraordinaire de se trouver sur un lac
+Americain</i>," exclaimed Mademoiselle Viefville.</p>
+
+<p>"More extraordinary than to find one's self on a Swiss lake, think you, my
+dear Mademoiselle Viefville?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Non, non, mais tout aussi extraordinaire pour une Parisienne.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"I am now about to introduce you, Mr. John Effingham and Miss Van
+Cortlandt excepted," Eve continued, "to the wonders and curiosities of
+this lake and region. There, near the small house that is erected over a
+spring of delicious water, stood the hut of Natty Bumppo, once known
+throughout all these mountains as a renowned hunter; a man who had the
+simplicity of a woodsman, the heroism of a savage, the faith of a
+Christian, and the feelings of a poet. A better than he, after his
+fashion, seldom lived."</p>
+
+<p>"We have all heard of him," said the baronet, looking round curiously;
+"and must all feel an interest in what concerns so brave and just a man. I
+would I could see his counterpart."</p>
+
+<p>"Alas!" said John Effingham, "the days of the 'Leather-stockings' have
+passed away. He preceded me in life, and I see few remains of his
+character in a region where speculation is more rife than moralizing, and
+emigrants are plentier than hunters. Natty probably chose that spot for
+his hut on account of the vicinity of the spring: is it not so. Miss
+Effingham?"</p>
+
+<p>"He did; and yonder little fountain that you see gushing from the thicket,
+and which comes glancing like diamonds into the lake, is called the 'Fairy
+Spring,' by some flight of poetry that, like so many of our feelings, must
+have been imported; for I see no connection between the name and the
+character of the country, fairies having never been known, even by
+tradition, in Otsego."</p>
+
+<p>The boat now came under a shore where the trees fringed the very water,
+frequently overhanging the element that mirrored their fantastic forms. At
+this point, a light skiff was moving leisurely along in their own
+direction, but a short distance in advance. On a hint from John Effingham,
+a few vigorous strokes of the oars brought the two boats near each other.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the flag-ship," half whispered John Effingham, as they came near
+the other skiff, "containing no less a man than the 'commodore.' Formerly,
+the chief of the lake was an admiral, but that was in times when, living
+nearer to the monarchy, we retained some of the European terms; now, no
+man rises higher than a commodore in America, whether it be on the ocean
+or on the Otsego, whatever may be his merits or his services. A charming
+day, commodore; I rejoice to see you still afloat, in your glory."</p>
+
+<p>The commodore, a tail, thin, athletic man of seventy, with a white head,
+and movements that were quick as those of a boy, had not glanced aside at
+the approaching boat, until he was thus saluted in the well-known voice of
+John Effingham. He then turned his head, however, and scanning the whole
+party through his spectacles, he smiled good-naturedly made a flourish
+with one hand, while he continued paddling with the other, for he stood
+erect and straight in the stern of his skiff, and answered heartily--</p>
+
+<p>"A fine morning, Mr. John, and the right time of the moon for boating.
+This is not a real scientific day for the fish, perhaps; but I have just
+come out to see that all the points and bays are in their right places."</p>
+
+<p>"How is it, commodore, that the water near the village is less limpid than
+common, and that even up here, we see so many specks floating on its
+surface?"</p>
+
+<p>"What a question for Mr. John Effingham to ask on his native water! So
+much for travelling in far countries, where a man forgets quite as much as
+he learns, I fear." Here the commodore turned entirely round, and raising
+an open hand in an oratorical manner, he added,--"You must know, ladies
+and gentlemen, that the lake is in blow."</p>
+
+<p>"In blow, commodore! I did not know that the lake bore its blossoms."</p>
+
+<p>"It does, sir, nevertheless. Ay, Mr. John, and its fruits, too; but the
+last must be dug for, like potatoes. There have been no miraculous
+draughts of the fishes, of late years, in the Otsego, ladies and
+gentlemen; but it needs the scientific touch, and the knowledge of baits,
+to get a fin of any of your true game above the water, now-a-days. Well, I
+have had the head of the sogdollager thrice in the open air, in my time;
+though I am told the admiral actually got hold of him once with his hand."</p>
+
+<p>"The sogdollager," said Eve, much amused with the singularities of the
+man, whom she perfectly remembered to have been commander of the lake,
+even in her own infancy; "we must be indebted to you for an explanation of
+that term, as well as for the meaning of your allusion to the head and the
+open air."</p>
+
+<p>"A sogdollager, young lady, is the perfection of a thing. I know Mr.
+Grant used to say there was no such word in the dictionary; but then there
+are many words that ought to be in the dictionaries that have been
+forgotten by the printers. In the way of salmon trout, the sogdollager is
+their commodore. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I should not like to tell you
+all I know about the patriarch of this lake, for you would scarcely
+believe me; but if he would not weigh a hundred when cleaned, there is not
+an ox in the county that will weigh a pound when slaughtered."</p>
+
+<p>"You say you had his head above water?" said John Effingham.</p>
+
+<p>"Thrice, Mr. John. The first time was thirty years ago; and I confess I
+lost him, on that occasion, by want of science; for the art is not learned
+in a day, and I had then followed the business but ten years. The second
+time was five years later: and I had then been fishing expressly for the
+old gentleman, about a month. For near a minute, it was a matter of
+dispute between us, whether he should come out of the lake or I go into
+it; but I actually got his gills in plain sight. That was a glorious haul!
+Washington did not feel better the night Cornwallis surrendered, than I
+felt on that great occasion!"</p>
+
+<p>"One never knows the feelings of another, it seems. I should have thought
+disappointment at the loss would have been the prevailing sentiment on
+that great occasion, as you so justly term it."</p>
+
+<p>"So it would have been, Mr. John, with an unscientific fisherman; but we
+experienced hands know better. Glory is to be measured by quality, and not
+by quantity, ladies and gentlemen; and I look on it as a greater feather
+in a man's cap, to see the sogdollager's head above water, for half a
+minute, than to bring home a skiff filled with pickerel. The last time I
+got a look at the old gentleman, I did not try to get him into the boat,
+but we sat and conversed for near two minutes; he in the water, and I in
+the skiff."</p>
+
+<p>"Conversed!" exclaimed Eve, "and with a fish, too! What could the animal
+have to say!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, young lady, a fish can talk as well as one of ourselves; the only
+difficulty is to understand what he says. I have heard the old settlers
+affirm, that the Leather-stocking used to talk for hours at a time, with
+the animals of the forest."</p>
+
+<p>"You knew the Leather-stocking, commodore?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, young lady, I am sorry to say I never had the pleasure of looking on
+him even. He <i>was</i> a great man! They may talk of their Jeffersons and
+Jacksons, but I set down Washington and Natty Bumppo as the two only
+really great men of my time."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think of Bonaparte, commodore?" inquired Paul.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, Bonaparte had some strong points about him, I do really
+believe. But he could have been nothing to the Leather-stocking, in the
+woods! It's no great matter, young gentleman, to be a great man among your
+inhabitants of cities--what I call umbrella people. Why, Natty was almost
+as great with the spear as with the rifle; though I never heard that he
+got a sight of the sogdollager."</p>
+
+<p>"We shall meet again this summer, commodore," said John Effingham; "the
+ladies wish to hear the echoes, and we must leave you."</p>
+
+<p>"All very natural, Mr. John," returned the commodore, laughing, and again
+flourishing his hand in his own peculiar manner. "The women all love to
+hear the echoes, for they are not satisfied with what they have once said,
+but they like to hear it over again. I never knew a lady come on the
+Otsego, but one of the first things she did was to get paddled to the
+Speaking Rocks, to have a chat with herself. They come out in such
+numbers, sometimes, and then all talk at once, in a way quite to confuse
+the echo. I suppose you have heard, young lady, the opinion people have
+now got concerning these voices."</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot say I have ever heard more than that they are some of the most
+perfect echoes known;" answered Eve, turning her body, so as to face the
+old man, as the skiff of the party passed that of the veteran fisherman.</p>
+
+<p>"Some people maintain that there is no echo at all, and that the sounds we
+hear come from the spirit of the Leather-stocking, which keeps about its
+old haunts, and repeats every thing we say, in mockery of our invasion of
+the woods. I do not say this notion is true, or that it is my own; but we
+all know that Natty <i>did</i> dislike to see a new settler arrive in the
+mountains, and that he loved a tree as a muskrat loves water. They show a
+pine up here on the side of the Vision, which he notched at every
+new-comer, until reaching seventeen, his honest old heart could go no
+farther, and he gave the matter up in despair."</p>
+
+<p>"This is so poetical, commodore, it is a pity it cannot be true. I like
+this explanation of the 'Speaking Rocks,' much better than that implied by
+the name of 'Fairy Spring.'"</p>
+
+<p>"You are quite right, young lady," called out the fisherman, as the boats
+separated still farther; "there never was any fairy known in Otsego; but
+the time has been when we could boast of a Natty Bumppo."</p>
+
+<p>Here the commodore flourished his hand again, and Eve nodded her adieus.
+The skiff of the party continued to pull slowly along the fringed shore,
+occasionally sheering more into the lake, to avoid some overhanging and
+nearly horizontal tree, and then returning so closely to the land, as
+barely to clear the pebbles of the narrow strand with the oar.</p>
+
+<p>Eve thought she had never beheld a more wild or beautifully variegated
+foliage, than that which the whole leafy mountainside presented. More than
+half of the forest of tall, solemn pines, that had veiled the earth when
+the country was first settled, had already disappeared; but, agreeably to
+one of the mysterious laws by which nature is governed, a rich second
+growth, that included nearly every variety of American wood, had shot up
+in their places. The rich Rembrandt-like hemlocks, in particular, were
+perfectly beautiful, contrasting admirably with the livelier tints of the
+various deciduous trees. Here and there, some flowering shrub rendered the
+picture gay, while masses of the rich chestnut, in blossom, lay in clouds
+of natural glory among the dark tops of the pines.</p>
+
+<p>The gentlemen pulled the light skiff fully a mile under this overhanging
+foliage, occasionally frightening some migratory bird from a branch, or a
+water-fowl from the narrow strand. At length, John Effingham desired them
+to cease rowing, and managing the skiff for a minute or two with the
+paddle which he had used in steering, he desired the whole party to look
+up, announcing to them that they were beneath the 'Silent Pine.'</p>
+
+<p>A common exclamation of pleasure succeeded the upward glance; for it is
+seldom that a tree is seen to more advantage than that which immediately
+attracted every eye. The pine stood on the bank, with its roots embedded
+in the earth, a few feet higher than the level of the lake, but in such a
+situation as to bring the distance above the water into the apparent
+height of the tree. Like all of its kind that grows in the dense forests
+of America, its increase, for a thousand years, had been upward; and it
+now stood in solitary glory, a memorial of what the mountains which were
+yet so rich in vegetation had really been in their days of nature and
+pride. For near a hundred feet above the eye, the even round trunk was
+branchless, and then commenced the dark-green masses of foliage, which
+clung around the stem like smoke ascending in wreaths. The tall
+column-like tree had inclined to wards the light when struggling among
+its fellows, and it now so far overhung the lake, that its summit may have
+been some ten or fifteen feet without the base. A gentle, graceful curve
+added to the effect of this variation from the perpendicular, and infused
+enough of the fearful into the grand, to render the picture sublime.
+Although there was not a breath of wind on the lake, the currents were
+strong enough above the forest to move this lofty object, and it was just
+possible to detect a slight, graceful yielding of the very uppermost
+boughs to the passing air.</p>
+
+<p>"This pine is ill-named," cried Sir George Templemore, "for it is the most
+eloquent tree eye of mine has ever looked on!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is, indeed, eloquent," answered Eve; "one hears it speak even now of
+the fierce storms that have whistled round its tops--of the seasons that
+have passed since it extricated that verdant cap from the throng of
+sisters that grew beneath it, and of all that has passed on the Otsego,
+when this limpid lake lay, like a gem embedded in the forest. When the
+Conqueror first landed in England, this tree stood on the spot where it
+now stands! Here, then, is at last, an American antiquity!"</p>
+
+<p>"A true and regulated taste, Miss Effingham," said Paul, "has pointed out
+to you one of the real charms of the country. Were we to think less of the
+artificial, and more of our natural excellencies, we should render
+ourselves less liable to criticism."</p>
+
+<p>Eve was never inattentive when Paul spoke; and her colour heightened, as
+he paid this compliment to her taste, but still her soft blue eye was
+riveted on the pine.</p>
+
+<p>"Silent it may be, in one respect, but it is, indeed, all eloquence in
+another," she resumed, with a fervour that was not lessened by Paul's
+remark. "That crest of verdure, which resembles a plume of feathers,
+speaks of a thousand things to the imagination."</p>
+
+<p>"I have never known a person of any poetry, who came under this tree,"
+said John Effingham, "that did not fall into this very train of thought. I
+once brought a man celebrated for his genius here, and, after gazing for a
+minute or two at the high, green tuft that tops the tree, he exclaimed,
+'that mass of green waved there in the fierce light when Columbus first
+ventured into the unknown sea.' It is, indeed, eloquent; for it tells the
+same glowing tale to all who approach it--a tale fraught with feeling and
+recollections."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet its silence is, after all, its eloquence," added Paul; "and the
+name is not so misplaced as one might at first think."</p>
+
+<p>"It probably obtained its name from some fancied contrast to the garrulous
+rocks that lie up yonder, half concealed by the forest. If you will ply
+the oars, gentlemen, we will now hold a little communion with the spirit
+of the Leather-stocking."</p>
+
+<p>The young men complied; and in about five minutes, the skiff was off in
+the lake, at the distance of fifty rods from the shore, where the whole
+mountainside came at one glance into the view. Here they lay on their
+oars, and John Effingham called out to the rocks a "good morning," in a
+clear distinct voice. The mocking sounds were thrown back again, with a
+closeness of resemblance that actually startled the novice. Then followed
+other calls and other repetitions of the echoes, which did not lose the
+minutest intonation of the voice.</p>
+
+<p>"This actually surpasses the celebrated echoes of the Rhine," cried the
+delighted Eve; "for, though those do give the strains of the bugle so
+clearly, I do not think they answer to the voice with so much fidelity."</p>
+
+<p>"You are very right, Eve," replied her kinsman, "for I can recall no
+place where so perfect and accurate an echo is to be heard as at these
+speaking rocks. By increasing our distance to half a mile, and using a
+bugle, as I well know, from actual experiment, we should get back entire
+passages of an air. The interval between the sound and the echo, too,
+would be distinct, and would give time for an undivided attention.
+Whatever may be said of the 'pine,' these rocks are most aptly named; and
+if the spirit of Leather-stocking has any concern with the matter, he is a
+mocking spirit."</p>
+
+<p>John Effingham now looked at his watch, and then he explained to the party
+a pleasure he had in store for them. On a sort of small, public promenade,
+that lay at the point where the river flowed out of the lake, stood a rude
+shell of a building that was called the "gun-house." Here, a speaking
+picture of the entire security of the country, from foes within as well as
+from foes without, were kept two or three pieces of field artillery, with
+doors so open that any one might enter the building, and even use the guns
+at will, although they properly belonged to the organized corps of the
+state.</p>
+
+<p>One of these guns had been sent a short distance down the valley; and John
+Effingham informed his companions that they might look momentarily for its
+reports to arouse the echoes of the mountains. He was still speaking when
+the gun was fired, its muzzle being turned eastward. The sound first
+reached the side of the Vision, abreast of the village, whence the
+reverberations reissued, and rolled along the range, from cave to cave,
+and cliff to cliff, and wood to wood, until they were lost, like distant
+thunder, two or three leagues to the northward. The experiment was thrice
+repeated, and always with the same magnificent effect, the western hills
+actually echoing the echoes of the eastern mountains, like the dying
+strains of some falling music.</p>
+
+<p>"Such a locality would be a treasure in the vicinity of a melo-dramatic
+theatre," said Paul, laughing, "for certainly, no artificial thunder I
+have ever heard has equalled this. This sheet of water might even receive
+a gondola."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet, I fear one accustomed to the boundless horizon of the ocean,
+might in time weary of it," answered John Effingham, significantly.</p>
+
+<p>Paul made no answer; and the party rowed away in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Yonder is the spot where we have so long been accustomed to resort for
+Pic-Nics," said Eve, pointing out a lovely place, that was beautifully
+shaded by old oaks, and on which stood a rude house that was much
+dilapidated, and indeed injured, by the hands of man. John Effingham
+smiled, as his cousin showed the place to her companions, promising them
+an early and a nearer view of its beauties.</p>
+
+<p>"By the way, Miss Effingham," he said, "I suppose you flatter yourself
+with being the heiress of that desirable retreat?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is very natural that, at some day, though I trust a very distant one,
+I should succeed to that which belongs to my dear father."</p>
+
+<p>"Both natural and legal, my fair cousin; but you are yet to learn that
+there is a power that threatens to rise up and dispute your claim."</p>
+
+<p>"What power--human power, at least--can dispute the lawful claim of an
+owner to his property? That Point has been ours ever since civilized man
+has dwelt among these hills; who will presume to rob us of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"You will be much surprised to discover that there is such a power, and
+that there is actually a disposition to exercise it. The public--the
+all-powerful omnipotent, overruling, law-making, law-breaking public--has
+a passing caprice to possess itself of your beloved Point; and Ned
+Effingham must show unusual energy, or it will get it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you serious, cousin Jack?"</p>
+
+<p>"As serious as the magnitude of the subject can render a responsible
+being, as Mr. Dodge would say."</p>
+
+<p>Eve said no more, but she looked vexed, and remained almost silent until
+they landed, when she hastened to seek her father, with a view to
+communicate what she had heard. Mr. Effingham listened to his daughter, as
+he always did, with tender interest; and when she had done, he kissed her
+glowing cheek, bidding her not to believe that which she seemed so
+seriously to dread, possible.</p>
+
+<p>"But, cousin John would not trifle with me on such a subject, father," Eve
+continued; "he knows how much I prize all those little heir-looms that are
+connected with the affections."</p>
+
+<p>"We can inquire further into the affair, my child, if it be your desire;
+ring for Pierre, if you please."</p>
+
+<p>Pierre answered, and a message was sent to Mr. Bragg, requiring his
+presence in the library.</p>
+
+<p>Aristabulus appeared, by no means in the best humour, for he disliked
+having been omitted in the late excursion on the lake, fancying that he
+had a community-right to share in all his neighbour's amusements, though
+he had sufficient self-command to conceal his feelings.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish to know, sir," Mr. Effingham commenced, without introduction,
+"whether there can be any mistake concerning the ownership of the Fishing
+Point on the west side of the lake."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not, sir; it belongs to the public."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Effingham's cheek glowed, and he looked astonished: but he remained
+calm.</p>
+
+<p>"The public! Do you gravely affirm, Mr. Bragg, that the public pretends to
+claim that Point?"</p>
+
+<p>"Claim, Mr. Effingham! as long as I have resided in this county, I have
+never heard its right disputed."</p>
+
+<p>"Your residence in this county, sir, is not of very ancient date, and
+nothing is easier than that <i>you</i> may be mistaken. I confess some
+curiosity to know in what manner the public has acquired its title to the
+spot. You are a lawyer, Mr. Bragg, and may give an intelligible account of
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, sir, your father gave it to them in his lifetime. Every body, in all
+this region, will tell you as much as this."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you suppose, Mr. Bragg, there is any body in all this region who will
+swear to the fact? Proof, you well know, is very requisite even to obtain
+justice."</p>
+
+<p>"I much question, sir, if there be any body in all this region that will
+not swear to the fact. It is the common tradition of the whole country;
+and, to be frank with you, sir, there is a little displeasure, because Mr.
+John Effingham has talked of giving private entertainments on the Point."</p>
+
+<p>"This, then, only shows how idly and inconsiderately the traditions of the
+country take their rise. But, as I wish to understand all the points of
+the case, do me the favour to walk into the village, and inquire of those
+whom you think the best informed in the matter, what they know of the
+Point, in order that I may regulate my course accordingly. Be particular,
+if you please, on the subject of title, as one would not wish to move in
+the dark."</p>
+
+<p>Aristabulus quitted the house immediately, and Eve, perceiving that things
+were in the right train, left her father alone to meditate on what had
+just passed. Mr. Effingham walked up and down his library for some time,
+much disturbed, for the spot in question was identified with all his early
+feelings and recollections; and if there were a foot of land on earth, to
+which he was more attached than to all others, next to his immediate
+residence, it was this. Still, he could not conceal from himself, in
+despite of his opposition to John Effingham's sarcasms, that his native
+country had undergone many changes since he last resided in it, and that
+some of these changes were quite sensibly for the worse. The spirit of
+misrule was abroad, and the lawless and unprincipled held bold language,
+when it suited their purpose to intimidate. As he ran over in his mind,
+however, the facts of the case, and the nature of his right, he smiled to
+think that any one should contest it, and sat down to his writing, almost
+forgetting that there had been any question at all on the unpleasant
+subject.</p>
+
+<p>Aristabulus was absent for several hours, nor did he return until Mr.
+Effingham was dressed for dinner, and alone in the library, again, having
+absolutely lost all recollection of the commission he had given his agent.</p>
+
+<p>"It is as I told you, sir--the public insists that it owns the Point; and
+I feel it my duty to say, Mr. Effingham, that the public is determined to
+maintain its claim."</p>
+
+<p>"Then, Mr. Bragg, it is proper I should tell the public that it is <i>not</i>
+the owner of the Point, but that <i>I</i> am its owner, and that I am
+determined to maintain <i>my</i> claim."</p>
+
+<p>"It is hard to kick against the pricks, Mr. Effingham."</p>
+
+<p>"It is so, sir, as the public will discover, if it persevere in invading a
+private right."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, sir, some of those with whom I have conversed have gone so far as to
+desire me to tell you--I trust my motive will not be mistaken----"</p>
+
+<p>"If you have any communication to make, Mr. Bragg, do it without reserve.
+It is proper I should know the truth exactly."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, sir, I am the bearer of something like a defiance; the people
+wish you to know that they hold your right cheaply, and that they laugh at
+it. Not to mince matters, they defy you."</p>
+
+<p>"I thank you for this frankness, Mr. Bragg, and increases my respect for
+your character. Affairs are now at such a pass, that it is necessary to
+act. If you will amuse yourself with a book for a moment, I shall have
+further occasion for your kindness."</p>
+
+<p>Aristabulus did not read, for he was too much filled with wonder at seeing
+a man so coolly set about contending with that awful public which he
+himself as habitually deferred to, as any Asiatic slave defers to his
+monarch. Indeed, nothing but his being sustained by that omnipotent power,
+as he viewed the power of the public to be, had emboldened him to speak so
+openly to his employer, for Aristabulus felt a secret confidence that,
+right or wrong, it was always safe in America to make the most fearless
+professions in favour of the great body of the community. In the mean
+time, Mr. Effingham wrote a simple advertisement, against trespassing on
+the property in question, and handed it to the other, with a request that
+he would have it inserted in the number of the village paper that was to
+appear next morning. Mr. Bragg took the advertisement, and went to execute
+the duty without comment.</p>
+
+<p>The evening arrived before Mr. Effingham was again alone, when, being by
+himself in the library once more, Mr. Bragg entered, full of his subject.
+He was followed by John Effingham, who had gained an inkling of what had
+passed.</p>
+
+<p>"I regret to say, Mr. Effingham," Aristabulus commenced, "that your
+advertisement has created one of the greatest excitements it has ever been
+my ill-fortune to witness in Templeton."</p>
+
+<p>"All of which ought to be very encouraging to us, Mr.. Bragg, as men under
+excitement are usually wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"Very true, sir, as regards individual excitement, but this is a public
+excitement."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not at all aware that the fact, in the least alters the case. If
+one excited man is apt to do silly things, half a dozen backers will be
+very likely to increase his folly."</p>
+
+<p>Aristabulus listened with wonder, for excitement was one of the means for
+effecting public objects, so much practised by men of his habits, that it
+had never crossed his mind any single individual could be indifferent to
+its effect. To own the truth, he had anticipated so much unpopularity,
+from his unavoidable connexion with the affair, as to have contributed
+himself in producing the excitement, with the hope of "choking Mr.
+Effingham off," as he had elegantly expressed it to one of his intimates,
+in the vernacular of the country.</p>
+
+<p>"A public excitement is a powerful engine, Mr. Effingham!" he exclaimed,
+in a sort of politico pious horror.</p>
+
+<p>"I am fully aware, sir, that it may be even a fearfully powerful engine.
+Excited men, acting in masses, compose what are called mobs, and have
+committed a thousand excesses."</p>
+
+<p>"Your advertisement is, to the last degree, disrelished; to be very
+sincere, it is awfully unpopular!"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose it is always what you term an unpopular act, so far as the
+individuals opposed are concerned, to resist aggression."</p>
+
+<p>"But they call your advertisement aggression, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"In that simple fact exist all the merits of the question. If I own this
+property, the public, or that portion of it which is connected with this
+affair, are aggressors; and so much more in the wrong that they are many
+against one; if <i>they</i> own the property, I am not only wrong, but very
+indiscreet."</p>
+
+<p>The calmness with which Mr. Effingham spoke had an effect on Aristabulus,
+and, for a moment, he was staggered. It was only for a moment, however, as
+the pains and penalties of unpopularity presented themselves afresh to an
+imagination that had been so long accustomed to study the popular
+caprice, that it had got to deem the public favour the one great good of
+life.</p>
+
+<p>"But <i>they</i> say, <i>they</i> own the Point, Mr. Effingham."</p>
+
+<p>"And <i>I</i> say, they do <i>not</i> own the Point, Mr. Bragg; never <i>did</i> own
+it; and, with my consent, never <i>shall</i> own it."</p>
+
+<p>"This is purely a matter of fact," observed John Effingham, "and I confess
+I am curious to know how or whence this potent public derives its title.
+You are lawyer enough, Mr. Bragg, to know that the public can hold
+property only by use, or by especial statute. Now, under which title does
+this claim present itself."</p>
+
+<p>"First, by use, sir, and then by especial gift."</p>
+
+<p>"The use, you are aware, must be adverse, or as opposed to the title of
+the other claimants. Now, I am a living witness that my late uncle
+<i>permitted</i> the public to use this Point, and that the public accepted the
+conditions. Its use, therefore, has not been adverse, or, at least, not
+for a time sufficient to make title. Every hour that my cousin has
+<i>permitted</i> the public to enjoy his property, adds to his right, as well
+as to the obligation conferred on that public, and increases the duty of
+the latter to cease intruding, whenever he desires it. If there is an
+especial gift, as I understand you to say, from my late uncle, there must
+also be a law to enable the public to hold, or a trustee; which is the
+fact?"</p>
+
+<p>"I admit, Mr. John Effingham, that I have seen neither deed nor law, and I
+doubt if the latter exist. Still the public <i>must</i> have some claim, for it
+is impossible that every body should be mistaken."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing is easier, nor any thing more common, than for whole communities
+to be mistaken, and more particularly when they commence with excitement."</p>
+
+<p>While his cousin was speaking, Mr. Effingham went to a secretary, and
+taking out a large bundle of papers, he laid it down on the table,
+unfolding several parchment deeds, to which massive seals, bearing the
+arms of the late colony, as well as those of England, were pendent.</p>
+
+<p>"Here are my titles, sir," he said, addressing Aristabulus pointedly; "if
+the public has a better, let it be produced, and I shall at once submit to
+its claim."</p>
+
+<p>"No one doubts that the King, through his authorized agent, the Governor
+of the colony of New-York, granted this estate to your predecessor, Mr.
+Effingham; or that it descended legally to your immediate parent; but all
+contend that your parent gave this spot to the public, as a spot of public
+resort."</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad that the question is narrowed down within limits that are so
+easily examined. What evidence is there of this intention, on the part of
+my late father?"</p>
+
+<p>"Common report; I have talked with twenty people in the village, and they
+all agree that the 'Point' has been used by the public, as public
+property, from time immemorial."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you be so good, Mr. Bragg, as to name some of those who affirm
+this."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bragg complied, naming quite the number of persons he had mentioned,
+with a readiness that proved he thought he was advancing testimony of
+weight.</p>
+
+<p>"Of all the names you have mentioned," returned Mr. Effingham, "I never
+heard but three, and these are the names of mere boys. The first dozen are
+certainly the names of persons who can know no more of this village than
+they have gleaned in the last few years; and several of them, I
+understand, have dwelt among us but a few weeks; nay, days."</p>
+
+<p>"Have I not told you, Ned," interrupted John Effingham, "that, an American
+'always' means eighteen months, and that 'time immemorial' is only since
+the last general crisis in the money market!"</p>
+
+<p>"The persons I have mentioned compose a part of the population, sir,"
+added Mr. Bragg, "and, one and all, they are ready to swear that your
+father, by some means or other, they are not very particular as to
+minutiae, gave them the right to use this property."</p>
+
+<p>"They are mistaken, and I should be sorry that any one among them should
+swear to such a falsehood. But here are my titles--let them show better,
+or, if they can, any, indeed."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps your father abandoned the place to the public; this might make a
+good claim."</p>
+
+<p>"That he did not, I am a living proof to the contrary; he left it to his
+heirs at his death, and I myself exercised full right of ownership over
+it, until I went abroad. I did not travel with it in my pocket, sir, it is
+true; but I left it to the protection of the laws, which, I trust, are as
+available to the rich as to the poor, although this is a free country."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, I suppose a jury must determine the point, as you seem firm;
+though I warn you, Mr. Effingham, as one who knows his country, that a
+verdict, in the face of a popular feeling, is rather a hopeless matter. If
+they prove that your late father intended to abandon or give this property
+to the public, your case will be lost."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Effingham looked among the papers a moment, and selecting one, he
+handed it to Mr. Bragg, first pointing out to his notice a particular
+paragraph.</p>
+
+<p>"This, sir, is my late father's will," Mr. Effingham said mildly; "and, in
+that particular clause, you will find that he makes a special devise of
+this very 'Point,' leaving it to his heirs, in such terms as to put any
+intention to give it to the public quite out of the question. This, at
+least, is the latest evidence I, his only son, executor, and heir possess
+of his final wishes; if that wondering and time-immemorial public of which
+you speak, has a better, I wait with patience that it may be produced."</p>
+
+<p>The composed manner of Mr. Effingham had deceived Aristabulus, who did
+not anticipate any proof so completely annihilating to the pretensions of
+the public, as that he now held in his hand. It was a simple, brief
+devise, disposing of the piece of property in question, and left it
+without dispute, that Mr. Effingham had succeeded to all the rights of his
+father, with no reservation or condition of any sort.</p>
+
+<p>"This is very extraordinary!" exclaimed Mr. Bragg, when he had read the
+clause seven times, each perusal contributing to leave the case still
+clearer in favour of his employer, the individual, and still stronger
+against the hoped-for future employers, the people. "The public ought to
+know of this bequest of the late Mr. Effingham."</p>
+
+<p>"I think it ought, sir, before it pretended to deprive his child of his
+property; or, rather, it ought to be certain, at least, that there was no
+such devise."</p>
+
+<p>"You will excuse me, Mr. Effingham, but I think it is incumbent on a
+private citizen, in a case of this sort, when the public has taken up a
+wrong notion, as I now admit is clearly the fact as regards the Point, to
+enlighten it, and to inform it that it does not own the spot."</p>
+
+<p>"This has been done already, Mr. Bragg, in the advertisement you had the
+goodness to carry to the printers, although I deny that there exists any
+such obligation."</p>
+
+<p>"But, sir, they object to the mode you have chosen to set them right."</p>
+
+<p>"The mode is usual, I believe in the case of trespasses."</p>
+
+<p>"They expect something different, sir, in an affair in which the public
+is--is--is--all--"</p>
+
+<p>"Wrong," put in John Effingham, pointedly. "I have heard something of this
+out of doors, Ned, and blame you for your moderation. Is it true that you
+had told several of your neighbours that you have no wish to prevent them
+from using the Point, but that your sole object is merely to settle the
+question of right, and to prevent intrusions on your family when it is
+enjoying its own place of retirement?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, John, my only wish is to preserve the property for those to
+whom it is especially devised, to allow those who have the best, nay, the
+only right to it, its undisturbed possession, occasionally, and to prevent
+any more of that injury to the trees that has been committed by some of
+those rude men, who always fancy themselves so completely all the public,
+as to be masters, in their own particular persons, whenever the public has
+any claim. I can have no wish to deprive my neighbours of the innocent
+pleasure of visiting the Point, though I am fully determined they shall
+not deprive me of my property."</p>
+
+<p>"You are far more indulgent than I should be, or perhaps, than you will be
+yourself, when you read this."</p>
+
+<p>As John Effingham spoke, he handed his kinsman a small handbill, which
+purported to call a meeting for that night, of the inhabitants of
+Templeton, to resist his arrogant claim to the disputed property. This
+handbill had the usual marks of a feeble and vulgar malignancy about it,
+affecting to call Mr. Effingham, "<i>one</i> Mr. Effingham," and it was
+anonymous.</p>
+
+<p>"This is scarcely worth our attention, John," said Mr. Effingham, mildly.
+"Meetings of this sort cannot decide a legal title, and no man who
+respects himself will be the tool of so pitiful an attempt to frighten a
+citizen from maintaining his rights."</p>
+
+<p>"I agree with you, as respects the meeting, which has been conceived in
+ignorance and low malice, and will probably end, as all such efforts end,
+in ridicule. But----"</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse me, Mr. John," interrupted Aristabulus, "there is an awful
+excitement! Some have even spoken of Lynching!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then," said Mr. Effingham, "it does, indeed, require that we should be
+more firm. Do <i>you</i>, sir, know of any person who has dared to use such a
+menace?"</p>
+
+<p>Aristabulus quailed before the stern eye of Mr. Effingham, and he
+regretted having communicated so much, though he had communicated nothing
+but the truth. He stammered out an obscure and half-intelligible
+explanation, and proposed to attend the meeting in person, in order that
+he might be in the way of understanding the subject, without falling into
+the danger of mistake. To this Mr. Effingham assented, as he felt too
+indignant at this outrage on all his rights, whether as a citizen or a
+man, to wish to pursue the subject with his agent that night. Aristabulus
+departed, and John Effingham remained closeted with his kinsman until the
+family retired. During this long interview, the former communicated many
+things to the latter, in relation to this very affair, of which the owner
+of the property, until then, had been profoundly ignorant.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Chapter XV.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>  "There shall be, in England, seven half-penny loaves sold for a penny,
+  the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops; and I will make it felony to
+  drink small beer: all the realm shall be in common, and, in Cheapside
+  shall my palfrey go to grass."--JACK CADE.</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>Though the affair of the Point continued to agitate the village of
+Templeton next day, and for many days, it was little remembered in the
+Wigwam. Confident of his right, Mr. Effingham, though naturally indignant
+at the abuse of his long liberality, through which alone the public had
+been permitted to frequent the place, and this too, quite often, to his
+own discomfort and disappointment, had dismissed the subject temporarily
+from his mind, and was already engaged in his ordinary pursuits. Not so,
+however, with Mr. Bragg. Agreeably to promise, he had attended the
+meeting; and now he seemed to regulate all his movements by a sort of
+mysterious self-importance, as if the repository of some secret of unusual
+consequence. No one regarded his manner, however; for Aristabulus, and his
+secrets, and opinions, were all of too little value, in the eyes of most
+of the party, to attract peculiar attention. He found a sympathetic
+listener in Mr. Dodge, happily; that person having been invited, through
+the courtesy of Mr. Effingham, to pass the day with those in whose
+company, though very unwillingly on the editor's part certainly, he had
+gone through so many dangerous trials. These two then, soon became
+intimate, and to have seen their shrugs, significant whisperings, and
+frequent conferences in corners, one who did not know them, might have
+fancied their shoulders burthened with the weight of the state.</p>
+
+<p>But all this pantomime, which was intended to awaken curiosity, was lost
+on the company in general. The ladies, attended by Paul and the Baronet,
+proceeded into the forest on foot, for a morning's walk, while the two
+Messrs. Effinghams continued to read the daily journals, that were
+received from town each morning, with a most provoking indifference.
+Neither Aristabulus, nor Mr. Dodge, could resist any longer; and, after
+exhausting their ingenuity, in the vain effort to induce one of the two
+gentlemen to question them in relation to the meeting of the previous
+night, the desire to be doing fairly overcame their affected
+mysteriousness, and a formal request was made to Mr. Effingham to give
+them an audience in the library. As the latter, who suspected the nature
+of the interview, requested his kinsman to make one in it, the four were
+soon alone, in the apartment so often named.</p>
+
+<p>Even now, that his own request for the interview was granted, Aristabulus
+hesitated about proceeding until a mild intimation from Mr. Effingham that
+he was ready to hear his communication, told the agent that it was too
+late to change his determination.</p>
+
+<p>"I attended the meeting last night, Mr. Effingham," Aristabulus commenced,
+"agreeably to our arrangement, and I feel the utmost regret at being
+compelled to lay the result before a gentleman for whom I entertain so
+profound a respect."</p>
+
+<p>"There was then a meeting?" said Mr. Effingham, inclining his body
+slightly, by way of acknowledgment for the other's compliment.</p>
+
+<p>"There was, sir; and I think, Mr. Dodge, we may say an overflowing one."</p>
+
+<p>"The public was fairly represented," returned the editor, "as many as
+fifty or sixty having been present."</p>
+
+<p>"The public has a perfect right to meet, and to consult on its claims to
+anything it may conceive itself entitled to enjoy," observed Mr.
+Effingham; "I can have no possible objection to such a course, though I
+think it would have consulted its own dignity more, had it insisted on
+being convoked by more respectable persons than those who, I understand,
+were foremost in this affair, and in terms better suited to its own sense
+of propriety."</p>
+
+<p>Aristabulus glanced at Mr. Dodge, and Mr. Dodge glanced back at Mr. Bragg,
+for neither of these political mushrooms could conceive of the dignity and
+fair-mindedness with which a gentleman could view an affair of this
+nature.</p>
+
+<p>"They passed a set of resolutions, Mr. Effingham;" Aristabulus resumed,
+with the gravity with which he ever spoke of things of this nature. "A set
+of resolutions, sir!"</p>
+
+<p>"That was to be expected," returned his employer, smiling; "the Americans
+are a set-of-resolutions-passing people. Three cannot get together,
+without naming a chairman and secretary, and a resolution is as much a
+consequence of such an 'organization,'--I believe that is the approved
+word,--as an egg is the accompaniment of the cackling of a hen."</p>
+
+<p>"But, sir, you do not yet know the nature of those resolutions!"</p>
+
+<p>"Very true, Mr. Bragg; that is a piece of knowledge I am to have the
+pleasure of obtaining from you."</p>
+
+<p>Again Aristabulus glanced at Steadfast, and Steadfast threw back the look
+of surprise, for, to both it was matter of real astonishment that any man
+should be so indifferent to the resolutions of a meeting that had been
+regularly organized, with a chairman and secretary at its head, and which
+so unequivocally professed to be the public.</p>
+
+<p>"I am reluctant to discharge this duty, Mr. Effingham, but as you insist
+on its performance it must be done. In the first place, they resolved that
+your father meant to give them the Point."</p>
+
+<p>"A decision that must clearly settle the matter, and which will destroy
+all my father's own resolutions on the same subject. Did they stop at the
+Point, Mr. Bragg or did they resolve that my father also gave them his
+wife and children?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir, nothing was said concerning the latter."</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot properly express my gratitude for the forbearance, as they had
+just as good a right to pass this resolution, as to pass the other."</p>
+
+<p>"The public's is an awful power, Mr. Effingham!"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed it is, sir, but fortunately, that of the republic is still more
+awful, and I shall look to the latter for support, in this 'crisis'--that
+is the word, too, is it not, Mr. John Effingham?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you mean a change of administration, the upsetting of a stage, or the
+death of a cart-horse; they are all equally crisises, in the American
+vocabulary."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mr. Bragg, having resolved that it knew my late father's intentions
+better than he knew them himself, as is apparent from the mistake he made
+in his will, what next did the public dispose of, in the plenitude of its
+power?"</p>
+
+<p>"It resolved, sir, that it was your duty to carry out the intentions of
+your father."</p>
+
+<p>"In that, then, we are perfectly of a mind; as the public will most
+probably discover, before we get through with this matter. This is one of
+the most pious resolutions I ever knew the public to pass. Did it proceed
+any farther?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bragg, notwithstanding the long-encouraged truckling to the sets of
+men, whom he was accustomed to dignify with the name of the public, had a
+profound deference or the principles, character, and station of Mr.
+Effingham, that no sophistry, or self-encouragement in the practices of
+social confusion, could overcome; and he paused before he communicated the
+next resolution to his employers. But perceiving that both the latter and
+his cousin were quietly waiting to hear it, he was fain to overcome his
+scruples.</p>
+
+<p>"They have openly libelled you, by passing resolutions declaring you to be
+odious."</p>
+
+<p>"That, indeed, is a strong measure, and, in the interest of good manners
+and of good morals, it may call for a rebuke. No one can care less than
+myself, Mr. Bragg, for the opinions of those who have sufficiently
+demonstrated that their opinions are of no value, by the heedless manner
+in which they have permitted themselves to fall into this error; but it is
+proceeding too far, when a few members of the community presume to take
+these liberties with a private individual, and that, moreover, in a case
+affecting a pretended claim of their own; and I desire you to tell those
+concerned, that if they dare to publish their resolution declaring me to
+be odious, I will teach them what they now do not appear to know, that we
+live in a country of laws. I shall not prosecute them, but I shall indict
+them for the offence, and I hope this is plainly expressed."</p>
+
+<p>Aristabulus stood aghast! To indict the public was a step he had never
+heard of before, and he began to perceive that the question actually had
+two sides. Still, his awe of public meetings, and his habitual regard for
+popularity, induced him not to give up the matter, without another
+struggle.</p>
+
+<p>"They have already ordered their proceedings to be published, Mr.
+Effingham!" he said, as if such an order were not to be countermanded.</p>
+
+<p>"I fancy, sir, that when it comes to the issue, and the penalties of a
+prosecution present themselves, their readers will begin to recollect
+their individuality, and to think less of their public character. They
+who hunt in droves, like wolves, are seldom very valiant when singled out
+from their pack. The end will show."</p>
+
+<p>"I heartily wish this unpleasant affair might be amicably settled," added
+Aristabulus.</p>
+
+<p>"One might, indeed, fancy so," observed John Effingham, "since no one
+likes to be persecuted."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Mr. John, the public thinks <i>itself</i> persecuted, in this affair."</p>
+
+<p>"The term, as applied to a body that not only makes, but which executes,
+the law, is so palpably absurd, that I am surprised any man can presume to
+use it. But, Mr. Bragg, you have seen documents that cannot err, and know
+that the public has not the smallest right to this bit of land."
+
+"All very true, sir; but you will please to remember, that the people do
+not know what I now know."</p>
+
+<p>"And you will please to remember, sir, that when people choose to act
+affirmatively, in so high-handed a manner as this, they are <i>bound</i> to
+know what they are about. Ignorance in such a matter, is like the
+drunkard's plea of intoxication; it merely makes the offence worse."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you not think, Mr. John, that Mr. Effingham might have acquainted
+these citizens with the real state of the case? Are the people so very
+wrong that they have fallen into a mistake?"</p>
+
+<p>"Since you ask this question plainly, Mr. Bragg, it shall be answered with
+equal sincerity. Mr. Effingham is a man of mature years; the known child,
+executor, and heir of one who, it is admitted all round, was the master of
+the controverted property. Knowing his own business, this Mr. Effingham,
+in sight of the grave of his fathers, beneath the paternal roof, has the
+intolerable impudence--"</p>
+
+<p>"Arrogance is the word, Jack," said Mr. Effingham, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"Aye, the intolerable arrogance to suppose that his own is his own; and
+this he dares to affirm, without having had the politeness to send his
+title-deeds, and private papers, round to those who have been so short a
+time in the place, that they might well know every thing that has occurred
+in it for the last half century. Oh thou naughty, arrogant fellow, Ned!"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. John, you appear to forget that the public has more claims to be
+treated with attention, than a single individual. If it has fallen into
+error, it ought to be undeceived."</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt, sir; and I advise Mr. Effingham to send you, his agent, to every
+man, woman and child in the county, with the Patent of the King, all the
+mesne conveyances and wills, in your pocket, in order that you may read
+them at length to each individual, with a view that every man, woman and
+child, may be satisfied that he or she is not the owner of Edward
+Effingham's lands!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, sir, a shorter process might be adopted."</p>
+
+<p>"It might, indeed, sir, and such a process has been adopted by my cousin,
+in giving the usual notice, in the newspaper, against trespassing. But,
+Mr. Bragg, you must know that I took great pains, three years since, when
+repairing this house, to correct the mistake on this very point, into
+which I found that your immaculate public had fallen, through its
+disposition to know more of other people's affairs, than those concerned
+knew of themselves."</p>
+
+<p>Aristabulus said no more, but gave the matter up in despair. On quitting
+the house, he proceeded forthwith, to inform those most interested of the
+determination of Mr. Effingham, not to be trampled on by any pretended
+meeting of the public. Common sense, not to say common honesty, began to
+resume its sway, and prudence put in its plea, by way of applying the
+corrective. Both he and Mr. Dodge, however, agreed that there was an
+unheard-of temerity in thus resisting the people, and this too without a
+commensurate object, as the pecuniary value of the disputed point was of
+no material consequence to either party.</p>
+
+<p>The reader is not, by any means, to suppose that Aristabulus Bragg and
+Steadfast Dodge belonged to the same variety of the human species, in
+consequence of their unity of sentiment in this affair, and certain other
+general points of resemblance in their manner and modes of thinking. As a
+matter of necessity each partook of those features of caste, condition,
+origin, and association that characterize their particular set; but when
+it came to the nicer distinctions that mark true individuality, it would
+not have been easy to find two men more essentially different in
+character. The first was bold, morally and physically, aspiring,
+self-possessed, shrewd, singularly adapted to succeed in his schemes where
+he knew the parties, intelligent, after his tastes, and apt. Had it been
+his fortune to be thrown earlier into a better sphere, the same natural
+qualities that rendered him so expert in his present situation, would have
+conduced to his improvement, and most probably would have formed a
+gentleman, a scholar, and one who could have contributed largely to the
+welfare and tastes of his fellow-creatures. That such was not his fate,
+was more his misfortune than his fault, for his plastic character had
+readily taken the impression of those things that from propinquity alone,
+pressed hardest on it. On the other hand Steadfast was a hypocrite by
+nature, cowardly, envious, and malignant; and circumstances had only lent
+their aid to the natural tendencies of his disposition. That two men so
+differently constituted at their births, should meet, as it might be in a
+common centre, in so many of their habits and opinions, was merely the
+result of accident and education.</p>
+
+<p>Among the other points of resemblance between these two persons, was that
+fault of confounding the cause with the effects of the peculiar
+institutions under which they had been educated and lived. Because the
+law gave to the public, that authority which, under other systems, is
+entrusted either to one, or to the few they believed the public was
+invested with far more power than a right understanding of their own
+principles would have shown. In a word, both these persons made a mistake
+which is getting to be too common in America, that of supposing the
+institutions of the country were all means and no end. Under this
+erroneous impression they saw only the machinery of the government,
+becoming entirely forgetful that the power which was given to the people
+collectively, was only so given to secure to them as perfect a liberty as
+possible, in their characters of individuals. Neither had risen
+sufficiently above vulgar notions, to understand that public opinion, in
+order to be omnipotent, or even formidable beyond the inflictions of the
+moment, must be right; and that, if a solitary man renders himself
+contemptible by taking up false notions inconsiderately and unjustly,
+bodies of men, falling into the same error, incur the same penalties, with
+the additional stigma of having acted as cowards.</p>
+
+<p>There was also another common mistake into which Messrs. Bragg and Dodge
+had permitted themselves to fall, through the want of a proper distinction
+between principles. Resisting the popular will, on the part of an
+individual, they considered arrogance and aristocracy, <i>per se</i>, without
+at all entering into the question of the right, or the wrong. The people,
+rightly enough in the general signification of the term, they deemed to be
+sovereign; and they belonged to a numerous class, who view disobedience to
+the sovereign in a democracy, although it be in his illegal caprices, very
+much as the subject of a despot views disobedience to his prince.</p>
+
+<p>It is scarcely necessary to say, that Mr. Effingham and his cousin viewed
+these matters differently. Clear headed, just-minded, and liberal in all
+his practices, the former, in particular, was greatly pained by the recent
+occurrence; and he paced his library in silence, for several minutes
+after Mr. Bragg and his companion had withdrawn, really too much grieved
+to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"This is, altogether, a most extraordinary procedure, John," he at length
+observed, "and, it strikes me, that it is but an indifferent reward for
+the liberality with which I have permitted others to use my property,
+these thirty years; often, very often, as you well know, to my own
+discomfort, and to that of my friends."</p>
+
+<p>"I have told you, Ned, that you were not to expect the America on your
+return, that you left behind you on your departure for Europe. I insist
+that no country has so much altered for the worse, in so short a time."</p>
+
+<p>"That unequalled pecuniary prosperity should sensibly impair the manners
+of what is termed the world, By introducing suddenly lame bodies of
+uninstructed and untrained men and women into society, is a natural
+consequence of obvious causes; that it should corrupt morals, even, we
+have a right to expect, for we are taught to believe it the most
+corrupting influence under which men can live; but, I confess, I did not
+expect to see the day, when a body of strangers, birds of passage,
+creatures of an hour, should assume a right to call on the old and
+long-established inhabitants of a country, to prove their claims to their
+possessions, and this, too, in an unusual and unheard-of manner, under the
+penalty of being violently deprived of them!"</p>
+
+<p>"Long established!" repeated John Effingham, laughing; "what do you term
+long established? Have you not been absent a dozen years, and do not these
+people reduce everything to the level of their own habits. I suppose, now,
+you fancy you can go to Rome or Jerusalem, or Constantinople, and remain
+four or five lustres, and then come coolly back to Templeton. and, on
+taking possession of this house again, call yourself an old resident."</p>
+
+<p>"I certainly do suppose I have that right. How many English, Russians,
+and Germans, did we meet in Italy, the residents of years, who still
+retained all their natural and local right and feelings!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, that is in countries where society is permanent, and men get
+accustomed to look on the same objects, hear the same names, and see the
+same faces for their entire lives. I have had the curiosity to inquire,
+and have ascertained that none of the old, permanent families have been
+active in this affair of the Point, but that all the clamour has been made
+by those you call the birds of passage. But what of that? These people
+fancy everything reduced to the legal six months required to vote; and
+that rotation in persons is as necessary to republicanism as rotation in
+office."</p>
+
+<p>"Is is not extraordinary that persons who can know so little on the
+subject, should be thus indiscreet and positive?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is not extraordinary in America. Look about you, Ned, and you will see
+adventurers uppermost everywhere; in the government, in your towns, in
+your villages, in the country, even. We are a nation of changes. Much of
+this, I admit, is the fair consequence of legitimate causes, as an immense
+region, in forest, cannot be peopled on any other conditions. But this
+necessity has infected the entire national character, and men get to be
+impatient of any sameness, even though it be useful. Everything goes to
+confirm this feeling, instead of opposing it. The constant recurrences of
+the elections accustom men to changes in their public functionaries; the
+great increase in the population brings new faces; and the sudden
+accumulations of property place new men in conspicuous stations. The
+architecture of the country is barely becoming sufficiently respectable to
+render it desirable to preserve the buildings, without which we shall have
+no monuments to revere. In short, everything contributes to produce such
+a state of things, painful as it may be to all of any feeling, and little
+to oppose it."</p>
+
+<p>"You colour highly, Jack; and no picture loses in tints, in being
+retouched by you."</p>
+
+<p>"Look into the first paper that offers, and you will see the <i>young men</i>
+of the country hardily invited to meet by themselves, to consult
+concerning public affairs, as if they were impatient of the counsels and
+experience of their fathers. No country can prosper, where the ordinary
+mode of transacting the business connected with the root of the
+government, commences with this impiety."</p>
+
+<p>"This is a disagreeable feature in the national character, certainly; but
+we must remember the arts employed by the designing to practise on the
+inexperienced."</p>
+
+<p>"Had I a son, who presumed to denounce the wisdom and experience of his
+father, in this disrespectful mariner, I would disinherit the rascal!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Jack, bachelor's children are notoriously well educated, and well
+mannered. We will hope, however, that time will bring its changes also,
+and that one of them will be a greater constancy in persons, things, and
+the affections."</p>
+
+<p>"Time <i>will</i> bring its changes, Ned; but all of them that are connected
+with individual rights, as opposed to popular caprice, or popular
+interests, are likely to be in the wrong direction."</p>
+
+<p>"The tendency is certainly to substitute popularity for the right, but we
+must take the good with the bad; Even you, Jack, would not exchange this
+popular oppression for any other system under which you have lived."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know that--I don't know that. Of all tyranny, a vulgar tyranny is
+to me the most odious."</p>
+
+<p>"You used to admire the English system, but I think observation has
+lessened your particular admiration in that quarter;" said Mr. Effingham,
+smiling in a way that his cousin perfectly understood.</p>
+
+<p>"Harkee, Ned; we all take up false notions in youth, and this was one of
+mine; but, of the two, I should prefer the cold, dogged domination of
+English law, with its fruits, the heartlessness of a sophistication
+without parallel, to being trampled on by every arrant blackguard that may
+happen to traverse this valley, in his wanderings after dollars. There is
+one thing you yourself must admit; the public is a little too apt to
+neglect the duties it ought to discharge, and to assume duties it has no
+right to fulfil."</p>
+
+<p>This remark ended the discourse.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Chapter XVI.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>  Her breast was a brave palace, a broad street,<br />
+Where all heroic, ample thoughts did meet,<br />
+Where nature such a tenement had ta'en,<br />
+That other souls, to hers, dwelt in 'a lane.</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>  JOHN NORTON.</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>The village of Templeton, it has been already intimated, was a miniature
+town. Although it contained within the circle of its houses, half-a-dozen
+residences with grounds, and which were dignified with names, as has been
+also said, it did not cover a surface of more than a mile square; that
+disposition to concentration, which is as peculiar to an American town, as
+the disposition to diffusion is peculiar to the country population, and
+which seems almost to prescribe that a private dwelling shall have but
+three windows in front, and a <i>facade</i> of twenty-five feet, having
+presided at the birth of this spot, as well as at the birth of so many of
+its predecessors and contemporaries. In one of its more retired streets
+(for Templeton had its publicity and retirement, the latter after a very
+village fashion, however,) dwelt a widow--bewitched of small worldly
+means, five children, and of great capacity for circulating intelligence.
+Mrs. Abbott, for so was this demi-relict called, was just on the verge of
+what is termed the "good society" of the village, the most uneasy of all
+positions for an ambitious and <i>ci-devant</i> pretty woman to be placed in.
+She had not yet abandoned the hope of obtaining a divorce and its
+<i>suites</i>; was singularly, nay, rabidly devout, if we may coin the adverb;
+in her own eyes she was perfection, in those of her neighbours slightly
+objectionable; and she was altogether a droll, and by no means an unusual
+compound of piety, censoriousness, charity, proscription, gossip,
+kindness, meddling, ill-nature, and decency.</p>
+
+<p>The establishment of Mrs. Abbott, like her house, was necessarily very
+small, and she kept no servant but a girl she called her help, a very
+suitable appellation, by the way, as they did most of the work of the
+<i>m&egrave;nage</i> in common. This girl, in addition to cooking and washing, was the
+confidant of all her employer's wandering notions of mankind in general,
+and of her neighbours in particular; as often, helping her mistress in
+circulating her comments on the latter, as in anything else.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Abbott knew nothing of the Effinghams, except by a hearsay that got
+its intelligence from her own school, being herself a late arrival in the
+place. She had selected Templeton as a residence on account of its
+cheapness, and, having neglected to comply with the forms of the world, by
+hesitating about making the customary visit to the Wigwam, she began to
+resent, in her spirit at least, Eve's delicate forbearance from obtruding
+herself, where, agreeably to all usage, she had a perfect right to suppose
+she was not desired. It was in this spirit, then, that she sat, conversing
+with Jenny, as the maid of all work was called, the morning after the
+conversation related in the last chapter, in her snug little parlour,
+sometimes plying her needle, and oftener thrusting her head out of a
+window which commanded a view of the principal street of the place, in
+order to see what her neighbours might be about.</p>
+
+<p>"This is a most extraordinary course Mr. Effingham has taken concerning
+the Point," said Mrs. Abbott, "and I <i>do</i> hope the people will bring him
+to his senses. Why, Jenny, the public has used that place ever since I can
+remember, and I have now lived in Templeton quite fifteen months.--What
+<i>can</i> induce Mr. Howel to go so often to that barber's shop, which stands
+directly opposite the parlour windows of Mrs. Bennett--one would think the
+man was all beard."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose Mr. Howel gets shaved sometimes," said the logical Jenny.</p>
+
+<p>"Not he; or if he does, no decent man would think of posting himself
+before a lady's window to do such a thing.--Orlando Furioso," calling to
+her eldest son, a boy of eleven, "run over to Mr. Jones's store, and
+listen to what the people are talking about, and bring me back the news,
+as soon as any thing worth hearing drops from any body; and stop as you
+come back, my son, and borrow neighbour Brown's gridiron. Jenny, it is
+most time to think of putting over the potatoes."</p>
+
+<p>"Ma'--" cried Orlando Furioso, from the front door, Mrs. Abbott being very
+rigid in requiring that all her children should call her 'ma',' being so
+much behind the age as actually not to know that 'mother' had got to be
+much the genteeler term of the two; "Ma'," roared Orlando Furioso,
+"suppose there is no news at Mr. Jones's store?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then go to the nearest tavern; something must be stirring this fine
+morning, and I'm dying to know what it can possibly be. Mind you bring
+something besides the gridiron back with you. Hurry, or never come home
+again as long as you live! As I was saying, Jenny, the right of the
+public, which is our right, for we are a part of the public, to this
+Point, is as clear as day, and I am only astonished at the impudence of
+Mr. Effingham in pretending to deny it. I dare say his French daughter
+has put him up to it. They say she is monstrous arrogant!"</p>
+
+<p>"Is Eve Effingham, French," said Jenny, studiously avoiding any of the
+usual terms of civility and propriety, by way of showing her
+breeding--"well, I had always thought her nothing but Templeton born!"</p>
+
+<p>"What signifies where a person was born? where they <i>live</i>, is the
+essential thing; and Eve Effingham has lived so long in France, that she
+speaks nothing but broken English; and Miss Debby told me last week, that
+in drawing up a subscription paper for a new cushion to the reading-desk
+of her people, she actually spelt 'charity' 'carrotty.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Is that French, Miss Abbott?"</p>
+
+<p>"I rather think it is, Jenny; the French are very niggardly, and give
+their poor carrots to live on, and so they have adopted the word, I
+suppose. You, Byansy-Alzumy-Ann, (Bianca-Alzuma-Ann!)"</p>
+
+<p>"Marm!"</p>
+
+<p>"Byansy-Alzumy-Ann! who taught you to call me marm! Is this the way you
+have learned your catechism? Say, ma', this instant."</p>
+
+<p>"Ma'."</p>
+
+<p>"Take your bonnet, my child, and run down to Mrs. Wheaton's, and ask her
+if any thing new has turned up about the Point, this morning; and, do you
+hear, Byansy-Alzumy-Ann Abbott--how the child starts away, as if she were
+sent on a matter of life and death!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, ma', I want to hear the news, too."</p>
+
+<p>"Very likely, my dear, but, by stopping to get your errand, you may learn
+more than by being in such a hurry. Stop in at Mrs. Green's, and ask how
+the people liked the lecture of the strange parson, last evening--and ask
+her if she can lend me a watering-pot, Now, run, and be back as soon as
+possible. Never loiter when you carry news, child."</p>
+
+<p>"No one has a right to stop the man, I believe, Miss Abbott," put in
+Jenny, very appositely.</p>
+
+<p>"That, indeed, have they not, or else we could not calculate the
+consequences. You may remember, Jenny, the pious, even, had to give up
+that point, public convenience being; too strong for them.
+Roger-Demetrius-Benjamin!"--calling to a second boy, two years younger
+than his brother--"your eyes are better than mine--who are all those
+people collected together in the street. Is not Mr. Howel among them?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know, ma'!" answered Roger-Demetrius-Benjamin, gaping.</p>
+
+<p>"Then run, this minute, and see, and don't stop to look for your hat. As
+you come back, step into the tailor's shop and ask if your new jacket is
+most done, and what the news is? I rather think, Jenny, we shall find out
+something worth hearing, in the course of the day. By the way, they do say
+that Grace Van Cortlandt, Eve Effingham's cousin, is under concern."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, she is the last person I should think would be troubled about any
+thing, for every body says she is so desperate rich she might eat off of
+silver, if she liked; and she is sure of being married, some time or
+other."</p>
+
+<p>"That ought to lighten her concern, you think. Oh! it does my heart good
+when I see any of those flaunty people right well exercised! Nothing would
+make me happier than to see Eve Effingham groaning fairly in the spirit!
+That would teach her to take away the people's Points."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Miss Abbott, then she would become almost as good a woman as you are
+yourself,"</p>
+
+<p>"I am a miserable, graceless, awfully wicked sinner! Twenty times a day do
+I doubt whether I am actually converted or not. Sin has got such a hold of
+my very heart-strings, that I sometimes think they will crack before it
+lets go. Rinaldo-Rinaldini-Timothy, my child, do you toddle across the
+way, and give my compliments to Mrs. Hulbert, and inquire if it be true
+that young Dickson, the lawyer, is really engaged to Aspasia Tubbs or not?
+and borrow a skimmer, or a tin pot, or any thing you can carry, for we may
+want something of the sort in the course of the day. I do believe, Jenny,
+that a worse creature than myself is hardly to be found in Templeton."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Miss Abbott," returned Jenny, who had heard too much of this
+self-abasement to be much alarmed at it, "this is giving almost as bad an
+account of yourself, as I heard somebody, that I won't name, give of you
+last week."</p>
+
+<p>"And who is your somebody, I should like to know? I dare say, one no
+better than a formalist, who thinks that reading prayers out of a book,
+kneeling, bowing, and changing gowns, is religion! Thank Heaven, I'm
+pretty indifferent to the opinions of such people. Harkee, Jenny; if I
+thought I was no better than some persons I could name, I'd give the point
+of salvation up, in despair!"</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Abbott," roared a rugged, dirty-faced, bare-footed boy, who entered
+without knocking, and stood in the middle of the room, with his hat on,
+with a suddenness that denoted great readiness in entering other people's
+possessions; "Miss Abbott, ma' wants to know if you are likely to go from
+home this week?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what in nature can she want to know that for, Ordeal Bumgrum?" Mrs.
+Abbott pronounced this singular name, however, "Ordeel."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! she <i>warnts</i> to know."</p>
+
+<p>"So do I <i>warnt</i> to know; and know I will. Run home this instant, and ask
+your mother why she has sent you here with this message. Jenny, I am much
+exercised to find out the reason Mrs. Bumgrum should have sent Ordeal over
+with such a question."</p>
+
+<p>"I did hear that Miss Bumgrum intended to make a journey herself, and she
+may want your company."</p>
+
+<p>"Here comes Ordeal back, and we shall soon be out of the clouds. What a
+boy that is for errands. He is worth all my sons put together. You never
+see him losing time by going round by the streets, but away he goes over
+the garden fences like a cat, or he will whip through a house, if standing
+in his way, as if he were its owner, should the door happen to be open.
+Well, Ordeal?"</p>
+
+<p>But Ordeal was out of breath, and although Jenny shook him, as if to shake
+the news out of him, and Mrs. Abbott actually shook her fist, in her
+impatience to be enlightened, nothing could induce the child to speak,
+until he had recovered his wind.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe he does it on purpose," said the provoked maid.</p>
+
+<p>"It's just like him!" cried the mistress; "the very best news-carrier in
+the village is actually spoilt because he is thick-winded."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish folks wouldn't make their fences so high," Ordeal exclaimed, the
+instant he found breath. "I can't see of what use it is to make a fence
+people can't climb!"</p>
+
+<p>"What does your mother say?" cried Jenny repeating her shake, <i>con amore</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Ma, wants to know, Miss Abbott, if you don't intend to use it yourself,
+if you will lend her your name for a few days, to go to Utica with? She
+says folks don't treat her half as well when she is called Bumgrum, as
+when she has another name, and she thinks she'd like to try yours, this
+time."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that all!--You needn't have been so hurried about such a trifle,
+Ordeal. Give my compliments to your mother, and tell her she is quite
+welcome to my name, and I hope it will be serviceable to her."</p>
+
+<p>"She says she is willing to pay for the use of it, if you will tell her
+what the damage will be."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! it's not worth while to speak of such a trifle I dare say she will
+bring it back quite as good as when she took it away. I am no such
+unneighbourly or aristocratical person as to wish to keep my name all to
+myself. Tell your mother she is welcome to mine, and to keep it as long as
+she likes, and not to say any thing about pay; I may want to borrow hers,
+or something else, one of these days, though, to say the truth, my
+neighbours <i>are</i> apt to complain of me as unfriendly and proud for not
+borrowing as much as a good neighbour ought."</p>
+
+<p>Ordeal departed, leaving Mrs. Abbot in some such condition as that of the
+man who had no shadow. A rap at the door interrupted the further
+discussion of the old subject, and Mr. Steadfast Dodge appeared in answer
+to the permission to enter. Mr. Dodge and Mrs. Abbott were congenial
+spirits, in the way of news, he living by it, and she living on it.</p>
+
+<p>"You are very welcome, Mr. Dodge," the mistress of the house commenced; "I
+hear you passed the day, yesterday, up at the Effinghamses."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes, Mrs. Abbott, the Effinghams insisted on it, and I could not
+well get over the sacrifice, after having been their shipmate so long.
+Besides it is a little relief to talk French, when one has been so long in
+the daily practice of it."</p>
+
+<p>"I hear there is company at the house?"</p>
+
+<p>"Two of our fellow-travellers, merely. An English baronet, and a young man
+of whom less is known than one could wish. He is a mysterious person, and
+I hate mystery, Mrs. Abbott."</p>
+
+<p>"In that, then, Mr. Dodge, you and I are alike. I think every thing should
+be known. Indeed, that is not a free country in which there are any
+secrets. I keep nothing from my neighbours, and, to own the truth, I do
+not like my neighbours to keep any thing from me."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you'll hardly like the Effinghams, for I never yet met with a more
+close-mouthed family. Although I was so long in the ship with Miss Eve, I
+never heard her once speak of her want of appetite; of sea-sickness, or of
+any thing relating to her ailings even: no? can you imagine how close she
+is on the subject of the beaux; I do not think I ever heard her use the
+word, or so much as allude to any walk or ride she ever took with a single
+man. I set her down, Mrs. Abbott, as unqualifiedly artful!"</p>
+
+<p>"That you may with certainty, sir, for there is no more sure sign that a
+young woman is all the while thinking of the beaux, than her never
+mentioning them."</p>
+
+<p>"That I believe to be human nature; no ingenuous person ever thinks much
+of the particular subject of conversation. What is your opinion, Mrs.
+Abbott, of the contemplated match at the Wigwam?"</p>
+
+<p>"Match!" exclaimed Mrs. Abbott.--"What, already! It is the most indecent
+thing I ever heard of! Why, Mr. Dodge, the family has not been home a
+fortnight, and to think so soon of getting married! It is quite as bad as
+a widower's marrying within the month."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Abbott made a distinction, habitually, between the cases of widowers
+and widows, as the first, she maintained, might get married whenever they
+pleased, and the latter only when they got offers; and she felt just that
+sort of horror of a man's thinking of marrying too soon after the death of
+his wife, as might be expected in one who actually thought of a second
+husband before the first was dead.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes," returned Steadfast, "it is a little premature, perhaps, though
+they have been long acquainted. Still, as you say, it would be more decent
+to wait and see what may turn up in a country, that, to them, may be said
+to be a foreign land."</p>
+
+<p>"But, who are the parties, Mr. Dodge."</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Eve Effingham, and Mr. John Effingham"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. John Effingham!" exclaimed the lady, who had lent her name to a
+neighbour, aghast, for this was knocking one of her own day-dreams in the
+head, "well this is too much! But he shall not marry her, sir; the law
+will prevent it, and we live in a country of laws. A man cannot marry his
+own niece."</p>
+
+<p>"It is excessively improper, and ought to be put a stop to. And yet these
+Effinghams do very much as they please."</p>
+
+<p>"I am very sorry to hear that; they are extremely disagreeable," said Mrs.
+Abbott, with a look of eager inquiry, as if afraid the answer might be in
+the negative.</p>
+
+<p>"As much so as possible; they have hardly a way that you would like, my
+dear ma'am; and are as close-mouthed as if they were afraid of committing
+themselves."</p>
+
+<p>"Desperate bad news-carriers, I am told, Mr. Dodge. There is Dorindy
+(Dorinda) Mudge, who was employed there by Eve and Grace one day; she
+tells me she tried all she could to get them to talk, by speaking of the
+most common things; things that one of my children knew all about; such as
+the affairs of the neighbourhood, and how people are getting on; and,
+though they would listen a little, and that is something, I admit, not a
+syllable could she get in the way of answer, or remark. She tells me that,
+several times, she had a mind to quit, for it is monstrous unpleasant to
+associate with your tongue-tied folks."</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say Miss Effingham could throw out a hint now and then, concerning
+the voyage and her late fellow-travellers," said Steadfast, casting an
+uneasy glance at his companion.</p>
+
+<p>"Not she. Dorindy maintains that it is impossible to get a sentiment out
+of her concerning a single fellow-creature. When she talked of the late
+unpleasant affair of poor neighbour Bronson's family--a melancholy
+transaction that, Mr. Dodge, and I shouldn't wonder if it went to nigh
+break Mrs. Bronson's heart--but when Dorindy mentioned this, which is bad
+enough to stir the sensibility of a frog, neither of my young ladies
+replied, or put a single question. In this respect Grace is as bad as
+Eve, and Eve is as bad as Grace, they say. Instead of so much as seeming
+to wish to know any more, what does my Miss Eve do, but turn to some daubs
+of paintings, and point out to her cousin what she was pleased to term
+peculiarities in Swiss usages. Then the two hussies would talk of nature,
+'our beautiful nature' Dorindy says Eve had the impudence to call it, and,
+as if human nature and its failings and backsliding wore not a fitter
+subject for a young woman's discourse, than a silly conversation about
+lakes, and rocks, and trees, and as if she <i>owned</i> the nature about
+Templeton. It is my opinion, Mr. Dodge, that downright ignorance is at the
+bottom of it all, for Dorindy says that they actually know no more of the
+intricacies of the neighbourhood than if they lived in Japan."</p>
+
+<p>"All pride, Mrs. Abbott; rank pride. They feel themselves too great to
+enter into the minutiae of common folks' concerns. I often tried Miss
+Effingham coming from England; and things touching private interests, that
+I know she did and must understand, she always disdainfully refused to
+enter into. Oh! she is, a real Tartar, in her way; and what she does not
+wish to do, you never can make her do!"</p>
+
+<p>"Have you heard that Grace is under concern?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a breath of it; under whose preaching was she sitting, Mrs. Abbott?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is more than I can tell you; not under the church parson's, I'll
+engage; no one ever heard of a real, active, regenerating, soul-reviving,
+spirit-groaning and fruit-yielding conversion under <i>his</i> ministry."</p>
+
+<p>"No, there is very little unction in that persuasion generally. How cold
+and apathetic they are, in these soul-stirring times! Not a sinner has
+been writhing on <i>their</i> floor, I'll engage, nor a wretch transferred into
+a saint, in the twinkling of an eye, by <i>that</i> parson. Well, <i>we</i> have
+every reason to be grateful, Mrs. Abbott."</p>
+
+<p>"That we have, for most glorious have been our privileges! To be sure
+that is a sinful pride that can puff up a wretched, sinful being like Eve
+Effingham to such a pass of conceit, as to induce her to think she is
+raised above thinking of, and taking an interest in the affairs of her
+neighbours. Now, for my part, conversion has so far opened <i>my</i> heart,
+that I do actually feel as if I wanted to know all about the meanest
+creature in Templeton."</p>
+
+<p>"That's the true spirit, Mrs. Abbott; stick to that, and your redemption
+is secure. I only edit a newspaper, by way of showing an interest in
+mankind."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope, Mr. Dodge, the press does not mean to let this matter of the
+Point sleep; the press is the true guardian of the public rights, and I
+can tell you the whole community looks to it for support, in this crisis."</p>
+
+<p>"We shall not fail to do our duty," said Mr. Dodge, looking over his
+shoulder, and speaking lower. "What! shall one insignificant individual,
+who has not a single right above that of the meanest citizen in the
+county, oppress this great and powerful community! What if Mr. Effingham
+does own this point of land--"</p>
+
+<p>"But he does <i>not</i> own it," interrupted Mrs. Abbott. "Ever since I have
+known Templeton, the public has owned it. The public, moreover, says it
+owns it, and what the public says, in this happy country, is law."</p>
+
+<p>"But, allowing that the public does not own--"</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>does</i> own it, Mr. Dodge," the nameless repeated, positively.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, ma'am, own or no own, this is not a country in which the press
+ought to be silent, when a solitary individual undertakes to trample on
+the public. Leave that matter to us, Mrs. Abbott; it is in good hands, and
+shall be well taken care of."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm piously glad of it!"</p>
+
+<p>"I mention this to you, as to a friend," continued Mr. Dodge, cautiously
+drawing from his pocket a manuscript, which he prepared to read to his
+companion who sat with a devouring curiosity, ready to listen.</p>
+
+<p>The manuscript of Mr. Dodge contained a professed account of the affair
+of the Point. It was written obscurely, and was not without its
+contradictions, but the imagination of Mrs. Abbott supplied all the
+vacuums, and reconciled all the contradictions. The article was so liberal
+of its professions of contempt for Mr. Effingham, that every rational man
+was compelled to wonder, why a quality, that is usually so passive,
+should, in this particular instance, be aroused to so sudden and violent
+activity. In the way of facts, not one was faithfully stated; and there
+were several deliberate, unmitigated falsehoods, which went essentially to
+colour the whole account.</p>
+
+<p>"I think this will answer the purpose," said Steadfast, "and we have taken
+means to see that it shall be well circulated."</p>
+
+<p>"This will do them good," cried Mrs. Abbott; almost breathless with
+delight. "I hope folks will believe it."</p>
+
+<p>"No fear of that. If it were a party thing, now, one half would believe
+it, as a matter of course, and the other half would not believe it, as a
+matter of course; but, in a private matter, lord bless you, ma'am, people
+are always ready to believe any thing that will give them something to
+talk about."</p>
+
+<p>Here the <i>t&ecirc;te &agrave; t&ecirc;te</i> was interrupted by the return of Mrs. Abbott's
+different messengers, all of whom, unlike the dove sent forth from the
+ark, brought back something in the way of hopes. The Point was a general
+theme, and, though the several accounts flatly contradicted each other,
+Mrs. Abbott, in the general benevolence of her pious heart, found the
+means to extract corroboration of her wishes from each.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Dodge was as good as his word, and the account appeared. The press
+throughout the country seized with avidity on any thing that helped to
+fill its columns. No one appeared disposed to inquire into the truth of
+the account, or after the character of the original authority. It was in
+print, and that struck the great majority of the editors and their
+readers, as a sufficient sanction. Few, indeed, were they, who lived so
+much under a proper self-control, as to hesitate; and this rank injustice
+was done a private citizen, as much without moral restraint, as without
+remorse, by those, who, to take their own accounts of the matter, were the
+regular and habitual champions of human rights!</p>
+
+<p>John Effingham pointed out this extraordinary scene of reckless wrong, to
+his wondering cousin, with the cool sarcasm, with which he was apt to
+assail the weaknesses and crimes of the country. His firmness, united to
+that of his cousin, however, put a stop to the publication of the
+resolutions of Aristabulus's meeting, and when a sufficient time had
+elapsed to prove that these prurient denouncers of their fellow-citizens
+had taken wit in their anger, he procured them, and had them published
+himself, as the most effectual means of exposing the real character of the
+senseless mob, that had thus disgraced liberty, by assuming its
+professions and its usages.</p>
+
+<p>To an observer of men, the end of this affair presented several strong
+points for comment. As soon as the truth became generally known, in
+reference to the real ownership, and the public came to ascertain that
+instead of hitherto possessing a right, it had, in fact been merely
+enjoying a favour, those who had commit ted themselves by their arrogant
+assumptions of facts, and their indecent outrages, fell back on their
+self-love, and began to find excuses for their conduct in that of the
+other party. Mr. Effingham was loudly condemned for not having done the
+very thing, he, in truth, had done, viz: telling the public it did not own
+his property; and when this was shown to be an absurdity, the complaint
+followed that what he had done, had been done in precisely such a mode,
+although it was the mode constantly used by every one else. From these
+vague and indefinite accusations, those most implicated in the wrong,
+began to deny all their own original assertions, by insisting that they
+had known all along, that Mr. Effingham owned the property, but that they
+did not choose he, or any other man, should presume to tell them what they
+knew already. In short, the end of this affair exhibited human nature in
+its usual aspects of prevarication, untruth, contradiction, and
+inconsistency, notwithstanding the high profession of liberty made by
+those implicated; and they who had been the most guilty of wrong, were
+loudest in their complaints, as if they alone had suffered.</p>
+
+<p>"This is not exhibiting the country to us, certainly, after so long an
+absence, in its best appearance," said Mr. Effingham, "I must admit, John;
+but error belongs to all regions, and to all classes of institutions."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, Ned, make the best of it, as usual; but, if you do not come round to
+my way of thinking, before you are a twelvemonth older, I shall renounce
+prophesying. I wish we could get at the bottom of Miss Effingham's
+thoughts, on this occasion."</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Effingham has been grieved, disappointed, nay, shocked," said Eve,
+"but, still she will not despair of the republic. None of our respectable
+neighbours, in the first place, have shared in this transaction, and that
+is something; though I confess I feel some surprise that any considerable
+portion of a community, that respects itself, should quietly allow an
+ignorant fragment of its own numbers, to misrepresent it so grossly, in an
+affair that so nearly touches its own character for common sense and
+justice."</p>
+
+<p>"You have yet to learn, Miss Effingham, that men can get to be so
+saturated with liberty, that they become insensible to the nicer feelings.
+The grossest enormities are constantly committed in this good republic of
+ours, under the pretence of being done by the public, and for the public.
+The public have got to bow to that bugbear, quite as submissively as
+Gesler would have wished the Swiss to bow to his own cap, as to the cap
+of Rodolph's substitute. Men will have idols, and the Americans have
+merely set up themselves."</p>
+
+<p>"And you, cousin Jack, you would be wretched were you doomed to live under
+a system less free. I fear you have the affectation of sometimes saying
+that which you do not exactly feel."</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Chapter XVII.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>  "Come, these are no times to think of dreams--<br />
+We'll talk of dreams hereafter."</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>  SHAKSPEARE.</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>The day succeeding that in which the conversation just mentioned occurred,
+was one of great expectation and delight in the Wigwam. Mrs. Hawker and
+the Bloomfields were expected, and the morning passed away rapidly, under
+the gay buoyancy of the feelings that usually accompany such anticipations
+in a country-house. The travellers were to leave town the previous
+evening, and, though the distance was near two hundred and thirty miles,
+they were engaged to arrive by the usual dinner hour. In speed, the
+Americans, so long as they follow the great routes, are unsurpassed; and
+even Sir George Templemore, coming, as he did, from a country of
+MacAdamized roads and excellent posting, expressed his surprise, when
+given to understand that a journey of this length, near a hundred miles of
+which were by land, moreover, was to be performed in twenty-four hours,
+the stops included.</p>
+
+<p>"One particularly likes this rapid travelling," he remarked, "when it is
+to bring us such friends as Mrs. Hawker."</p>
+
+<p>"And Mrs. Bloomfield," added Eve, quickly. "I rest the credit of the
+American females on Mrs. Bloomfield."</p>
+
+<p>"More so, than on Mrs. Hawker, Miss Effingham."</p>
+
+<p>"Not in all that is amiable, respectable, feminine, and lady-like; but
+certainly more so, in the way of mind. I know, Sir George Templemore, as a
+European, what your opinion is of our sex in this country."</p>
+
+<p>"Good heaven, my dear Miss Effingham!--My opinion of your sex, in America!
+It is impossible for any one to entertain a higher opinion of your
+country-women--as I hope to show--as, I trust, my respect and admiration
+have always proved--nay, Powis, you, as an American, will exonerate me
+from this want of taste--judgment--feeling--"</p>
+
+<p>Paul laughed, but told the embarrassed and really distressed baronet, that
+he should leave him in the very excellent hands into which he had fallen.</p>
+
+<p>"You see that bird, that is sailing so prettily above the roofs of the
+village," said Eve, pointing with her parasol in the direction she meant;
+for the three were walking together on the little lawn, in waiting for the
+appearance of the expected guests; "and I dare say you are ornithologist
+enough to tell its vulgar name."</p>
+
+<p>"You are in the humour to be severe this morning--the bird is but a
+common swallow."</p>
+
+<p>"One of which will not make a summer, as every one knows. Our
+cosmopolitism is already forgotten, and with it, I fear, our frankness."</p>
+
+<p>"Since Powis has hoisted his national colours, I do not feel as free on
+such subjects as formerly," returned Sir George, smiling. "When I thought
+I had a secret ally in him, I was not afraid to concede a little in such
+things, but his avowal of his country has put me on my guard. In no case,
+however, shall I admit my insensibility to the qualities of your
+countrywomen. Powis, as a native, may take that liberty; but, as for
+myself, I shall insist they are, at least, the equals of any females I
+know."</p>
+
+<p>"In <i>naivet&eacute;</i>, prettiness, delicacy of appearance, simplicity, and
+sincerity--"</p>
+
+<p>"In sincerity, think you, dear Miss Effingham?"</p>
+
+<p>"In sincerity, above all things, dear Sir George Templemore.
+Sincerity--nay, frankness is the last quality I should think of denying
+them."</p>
+
+<p>"But to return to Mrs. Bloomfield--she is clever, exceedingly clever, I
+allow; in what is her cleverness to be distinguished from that of one of
+her sex, on the other side of the ocean?"</p>
+
+<p>"In nothing, perhaps, did there exist no differences in national
+characteristics. Naples and New-York are in the same latitude, and yet, I
+think you will agree with me, that there is little resemblance in their
+populations."</p>
+
+<p>"I confess I do not understand the allusion--are you quicker witted,
+Powis?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will not say that," answered Paul; "but I think I do comprehend Miss
+Effingham's meaning. You have travelled enough to know, that, as a rule,
+there is more aptitude in a southern, than in a northern people. They
+receive impressions more readily, and are quicker in all their
+perceptions."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe this to be true; but, then, you will allow that they are less
+constant, and have less perseverance?"</p>
+
+<p>"In that we are agreed, Sir George Templemore," resumed Eve, "though we
+might differ as to the cause. The inconstancy of which you speak, is more
+connected with moral than physical causes, perhaps, and we, of this
+region, might claim an exemption from some of them. But, Mrs. Bloomfield
+is to be distinguished from her European rivals, by a frame so singularly
+feminine as to appear fragile, a delicacy of exterior, that, were it not
+for that illumined face of hers, might indicate a general feebleness, a
+sensitiveness and quickness of intellect that amount almost to
+inspiration; and yet all is balanced by a practical common sense, that
+renders her as safe a counsellor as she is a warm friend. This latter
+quality causes you sometimes to doubt her genius, it is so very homely and
+available. Now it is in this, that I think the American woman, when she
+does rise above mediocrity, is particularly to be distinguished from the
+European. The latter, as a genius, is almost always in the clouds,
+whereas, Mrs. Bloomfield, in her highest flights, is either all heart, or
+all good sense. The nation is practical, and the practical qualities get
+to be imparted even to its highest order of talents."</p>
+
+<p>"The English women are thought to be less excitable, and not so much under
+the influence of sentimentalism, as some of their continental neighbours."</p>
+
+<p>"And very justly--but----"</p>
+
+<p>"But, what, Miss Effingham--there is, in all this, a slight return to the
+cosmopolitism, that reminds me of our days of peril and adventure. Do not
+conceal a thought, if you wish to preserve that character."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, to be sincere, I shall say that your women live under a system too
+sophisticated and factitious to give fair play to common sense, at all
+times. What, for instance, can be the habitual notions of one, who,
+professing the doctrines of Christianity, is accustomed to find money
+placed so very much in the ascendant, as to see it daily exacted in
+payment for the very first of the sacred offices of the church? It would
+be as rational to contend that a mirror which had been cracked into radii,
+by a bullet, like those we have so often seen in Paris, would reflect
+faithfully, as to suppose a mind familiarized to such abuses would be
+sensitive on practical and common sense things."</p>
+
+<p>"But, my dear Miss Effingham, this is all habit."</p>
+
+<p>"I know it is all habit, Sir George Templemore, and a very bad habit it
+is. Even your devoutest clergymen get so accustomed to it, as not to see
+the capital mistake they make. I do not say it is absolutely sinful, where
+there is no compulsion; but, I hope you agree with me, Mr. Powis, when I
+say I think a clergyman ought to be so sensitive on such a subject, as to
+refuse even the little offerings for baptisms, that it is the practice of
+the wealthy of this country to make."</p>
+
+<p>"I agree with you entirely, for it would denote a more just perception of
+the nature of the office they are performing; and they who wish to give
+can always make occasions."</p>
+
+<p>"A hint might be taken from Franklin, who is said to have desired his
+father to ask a blessing on the pork-barrel, by way of condensation," put
+in John Effingham, who joined them as he spoke, and who had heard a part
+of the conversation. "In this instance an average might be struck in the
+marriage fee, that should embrace all future baptisms. But here comes
+neighbour Howel to favour us with his opinion. Do you like the usages of
+the English church, as respects baptisms, Howel?"</p>
+
+<p>"Excellent, the best in the world, John Effingham."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Howel is so true an Englishman," said Eve, shaking hands cordially
+with their well-meaning neighbour, "that he would give a certificate in
+favour of polygamy, if it had a British origin."</p>
+
+<p>"And is not this a more natural sentiment for an American than that which
+distrusts so much, merely because it comes from the little island?" asked
+Sir George, reproachfully.</p>
+
+<p>"That is a question I shall leave Mr. Howel himself to answer."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Sir George," observed the gentleman alluded to, "I do not attribute
+my respect for your country, in the least, to origin. I endeavour to keep
+myself free from all sorts of prejudices. My admiration of England arises
+from conviction, and I watch all her movements with the utmost jealousy,
+in order to see if I cannot find her tripping, though I feel bound to say
+I have never yet detected her in a single error. What a very different
+picture, France--I hope your governess is not within hearing, Miss Eve;
+it is not her fault; she was born a French woman, and we would not wish to
+hurt her feelings--but what a different picture France presents! I have
+watched her narrowly too, these forty years, I may say, and I have never
+yet found her right; and this, you must allow, is a great deal to be said
+by one who is thoroughly impartial."</p>
+
+<p>"This is a terrible picture, indeed, Howel, to come from an unprejudiced
+man," said John Effingham; "and I make no doubt Sir George Templemore will
+have a better opinion of himself for ever after--he for a valiant lion,
+and you for a true prince. But yonder is the 'exclusive extra,' which
+contains our party."</p>
+
+<p>The elevated bit of lawn on which they were walking commanded a view of
+the road that led into the village, and the travelling, vehicle engaged by
+Mrs. Hawker and her friends, was now seen moving along it at a rapid pace.
+Eve expressed her satisfaction, and then all resumed their walk, as some
+minutes must still elapse previously to the arrival.</p>
+
+<p>"Exclusive extra!" repeated Sir George; "that is a peculiar phrase, and
+one that denotes any thing but democracy."</p>
+
+<p>"In any other part of the world a thing would be sufficiently marked, by
+being 'extra,' but here it requires the addition of 'exclusive,' in order
+to give it the 'tower stamp,'" said John Effingham, with a curl of his
+handsome lip. "Any thing may be as exclusive as it please, provided it
+bear the public impress. A stagecoach being intended for every body, why,
+the more exclusive it is, the better. The next thing we shall hear of will
+be exclusive steamboats, exclusive railroads, and both for the uses of the
+exclusive people."</p>
+
+<p>Sir George now seriously asked an explanation of the meaning of the term,
+when Mr. Howel informed him that an 'extra' in America meant a
+supernumerary coach, to carry any excess of the ordinary number of
+passengers; whereas an 'exclusive extra' meant a coach expressly engaged
+by a particular individual.</p>
+
+<p>"The latter, then, is American posting," observed Sir George.</p>
+
+<p>"You have got the best idea of it that can be given," said Paul. "It is
+virtually posting with a coachman, instead of postillions, few persons in
+this country, where so much of the greater distances is done by steam,
+using their own travelling carriages. The American 'exclusive extra' is
+not only posting, but, in many of the older parts of the country, it is
+posting of a very good quality."</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say, now, this is all wrong, if we only knew it," said the
+simple-minded Mr. Howel. "There is nothing exclusive in England, ha, Sir
+George?"</p>
+
+<p>Every body laughed except the person who put this question, but the
+rattling of wheels and the tramping of horses on the village bridge,
+announced the near approach of the travellers. By the time the party had
+reached the great door in front of the house, the carriage was already in
+the grounds, and at the next moment, Eve was in the arms of Mrs.
+Bloomfield. It was apparent, at a glance, that more than the expected
+number of guests was in the vehicle; and as its contents were slowly
+discharged, the spectators stood around it, with curiosity, to observe who
+would appear.</p>
+
+<p>The first person that descended, after the exit of Mrs. Bloomfield, was
+Captain Truck, who, however, instead of saluting his friends, turned
+assiduously to the door he had just passed through, to assist Mrs. Hawker
+to alight. Not until this office had been done, did he even look for Eve;
+for, so profound was the worthy captain's admiration and respect for this
+venerable lady, that she actually had got to supplant our heroine, in some
+measure, in his heart. Mr. Bloomfield appeared next, and an exclamation of
+surprise and pleasure proceeded from both Paul and the baronet, as they
+caught a glimpse of the face of the last of the travellers that got out.</p>
+
+<p>"Ducie!" cried Sir George. "This is even better than we expected."</p>
+
+<p>"Ducie!" added Paul, "you are several days before the expected time, and
+in excellent company."</p>
+
+<p>The explanation, however, was very simple Captain Ducie had found the
+facilities for rapid motion much greater than he had expected, and he
+reached Fort Plain, in the eastward cars, as the remainder of the party
+arrived in the westward. Captain Truck-who had met Mrs. Hawker's party in
+the river boat, had been intrusted with the duty of making the
+arrangements, and recognizing Captain Ducie, to their mutual surprise,
+while engaged in this employment, and ascertaining his destination, the
+latter was very cordially received into the "exclusive extra."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Effingham welcomed all his guests with the hospitality and kindness
+for which he was distinguished. We are no great admirers of the pretension
+to peculiar national virtues, having ascertained, to our own satisfaction,
+by tolerably extensive observation, that the moral difference between men
+is of no great amount; but we are almost tempted to say, on this occasion,
+that Mr. Effingham received his guests with American hospitality; for if
+there be one quality that this people can claim to possess in a higher
+degree than that of most other Christian nations, it is that of a simple,
+sincere, confiding hospitality. For Mrs. Hawker, in common with all who
+knew her, the owner of the Wigwam entertained a profound respect; and
+though his less active mind did not take as much pleasure as that of his
+daughter, in the almost intuitive intelligence of Mrs. Bloomfield, he also
+felt for this lady a very friendly regard. It gave him pleasure to see Eve
+surrounded by persons of her own sex, of so high a tone of thought and
+breeding; a tone of thought and breeding, moreover, that was as far
+removed as possible from anything strained or artificial: and his welcomes
+were cordial in proportion. Mr. Bloomfield was a quiet, sensible,
+gentleman-like man, whom his wife fervently loved, without making any
+parade of her attachment and he was also one who had the good sense to
+make himself agreeable wherever he went. Captain Ducie, who,
+Englishman-like, had required some urging to be induced to present himself
+before the precise hour named in his own letter, and who had seriously
+contemplated passing several days in a tavern, previously to showing
+himself at the Wigwam, was agreeably disappointed at a reception, that
+would have been just as frank and warm, had he come without any notice at
+all: for the Effinghams knew that the usages which sophistication and a
+crowded population perhaps render necessary in older countries, were not
+needed in their own; and then the circumstance that their quondam pursuer
+was so near a kinsman of Paul Powis', did not fail to act essentially in
+his favour.</p>
+
+<p>"We can offer but little, in these retired mountains, to interest a
+traveller and a man of the world, Captain Ducie," said Mr. Effingham, when
+he went to pay his compliments more particularly, after the whole party
+was in the house; "but there is a common interest in our past adventures
+to talk about, after all other topics fail. When, we met on the ocean, and
+you deprived us so unexpectedly of our friend Powis, we did not know that
+you had the better claim of affinity to his company."</p>
+
+<p>Captain Ducie coloured slightly, but he made his answer with a proper
+degree of courtesy and gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>"It is very true," he added, "Powis and myself are relatives, and I shall
+place all my claims to your hospitality to his account; for I feel that I
+have been the unwilling cause of too much suffering to your party to bring
+with me any very pleasant recollections, notwithstanding your kindness in
+including me as a friend in the adventures of which you speak."</p>
+
+<p>"Dangers that are happily past, seldom bring very unpleasant
+recollections, more especially when they were connected with scenes of
+excitement, I understand, sir, that the unhappy young man, who was the
+principal cause of all that passed, anticipated the sentence of the law,
+by destroying himself."</p>
+
+<p>"He was his own executioner, and the victim of a silly weakness that, I
+should think, your state of society was yet too young and simple to
+encourage. The idle vanity of making an appearance, a vanity, by the way,
+that seldom besets gentlemen, or the class to which it may be thought more
+properly to belong, ruins hundreds of young men in England, and this poor
+creature was of the number. I never was more rejoiced than when he quitted
+my ship, for the sight of so much weakness sickened one of human nature.
+Miserable as his fate proved to be, and pitiable as his condition really
+was while in my charge, his case has the alleviating circumstance with me,
+of having made me acquainted with those whom it might not otherwise have
+been my good fortune to meet!"</p>
+
+<p>This civil speech was properly acknowledged, and Mr. Effingham addressed
+himself to Captain Truck, to whom, in the hurry of the moment, he had not
+yet said half that his feelings dictated.</p>
+
+<p>"I am rejoiced to see you under my roof, my worthy friend," taking the
+rough hand of the old seaman between his own whiter and more delicate
+fingers, and shaking it with cordiality, "for this <i>is</i> being under my
+roof, while those town residences have less the air of domestication and
+familiarity. You will spend many of your holidays here, I trust; and when
+we get a few years older, we will begin to prattle about the marvels we
+have seen in company."</p>
+
+<p>The eye of Captain Truck glistened, and, as he return ed the shake by
+another of twice the energy, and the gentle pressure of Mr. Effingham by a
+squeeze like that of a vice, he said in his honest off-hand manner--</p>
+
+<p>"The happiest hour I ever knew was that in which I discharged the pilot,
+the first time out, as a ship-master; the next great event of my life, in
+the way of happiness, was the moment I found myself on the deck of the
+Montauk, after we had given those greasy Arabs a him that their room was
+better than their company; and I really think this very instant must be
+set down as the third. I never knew, my dear sir, how much I truly loved
+you and your daughter, until both were out of sight."</p>
+
+<p>"That is so kind and gallant a speech, that it ought not to be lost on the
+person most concerned. Eve, my love, our worthy friend has just made a
+declaration which will be a novelty to you, who have not been much in the
+way of listening to speeches of this nature."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Effingham then acquainted his daughter with what Captain Truck had
+just said.</p>
+
+<p>"This is certainly the first declaration of the sort I ever heard, and
+with the simplicity of an unpractised young woman, I here avow that the
+attachment is reciprocal," said the smiling Eve. "If there is an
+indiscretion in this hasty acknowledgement, it must be ascribed to
+surprise, and to the suddenness with which I have learned my power, for
+your <i>parvenues</i> are not always perfectly regulated."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope Mamselle V.A.V. is well," returned the Captain, cordially shaking
+the hand the young lady had given him, "and that she enjoys herself to her
+liking in this outlandish country?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mademoiselle Viefville will return you her thanks in person, at dinner;
+and I believe she does not yet regret <i>la belle France</i> unreasonably; as I
+regret it myself, in many particulars, it would be unjust not to permit a
+native of the country some liberty in that way."</p>
+
+<p>"I perceive a strange face in the room--one of the family, my dear young
+lady?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a relative, but a very old friend.--Shall I have the pleasure of
+introducing you, Captain?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hardly dared to ask it, for I know you must have been overworked in
+this way, lately, but I confess I <i>should</i> like an introduction; I have
+neither introduced, nor been introduced since I left New-York, with the
+exception of the case of Captain Ducie, whom I made properly acquainted
+with Mrs. Hawker and her party as you may suppose. They know each other
+regularly now, and you are saved the trouble of going through the
+ceremony yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"And how is it with you and the Bloomfields? Did Mrs. Hawker name you to
+them properly?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is the most extraordinary thing of the sort I ever knew! Not a word
+was said in the way of introduction, and yet I slid into an acquaintance
+with Mrs. Bloomfield so easily, that I could not tell how it was done, if
+my life depended on it. But this very old friend of yours, my dear young
+lady----"</p>
+
+<p>"Captain Truck, Mr. Howel; Mr. Howel, Captain Truck;" said Eve, imitating
+the most approved manner of the introductory spirit of the day with
+admirable self-possession and gravity. "I am fortunate in having it in my
+power to make two persons whom I so much esteem acquainted."</p>
+
+<p>"Captain Truck is the gentleman who commands the Montauk?" said Mr. Howel,
+glancing at Eve, as much as to say, "am I right?"</p>
+
+<p>"The very same, and the brave seaman to whom we are all indebted for the
+happiness of standing here at this moment."</p>
+
+<p>"You are to be envied, Captain Truck; of all the men in your calling, you
+are exactly the one I should most wish to supplant. I understand you
+actually go to England twice every year!"</p>
+
+<p>"Three times, sir, when the winds permit. I have even seen the old island
+four times, between January and January."</p>
+
+<p>"What a pleasure! It must be the very acme of navigation to sail between
+America and England!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is not unpleasant, sir, from April to November, but the long nights,
+thick weather, and heavy winds knock off a good deal of the satisfaction
+for the rest of the year."</p>
+
+<p>"But I speak of the country; of old England itself; not of the passages."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, England has what I call a pretty fair coast. It is high, and great
+attention is paid to the lights; but of what account is either coast or
+lights, if the weather is so thick, you cannot see the end of your
+flying-jib-boom!"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Howel alludes more particularly to the country, inland," said Eve;
+"to the towns, the civilization and the other proofs of cultivation and
+refinement. To the government, especially."</p>
+
+<p>"In my judgment, sir, the government is much too particular about tobacco,
+and some other trifling things I could name. Then it restricts pennants to
+King's ships, whereas, to my notion, my dear young lady, a New-York packet
+is as worthy of wearing a pennant as any vessel that floats. I mean, of
+course, ships of the regular European lines, and not the Southern
+traders."</p>
+
+<p>"But these are merely spots on the sun, my good sir," returned Mr. Howel;
+"putting a few such trifles out of the question, I think you will allow
+that England is the most delightful country in the world?"</p>
+
+<p>"To be frank with you, Mr. Howel, there is a good deal of hang-dog
+weather, along in October, November and December. I have known March any
+thing but agreeable, and then April is just like a young girl with one of
+your melancholy novels, now smiling, and now blubbering."</p>
+
+<p>"But the morals of the country, my dear sir; the moral features of England
+must be a source of never-dying delight to a true philanthropist," resumed
+Mr. Howel, as Eve, who perceived that the discourse was likely to be long,
+went to join the ladies. "An Englishman has most reason to be proud of the
+moral excellencies of his country!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, to be frank with you, Mr. Howel, there are some of the moral
+features of London, that are any thing but very beautiful. If you could
+pass twenty-four hours in the neighbourhood of St. Catharine's, would see
+sights that would throw Templeton into fits. The English are a handsome
+people, I allow; but their morality is none of the best-featured."</p>
+
+<p>"Let us be seated, sir; I am afraid we are not exactly agreed on our
+terms, and, in order that we may continue this subject, I beg you will let
+me take a seat next you, at table."</p>
+
+<p>To this Captain Truck very cheerfully assented, and then the two took
+chairs, continuing the discourse very much in the blind and ambiguous
+manner in which it had been commenced; the one party insisting on seeing
+every thing through the medium of an imagination that had got to be
+diseased on such subjects, or with a species of monomania; while the other
+seemed obstinately determined to consider the entire country as things had
+been presented to his limited and peculiar experience, in the vicinity of
+the docks.</p>
+
+<p>"We have had a very unexpected, and a very agreeable attendant in Captain
+Truck," said Mrs Hawker, when Eve had placed herself by her side, and
+respectfully taken one of her hands. "I really think if I were to suffer
+shipwreck, or to run the hazard of captivity, I should choose to have both
+occur in his good company."</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Hawker makes so many conquests," observed Mrs. Bloomfield, "that we
+are to think nothing of her success with this mer-man; but what will you
+say, Miss Effingham, when you learn that I am also in favour, in the same
+high quarter. I shall think the better of masters, and boatswains, and
+Trinculos and Stephanos, as long as I live, for this specimen of their
+craft."</p>
+
+<p>"Not Trinculos and Stephanos, dear Mrs. Bloom field; for, <i>&agrave; l' exception
+pres de</i> Saturday-nights, and sweethearts and wives, a more exemplary
+person in the way of libations does not exist than our excellent Captain
+Truck. He is much too religious and moral for so vulgar an excess as
+drinking."</p>
+
+<p>"Religious!" exclaimed Mrs, Bloomfield, in sur prise. "This is a merit to
+which I did not know he possessed the smallest claims. One might imagine a
+little superstition, and some short-lived repentances in gales of wind;
+but scarcely any thing as much like a trade wind, as religion!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then you do not know him; for a more sincerely devout man, though I
+acknowledge it is after a fashion that is perhaps peculiar to the ocean,
+is not often met with. At any rate, you found him attentive to our sex?"</p>
+
+<p>"The pink of politeness, and, not to embellish, there is a manly deference
+about him, that is singularly agreeable to our frail vanity. This comes of
+his packet-training, I suppose, and we may thank you for some portion of
+his merit, His tongue never tires in your praises, and did I not feel
+persuaded that your mind is made up never to be the wife of any republican
+American, I should fear this visit exceedingly. Notwithstanding the remark
+I made concerning my being in favour, the affair lies between Mrs. Hawker
+and yourself. I know it is not your habit to trifle even on that very
+popular subject with young ladies, matrimony; but this case forms so
+complete an exception to the vulgar passion, that I trust you will
+overlook the indiscretion. Our <i>golden</i> captain, for <i>copper</i> he is not,
+protests that Mrs. Hawker is the most delightful old lady he ever knew,
+and that Miss Eve Effingham is the most delightful young lady he ever
+knew. Here, then, each may see the ground she occupies, and play her cards
+accordingly. I hope to be forgiven for touching on a subject so delicate."</p>
+
+<p>"In the first place," said Eve, smiling, "I should wish to hear Mrs.
+Hawker's reply."</p>
+
+<p>"I have no more to say, than to express my perfect gratitude," answered
+that lady, "to announce a determination not to change my condition, on
+account of extreme youth, and a disposition to abandon the field to my
+younger, if not fairer, rival."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then," resumed Eve, anxious to change the subject, for she saw
+that Paul was approaching their group, "I believe it will be wisest in me
+to suspend a decision, circumstances leaving so much at my disposal. Time
+must show what that decision will be."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay," said Mrs. Bloomfield, who saw no feeling involved in the trifling,
+"this is unjustifiable coquetry, and I feel bound to ascertain how the
+land lies. You will remember I am the Captain's confidant, and you know
+the fearful responsibility of a friend in an affair of this sort; that of
+a friend in the duello being insignificant in comparison. That I may have
+testimony at need, Mr. Powis shall be made acquainted with the leading
+facts. Captain Truck is a devout admirer of this young lady, sir, and I am
+endeavouring to discover whether he ought to hang himself on her father's
+lawn, this evening, as soon as the moon rises, or live another week. In
+order to do this, I shall pursue the categorical and inquisitorial
+method--and so defend yourself Miss Effingham. Do you object to the
+country of your admirer?"</p>
+
+<p>Eve, though inwardly vexed at the turn this pleasantry had taken,
+maintained a perfectly composed manner, for she knew that Mrs. Bloomfield
+had too much feminine propriety to say any thing improper, or any thing
+that might seriously embarrass her.</p>
+
+<p>"It would, indeed, be extraordinary, should I object to a country which is
+not only my own, but which has so long been that of my ancestors," she
+answered steadily. "On this score, my knight has nothing to fear."</p>
+
+<p>"I rejoice to hear this," returned Mrs. Bloomfield, glancing her eyes,
+unconsciously to herself, however, towards Sir George Templemore, "and,
+Mr. Powis, you, who I believe are a European, will learn humility in the
+avowal. Do you object to your swain that he is a seaman?"</p>
+
+<p>Eve blushed, notwithstanding a strong effort to appear composed, and, for
+the first time since their acquaintance, she felt provoked with Mrs.
+Bloomfield. She hesitated before she answered in the negative, and this
+too in a way to give more meaning to her reply, although nothing could be
+farther from her intentions.</p>
+
+<p>"The happy man <i>may</i> then be an American and a seaman! Here is great
+encouragement. Do you object to sixty?"</p>
+
+<p>"In any other man I should certainly consider it a blemish, as my own dear
+father is but fifty."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bloomfield was struck with the tremor in the voice, and with the air
+of embarrassment, in one who usually was so easy and collected; and with
+feminine sensitiveness she adroitly abandoned the subject, though she
+often recurred to this stifled emotion in the course of the day, and from
+that moment she became a silent observer of Eve's deportment with all her
+father's guests.</p>
+
+<p>"This is hope enough for one day," she said, rising; "the profession and
+the flag must counterbalance the years as best they may, and the Truck
+lives another revolution of the sun! Mrs. Hawker, we shall be late at
+dinner, I see by that clock, unless we retire soon."</p>
+
+<p>Both the ladies now went to their rooms; Eve, who was already dressed for
+dinner, remaining in the drawing-room. Paul still stood before her, and,
+like herself, he seemed embarrassed.</p>
+
+<p>"There are men who would be delighted to hear even the little that has
+fallen from your lips in this trifling," he said, as soon as Mrs.
+Bloomfield was out of hearing. "To be an American and a seaman, then, are
+not serious defects in your eyes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Am I to be made responsible for Mrs. Bloomfield's caprices and
+pleasantries?"</p>
+
+<p>"By no means; but I do think you hold yourself responsible for Miss
+Effingham's truth and sincerity I can conceive of your silence, when
+questioned too far, but scarcely of any direct declaration, that shall not
+possess both these high qualities."</p>
+
+<p>Eve looked up gratefully, for she saw that profound respect for her
+character dictated the remark; but rising, she observed--</p>
+
+<p>"This is making a little <i>badinage</i> about our honest, lion-hearted, old
+captain, a very serious affair. And now, to show you that I am conscious
+of, and thankful for, your own compliment, I shall place you on the
+footing of a friend to both the parties, and request you will take Captain
+Truck into your especial care, while he remains here. My father and cousin
+are both sincerely his friends, but their habits are not so much those of
+their guests, as yours will probably be; and to you, then, I commit him,
+with a request that he may miss his ship and the ocean as little as
+possible."</p>
+
+<p>"I would I knew how to take this charge, Miss Effingham!--To be a seaman
+is not always a recommendation with the polished, intelligent, and
+refined."</p>
+
+<p>"But when one is polished, intelligent, and refined, to be a seaman is to
+add one other particular and useful branch of knowledge to those which are
+more familiar. I feel certain Captain Truck will be in good hands, and now
+I will go and do my devoirs to my own especial charges, the ladies."</p>
+
+<p>Eve bowed as she passed the young man, and she left the room with as much
+haste as at all became her. Paul stood motionless quite a minute after she
+had vanished, nor did he awaken from his reverie, until aroused by an
+appeal from Captain Truck, to sustain him, in some of his matter-of-fact
+opinions concerning England, against the visionary and bookish notions of
+Mr. Howel.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is this Mr. Powis?" asked Mrs. Bloomfield of Eve, when the latter
+appeared in her dressing-room, with an unusual impatience of manner.</p>
+
+<p>"You know, my dear Mrs. Bloomfield, that he was our fellow-passenger in
+the Montauk, and that he was of infinite service to us, in escaping from
+the Arabs."</p>
+
+<p>"All this I know, certainly; but he is a European, is he not?"</p>
+
+<p>Eve scarcely ever felt more embarrassed than in answering this simple
+question.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe not; at least, I think not; we thought so when we met him in
+Europe, and even until quite lately; but he has avowed himself a
+countryman of our own, since his arrival at Templeton."</p>
+
+<p>"Has he been here long?"</p>
+
+<p>"We found him in the village on reaching home. He was from Canada, and has
+been in waiting for his cousin, Captain Ducie, who came with you."</p>
+
+<p>"His cousin!--He has English cousins, then! Mr. Ducie kept this to
+himself, with true English reserve. Captain Truck whispered something of
+the latter's having taken out one of his passengers, <i>the</i> Mr. Powis. the
+hero of the rocks, but I did not know of his having found his way back to
+our--to his country. Is he as agreeable as Sir George Templemore?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, Mrs. Bloomfield, I must leave you to judge of that for yourself. I
+think them both agreeable men; but there is so much caprice in a woman's
+tastes, that I decline thinking for others."</p>
+
+<p>"He is a seaman, I believe," observed Mrs. Bloomfield, with an abstracted
+manner--"he <i>must</i> have been, to have manoeuvred and managed as I have
+been told he did. Powis--Powis--that is not one of our names, neither--I
+should think he must be from the south."</p>
+
+<p>Here Eve's habitual truth and dignity of mind did her good service, and
+prevented any further betrayal of embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>"We do not know his family," she steadily answered. "That he is a
+gentleman, we see; but of his origin and connections he never speaks."</p>
+
+<p>"His profession would have given him the notions of a gentleman, for he
+was in the navy I have heard, although I had thought it the British navy.
+I do not know of any Powises in Philadelphia, or Baltimore, or Richmond,
+or Charleston; he must surely be from the interior."</p>
+
+<p>Eve could scarcely condemn her friend for a curiosity that had not a
+little tormented herself, though she would gladly change the discourse.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Powis would be much gratified, did he know what a subject of interest
+he has suddenly become with Mrs. Bloomfield," she said, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"I confess it all; to be very sincere, I think him the most distinguished
+young man, in air, appearance, and expression of countenance, I ever saw.
+When this is coupled with what I have heard of his gallantry and coolness,
+my dear, I should not be woman to feel no interest in him. I would give
+the world to know of what State he is a native, if native, in truth, he
+be."</p>
+
+<p>"For that we have his own word. He was born in this country, and was
+educated in our own marine."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet from the little that fell from him, in our first short
+conversation, he struck me as being educated above his profession."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Powis has seen much as a traveller; when we met him in Europe, it was
+in a circle particularly qualified to improve both his mind and his
+manners."</p>
+
+<p>"Europe! Your acquaintance did not then commence, like that with Sir
+George Templemore, in the packet?"</p>
+
+<p>"Our acquaintance with neither, commenced in the packet. My father had
+often seen both these gentlemen, during our residences in different parts
+of Europe."</p>
+
+<p>"And your father's daughter?"</p>
+
+<p>"My father's daughter, too," said Eve, laughing. "With Mr. Powis, in
+particular, we were acquainted under circumstances that left a vivid
+recollection of his manliness and professional skill. He was of almost as
+much service to us on one of the Swiss lakes, as he has subsequently been
+on the ocean."</p>
+
+<p>All this was news to Mrs. Bloomfield, and she looked as if she thought the
+intelligence interesting. At this moment the dinner-bell rang, and all the
+ladies descended to the drawing-room. The gentlemen were already
+assembled, and as Mr. Effingham led Mrs. Hawker to the table, Mrs.
+Bloomfield gaily took Eve by the arm, protesting that she felt herself
+privileged, the first day, to take a seat near the young mistress of the
+Wigwam.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Powis and Sir George Templemore will not quarrel about the honour,"
+she said, in a low voice, as they proceeded towards the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed you are in error, Mrs. Bloomfield; Sir George Templemore is much
+better pleased with being at liberty to sit next my cousin Grace."</p>
+
+<p>"Can this be so!" returned the other, looking intently at her young
+friend.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed it is so, and I am very glad to be able to affirm it. How far Miss
+Van Cortlandt is pleased that it is so, time must show: but the baronet
+betrays every day, and all day, how much he is pleased with her."</p>
+
+<p>"He is then a man of less taste, and judgment, and intelligence, than I
+had thought him."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, dearest Mrs. Bloomfield, this is not necessarily true; or, if true,
+need it be so openly said?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Se non e vero, e ben trovato</i>."</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Chapter XVIII.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>  "Thine for a space are they--<br />
+Yet shalt thou yield thy treasures up at last;<br />
+Thy gates shall yet give way,<br />
+Thy bolts shall fall, inexorable Past."</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>  BRYANT</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>Captain Ducie had retired for the night, and was sitting reading, when a
+low tap at the door roused him from a brown study. He gave the necessary
+permission, and the door opened.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope, Ducie, you have not forgotten the secretary I left among your
+effects," said Paul entering the room, "and concerning which I wrote you
+when you were still at Quebec."</p>
+
+<p>Captain Ducie pointed to the case, which was standing among his other
+luggage, on the floor of the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you for this care," said Paul, taking the secretary under his arm,
+and retiring towards the door; "it contains papers of much importance to
+myself, and some that I have reason to think are of importance to others."</p>
+
+<p>"Stop, Powis--a word before, you quit me. Is Templemore <i>de trop</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all; I have a sincere regard for Templemore, and should be sorry
+to see him leave us."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet I think it singular a man of his habits should be rusticating
+among these hills, when I know that he is expected to look at the Canadas,
+with a view to report their actual condition at home."</p>
+
+<p>"Is Sir George really entrusted with a commission of that sort?" inquired
+Paul, with interest.</p>
+
+<p>"Not with any positive commission, perhaps, for none was necessary.
+Templemore is a rich fellow, and has no need of appointments; but, it is
+hoped and understood, that he will look at the provinces, and report
+their condition to the government, I dare say he will not be impeached for
+his negligence, though it may occasion surprise."</p>
+
+<p>"Good night, Ducie; Templemore prefers a wigwam to your walled Quebec, and
+<i>natives</i> to colonists, that's all."</p>
+
+<p>In a minute, Paul was at the door of John Effingham's room, where he again
+tapped, and was again told to enter.</p>
+
+<p>"Ducie has not forgotten my request, and here is the secretary that
+contains poor Mr. Monday's paper," he remarked, as he laid his load on a
+toilet-table, speaking in a way to show that the visit was expected. "We
+have, indeed, neglected this duty too long, and it is to be hoped no
+injustice, or wrong to any, will be the consequence."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that the package?" demanded John Effingham, extending a hand to
+receive a bundle of papers that Paul had taken from the secretary. "We
+will break the seals this moment, and ascertain what ought to be done,
+before we sleep."</p>
+
+<p>"These are papers of my own, and very precious are they," returned the
+young man, regarding them a moment, with interest, before he laid them on
+the toilet. "Here are the papers of Mr. Monday."</p>
+
+<p>John Effingham received the package from his young friend, placed the
+lights conveniently on the table, put on his spectacles, and invited Paul
+to be seated. The gentlemen were placed opposite each other, the duty of
+breaking the seals, and first casting an eye at the contents of the
+different documents, devolving, as a matter of course, on the senior of
+the two, who, in truth, had alone been entrusted with it.</p>
+
+<p>"Here is something signed by poor Monday himself, in the way of a general,
+certificate," observed John Effingham, who first read the paper, and then
+handed it to Paul. It was, in form, an unsealed letter; and it was
+addressed "to all whom it may concern." The certificate itself was in the
+following words:</p>
+
+<p>"I, John Monday, do declare and certify, that all the accompanying letters
+and documents are genuine and authentic. Jane Dowse, to whom and from
+whom, are so many letters, was my late mother, she having intermarried
+with Peter Dowse, the man so often named, and who led her into acts for
+which I know she has since been deeply repentant. In committing these
+papers to me, my poor mother left me the sole judge of the course I was to
+take, and I have put them in this form in order that they may yet do good,
+should I be called suddenly away. All depends on discovering who the
+person called Bright actually is, for he was never known to my mother, by
+any other name. She knows him to have been an Englishman, however, and
+thinks he was, or had been, an upper servant in a gentleman's family. JOHN
+MONDAY."</p>
+
+<p>This paper was dated several years back, a sign that the disposition to do
+right had existed some time in Mr. Monday; and all the letters and other
+papers had been carefully preserved. The latter also appeared to be
+regularly numbered, a precaution that much aided the investigations of the
+two gentlemen. The original letters spoke for themselves, and the copies
+had been made in a clear, strong, mercantile hand, and with the method of
+one accustomed to business. In short, so far as the contents of the
+different papers would allow, nothing was wanting to render the whole
+distinct and intelligible.</p>
+
+<p>John Effingham read the paper No. 1, with deliberation, though not aloud;
+and when he had done, he handed it to his young friend, coolly remarking--</p>
+
+<p>"That is the production of a deliberate villain."</p>
+
+<p>Paul glanced his eye over the document, which was an original letter
+signed, 'David Bright,' and addressed to 'Mrs. Jane Dowse,' It was written
+with exceeding art, made many professions of friendship, spoke of the
+writer's knowledge of the woman's friends in England, and of her first
+husband in particular, and freely professed the writer's desire to serve
+her, while it also contained several ambiguous allusions to certain means
+of doing so, which should be revealed whenever the person to whom the
+letter was addressed should discover a willingness to embark in the
+undertaking. This letter was dated Philadelphia, was addressed to one in
+New-York, and it was old.</p>
+
+<p>"This is, indeed, a rare specimen of villany," said Paul, as he laid down
+the paper, "and has been written in some such spirit as that employed by
+the devil when he tempted our common mother. I think I never read a better
+specimen of low, wily, cunning."</p>
+
+<p>"And, judging by all that we already know, it would seem to have
+succeeded. In this letter you will find the gentleman a little more
+explicit; and but a little; though he is evidently encouraged by the
+interest and curiosity betrayed by the woman in this copy of the answer to
+his first epistle."</p>
+
+<p>Paul read the letter just named, and then he laid it down to wait for the
+next, which was still in the hands of his companion.</p>
+
+<p>"This is likely to prove a history of unlawful love, and of its miserable
+consequences," said John Effingham in his cool manner, as he handed the
+answers to letter No. 1, and letter No. 2, to Paul. "The world is full of
+such unfortunate adventures, and I should think the parties English, by a
+hint or two you will find in this very honest and conscientious
+communication. Strongly artificial, social and political distinctions
+render expedients of this nature more frequent, perhaps, in Great Britain,
+than in any other country. Youth is the season of the passions, and many a
+man in the thoughtlessness of that period lays the foundation of bitter
+regret in after life."</p>
+
+<p>As John Effingham raised his eyes, in the act of extending his hand
+towards his companion, he perceived that the fresh ruddy hue of his
+embrowned cheek deepened, until the colour diffused itself over the whole
+of his fine brow. At first an unpleasant suspicion flashed on John
+Effingham, and he admitted it with regret, for Eve and her future
+happiness had got to be closely associated, in his mind, with the
+character and conduct of the young man; but when Paul took the papers,
+steadily, and by an effort seemed to subdue all unpleasant feelings, the
+calm dignity with which he read them completely effaced the disagreeable
+distrust. It was then John Effingham remembered that he had once believed
+Paul himself might be the fruits of the heartless indiscretion he
+condemned. Commiseration and sympathy instantly took the place of the
+first impression, and he was so much absorbed with these feelings that he
+had not taken up the letter which was to follow, when Paul laid down the
+paper he had last been required to read.</p>
+
+<p>"This does, indeed, sir, seem to foretell one of those painful histories
+of unbridled passion, with the still more painful consequences," said the
+young man with the steadiness of one who was unconscious of having a
+personal connexion with any events of a nature so unpleasant. "Let us
+examine farther."</p>
+
+<p>John Effingham felt emboldened by these encouraging signs of unconcern,
+and he read the succeeding letters aloud, so that they learned their
+contents simultaneously. The next six or eight communications betrayed
+nothing distinctly, beyond the fact that the child which formed the
+subject of the whole correspondence, was to be received by Peter Dowse and
+his wife, and to be retained as their own offspring, for the consideration
+of a considerable sum, with an additional engagement to pay an annuity. It
+appeared by these letters also, that the child, which was hypocritically
+alluded to under the name of the 'pet,' had been actually transferred to
+the keeping of Jane Dowse, and that several years passed, after this
+arrangement, before the correspondence terminated. Most of the later
+letters referred to the payment of the annuity, although they all
+contained cold inquiries after the 'pet,' and answers so vague and
+general, as sufficiently to prove that the term was singularly misapplied.
+In the whole, there were some thirty or forty letters, each of which had
+been punctually answered, and their dates covered a space of near twelve
+years. The perusal of all these papers consumed more than an hour, and
+when John Effingham laid his spectacles on the table, the village clock
+had struck the hour of midnight.</p>
+
+<p>"As yet," he observed, "we have learned little more than the fact, that a
+child was made to take a false character, without possessing any other
+clue to the circumstances than is given in the names of the parties, all
+of whom are evidently obscure, and one of the most material of whom, we
+are plainly told, must have borne a fictitious name. Even poor Monday, in
+possession of so much collateral testimony that we want, could not have
+known what was the precise injustice done, if any, or, certainly, with the
+intentions he manifests, he would not have left that important particular
+in the dark."</p>
+
+<p>"This is likely to prove a complicated affair," returned Paul, "and it is
+not very clear that we can be of any immediate service. As you are
+probably fatigued, we may without impropriety defer the further
+examination to another time."</p>
+
+<p>To this John Effingham assented, and Paul, during the short conversation
+that followed, brought the secretary from the toilet to the table, along
+with the bundle of important papers that belonged to himself, to which he
+had alluded, and busied himself in replacing the whole in the drawer from
+which they had been taken.</p>
+
+<p>"All the formalities about the seals, that we observed when poor Monday
+gave us the packet, would seem to be unnecessary," he remarked, while thus
+occupied, "and it will probably be sufficient if I leave the secretary in
+your room, and keep the keys myself."</p>
+
+<p>"One never knows," returned John Effingham, with the greater caution of
+experience and age. "We have not read all the papers, and there are wax
+and lights before you; each has his watch and seal, and it will be the
+work of a minute only, to replace every thing as we left the package,
+originally. When this is done, you may leave the secretary, or remove it,
+at your own pleasure."</p>
+
+<p>"I will leave it; for, though it contains so much that I prize, and which
+is really of great importance to myself, it contains nothing for which I
+shall have immediate occasion."</p>
+
+<p>"In that case, it were better that I place the package in which we have a
+common interest in an <i>armoire</i>, or in my secretary, and that you keep
+your precious effects more immediately under your own eye."</p>
+
+<p>"It is immaterial, unless the case will inconvenience you, for I do not
+know that I am not happier when it is out of my sight, so long as I feel
+certain of its security, than when it is constantly before my eyes."</p>
+
+<p>Paul said this with a forced smile, and there was a sadness in his
+countenance that excited the sympathy of his companion. The latter,
+however, merely bowed his assent, and the papers were replaced, and the
+secretary was locked and deposited in an <i>armoire</i>, in silence. Paul was
+then about to wish the other good night, when John Effingham seized his
+hand, and by a gentle effort induced him to resume his seat. An
+embarrassing, but short pause succeeded, when the latter spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"We have suffered enough in company, and have seen each other in
+situations of sufficient trial to be friends," he said. "I should feel
+mortified, did I believe you could think me influenced by an improper
+curiosity, in wishing to share more of your confidence than you are
+perhaps willing to bestow; I trust you will attribute to its right motive
+the liberty I am now taking. Age makes some difference between us, and
+the sincere and strong interest I feel in your welfare, ought to give me a
+small claim not to be treated as a total stranger. So jealous and watchful
+has this interest been, I might with great truth call it affection, that I
+have discovered you are not situated exactly as other men in your
+condition of life are situated, and feel persuaded that the sympathy,
+perhaps the advice, of one so many years older than yourself, might be
+useful. You have already said so much to me, on the subject of your
+personal situation, that I almost feel a right to ask for more."</p>
+
+<p>John Effingham uttered this in his mildest and most winning manner; and
+few men could carry with them, on such an occasion, more of persuasion in
+their voices and looks. Paul's features worked, and it was evident to his
+companion that he was moved, while, at the same time, he was not
+displeased.</p>
+
+<p>"I am grateful, deeply grateful, sir, for this interest in my happiness,"
+Paul answered, "and if I knew the particular points on which you feel any
+curiosity, there is nothing that I can desire to conceal. Have the further
+kindness to question me, Mr. Effingham, that I need not touch on things
+you do not care to hear."</p>
+
+<p>"All that really concerns your welfare, would have interest with me. You
+have been the agent of rescuing not only myself, but those whom I most
+love, from a fate worse than death; and, a childless bachelor myself, I
+have more than once thought of attempting to supply the places of those
+natural friends that I fear you have lost. Your parents--"</p>
+
+<p>"Are both dead. I never knew either," said Paul, who spoke huskily, "and
+will most cheerfully accept your generous offer, if you will allow me to
+attach to it a single condition."</p>
+
+<p>"Beggars must not be choosers," returned John Effingham, "and if you will
+allow me to feel this interest in you, and occasionally to share in the
+confidence of a father; I shall not insist on any unreasonable terms. What
+is your condition?"</p>
+
+<p>"That the word money may be struck out of our vocabulary, and that you
+leave your will unaltered. Were the world to be examined, you could not
+find a worthier or a lovelier heiress, than the one you have already
+selected, and whom Providence itself has given you. Compared with
+yourself, I am not rich, but I have a gentleman's income, and as I shall
+probably never marry, it will suffice for all my wants."</p>
+
+<p>John Effingham was more pleased than he cared to express with this
+frankness, and with the secret sympathy that had existed between them; but
+he smiled at the injunction; for, with Eve's knowledge, and her father's
+entire approbation, he had actually made a codicil to his will, in which
+their young protector was left one half of his large fortune.</p>
+
+<p>"The will may remain untouched, if you desire it," he answered, evasively,
+"and that condition is disposed of. I am glad to learn so directly from
+yourself, what your manner of living and the reports of others had
+prepared me to hear, that you are independent. This fact, alone, will
+place us solely on our mutual esteem, and render the friendship that I
+hope is now brought within a covenant, if not now first established, more
+equal and frank. You have seen much of the world, Powis, for your years
+and profession?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is usual to think that men of my profession see much of the world, as
+a consequence of their pursuits; though I agree with you, sir, that this
+is seeing the world only in a very limited circle. It is now several years
+since circumstances, I might almost say the imperative order of one whom I
+was bound to obey, induced me to resign, and since that time I have done
+little else but travel. Owing to certain adventitious causes, I have
+enjoyed an access to European society that few of our countrymen possess,
+and I hope the advantage has not been entirely thrown away. It was as a
+traveller on the continent of Europe, that I had the pleasure of first
+meeting with Mr. and Miss Effingham. I was much abroad, even as a child,
+and owe some little skill in foreign languages to that circumstance."</p>
+
+<p>"So my cousin has informed me. You have set the question of country at
+rest, by declaring that you are an American, and yet I find you have
+English relatives. Captain Ducie, I believe, is a kinsman?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is; we are sister's children, though our friendship has not always
+been such as the connexion would infer. When Ducie and myself met at sea,
+there was an awkwardness, if not a coolness, in the interview, that,
+coupled with my sudden return to England, I fear did not make the most
+favourable impression, on those who witnessed what passed."</p>
+
+<p>"We had confidence in your principles," said John Effingham, with a frank
+simplicity, "and, though the first surmises were not pleasant, perhaps, a
+little reflection told us that there was no just ground for suspicion."</p>
+
+<p>"Ducie is a fine, manly fellow, and has a seaman's generosity and
+sincerity. I had last parted from him on the field, where we met as
+enemies; and the circumstance rendered the unexpected meeting awkward. Our
+wounds no longer smarted, it is true; but, perhaps, we both felt shame and
+sorrow that they had ever been inflicted."</p>
+
+<p>"It should be a very serious quarrel that could arm sister's children
+against each other," said John Effingham, gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"I admit as much. But, at that time, Captain Ducie was not disposed to
+admit the consanguinity, and the offence grew out of an intemperate
+resentment of some imputations on my birth; between two military men, the
+issue could scarcely be avoided. Ducie challenged, and I was not then in
+the humour to balk him. A couple of flesh-wounds happily terminated the
+affair. But an interval of three years had enabled my enemy to discover
+that he had not done me justice; that I had been causelessly provoked to
+the quarrel, and that we ought to be firm friends. The generous desire to
+make suitable expiation, urged him to seize the first occasion of coming
+to America that offered; and when ordered to chase the Montauk, by a
+telegraphic communication from London, he was hourly expecting to sail for
+our seas, where he wished to come, expressly that we might meet. You will
+judge, therefore, how happy he was to find me unexpectedly in the vessel
+that contained his principal object of pursuit, thus killing, as it might
+be, two birds with one stone."</p>
+
+<p>"And did he carry you away with him, with any such murderous intention?"
+demanded John Effingham, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"By no means; nothing could be more amicable than Ducie and myself got to
+be, when we had been a few hours together in his cabin. As often happens,
+when there have been violent antipathies and unreasonable prejudices, a
+nearer view of each other's character and motives removed every obstacle;
+and long before we reached England, two warmer friends could not be found,
+or a more frank intercourse between relatives could not be desired. You
+are aware, sir, that our English cousins do not often view their
+cis-atlantic relatives with the most lenient eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"This is but too true," said John Effingham proudly, though his lip
+quivered as he spoke, "and it is, in a great measure, the fault of that
+miserable mental bondage which has left this country, after sixty years of
+nominal independence, so much at the mercy of a hostile opinion. It is
+necessary that we respect ourselves in order that others respect us."</p>
+
+<p>"I agree with you, sir, entirely. In my case, however, previous injustice
+disposed my relatives to receive me better, perhaps, than might otherwise
+have been the case. I had little to ask in the way of fortune, and
+feeling no disposition to raise a question that might disturb the peerage
+of the Ducies, I became a favourite."</p>
+
+<p>"A peerage!--Both your parents, then, were English?"</p>
+
+<p>"Neither, I believe; but the connection between the two countries was so
+close, that it can occasion no surprise a right of this nature should have
+passed into the colonies. My mother's mother became the heiress of one of
+those ancient baronies, that pass to the heirs-general, and, in
+consequence of the deaths of two brothers, these rights, which however
+were never actually possessed by any of the previous generation, centered
+in my mother and my aunt. The former being dead, as was contended, without
+issue--"</p>
+
+<p>"You forget yourself!"</p>
+
+<p>"Lawful issue," added Paul, reddening to the temples, "I should have
+added--Mrs. Ducie, who was married to the younger son of an English
+nobleman, claimed and obtained the rank. My pretension would have left the
+peerage in abeyance, and I probably owe some little of the opposition I
+found, to that circumstance. But, after Ducie's generous conduct, I could
+not hesitate about joining in the application to the crown that, by its
+decision, the abeyance might be determined in favour of the person who was
+in possession; and Lady Dunluce is now quietly confirmed in her claim."</p>
+
+<p>"There are many young men in this country, who would cling to the hopes of
+a British peerage with greater tenacity!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is probable there are; but my self-denial is not of a very high order,
+for; it could scarcely be expected the English ministers would consent to
+give the rank to a foreigner who did not hesitate about avowing his
+principles and national feelings. I shall not say I did hot covet this
+peerage, for it would be supererogatory; but I am born an American, and
+will die an American; and an American who swaggers about such a claim, is
+like the daw among the peacocks. The less that is said about it, the
+better."</p>
+
+<p>"You are fortunate to have escaped the journals, which, most probably,
+would have <i>begraced</i> you, by elevating you at once to the rank of a
+duke."</p>
+
+<p>"Instead of which, I had no other station than that of a dog in the
+manger. If it makes my aunt happy to be called Lady Dunluce, I am sure she
+is welcome to the privilege; and when Ducie succeeds her, as will one day
+be the case, an excellent fellow will be a peer of England. <i>Voila tout</i>!
+You are the only countryman, sir, to whom I have ever spoken of the
+circumstance, and with you I trust it will remain a secret"</p>
+
+<p>"What! am I precluded from mentioning the facts in my own family? I am not
+the only sincere, the only warm friend, you have in this house, Powis."</p>
+
+<p>"In that respect, I leave you to act your pleasure, my dear sir. If Mr.
+Effingham feel sufficient interest in my fortunes, to wish to hear what I
+have told you, let there be no silly mysteries,--or--or Mademoiselle
+Viefville--"</p>
+
+<p>"Or Nanny Sidley, or Annette," interrupted John Effingham, with a kind
+smile. "Well, trust to me for that; but, before we separate for the night,
+I wish to ascertain beyond question one other fact, although the
+circumstances you have stated scarce leave a doubt of the reply."</p>
+
+<p>"I understand you, sir, and did not intend to leave you in any uncertainty
+on that important particular. If there can be a feeling, more painful than
+all others, with a man of any pride, it is to distrust the purity of his
+mother. Mine was beyond reproach, thank God, and so it was most clearly
+established, or I could certainly have had no legal claim to the peerage."</p>
+
+<p>"Or your fortune--" added John Effingham, drawing a long breath, like one
+suddenly relieved from an unpleasant suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>"My fortune comes from neither parent, but from one of those generous
+dispositions, or caprices, if you will, that sometimes induce men to adopt
+those who are alien to their blood. My guardian adopted me, took me abroad
+with him, placed me, quite young, in the navy, and dying, he finally left
+me all he possessed As he was a bachelor, with no near relative, and had
+been the artisan of his own fortune, I could have no hesitation about
+accepting the gift he so liberally bequeathed. It was coupled with the
+condition that I should retire from the service, travel for five years,
+return home, and marry. There is no silly-forfeiture exacted in either
+case, but such is the general course solemnly advised by a man who showed
+himself my true friend for so many years."</p>
+
+<p>"I envy him the opportunity he enjoyed of serving you. I hope he would
+have approved of your national pride, for I believe we must put that at
+the bottom of your disinterestedness, in the affair of the peerage."</p>
+
+<p>"He would, indeed, although he never knew anything of the claim which
+arose out of the death of the two lords who preceded my aunt, and who were
+the brothers of my grandmother. My guardian was in all respects a man,
+and, in nothing more, than in a manly national pride. While abroad a
+decoration was offered him, and he declined it with the character and
+dignity of one who felt that distinctions which his country repudiated,
+every gentleman belonging to that country ought to reject; and yet he did
+it with a respectful gratitude for the compliment, that was due to the
+government from which the offer came."</p>
+
+<p>"I almost envy that man," said John Effingham, with warmth. "To have
+appreciated you, Powis, was a mark of a high judgment; but it seems he
+properly appreciated himself, his country, and human nature."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet he was little appreciated in his turn. That man passed years in
+one of our largest towns, of no more apparent account among its population
+than any one of its commoner spirits, and of not half as much as one of
+its bustling brokers, or jobbers."</p>
+
+<p>"In that there is nothing surprising. The class of the chosen few is too
+small every where, to be very numerous at any given point, in a scattered
+population like that of America. The broker will as naturally appreciate
+the broker, as the dog appreciates the dog, or the wolf the wolf. Least of
+all is the manliness you have named, likely to be valued among a people
+who have been put into men's clothes before they are out of
+leading-strings. I am older than you, my dear Paul," it was the first time
+John Effingham ever used so familiar an appellation, and the young man
+thought it sounded kindly--"I am older than you, my dear Paul, and will
+venture to tell you an important fact that may hereafter lessen some of
+your own mortifications. In most nations there is a high standard to which
+man at least affects to look; and acts are extolled and seemingly
+appreciated, for their naked merits. Little of this exists in America,
+where no man is much praised for himself, but for the purposes of party,
+or to feed national vanity. In the country in which, of all others,
+political opinion ought to be the freest, it is the most persecuted, and
+the community-character of the nation induces every man to think he has a
+right of property in all its fame. England exhibits a great deal of this
+weakness and injustice, which, it is to be feared, is a vicious fruit of
+liberty; for it is certain that the sacred nature of opinion is most
+appreciated in those countries in which it has the least efficiency. We
+are constantly deriding those governments which fetter opinion, and yet I
+know of no nation in which the expression of opinion is so certain to
+attract persecution and hostility as our own, though it may be, and is, in
+one sense, free."</p>
+
+<p>"This arises from its potency. Men quarrel about opinion here, because
+opinion rules. It is but one mode of struggling for power. But to return
+to my guardian; he was a man to think and act for himself, and as far
+from the magazine and newspaper existence that most Americans, in a moral
+sense, pass, as any man could be."</p>
+
+<p>"It is indeed a newspaper and magazine existence," said John Effingham,
+smiling at Paul's terms, "to know life only through such mediums! It is as
+bad as the condition of those English who form their notions of society
+from novels written by men and women who have no access to it, and from
+the records of the court journal. I thank you sincerely, Mr. Powis for
+this confidence, which has not been idly solicited on my part, and which
+shall not be abused. At no distant day we will break the seals again, and
+renew our investigations into this affair of the unfortunate Monday, which
+is not yet, certainly, very promising in the way of revelations."</p>
+
+<p>The gentlemen shook hands cordially, and Paul, lighted by his companion,
+withdrew. When the young man was at the door of his own room, he turned,
+and saw John Effingham following him with his eye. The latter then renewed
+the good night, with one of those winning smiles that rendered his face so
+brilliantly handsome, and each retired.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Chapter XIX.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>  "Item, a capon, 2<i>s</i>. 2<i>d</i>.<br />
+Item, sauce, 4<i>d</i>.<br />
+Item, sack, two gallons, 5<i>s</i>. 8<i>d</i>.<br />
+Item, bread, a half-penny."</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>  SHAKSPEARE.</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>The next day John Effingham made no allusion to the conversation of the
+previous night, though the squeeze of the hand he gave Paul, when they
+met, was an assurance that nothing was forgotten. As he had a secret
+pleasure in obeying any injunction of Eve's, the young man himself sought
+Captain Truck, even before they had breakfasted, and, as he had made an
+acquaintance with 'the commodore,' on the lake, previously to the arrival
+of the Effinghams, that worthy was summoned, and regularly introduced to
+the honest ship-master. The meeting between these two distinguished men
+was grave, ceremonious and dignified, each probably feeling that he was
+temporarily the guardian of a particular portion of an element that was
+equally dear to both. After a few minutes passed, as it might be, in the
+preliminary points of etiquette, a better feeling and more confidence was
+established, and it was soon settled that they should fish in company, the
+rest of the day; Paul promising to row the ladies out on the lake, and to
+join them in the course of the afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>As the party quitted the breakfast-table, Eve took an occasion to thank
+the young man for his attention to their common friend, who, it was
+reported, had taken his morning's repast at an early hour, and was already
+on the lake, the day by this time having advanced within two hours of
+noon.</p>
+
+<p>"I have dared even to exceed your instructions, Miss Effingham," said
+Paul, "for I have promised the Captain to endeavour to persuade you, and
+as many of the ladies as possible, to trust yourselves to my seamanship,
+and to submit to be rowed out to the spot where we shall find him and his
+friend the commodore riding at anchor."</p>
+
+<p>"An engagement that my influence shall be used to see fulfilled. Mrs.
+Bloomfield has already expressed a desire to go on the Otsego-Water, and I
+make no doubt I shall find other companions. Once more let me thank you
+for this little attention, for I too well know your tastes, not to
+understand that you might find a more agreeable ward."</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my word, I feel a sincere regard for our old Captain, and could
+often wish for no better companion. Were he, however, as disagreeable as I
+find him, in truth, pleasant and frank, your wishes would conceal all his
+faults."</p>
+
+<p>"You have learned, Mr. Powis, that small attentions are as much remembered
+as important services, and after having saved our lives, wish to prove
+that you can discharge <i>les petits devoirs socials</i>, as well as perform
+great deeds. I trust you will persuade Sir George Templemore to be of our
+party, and at four we shall be ready to accompany you; until then I am
+contracted to a gossip with Mrs. Bloomfield in her dressing-room."</p>
+
+<p>We shall now leave the party on the land, and follow those who have
+already taken boat, or the fishermen. The beginning of the intercourse
+between the salt-water navigator and his fresh-water companion was again a
+little constrained and critical. Their professional terms agreed as ill as
+possible, for when the Captain used the expression 'ship the oars,' the
+commodore understood just the reverse of what it had been intended to
+express; and, once, when he told his companion to 'give way,' the latter
+took the hint so literally as actually to cease rowing. All these
+professional niceties induced the worthy ship-master to undervalue his
+companion, who, in the main, was very skilful in his particular pursuit,
+though it was a skill that he exerted after the fashions of his own lake,
+and not after the fashions of the ocean. Owing to several contre-tems of
+this nature, by the time they reached the fishing-ground the Captain began
+to entertain a feeling for the commodore, that ill comported with the
+deference due to his titular rank.</p>
+
+<p>"I have come out with you, commodore," said Captain Truck, when they had
+got to their station, and laying a peculiar emphasis on the appellation he
+used, "in order to <i>enjoy</i> myself, and you will confer an especial favour
+on me by not using such phrases as 'cable-rope,' 'casting anchor,' and
+'titivating.' As for the two first, no seaman ever uses them; and I never
+heard suchna word on board a ship, as the last, D----e, sir, if I believe
+it is to be found in the dictionary, even."</p>
+
+<p>"You amaze me, sir! 'Casting anchor,' and 'cable-rope' are both Bible
+phrases, and they must be right."</p>
+
+<p>"That follows by no means, commodore, as I have some reason to know; for
+my father having been a parson, and I being a seaman, we may be said to
+have the whole subject, as it were, in the family. St. Paul--you have
+heard of such a man as St. Paul, commodore?--"</p>
+
+<p>"I know him almost by heart, Captain Truck; but St. Peter and St. Andrew
+were the men, most after my heart. Ours is an ancient calling, sir, and in
+those two instances you see to what a fisherman can rise. I do not
+remember to have ever heard of a sea-captain who was converted into a
+saint."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, ay, there is always too much to do on board ship to have time to be
+much more than a beginner in religion. There was my mate, v'y'ge before
+last, Tom Leach, who is now master of a ship of his own, had he been
+brought up to it properly, he would have made as conscientious a parson as
+did his grandfather before him. Such a man would have been a seaman, as
+well as a parson. I have little to say against St. Peter or St. Andrew,
+but, in my judgment, they were none the better saints for having been
+fishermen; and, if the truth were known, I dare say they were at the
+bottom of introducing such lubberly phrases into the Bible, as
+'casting-anchor,' and 'cable-rope."</p>
+
+<p>"Pray, sir," asked the commodore, with dignity, "what are <i>you</i> in the
+practice of saying, when you speak of such matters; for, to be frank with
+you, <i>we</i> always use these terms on these lakes."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, ay, there is a fresh-water smell about them. We say 'anchor,' or
+'let go the anchor,' or 'dropped the anchor,' or some such reasonable
+expression, and not 'cast anchor,' as if a bit of iron, weighing two or
+three tons, is to be jerked about like a stone big enough to kill a bird
+with. As for the 'cable-rope,' as you call it, we say the 'cable,' or 'the
+chain,' or 'the ground tackle,' according to reason and circumstances. You
+never hear a real 'salt' flourishing his 'cable-ropes,' and his
+'casting-anchors,' which are altogether too sentimental and particular for
+his manner of speaking. As for 'ropes,' I suppose you have not got to be a
+commodore, and need being told how many there are in a ship."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not pretend to have counted them, but I have seen a ship, sir, and
+one under full sail, too, and I know there were as many ropes about her as
+there are pines on the Vision."</p>
+
+<p>"Are there more than seven of these trees on your mountain? for that is
+just the number of ropes in a merchant-man; though a man-of-war's-man
+counts one or two more."</p>
+
+<p>"You astonish me, sir! But seven ropes in a ship?--I should have said
+there are seven hundred!"</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say, I dare say; that is just the way in which a landsman pretends
+to criticise a vessel. As for the ropes, I will now give you their names,
+and then you can lay athwart hawse of these canoe gentry, by the hour, and
+teach them rigging and modesty, both at the same time. In the first
+place," continued the captain, jerking at his line, and then beginning to
+count on his fingers--"There is the 'man-rope;' then come the
+'bucket-rope,' the 'tiller-rope,' the 'bolt-rope,' the 'foot-rope,' the
+'top-rope,' and the 'limber-rope.' I have followed the seas, now, more
+than half a century, and never yet heard of a 'cable-rope,' from any one
+who could hand, reef, and steer."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, every man to his trade," said the commodore, who just then
+pulled in a fine pickerel, which was the third he had taken, while his
+companion rejoiced in no more than a few fruitless bites. "You are more
+expert in ropes than in lines, it would seem. I shall not deny your
+experience and knowledge; but in the way of fishing, you will at least
+allow that the sea is no great school. I dare say, now, if you were to
+hook the 'sogdollager,' we should have you jumping into the lake to get
+rid of him. Quite probably, sir, you never before heard of that celebrated
+fish?"</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding the many excellent qualities of Captain Truck, he had a
+weakness that is rather peculiar to a class of men, who, having seen so
+much of this earth, are unwilling to admit they have not seen it all. The
+little brush in which he was now engaged with the commodore, he conceived
+due to his own dignity, and his motive was duly to impress his companion
+with his superiority, which being fairly admitted, he would have been
+ready enough to acknowledge that the other understood pike-fishing much
+better than himself. But it was quite too early in the discussion to make
+any such avowal, and the supercilious remark of the commodore's putting
+him on his mettle, he was ready to affirm that he had eaten 'sogdollagers'
+for breakfast, a month at a time, had it been necessary.</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh! pooh! man," returned the captain, with an air of cool indifference,
+"you do not surely fancy that you have any thing in a lake like this, that
+is not to be found in the ocean! If you were to see a whale's flukes
+thrashing your puddle, every cruiser among you would run for a port; and
+as for 'sogdollagers,' we think little of them in salt-water; the
+flying-fish, or even the dry dolphin, being much the best eating."</p>
+
+<p>"Sir," said the commodore, with some heat, and a great deal of emphasis,
+"there is but <i>one</i> 'sogdollager' in the world, and he is in this lake. No
+man has ever seen him, but my predecessor, the 'Admiral,' and myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Bah!" ejaculated the captain, "they are as plenty as soft clams, in the
+Mediterranean, and the Egyptians use them as a pan-fish. In the East, they
+catch them to bait with, for hallibut, and other middling sized creatures,
+that are particular about their diet. It is a good fish, I own, as is seen
+in this very circumstance."</p>
+
+<p>"Sir," repeated the commodore, flourishing his hand, and waxing warm with
+earnestness, "there is but one 'sogdollager' in the universe, and that is
+in Lake Otsego. A 'sogdollager' is a salmon trout, and not a species; a
+sort of father to all the salmon trout in this part of the world; a scaly
+patriarch."</p>
+
+<p>"I make no doubt <i>your</i> 'sogdollager' is scaly enough; but what is the use
+in wasting words about such a trifle? A whale is the only fish fit to
+occupy a gentleman's thoughts. As long as I have been at sea, I have never
+witnessed the taking of more than three whales."</p>
+
+<p>This allusion happily preserved the peace; for, if there were any thing in
+the world for which the commodore entertained a profound, but obscure
+reverence, it was for a whale. He even thought better of a man for having
+actually seen one, gambolling in the freedom of the ocean; and his mind
+became suddenly oppressed by the glory of a mariner, who had passed his
+life among such gigantic animals. Shoving back his cap, the old man gazed
+steadily at the captain a minute, and all his displeasure about the
+'sogdollagers' vanished, though, in his inmost mind, he set down all that
+the other had told him on that particular subject, as so many parts of a
+regular 'fish story.'</p>
+
+<p>"Captain Truck," he said, with solemnity, "I acknowledge myself to be but
+an ignorant and inexperienced man, one who has passed his life on this
+lake, which, broad and beautiful as it is, must seem a pond in the eyes of
+a seaman like yourself, who have passed your days on the Atlantic----"</p>
+
+<p>"Atlantic!" interrupted the captain contemptuously, "I should have but a
+poor opinion of myself, had I seen nothing but the Atlantic! Indeed, I
+never can believe I am at sea at all, on the Atlantic, the passages
+between New-York and Portsmouth being little more than so much canalling
+along a tow-path. If you wish to say any thing about oceans, talk of the
+Pacific, or of the Great South Sea, where a man may run a month with a
+fair wind, and hardly go from island to island. Indeed, that is an ocean
+in which there is a manufactory of islands, for they turn them off in lots
+to supply the market, and of a size to suit customers."</p>
+
+<p>"A manufactory of islands!" repeated the commodore, who began to entertain
+an awe of his companion, that he never expected to feel for any human
+being on Lake Otsego; "are you certain, sir, there is no mistake in this?"</p>
+
+<p>"None in the least; not only islands, but whole Archipelagos are made
+annually, by the sea insects in that quarter of the world; but, then, you
+are not to form your notions of an insect in such an ocean, by the insects
+you see in such a bit of water as this."</p>
+
+<p>"As big as our pickerel, or salmon trout, I dare say?" returned the
+commodore, in the simplicity of his heart, for by this time his local and
+exclusive conceit was thoroughly humbled, and he was almost ready to
+believe any thing.</p>
+
+<p>"I say nothing of their size, for it is to their numbers and industry that
+I principally allude now. A solitary shark, I dare say, would set your
+whole Lake in commotion?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think we might manage a shark, sir. I once saw one of those animals,
+and I do really believe the sogdollager would outweigh him. I do think we
+might manage a shark, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, you mean an in-shore, high-latitude fellow. But what would you say
+to a shark as long as one of those pines on the mountain?"</p>
+
+<p>"Such a monster would take in a man, whole?"</p>
+
+<p>"A man! He would take in a platoon, Indian file I dare say one of those
+pines, now, may be thirty or forty feet high!"</p>
+
+<p>A gleam of intelligence and of exultation shot across the weather-beaten
+face of the old fisherman, for he detected a weak spot in the other's
+knowledge. The worthy Captain, with that species of exclusiveness which
+accompanies excellence in any one thing, was quite ignorant of most
+matters that pertain to the land. That there should be a tree, so far
+inland, that was larger than his main-yard, he did not think probable,
+although that yard itself was made of part of a tree; and, in the laudable
+intention of duly impressing his companion with the superiority of a real
+seaman over a mere fresh-water navigator, he had inadvertently laid bare a
+weak spot in his estimate of heights and distances, that the Commodore
+seized upon, with some such avidity as the pike seizes the hook. This
+accidental mistake alone saved the latter from an abject submission, for
+the cool superiority of the Captain had so far deprived him of his
+conceit, that he was almost ready to acknowledge himself no better than a
+dog, when he caught a glimpse of light through this opening.</p>
+
+<p>"There is not a pine, that can be called of age, on all the mountain,
+which is not more than a hundred feet high, and many are nearer two," he
+cried in exultation, flourishing his hand. "The sea may have its big
+monsters, Captain, but our hills have their big trees. Did you ever see a
+shark of half that length?"</p>
+
+<p>Now, Captain Truck was a man of truth, although so much given to
+occasional humorous violations of its laws, and, withal, a little disposed
+to dwell upon the marvels of the great deep, in the spirit of
+exaggeration, and he could not, in conscience, affirm any thing so
+extravagant as this. He was accordingly obliged to admit his mistake, and
+from this moment, the conversation was carried on with a greater regard to
+equality. They talked, as they fished, of politics, religion, philosophy,
+human nature, the useful arts, abolition, and most other subjects that
+would be likely to interest a couple of Americans who had nothing to do
+but to twitch, from time to time, at two lines dangling in the water.
+Although few people possess less of the art of conversation than our own
+countrymen, no other nation takes as wide a range in its discussions. He
+is but a very indifferent American that does not know, or thinks he knows,
+a little of every thing, and neither of our worthies was in the least
+backward in supporting the claims of the national character in this
+respect. This general discussion completely restored amity between the
+parties; for, to confess the truth, our old friend the Captain was a
+little rebuked about the affair of the tree. The only peculiarity worthy
+of notice, that occurred in the course of their various digressions, was
+the fact, that the commodore insensibly began to style his companion
+"General;" the courtesy of the country in his eyes, appearing to require
+that a man who has seen so much more than himself, should, at least, enjoy
+a title equal to his own in rank, and that of Admiral being proscribed by
+the sensitiveness of republican principles. After fishing a few hours, the
+old laker pulled the skiff up to the Point so often mentioned, where he
+Lighted a fire on the grass, and prepared a dinner. When every thing was
+ready, the two seated themselves, and began to enjoy the fruits of their
+labours in a way that will be understood by all sportsmen.</p>
+
+<p>"I have never thought of asking you, general," said the commodore, as he
+began to masticate a perch, "whether you are an aristocrat or a democrat.
+We have had the government pretty much upside-down, too, this morning, but
+this question has escaped me."</p>
+
+<p>"As we are here by ourselves under these venerable oaks, and talking like
+two old messmates," returned the general, "I shall just own the truth, and
+make no bones of it. I have been captain of my own ship so long, that I
+have a most thorough contempt for all equality. It is a vice that I
+deprecate, and, whatever may be the laws of this country, I am of opinion,
+that equality is no where borne out by the Law of Nations; which, after
+all, commodore, is the only true law for a gentleman to live under."</p>
+
+<p>"That is the law of the strongest, if I understand the matter, general."</p>
+
+<p>"Only reduced to rules. The Law of Nations, to own the truth to you, is
+full of categories, and this will give an enterprising man an opportunity
+to make use of his knowledge. Would you believe, commodore, that there are
+countries, in which they lay taxes on tobacco?"</p>
+
+<p>"Taxes on tobacco! Sir, I never heard of such an act of oppression under
+the forms of law! What has tobacco done, that any one should think of
+taxing it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe, commodore, that its greatest offence is being so general a
+favourite. Taxation, I have found, differs from most other things,
+generally attacking that which men most prize."</p>
+
+<p>"This is quite new to me, general; a tax on tobacco. The law-makers in
+those countries cannot chew. I drink to your good health, sir, and to many
+happy returns of such banquets as this."</p>
+
+<p>Here the commodore raised a large silver punch-bowl, which Pierre had
+furnished, to his lips, and fastening his eyes on the boughs of a knarled
+oak, he looked like a man who was taking an observation, for near a
+minute. All this time, the captain regarded him with a sympathetic
+pleasure, and when the bowl was free, he imitated the example, levelling
+his own eye at a cloud, that seemed floating at an angle of forty-five
+degrees above him, expressly for that purpose.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a lazy cloud!" exclaimed the general, as he let go his hold to
+catch breath; "I have been watching it some time, and it has not moved an
+inch."</p>
+
+<p>"Tobacco!" repeated the commodore, drawing a long breath, as if he was
+just recovering the play of his lungs, "I should as soon think of laying a
+tax on punch. The country that pursues such a policy must, sooner or
+later, meet with a downfall. I never knew good come of persecution."</p>
+
+<p>"I find you are a sensible man, commodore, and regret I did not make your
+acquaintance earlier in life. Have you yet made up your mind on the
+subject of religious faith?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, my dear general, not to be nibbling like a sucker with a sore mouth,
+with a person of your liberality, I shall give you a plain history of my
+adventures, in the way of experiences, that you may judge for yourself. I
+was born an Episcopalian, if one can say so, but was converted to
+Presbyterianism at twenty. I stuck to this denomination about five years,
+when I thought I would try the Baptists, having got to be fond of the
+water, by this time. At thirty-two I fished a while with the Methodists;
+since which conversion, I have chosen to worship God pretty much by
+myself, out here on the lake."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you consider it any harm, to hook a fish of a Sunday?"</p>
+
+<p>"No more than it is to eat a fish of a Sunday. I go altogether by faith,
+in my religion, general, for they talked so much to me of the uselessness
+of works, that I've got to be very unparticular as to what I do. Your
+people who have been converted four or five times, are like so many
+pickerel, which strike at every hook."</p>
+
+<p>"This is very much my case. Now, on the river--of course you know where
+the river is?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certain," said the commodore; "it is at the foot of the lake."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear commodore, when we say 'the river,' we always mean the
+Connecticut; and I am surprised a man of your sagacity should require to
+be told this. There are people on the river who contend that a
+ship should heave-to of a Sunday. They did talk of getting up an
+Anti-Sunday-Sailing-Society, but the ship-masters were too many for them,
+since they threatened to start a society to put down the growing of
+inyens, (the captain would sometimes use this pronunciation) except of
+week-days. Well, I started in life, on the platform tack, in the way of
+religion, and I believe I shall stand on the same course till orders come
+to 'cast anchor,' as you call it. With you, I hold out for faith, as the
+one thing needful. Pray, my good friend, what are your real sentiments
+concerning 'Old Hickory.'</p>
+
+<p>"Tough, sir;--Tough as a day in February on this lake. All fins, and
+gills, and bones."</p>
+
+<p>"That is the justest character I have yet heard of the old gentleman; and
+then it says so much in a few words; no category about it. I hope the
+punch is to your liking?"</p>
+
+<p>On this hint the old fisherman raised the bowl a second time to his lips,
+and renewed the agreeable duty of letting its contents flow down his
+throat, in a pleasant stream. This time, he took aim at a gull that was
+sailing over his head, only relinquishing the draught as the bird settled
+into the water. The 'general' was more particular; for selecting a
+stationary object, in the top of an oak, that grew on the mountain near
+him, he studied it with an admirable abstruseness of attention, until the
+last drop was drained. As soon as this startling fact was mentioned,
+however, both the <i>convives</i> set about repairing the accident, by
+squeezing lemons, sweetening water, and mixing liquors, <i>secundem artem.</i>
+At the same time, each lighted a cigar, and the conversation, for some
+time, was carried on between their teeth.</p>
+
+<p>"We have been so frank with each other to-day, my excellent commodore,"
+said Captain Truck, "that did I know your true sentiments concerning
+Temperance Societies, I should look on your inmost soul as a part of
+myself. By these free communications men get really to know each other."</p>
+
+<p>"If liquor is not made to be drunk, for what is it made? Any one may see
+that this lake was made for skiffs and fishing; it has a length, breadth,
+and depth suited to such purposes. Now, here is liquor distilled, bottled,
+and corked, and I ask if all does not show that it was made to be drunk. I
+dare say your temperance men are ingenious, but let them answer that if
+they can."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish, from my heart, my dear sir, we had known each other fifty years
+since. That would have brought you acquainted with salt-water, and left
+nothing to be desired in your character. We think alike, I believe, in
+every thing but on the virtues of fresh-water. If these temperance people
+had their way, we should all be turned into so many Turks, who never taste
+wine, and yet marry a dozen wives."</p>
+
+<p>"One of the great merits of fresh-water, general, is what I call its
+mixable quality."</p>
+
+<p>"There would be an end to Saturday nights, too, which are the seamen's
+tea-parties."</p>
+
+<p>"I question if many of them fish in the rain, from sunrise to sunset."</p>
+
+<p>"Or, stand their watches in wet pee-jackets, from sunset to sunrise.
+Splicing the main brace at such times, is the very quintessence of human
+enjoyments."</p>
+
+<p>"If liquors were not made to be drunk," put in the commodore, logically,
+"I would again ask for what are they made? Let the temperance men get over
+that difficulty if they can."</p>
+
+<p>"Commodore, I wish you twenty more good hearty years of fishing in this
+lake, which grows, each instant, more beautiful in my eyes, as I confess
+does the whole earth; and to show you that I say no more than I think, I
+will clench it with a draught."</p>
+
+<p>Captain Truck now brought his right eye to bear on the new moon, which
+happened to be at a convenient height, closed the left one, and continued
+in that attitude until the commodore began seriously to think he was to
+get nothing besides, the lemon-seeds for his share. This apprehension,
+however, could only arise from ignorance of his companion's character,
+than whom a juster man, according to the notions of ship-masters, did not
+live; and had one measured the punch that was left in the bowl when this
+draught was ended, he would have found that precisely one half of it was
+still untouched, to a thimblefull. The commodore now had his turn; and
+before he got through, the bottom of the vessel was as much uppermost as
+the butt of a club bed firelock. When the honest fisherman took breath
+after this exploit, and lowered his cup from the vault of heaven to the
+surface of the earth, he caught a view of a boat crossing the lake, coming
+from the Silent Pine, to that Point on which they were enjoying so many
+agreeable hallucinations on the subject of temperance.</p>
+
+<p>"Yonder is the party from the Wigwam," he said, "and they will be just in
+time to become converts to our opinions, if they have any doubts on the
+subjects we have discussed. Shall we give up the ground to them, by taking
+to the skiff, or do you feel disposed to face the women?"</p>
+
+<p>"Under ordinary circumstances, commodore, I should prefer your society to
+all the petticoats in the State, but there are two ladies in that party,
+either of whom I would marry, any day, at a minute's warning."</p>
+
+<p>"Sir," said the commodore with a tone of warning, "we, who have lived
+bachelors so long, and are wedded to the water, ought never to speak
+lightly on so grave a subject."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor do I. Two women, one of whom is twenty, and the other seventy--and
+hang me if I know which I prefer."</p>
+
+<p>"You would soonest be rid of the last, my dear general, and my advice is
+to take her."</p>
+
+<p>"Old as she is, sir, a king would have to plead hard to get her consent.
+We will make them some punch, that they may see we were mindful of them in
+their absence."</p>
+
+<p>To work these worthies now went in earnest, in order to anticipate the
+arrival of the party, and as the different compounds were in the course of
+mingling, the conversation did not flag. By this time both the salt-water
+and the fresh-water sailor were in that condition when men are apt to
+think aloud, and the commodore had lost all his awe of his companion.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear sir," said the former, "I am a thousand times sorry you came from
+that river, for, to tell you my mind without any concealment, my only
+objection to you is that you are not of the middle states. I admit the
+good qualities of the Yankees, in a general way, and yet they are the very
+worst neighbours that a man can have."</p>
+
+<p>"This is a new character of them, commodore, as they generally pass for
+the best, in their own eyes. I should like to hear you explain your
+meaning."</p>
+
+<p>"I call him a bad neighbour who never remains long enough in a place to
+love any thing but himself. Now, sir, I have a feeling for every pebble on
+the shore of this lake, a sympathy with every wave,"--here the commodore
+began to twirl his hand about, with the fingers standing apart, like so
+many spikes in a <i>che-vaux-de-frise</i>--"and each hour, as I row across it,
+I find I like it better; and yet, sir, would you believe me, I often go
+away of a morning to pass the day on the water, and, on returning home at
+night, find half the houses filled with new faces."</p>
+
+<p>"What becomes of the old ones?" demanded Captain Truck; for this, it
+struck him, was getting the better of him with his own weapons. "Do you
+mean that the people come and go like the tides?"</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly so, sir; just as it used to be with the herrings in the Otsego,
+before the. Susquehannah was dammed, and is still, with the swallows."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, my good friend, take consolation. You'll meet all the faces
+you ever saw here, one day in heaven."</p>
+
+<p>"Never; not a man of them will stay there, if there be such a thing as
+moving. Depend on it, sir," added the commodore, in the simplicity of his
+heart, "heaven is no place for a Yankee, if he can get farther west, by
+hook or by crook. They are all too uneasy for any steady occupation. You,
+who are a navigator, must know something concerning the stars; is there
+such a thing as another world, that lies west of this?"</p>
+
+<p>"That can hardly be, commodore, since the points of the compass only refer
+to objects on this earth. You know, I suppose, that a man starting from
+this spot, and travelling due west, would arrive, in time, at this very
+point, coming in from the east; so that what is west to us, in the
+heavens, on this side of the world, is east to those on the other."</p>
+
+<p>"This I confess I did not know, general. I have understood that what is
+good in one man's eyes, will be bad in another's; but never before have I
+heard that what is west to one man, lies east to another. I am afraid,
+general, that there is a little of the sogdollager bait in this?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not enough, sir, to catch the merest fresh-water gudgeon that swims. No,
+no; there is neither east nor west off the earth, nor any up and down; and
+so we Yankees must try and content ourselves with heaven. Now, commodore,
+hand me the bowl, and we will get it ready down to the shore, and offer
+the ladies our homage. And so you have become a laker in your religion, my
+dear commodore," continued the general, between his teeth, while he smoked
+and squeezed a lemon at the same time, "and do your worshipping on the
+water?"</p>
+
+<p>"Altogether of late, and more especially since my dream."</p>
+
+<p>"Dream! My dear sir, I should think you altogether too innocent a man to
+dream."</p>
+
+<p>"The best of us have our failings, general. I do sometimes dream, I own,
+as well as the greatest sinner of them all."</p>
+
+<p>"And of what did you dream--the sogdollager?"</p>
+
+<p>"I dreamt of death."</p>
+
+<p>"Of slipping the cable!" cried the general, looking up suddenly. "Well,
+what was the drift?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, sir, having no wings, I went down below, and soon found myself in
+the presence of the old gentleman himself."</p>
+
+<p>"That was pleasant--had he a tail? I have always been curious to know
+whether he really has a tail or not."</p>
+
+<p>"I saw none, sir, but then we stood face to face, like gentlemen, and I
+cannot describe what I did not see."</p>
+
+<p>"Was he glad to see you, commodore?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, sir; he was civilly spoken, but his occupation prevented many
+compliments."</p>
+
+<p>"Occupation!"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, sir; he was cutting out shoes, for his imps to travel about
+in, in order to stir up mischief."</p>
+
+<p>"And did he set you to work?--This is a sort of State-Prison affair, after
+all!"</p>
+
+<p>"No sir, he was too much of a gentleman to set me at making shoes as soon
+as I arrived. He first inquired what part of the country I was from, and
+when I told him, he was curious to know what most of the people were about
+in our neighbourhood."</p>
+
+<p>"You told him, of course, commodore?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, sir, I told him their chief occupation was quarrelling about
+religion; making saints of them selves, and sinners of their neighbours.
+'Hollo!' says the Devil, calling out to one of his imps, 'boy, run and
+catch my horse--I must be off, and have a finger in that pie. What
+denominations have you in that quarter, commodore? So I told him, general,
+that we had Baptists, and Quakers, and Universalists, and Episcopalians,
+and Presbyterians, old-lights, new-lights, and blue-lights; and
+Methodists----. 'Stop,' said the Devil, 'that's enough; you imp, be nimble
+with that horse.--Let me see, commodore, what, part of the country did you
+say you came from?' I told him the name more distinctly this time----"</p>
+
+<p>"The very spot?"</p>
+
+<p>"Town and county."</p>
+
+<p>"And what did the Devil say to that?"</p>
+
+<p>"He called out to the imp, again--'Hollo, you boy, never mind that horse;
+<i>these</i> people will all be here before I can get there.'"</p>
+
+<p>Here the commodore and the general began to laugh, until the arches of the
+forest rang with their merriment. Three times they stopped, and as often
+did they return to their glee, until, the punch being ready, each took a
+fresh draught, in order to ascertain if it were fit to be offered to the
+ladies.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Chapter XX.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>  "O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?"</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>  ROMEO AND JULIET.</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>The usual effect of punch is to cause people to see double; but, on this
+occasion, the mistake was the other way, for two boats had touched the
+strand, instead of the one announced by the commodore, and they brought
+with them the whole party from the Wigwam, Steadfast and Aristabalus
+included. A domestic or two had also been brought to prepare the customary
+repast.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Truck was as good as his word, as respects the punch, and the
+beverage was offered to each of the ladies in form, as soon as her feet
+had touched the green sward which covers that beautiful spot. Mrs. Hawker
+declined drinking, in a way to delight the gallant seaman; for so
+completely had she got the better of all his habits and prejudices, that
+every thing she did seemed right and gracious in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The party soon separated into groups, or pairs, some being seated on the
+margin of the limpid water, enjoying the light cool airs, by which it was
+fanned, others lay off in the boats fishing, while the remainder plunged
+into the woods, that, in their native wildness, bounded the little spot of
+verdure, which, canopied by old oaks, formed the arena so lately in
+controversy. In this manner, an hour or two soon slipped away, when a
+summons was given for all to assemble around the viands.</p>
+
+<p>The repast was laid on the grass, notwithstanding Aristabulus more than
+hinted that the public, his beloved public, usually saw fit to introduce
+rude tables for that purpose. The Messrs. Effinghams, however, were not to
+be taught by a mere bird of passage, how a rustic f&ecirc;te so peculiarly their
+own, ought to be conducted, and the attendants were directed to spread the
+dishes on the turf. Around this spot, rustic seats were <i>improvis&eacute;s</i>, and
+the business of <i>restauration</i> proceeded. Of all there assembled, the
+Parisian feelings of Mademoiselle Viefville were the most excited; for to
+her, the scene was one of pure delights, with the noble panorama of
+forest-clad mountains, the mirror-like lake, the overshadowing oaks, and
+the tangled brakes of the adjoining woods.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mais, vraiment ceci surpasse les Tuileries, m&ecirc;me dans leur propre
+genre</i>!" she exclaimed, with energy. "<i>On passer ait volontiers par les
+dangers du d&eacute;sert pour y parvenir</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Those who understood her, smiled at this characteristic remark, and most
+felt disposed to join in the enthusiasm. Still, the manner in which their
+companions expressed the happiness they felt, appeared tame and
+unsatisfactory to Mr. Bragg and Mr. Dodge, these two persons being
+accustomed to see the young of the two sexes indulge in broader
+exhibitions of merry-making than those in which it comported with the
+tastes and habits of the present party to indulge. In vain Mrs. Hawker, in
+her quiet dignified way, enjoyed the ready wit and masculine thoughts of
+Mrs. Bloom field, appearing to renew her youth; or, Eve, with her sweet
+simplicity, and highly cultivated mind and improved tastes, seemed like a
+highly-polished mirror, to throw back the flashes of thought and memory,
+that so constantly gleamed before both; it was all lost on these
+thoroughly matter-of-fact utilitarians. Mr. Effingham, all courtesy and
+mild refinement, was seldom happier; and John Effingham was never more
+pleasant, for he had laid aside the severity of his character, to appear,
+what he ought always to have been, a man in whom intelligence and
+quickness of thought could be made to seem secondary to the gentler
+qualities. The young men were not behind their companions, either, each,
+in his particular way, appearing to advantage, gay, regulated, and full of
+a humour that was rendered so much the more agreeable, by drawing its
+images from a knowledge of the world, that was tempered by observation and
+practice.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Grace, alone, was the only one of the whole party, always excepting
+Aristabulus and Steadfast, who, for those fleeting but gay hours, was not
+thoroughly happy. For the first time in her life, she felt her own
+deficiencies, that ready and available knowledge, so exquisitely feminine
+in its nature and exhibition, which escaped Mrs. Bloomfield and Eve, as it
+might be from its own excess; which the former possessed almost,
+intuitively, a gift of Heaven, and which the latter enjoyed, not only from
+the same source, but as a just consequence of her long and steady
+self-denial, application, and a proper appreciation of her duty to
+herself, was denied one who, in ill-judged compliance with the customs of
+a society that has no other apparent aim than the love of display, had
+precluded herself from enjoyments that none but the intellectual can feel.
+Still Grace was beautiful and attractive; and though she wondered where
+her cousin, in general so simple and unpretending, had acquired all those
+stores of thought, that, in the <i>abandon</i> and freedom of such a f&ecirc;te,
+escaped her in rich profusion, embellished with ready allusions and a
+brilliant though chastened wit, her generous and affectionate heart could
+permit her to wonder without envying. She perceived, for the first time,
+on this occasion, that if Eve were indeed a Hajji, it was not a Hajji of a
+common school; and, while her modesty and self-abasement led her bitterly
+to regret the hours irretrievably wasted in the frivolous levities so
+common to those of her sex with whom she had been most accustomed to
+mingle, her sincere regret did not lessen her admiration for one she began
+tenderly to love.</p>
+
+<p>As for Messrs. Dodge and Bragg, they both determined, in their own minds,
+that this was much the most stupid entertainment they had ever seen on
+that spot, for it was entirely destitute of loud laughing, noisy
+merriment, coarse witticisms, and practical jokes. To them it appeared the
+height of arrogance, for any particular set of persons to presume to come
+to a spot, rendered sacred by the public suffrage in its favour, in order
+to indulge in these outlandish dog-in-the-mangerisms.</p>
+
+<p>Towards the close of this gay repast, and when the party were about to
+yield their places to the attendants, who were ready to re-ship the
+utensils, John Effingham observed--</p>
+
+<p>"I trust, Mrs. Hawker, you have been-duly warned of the
+catastrophe-character of this point, on which woman is said never to have
+been wooed in vain. Here are Captain Truck and myself, ready at any
+moment to use these carving knives, <i>faute des Bowies</i>, in order to show
+our desperate devotion; and I deem it no more than prudent in you, not to
+smile again this day, lest the cross-eyed readings of jealousy should
+impute a wrong motive."</p>
+
+<p>"Had the injunction been against laughing, sir, I might have resisted, but
+smiles are far too feeble to express one's approbation, on such a day as
+this; you may, therefore, trust to my discretion. Is it then true,
+however, that Hymen haunts these shades?"</p>
+
+<p>"A bachelor's history of the progress of love, may be, like the education
+of his children, distrusted; but so sayeth tradition; and I never put my
+foot in the place, without making fresh vows of constancy to myself. After
+this announcement of the danger, dare you accept an arm, for I perceive
+signs that life cannot be entirely wasted in these pleasures, great as
+they may prove."</p>
+
+<p>The whole party arose, and separating naturally, they strolled in groups
+or pairs again, along the pebbly strand, or beneath the trees, while the
+attendants made the preparations to depart. Accident, as much as design,
+left Sir George and Grace alone, for neither perceived the circumstance
+until they had both passed a little rise in the formation of the ground,
+and were beyond the view of their companions. The baronet was the first to
+perceive how much he had been favoured by fortune, and his feelings were
+touched by the air of gentle melancholy, that shaded the usually bright
+and brilliant countenance of the beautiful girl.</p>
+
+<p>"I should have thrice enjoyed this pleasant day," he said, with an
+interest in his manner, that caused the heart of Grace to beat quicker,
+"had I not seen that to you it has been less productive of satisfaction,
+than to most of those around you. I fear you may not be as well, as
+usual?"</p>
+
+<p>"In health, never better, though not in spirits, perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>"I could wish I had a right to inquire why you, who have so few causes in
+general to be out of spirits, should have chosen a moment so little in
+accordance with the common feeling."</p>
+
+<p>"I have chosen no moment; the moment has chosen me, I fear. Not until this
+day, Sir George Templemore, have I ever been truly sensible of my great
+inferiority to my cousin, Eve."</p>
+
+<p>"An inferiority that no one but yourself would observe or mention."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I am neither vain enough, nor ignorant enough, to be the dupe of this
+flattery," returned Grace, shaking her hands and head, while she forced a
+smile; for even the delusions those we love pour into our ears, are not
+without their charms. "When I first met my cousin, after her return, my
+own imperfections rendered me blind to her superiority; but she herself
+has gradually taught me to respect her mind, her womanly character, her
+tact, her delicacy, principles, breeding, every thing that can make a
+woman estimable, or worthy to be loved! Oh! how have I wasted in childish
+amusements, and frivolous vanities, the precious moments of that girlhood
+which can never be recalled, and left myself scarcely worthy to be an
+associate of Eve Effingham!"</p>
+
+<p>The first feelings of Grace had so far gotten the control, that she scarce
+knew what she said, or to whom she was speaking; she even wrung her hands,
+in the momentary bitterness of her regrets, and in a way to arouse all the
+sympathy of a lover.</p>
+
+<p>"No one but yourself would say this, Miss Van Cortlandt, and least of all
+your admirable cousin."</p>
+
+<p>"She is, indeed, my admirable cousin! But what are <i>we</i>, in comparison
+with such a woman. Simple and unaffected as a child, with the intelligence
+of a scholar; with all the graces of a woman, she has the learning and
+mind of a man. Mistress of so many languages----"</p>
+
+<p>"But you, too, speak several, my dear Miss Van Cortlandt."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Grace, bitterly, "I <i>speak</i> them, as the parrot repeats words
+that he does not understand. But Eve Effingham has used these languages as
+means, and she does not tell you merely what such a phrase or idiom
+signifies, but what the greatest writers have thought and written."</p>
+
+<p>"No one has a more profound respect for your cousin than myself, Miss Van
+Cortlandt, but justice to you requires that I should say her great
+superiority over yourself has escaped me."</p>
+
+<p>"This may be true, Sir George Templemore, and for a long time it escaped
+me too. I have only learned to prize her as she ought to be prized by an
+intimate acquaintance; hour by hour, as it might be. But even you must
+have observed how quick and intuitively my cousin and Mrs. Bloomfield have
+understood each other to-day; how much extensive reading, and, what
+polished tastes they have both shown, and all so truly feminine! Mrs.
+Bloomfield is a remarkable woman, but she loves these exhibitions, for she
+knows she excels in them. Not so with Eve Effingham, who, while she so
+thoroughly enjoys every thing intellectual, is content, always, to seem so
+simple. Now, it happens, that the conversation turned once to-day on a
+subject that my cousin, no later than yesterday, fully explained to me, at
+my own earnest request; and I observed that, while she joined so naturally
+with Mrs. Bloomfield in adding to our pleasure, she kept back half what
+she knew, lest she might seem to surpass her friend. No--no--no--there is
+not such another woman as Eve Effingham in this world!"</p>
+
+<p>"So keen a perception of excellence in others, denotes an equal excellence
+in yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"I know my own great inferiority now, and no kindness of yours, Sir George
+Templemore, can ever persuade me into a better opinion of myself. Eve has
+travelled, seen much in Europe that does not exist here, and, instead of
+passing her youth in girlish trifling, has treated the minutes as if they
+were all precious, as she well knew them to be."</p>
+
+<p>"If Europe, then, does indeed possess these advantages, why not yourself
+visit it, dearest Miss Van Cortlandt?"</p>
+
+<p>"I--I a Hajji!" cried Grace with childish pleasure, though her colour
+heightened, and, for a moment, Eve and her superiority was forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly Sir George Templemore did not come out on the lake that day with
+any expectation of offering his baronetcy, his fair estate, with his hand,
+to this artless, half-educated, provincial, but beautiful girl. For a long
+time he had been debating with himself the propriety of such a step, and
+it is probable that, at some later period, he would have sought an
+occasion, had not one now so opportunely offered, notwithstanding all his
+doubts and reasonings with himself. If the "woman who hesitates is lost,"
+it is equally true that the man who pretends to set up his reason alone
+against beauty, is certain to find that sense is less powerful than the
+senses. Had Grace Van Cortlandt been more sophisticated, less natural, her
+beauty might have failed to make this conquest; but the baronet found a
+charm in her <i>naivet&eacute;</i>, that was singularly winning to the feelings of a
+man of the world. Eve had first attracted him by the same quality; the
+early education of American females being less constrained and artificial
+than that of the English; but in Eve he found a mental training and
+acquisitions that left the quality less conspicuous, perhaps, than in her
+scarcely less beautiful cousin; though, had Eve met his admiration with
+any thing like sympathy, her power over him would not have been easily
+weakened. As it was, Grace had been gradually winding herself around his
+affections, and he now poured out his love, in a language that her
+unpractised and already favourably disposed feelings had no means of
+withstanding. A very few minutes were allowed to them, before the summons
+to the boat; but when this summons came, Grace rejoined the party,
+elevated in her own good opinion, as happy as a cloudless future could
+make her and without another thought of the immeasurable superiority of
+her cousin.</p>
+
+<p>By a singular coincidence, while the baronet and Grace were thus engaged
+on one part of the shore, Eve was the subject of a similar proffer of
+connecting herself for life, on another. She had left the circle, attended
+by Paul, her father, and Aristabulus; but no sooner had they reached the
+margin of the water, than the two former were called away by Captain
+Truck, to settle some controverted point between the latter and the
+commodore. By this unlooked-for desertion, Eve found herself alone with
+Mr. Bragg.</p>
+
+<p>"That was a funny and comprehensive remark Mr. John made about the
+'Point,' Miss Eve," Aristabulus commenced, as soon as he found himself in
+possession of the ground. "I should like to know if it be really true that
+no woman was ever unsuccessfully wooed beneath these oaks? If such be the
+case, we gentlemen ought to be cautious how we come here."</p>
+
+<p>Here Aristabulus simpered, and looked, if possible, more amiable than
+ever; though the quiet composure and womanly dignity of Eve, who respected
+herself too much, and too well knew what was due to her sex, even to enter
+into, or, so far as it depended on her will, to permit any of that
+common-place and vulgar trifling about love and matrimony, which formed a
+never-failing theme between the youthful of the two sexes, in Mr. Bragg's
+particular circle, sensibly curbed his ambitious hopes. Still he thought
+he had made too good an opening, not to pursue the subject.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. John Effingham sometimes indulges in pleasantries," Eve answered,
+"that would lead one astray who might attempt to follow."</p>
+
+<p>"Love <i>is</i> a jack-o'-lantern," rejoined Aristabulus sentimentally. "That
+I admit; and it is no wonder so many get swamped in following his lights.
+Have you ever felt the tender passion, Miss Eve?"</p>
+
+<p>Now, Aristabulus had heard this question put at the <i>soir&eacute;e</i> of Mrs.
+Houston, more than once, and he believed himself to be in the most polite
+road for a regular declaration. An ordinary woman, who felt herself
+offended by this question, would, most probably, have stepped back, and,
+raising her form to its utmost elevation, answered by an emphatic "sir!"
+Not so with Eve. She felt the distance between Mr. Bragg and herself to be
+so great, that by no probable means could he even offend her by any
+assumption of equality. This distance was the result of opinions, habits,
+and education, rather than of condition, however; for, though Eve
+Effingham could become the wife of a gentleman only, she was entirely
+superior to those prejudices of the world that depend on purely factitious
+causes. Instead of discovering surprise, indignation, or dramatic dignity,
+therefore, at this extraordinary question, she barely permitted a smile to
+curl her handsome mouth; and this so slightly, as to escape her
+companion's eye.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe we are to be favoured with as smooth water, in returning to the
+village, as we had in the morning, while coming to this place," she simply
+said. "You row sometimes, I think, Mr. Bragg?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Miss Eve, such another opportunity may never occur again, for you
+foreign ladies are so difficult of access! Let me, then, seize this happy
+moment, here, beneath the hymeneal oaks, to offer you this faithful hand
+and this willing heart. Of fortune you will have enough for both, and I
+say nothing about the miserable dross. Reflect, Miss Eve, how happy we
+might be, protecting and soothing the old age of your father, and in going
+down the hill of life in company; or, as the song says, 'and hand in hand
+we'll go, and sleep the'gither at the foot, John Anderson, my Joe.'"</p>
+
+<p>"You draw very agreeable pictures, Mr Bragg, and with the touches of a
+master!"</p>
+
+<p>"However agreeable you find them, Miss Eve, they fall infinitely short of
+the truth. The tie of wedlock, besides being the most sacred, is also the
+dearest; and happy, indeed, are they who enter into the solemn engagement
+with such cheerful prospects as ourselves. Our ages are perfectly
+suitable, our disposition entirely consonant, our habits so similar as to
+obviate all unpleasant changes, and our fortunes precisely what they ought
+to be to render a marriage happy, with confidence on one side, and
+gratitude on the other. As to the day, Miss Eve, I could wish to leave you
+altogether the mistress of that, and shall not be urgent."</p>
+
+<p>Eve had often heard John Effingham comment on the cool impudence of a
+particular portion of the American population, with great amusement to
+herself; but never did she expect to be the subject of an attack like this
+in her own person. By way of rendering the scene perfect, Aristabulus had
+taken out his penknife, cut a twig from a bush, and he now rendered
+himself doubly interesting by commencing the favourite occupation of
+whittling. A cooler picture of passion could not well have been drawn.</p>
+
+<p>"You are bashfully silent, Miss Eve! I make all due allowances for natural
+timidity, and shall say no more at present--though, as silence universally
+'gives consent--'" "If you please, sir," interrupted Eve, with a slight
+motion of her parasol, that implied a check. "I presume our habits and
+opinions, notwithstanding you seem to think them so consonant with each
+other, are sufficiently different to cause you not to see the impropriety
+of one, who is situated like yourself, abusing the confidence of a parent,
+by making such a proposal to a daughter without her father's knowledge:
+and, on that point, I shall say nothing. But as you have done me the
+honour of making me a very unequivocal offer of your hand, I wish that the
+answer may be as distinct as the proposal. I decline the advantage and
+happiness of becoming your wife, sir----"</p>
+
+<p>"Time flies, Miss Eve!"</p>
+
+<p>"Time does fly, Mr. Bragg; and, if you remain much longer in the
+employment of Mr. Effingham, you may lose an opportunity of advancing your
+fortunes at the west, whither I understand it has long been your intention
+to emigrate----"</p>
+
+<p>"I will readily relinquish all my hopes at the west, for your sake."</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir, I cannot be a party to such a sacrifice. I will not say forget
+<i>me</i>, but forget your hopes here, and renew those you have so
+unreflectingly abandoned beyond the Mississippi. I shall not represent
+this conversation to Mr. Effingham in a manner to create any unnecessary
+prejudices against you; and while I thank you, as every woman should, for
+an offer that must infer some portion, at least, of your good opinion, you
+will permit me again to wish you all lawful success in your western
+enterprises."</p>
+
+<p>Eve gave Mr. Bragg no farther opportunity to renew his suit; for, she
+curtsied and left him, as she ceased speaking. Mr. Dodge, who had been a
+distant observer of the interview, now hastened to join his friend,
+curious to know the result, for it had been privately arranged between
+these modest youths, that each should try his fortune in turn, with the
+heiress, did she not accept the first proposal. To the chagrin of
+Steadfast, and probably to the reader's surprise, Aristabulus informed his
+friend that Eve's manner and language had been full of encouragement.</p>
+
+<p>"She thanked me for the offer, Mr. Dodge," he said, "and her wishes for my
+future prosperity at the west, were warm and repeated. Eve Effingham is,
+indeed, a charming creature!"</p>
+
+<p>"At the west! Perhaps she meant differently from what you imagine. I know
+her well; the girl is full of art."</p>
+
+<p>"Art, sir! She spoke as plainly as woman could speak, and I repeat that I
+feel considerably encouraged. It is something, to have had so plain a
+conversation with Eve Effingham."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Dodge swallowed his discontent, and the whole party soon embarked, to
+return to the village; the commodore and general taking a boat by
+themselves, in order to bring their discussions on human affairs in
+general, to a suitable close.</p>
+
+<p>That night, Sir George Templemore, asked an interview with Mr. Effingham,
+when the latter was alone in his library.</p>
+
+<p>"I sincerely hope this request is not the forerunner of a departure," said
+the host kindly, as the young man entered, "in which case I shall regard
+you as one unmindful of the hopes he has raised. You stand pledged by
+implication, if not in words, to pass another month with us."</p>
+
+<p>"So far from entertaining an intention so faithless, my dear sir, I am
+fearful that you may think I trespass too far on your hospitality."</p>
+
+<p>He then communicated his wish to be allowed to make Grace Van Cortlandt
+his wife. Mr. Effingham heard him with a smile, that showed he was not
+altogether unprepared for such a demand, and his eye glistened as he
+squeezed the other's hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Take her with all my heart, Sir George," he said, "but remember you are
+transferring a tender plant into a strange soil. There are not many of
+your countrymen to whom I would confide such a trust, for I know the risk
+they run who make ill-assorted unions--"</p>
+
+<p>"Ill-assorted unions, Mr. Effingham!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yours will not be one, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, I know;
+for in years, birth and fortune, you and my dear niece are as much, on an
+equality as can be desired: but it is too often an ill-assorted union for
+an American woman to become an English wife. So much depends on the man,
+that with one in whom I have less confidence than I have in you, I might
+justly hesitate. I shall take a guardian's privilege, though Grace be her
+own mistress, and give you one solemn piece of advice--always respect the
+country of the woman you have thought worthy to bear your name."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope always to respect every thing that is hers; but, why this
+particular caution?--Miss Van Cortlandt is almost English in her heart."</p>
+
+<p>"An affectionate wife will take her bias in such matters, generally from
+her husband. Your country will be her country, your God her God. Still,
+Sir George Templemore, a woman of spirit and sentiment can never wholly
+forget the land of her birth. You love us not in England, and one who
+settles there will often have occasion to hear gibes and sneers on the
+land from which she came--"</p>
+
+<p>"Good God, Mr. Effingham, you do not think I shall take my wife into
+society where--"</p>
+
+<p>"Bear with a proser's doubts, Templemore. You will do all that is
+well-intentioned and proper, I dare say, in the usual acceptation of the
+words; but I wish you to do more; that which is wise. Grace has now a
+sincere reverence and respect for England, feelings that in many
+particulars are sustained by the facts, and will be permanent; but, in
+some things, observation, as it usually happens with the young and
+sanguine, will expose the mistakes into which she has been led by
+enthusiasm and the imagination. As she knows other countries better, she
+will come to regard her own with more favourable and discriminating eyes,
+losing her sensitiveness on account of peculiarities she now esteems, and
+taking new views of things. Perhaps you will think me selfish, but I shall
+add, also, that if you wish to cure your wife of any homesickness, the
+surest mode will be to bring her back to her native land."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, my dear sir," said Sir George, laughing, "this is very much like
+acknowledging its blemishes."</p>
+
+<p>"I am aware it has that appearance, and yet the fact is otherwise. The
+cure is as certain with the Englishman as with the American; and with the
+German as with either. It depends on a general law which causes us all to
+over-estimate by-gone pleasures and distant scenes, and to undervalue
+those of the present moment. You know I have always maintained there is no
+real philosopher short of fifty, nor any taste worth possessing that is a
+dozen years old."</p>
+
+<p>Here Mr. Effingham rang the bell, and desired Pierre to request Miss Van
+Cortlandt to join him in the library. Grace entered blushing and shy, but
+with a countenance beaming with inward peace. Her uncle regarded her a
+moment intently, and a tear glistened in his eye, again, as he tenderly
+kissed her burning cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"God bless you, love," he said--"'tis a fearful change for your sex, and
+yet you all enter into it radiant with hope, and noble in your confidence.
+Take her, Templemore," giving her hand to the baronet, "and deal kindly by
+her. You will not desert us entirely I trust I shall see you both once
+more in the Wigwam before I die."</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle--uncle--" burst from Grace, as, drowned in tears, she threw herself
+into Mr. Effingham's arms; "I am an ungrateful girl, thus to abandon all
+my natural friends. I have acted wrong----"</p>
+
+<p>"Wrong, dearest Miss Van Cortlandt!"</p>
+
+<p>"Selfishly, then, Sir George Templemore," the simple-hearted girl
+ingenuously added, scarcely knowing how much her words implied--"Perhaps
+this matter night be reconsidered."</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid little would be gained by that, my love," returned the
+smiling uncle, wiping his eyes at the same instant. "The second thoughts
+of ladies usually confirm the first, in such matters. God bless you,
+Grace;--Templemore, may Heaven have you, too, in its holy keeping.
+Remember what I have said, and to-morrow we will converse further on the
+subject. Does Eve know of this, my niece?"</p>
+
+<p>The colour went and came rapidly in Grace's cheek, and she looked to the
+floor, abashed.</p>
+
+<p>"We ought then to send for her," resumed Mr. Effingham, again reaching
+towards the bell.</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle--" and Grace hurriedly interposed, in time to save the string from
+being pulled. "Could I keep such an important secret from my dearest
+cousin!"</p>
+
+<p>"I find that I am the last in the secret, as is generally the case with
+old fellows, and I believe I am even now <i>de trop</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Effingham kissed Grace again affectionately, and, although she
+strenuously endeavoured to detain him, he left the room.</p>
+
+<p>"We must follow," said Grace, hastily wiping her eyes, and rubbing the
+traces of tears from her cheeks--"Excuse me, Sir George Templemore; will
+you open----"</p>
+
+<p>He did, though it was not the door, but his arms. Grace seemed like one
+that was rendered giddy by standing on a precipice, but when she fell, the
+young baronet was at hand to receive her. Instead of quitting the library
+that instant, the bell had announced the appearance of the supper-tray,
+before she remembered that she had so earnestly intended to do so.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Chapter XXI.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>  "This day, no man thinks<br />
+He has business at his house."</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>  KING HENRY VIII.</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>The warm weather, which was always a little behind that of the lower
+counties, had now set in among the mountains, and the season had advanced
+into the first week in July. "Independence Day," as the fourth of that
+month is termed by the Americans, arrived; and the wits of Templeton were
+taxed, as usual, in order that the festival might be celebrated with the
+customary intellectual and moral treat. The morning commenced with a
+parade of the two or three uniformed companies of the vicinity, much
+gingerbread and spruce-beer were consumed in the streets, no light
+potations of whiskey were swallowed in the groceries, and a great variety
+of drinks, some of which bore very ambitious names, shared the same fate
+in the taverns.</p>
+
+<p>Mademoiselle Viefville had been told that this was the great American
+<i>f&ecirc;te</i>; the festival of the nation; and she appeared that morning in gay
+ribands, and with her bright, animated face, covered with smiles for the
+occasion. To her surprise, however, no one seemed to respond to her
+feelings; and as the party rose from the breakfast-table, she took an
+opportunity to ask an explanation of Eve, in a little 'aside.'</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Est-ce que je me suis tromp&eacute;e, ma chere</i>?" demanded the lively
+Frenchwoman. "Is not this <i>la c&eacute;l&eacute;bration de votre ind&eacute;pendance</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"You are not mistaken, my dear Mademoiselle Viefville, and great
+preparations are made to do it honour. I understand there is to be a
+military parade, an oration, a dinner, and fire-works."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Monsieur votre p&egrave;re----?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Monsieur mon p&egrave;re</i> is not much given to rejoicings, and he takes this
+annual joy, much as a valetudinarian takes his morning draught."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Et Monsieur Jean Effingham----?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is always a philosopher; you are to expect no antics from him."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mais ces jeunes gens, Monsieur Bragg, Monsieur Dodge, et Monsieur Powis,
+m&ecirc;me!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Se r&eacute;jouissent en Am&eacute;ricains.</i> I presume you are aware that Mr. Powis
+has declared himself to be an American?"</p>
+
+<p>Mademoiselle Viefville looked towards the streets, along which divers
+tall, sombre-looking countrymen, with faces more lugubrious than those of
+the mutes of a funeral, were sauntering, with a desperate air of
+enjoyment; and she shrugged her shoulders, as she muttered to herself,
+"<i>que ces Americains sont dr&ocirc;les!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>At a later hour, however, Eve surprised her father, and indeed most of the
+Americans of the party, by proposing that the ladies should walk out into
+the street, and witness the f&ecirc;te.</p>
+
+<p>"My child, this is a strange proposition to come from a young lady of
+twenty," said her father.</p>
+
+<p>"Why strange, dear sir?--We always mingled in the village f&ecirc;tes in
+Europe."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Certainement</i>" cried the delighted Mademoiselle Viefville; "<i>c'est de
+rigueur, m&ecirc;me</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"And it is <i>de rigueur</i>, here, Mademoiselle, for young ladies to keep out
+of them," put in John Effingham. "I should be very sorry to see either of
+you three ladies in the streets of Templeton to-day."</p>
+
+<p>Why so, cousin Jack? Have we any thing to fear from the rudeness of our
+countrymen? I have always understood, on the contrary, that in no other
+part of the world is woman so uniformly treated with respect and kindness,
+as in this very republic of ours; and yet, by all these ominous faces, I
+perceive that it will not do for her to trust herself in the streets of a
+village on a <i>festa</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"You are not altogether wrong, in what you now say, Miss Effingham, nor
+are you wholly right. Woman, as a whole, is well treated in America; and
+yet it will not do for a <i>lady</i> to mingle in scenes like these, as ladies
+may and do mingle with them in Europe."</p>
+
+<p>"I have heard this difference accounted for," said Paul Powis, "by the
+fact that women have no legal rank in this country. In those nations where
+the station of a lady is protected by legal ordinances, it is said she may
+descend with impunity; but, in this, where all are equal before the law,
+so many misunderstand the real merits of their position, that she is
+obliged to keep aloof from any collisions with those who might be disposed
+to mistake their own claims."</p>
+
+<p>"But I wish for no collisions, no associations, Mr. Powis, but simply to
+pass through the streets, with my cousin and Mademoiselle Viefville, to
+enjoy the sight of the rustic sports, as one would do in France, or Italy,
+or even in republican Switzerland, if you insist on a republican example."</p>
+
+<p>"Rustic sports!" repeated Aristabulus with a frightened look--"the people
+will not bear to hear their sports called rustic, Miss Effingham."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely, sir,"--Eve never spoke to Mr. Bragg, now, without using a
+repelling politeness--"surely, sir, the people of these mountains will
+hardly pretend that their sports are those of a capital."</p>
+
+<p>"I merely mean, ma'am, that the <i>term</i> would be monstrously unpopular; nor
+do I see why the sports in a city"--Aristabulus was much too peculiar in
+his notions, to call any place that had a mayor and aldermen a
+town,--"should not be just as rustic as those of a village. The contrary
+supposition violates the principle of equality."</p>
+
+<p>"And do <i>you</i> decide against us, dear sir?" Eve added looking at Mr.
+Effingham.</p>
+
+<p>"Without stopping to examine causes, my child. I shall say that I think
+you had better all remain at home."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Voil&agrave;, Mademoiselle Viefville, une f&ecirc;te Americaine!"</i></p>
+
+<p>A shrug of the shoulders was the significant reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, my daughter, you are not entirely excluded from the festivities; all
+gallantry has not quite deserted the land."</p>
+
+<p>"A young lady shall walk <i>alone</i> with a young gentleman--shall ride alone
+with him--shall drive out alone with him--shall not move <i>without</i> him,
+<i>dans le monde, mais</i>, she shall not walk in the crowd, to look at <i>une
+f&ecirc;te avec son p&egrave;re!</i>" exclaimed Mademoiselle Viefville, in her imperfect
+English. "<i>Je d&eacute;sesp&egrave;re vraiment</i>, to understand some <i>habitudes
+Americaines!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mademoiselle, that you may not think us altogether barbarians, you
+shall, at least, have the benefit of the oration."</p>
+
+<p>"You may well call it <i>the</i> oration, Ned; for, I believe one, or,
+certainly one skeleton, has served some thousand orators annually, any
+time these sixty years."</p>
+
+<p>"Of this skeleton, then, the ladies shall have the benefit. The procession
+is about to form, I hear; and by getting ready immediately, we shall be
+just in time to obtain good seats."</p>
+
+<p>Mademoiselle Viefville was delighted; for, after trying the theatres, the
+churches, sundry balls, the opera, and all the admirable gaieties of
+New-York, she had reluctantly come to the conclusion that America was a
+very good country <i>pour s'ennuyer</i>, and for very little else; but here was
+the promise of a novelty. The ladies completed their preparations, and,
+accordingly, attended by all the gentlemen, made their appearance in the
+assembly, at the appointed hour.</p>
+
+<p>The orator, who, as usual, was a lawyer, was already in possession of the
+pulpit, for one of the village churches had been selected as the scene of
+the ceremonies. He was a young man, who had recently been called to the
+bar, it being as much in rule for the legal tyro to take off the wire-edge
+of his wit in a Fourth of July oration, as it was formerly for a
+Mousquetaire to prove his spirit in a duel. The academy which, formerly,
+was a servant of all work to the public, being equally used for education,
+balls, preaching, town-meetings, and caucuses, had shared the fate of most
+American edifices in wood, having lived its hour and been burned; and the
+collection of people, whom we have formerly had occasion to describe,
+appeared to have also vanished from the earth, for nothing could be less
+alike in exterior, at least, than those who had assembled under the
+ministry of Mr. Grant, and their successors, who were now collected to
+listen to the wisdom of Mr. Writ. Such a thing as a coat of two
+generations was no longer to be seen; the latest fashion, or what was
+thought to be the latest fashion, being as rigidly respected by the young
+farmer, or the young mechanic, as by the more admitted bucks, the law
+student, and the village shop-boy. All the red cloaks had long since been
+laid aside to give place to imitation merino shawls, or, in cases of
+unusual moderation and sobriety, to mantles of silk. As Eve glanced her
+eye around her, she perceived Tuscan hats, bonnets of gay colours and
+flowers, and dresses of French chintzes, where fifty years ago would have
+been seen even men's woollen hats, and homely English calicoes. It is true
+that the change among the men was not quite as striking, for their attire
+admits of less variety; but the black stock had superseded the check
+handkerchief and the bandanna; gloves had taken the places of mittens; and
+the coarse and clownish shoe of "cow-hide" was supplanted by the calf-skin
+boot.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are your peasants, your rustics, your milk and dairy maids--<i>the
+people</i>, in short"--whispered Sir George Templemore to Mrs. Bloomfield, as
+they took their seats; "or is this occasion thought to be too intellectual
+for them, and the present assembly composed only of the <i>&eacute;lite</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"These <i>are</i> the people, and a pretty fair sample, too, of their
+appearance and deportment. Most of these men are what you in England would
+call operatives, and the women are their wives, daughters, and sisters."</p>
+
+<p>The baronet said nothing at the moment, but he sat looking around him with
+a curious eye for some time, when he again addressed his companion.</p>
+
+<p>"I see the truth of what you say, as regards the men, for a critical eye
+can discover the proofs of their occupations; but, surely, you must be
+mistaken as respects your own sex; there is too much delicacy of form and
+feature for the class you mean."</p>
+
+<p>"Nevertheless, I have said naught but truth."</p>
+
+<p>"But look at the hands and the feet, dear Mrs. Bloomfield. Those are
+French gloves, too, or I am mistaken."</p>
+
+<p>"I will not positively affirm that the French gloves actually belong to
+the dairy-maids, though I have known even this prodigy; but, rely on it,
+you see here the proper female counterparts of the men, and singularly
+delicate and pretty females are they, for persons of their class. This is
+what you call democratic coarseness and vulgarity, Miss Effingham tells
+me, in England."</p>
+
+<p>Sir George smiled, but, as what it is the fashion of me country to call
+'the exercises,' just then began, he made no other answer.</p>
+
+<p>These exercises commenced with instrumental music, certainly the weakest
+side of American civilization. That of the occasion of which we write, had
+three essential faults, all of which are sufficiently general to be termed
+characteristic, in a national point of view. In the first place, the
+instruments themselves were bad; in the next place, they were assorted
+without any regard to harmony; and, in the last place, their owners did
+not know how to use them. As in certain American <i>cities</i>--the word is
+well applied here--she is esteemed the greatest belle who can contrive to
+utter her nursery sentiments in the loudest voice, so in Templeton, was he
+considered the ablest musician who could give the greatest <i>&eacute;clat</i> to a
+false note. In a word, clamour was the one thing needful, and as regards
+time, that great regulator of all harmonies, Paul Powis whispered to the
+captain that the air they had just been listening to, resembled what the
+sailors call a 'round robin;' or a particular mode of signing complaints
+practised by seamen, in which the nicest observer cannot tell which is the
+beginning, or which the end.</p>
+
+<p>It required all the Parisian breeding of Mademoiselle Viefville to
+preserve her gravity during this overture, though she kept her bright
+animated, French-looking eyes, roaming over the assembly, with an air of
+delight that, as Mr. Bragg would say, made her very popular. No one else
+in the party from the Wigwam, Captain Truck excepted, dared look up, but
+each kept his or her eyes riveted on the floor, as if in silent enjoyment
+of the harmonies. As for the honest old seaman, there was as much melody
+in the howling of a gale to his unsophisticated ears, as in any thing
+else, and he saw no difference between this feat of the Templeton band and
+the sighings of old Boreas; and, to say the truth, our nautical critic was
+not so much out of the way.</p>
+
+<p>Of the oration it is scarcely necessary to say much, for if human nature
+is the same in all ages, and under all circumstances, so is a fourth of
+July oration. There were the usual allusions to Greece and Rome, between
+the republics of which and that of this country there exists some such
+affinity as is to be found between a horse-chestnut and a chestnut-horse;
+or that, of mere words: and a long catalogue of national glories that
+might very well have sufficed for all the republics, both of antiquity and
+of our own time. But when the orator came to speak of the American
+character, and particularly of the intelligence of the nation, he was most
+felicitous, and made the largest investments in popularity. According to
+his account of the matter, no other people possessed a tithe of the
+knowledge, or a hundredth part of the honesty and virtue of the very
+community he was addressing; and after labouring for ten minutes to
+convince his hearers that they already knew every thing, he wasted several
+more in trying to persuade them to undertake further acquisitions of the
+same nature.</p>
+
+<p>"How much better all this might be made," said Paul Powis, as the party
+returned towards the Wigwam, when the 'exercises' were ended, "by
+substituting a little plain instruction on the real nature and obligations
+of the institutions, for so much unmeaning rhapsody. Nothing has struck me
+with more surprise and pain, than to find how far, or it might be better
+to say, how high, ignorance reaches on such subjects, and how few men, in
+a country where all depends on the institutions, have clear notions
+concerning their own condition."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly this is not the opinion we usually entertain of ourselves,"
+observed John Effingham. "And yet it ought to be. I am far from
+underrating the ordinary information of the country, which, as an average
+information, is superior to that of almost every other people; nor am I
+one of those who, according to the popular European notion, fancy the
+Americans less gifted than common in intellect; there can be but one truth
+in any thing, however, and it falls to the lot of very few, any where, to
+master it. The Americans, moreover, are a people of facts and practices,
+paying but little attention to principles, and giving themselves the very
+minimum of time for investigations that lie beyond the reach of the common
+mind; and it follows that they know little of that which does not present
+itself in their every-day transactions. As regards the practice of the
+institutions, it is regulated here, as elsewhere, by party, and party is
+never an honest or a disinterested expounder."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you, then, more than in the common dilemma," asked Sir George, "or
+worse off than your neighbours?"</p>
+
+<p>"We are worse off than our neighbours for the simple reason that it is the
+intention of the American system, which has been deliberately framed, and
+which is moreover the result of a bargain, to carry out its theory in
+practice; whereas, in countries where the institutions are the results of
+time and accidents, <i>improvement</i> is only obtained by <i>innovations</i>. Party
+invariably assails and weakens power. When power is the possession of a
+few, the many gain by party; but when power is the legal right of the
+many, the few gain by party. Now, as party has no ally as strong as
+ignorance and prejudice, a right understanding of the principles of a
+government is of far more importance in a popular government, than in any
+other. In place of the eternal eulogies on facts, that one hears on all
+public occasions in this country, I would substitute some plain and clear
+expositions of principles; or, indeed, I might say, of facts as they are
+connected with principles."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mais, la musique, Monsieur</i>," interrupted Mademoiselle Viefville, in a
+way so droll as to raise a general smile, "<i>qu'en pensez-vous?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"That it is music, my dear Mademoiselle, in neither fact nor principle."</p>
+
+<p>"It only proves that a people can be free, Mademoiselle," observed Mrs.
+Bloomfield, "and enjoy fourth of July orations, without having very
+correct notions of harmony or time. But do our rejoicings end here, Miss
+Effingham?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all--there is still something in reserve for the day, and all who
+honour it. I am told the evening, which promises to be sufficiently
+sombre, is to terminate with a f&ecirc;te that is peculiar to Templeton, and
+which is called 'The Fun of Fire.'"</p>
+
+<p>"It is an ominous name, and ought to be a brilliant ceremony."</p>
+
+<p>As this was uttered, the whole party entered the Wigwam.</p>
+
+<p>"The Fun of Fire" took place, as a matter of course, at a later hour. When
+night had set in, every body appeared in the main street of the village, a
+part of which, from its width and form, was particularly adapted to the
+sports of the evening. The females were mostly at the windows, or on such
+elevated stands as favoured their view, and the party from the Wigwam
+occupied a large balcony that topped the piazza of one of the principal
+inns of the place.</p>
+
+<p>The sports of the night commenced with rockets, of which a few, that did
+as much credit to the climate as to the state of the pyrotechnics of the
+village, were thrown up, as soon as the darkness had become sufficiently
+dense to lend them brilliancy. Then followed wheels, crackers and
+serpents, all of the most primitive kind, if, indeed, there be any thing
+primitive in such amusements. The "Fun of Fire" was to close the
+rejoicings, and it was certainly worth all the other sports of that day,
+united, the gingerbread and spruce beer included.</p>
+
+<p>A blazing ball cast from a shop-door, was the signal for the commencement
+of the Fun. It was merely a ball of rope-yarn, or of some other similar
+material, saturated with turpentine, and it burned with a bright, fierce
+flame until consumed. As the first of these fiery meteors sailed into the
+street, a common shout from the boys, apprentices, and young men,
+proclaimed that the fun was at hand. It was followed by several more, and
+in a few minutes the entire area was gleaming with glancing light. The
+whole of the amusement consisted in tossing the fire-balls with boldness,
+and in avoiding them with dexterity, something like competition soon
+entering into the business of the scene.</p>
+
+<p>The effect was singularly beautiful. Groups of dark objects became
+suddenly illuminated, and here a portion of the throng might be seen
+beneath a brightness like that produced by a bonfire, while all the
+back-ground of persons and faces were gliding about in a darkness that
+almost swallowed up a human figure. Suddenly all this would be changed;
+the brightness would pass away, and a ball alighting in a spot that had
+seemed abandoned to gloom, it would be found peopled with merry
+countenances, and active forms. The constant changes from brightness to
+deep darkness, with all the varying gleams of light and shadow, made the
+beauty of the scene, which soon extorted admiration from all in the
+balcony."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mais, c'est charmant</i>!" exclaimed Mademoiselle Vielville, who was
+enchanted at discovering something like gaiety and pleasure among the
+"<i>tristes Am&ecirc;ricains</i>," and who had never even suspected them of being
+capable of so much apparent enjoyment.</p>
+
+<p>"These are the prettiest village sports I have ever witnessed," said Eve,
+"though a little dangerous, one would think. There is something
+refreshing, as the magazine writers term it, to find one of these
+miniature towns of ours condescending to be gay and happy in a village
+fashion. If I were to bring my strongest objection to American country
+life, it would be its ambitious desire to ape the towns, converting the
+ease and <i>abandon</i> of a village, into the formality and stiffness that
+render children in the clothes of grown people so absurdly ludicrous."</p>
+
+<p>"What!" exclaimed John Effingham; "do you fancy it possible to reduce a
+free-man so low, as to deprive him of his stilts! No, no, young lady; you
+are now in a country where if you have two rows of flounces on your frock,
+your maid will make it a point to have three, by way of maintaining the
+equilibrium. This is the noble ambition of liberty."</p>
+
+<p>"Annette's foible is a love of flounces, cousin Jack, and you have drawn
+that image from your eye, instead of your imagination. It is a French, as
+well as an American ambition, if ambition it be."</p>
+
+<p>"Let it be drawn whence it may, it is true. Have you not remarked, Sir
+George Templemore, that the Americans will not even bear the ascendency of
+a capital? Formerly, Philadelphia, then the largest town in the country,
+was the political capital; but it was too much for any one community to
+enjoy the united consideration that belongs to extent and politics; and so
+the honest public went to work to make a capital, that should have nothing
+else in its favour, but the naked fact that it was the seat of government,
+and I think it will be generally allowed, that they have succeeded to
+admiration. I fancy Mr. Dodge will admit that it would be quite
+intolerable, that country should not be town, and town country."</p>
+
+<p>"This is a land of equal rights, Mr. John Effingham, and I confess that I
+see no claims that New-York possesses, which does not equally belong to
+Templeton."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you hold, sir," inquired Captain Truck, "that a ship is a brig, and a
+brig a ship."</p>
+
+<p>"The case is different; Templeton <i>is</i> a town, is it not, Mr. John
+Effingham?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>A</i> town, Mr. Dodge, but not town. The difference is essential."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not see it, sir. Now, New-York, to my notion is not a <i>town</i>, but a
+<i>city</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! This is the critical acumen of the editor! But you should be
+indulgent, Mr. Dodge, to us laymen, who pick up our phrases by merely
+wandering about the world; or in the nursery perhaps, while you, of the
+favoured few, by living in the condensation of a province, obtain a
+precision and accuracy to which we can lay no claim."</p>
+
+<p>The darkness prevented the editor of the Active Inquirer from detecting
+the general smile, and he remained in happy ignorance of the feeling that
+produced it. To say the truth, not the smallest of the besetting vices of
+Mr. Dodge had their foundation in a provincial education, and in
+provincial notions; the invariable tendency of both being to persuade
+their subject that he is always right, while all opposed to him in opinion
+are wrong. That well-known line of Pope, in which the poet asks, "what can
+we reason, but from what we know?" contains the principle of half our
+foibles and faults, and perhaps explains fully that proportion of those of
+Mr. Dodge, to say nothing of those of no small number of his countrymen.
+There are limits to the knowledge, and tastes, and habits of every man,
+and, as each is regulated by the opportunities of the individual, it
+follows of necessity, that no one can have a standard much above his own
+experience. That an isolated and remote people should be a provincial
+people, or, in other words, a people of narrow and peculiar practices and
+opinions, is as unavoidable as that study should make a scholar; though in
+the case of America, the great motive for surprise is to be found in the
+fact that causes so very obvious should produce so little effect. When
+compared with the bulk of other nations, the Americans, though so remote
+and insulated, are scarcely provincial, for it is only when the highest
+standard of this nation is compared with the highest standard of other
+nations, that we detect the great deficiency that actually exists. That a
+moral foundation so broad should uphold a moral superstructure so narrow,
+is owing to the circumstance that the popular sentiment rules, and as
+every thing is referred to a body of judges that, in the nature of things,
+must be of very limited and superficial attainments, it cannot be a matter
+of wonder to the reflecting, that the decision shares in the qualities of
+the tribunal. In America, the gross mistake has been made of supposing,
+that, because the mass rules in a political sense, it has a right to be
+listened to and obeyed in all other matters, a practical deduction that
+can only lead, under the most favourable exercise of power, to a very
+humble mediocrity. It is to be hoped, that time, and a greater
+concentration of taste, liberality, and knowledge than can well
+distinguish a young and scattered population, will repair this evil, and
+that our children will reap the harvest of the broad fields of
+intelligence that have been sowed by ourselves. In the mean time, the
+present generation must endure that which cannot easily be cured; and,
+among its other evils, it will have to submit to a great deal of very
+questionable information, not a few false principles, and an unpleasant
+degree of intolerant and narrow bigotry, that are propagated by such
+apostles of liberty and learning as Steadfast Dodge, Esquire.</p>
+
+<p>We have written in vain, if it now be necessary to point out a multitude
+of things in which that professed instructor and Mentor of the public, the
+editor of the Active Inquirer, had made a false estimate of himself, as
+well as of his fellow-creatures. That such a man should be ignorant, is to
+be expected, as he had never been instructed; that he was self-sufficient
+was owing to his ignorance, which oftener induces vanity than modesty;
+that he was intolerant and bigoted, follows as a legitimate effect of his
+provincial and contracted habits; that he was a hypocrite, came from his
+homage of the people; and that one thus constituted, should be permitted,
+periodically, to pour out his vapidity, folly, malice, envy, and
+ignorance, on his fellow-creatures, in the columns of a newspaper, was
+owing to a state of society in which the truth of the wholesome adage
+"that what is every man's business is nobody's business," is exemplified
+not only daily, but hourly, in a hundred other interests of equal
+magnitude, as well as to a capital mistake, that leads the community to
+fancy that whatever is done in their time, is done for their good.</p>
+
+<p>As the "Fun of Fire" had, by this time, exhibited most of its beauties,
+the party belonging to the Wigwam left the balcony, and, the evening
+proving mild, they walked into the grounds of the building, where they
+naturally broke into groups, conversing on the incidents of the day, or of
+such other matters as came uppermost. Occasionally, gleams of light were
+thrown across them from a fire-ball; or a rocket's starry train was still
+seen drawn in the air, resembling the wake of a ship at night, as it wades
+through the ocean.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Chapter XXII.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;         Gentle Octavia,<br />
+Let your best love draw to that point, which seeks<br />
+But to preserve it.<br />
+<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>We shall not say it was an accident that brought Paul and Eve side by
+side, and a little separated from the others; for a secret sympathy had
+certainly exercised its influence over both, and probably contributed as
+much as any thing else towards bringing about the circumstance. Although
+the Wigwam stood in the centre of the village, its grounds covered several
+acres, and were intersected with winding walks, and ornamented with
+shrubbery, in the well-known English style, improvements also of John
+Effingham; for, while the climate and forests of America offer so many
+inducements to encourage landscape gardening, it is the branch of art
+that, of all the other ornamental arts, is perhaps the least known in this
+country. It is true, time had not yet brought the labours of the projector
+to perfection, in this instance; but enough had been done to afford very
+extensive, varied, and pleasing walks. The grounds were broken, and John
+Effingham had turned the irregularities to good account, by planting and
+leading paths among them, to the great amusement of the lookers-on,
+however, who, like true disciples of the Manhattanese economy, had
+already begun to calculate the cost of what they termed grading the lawns,
+it being with them as much a matter of course to bring pleasure grounds
+down to a mathematical surface, as to bring a rail-road route down to the
+proper level.</p>
+
+<p>Through these paths, and among the irregularities, groves, and
+shrubberies, just mentioned, the party began to stroll; one group taking a
+direction eastward, another south, and a third westward, in a way soon to
+break them up into five or six different divisions. These several portions
+of the company ere long got to move in opposite directions, by taking the
+various paths, and while they frequently met, they did not often re-unite.
+As has been already intimated, Eve and Paul were alone, for the first time
+in their lives, under circumstances that admitted of an uninterrupted
+confidential conversation. Instead of profiting immediately, however, by
+this unusual occurrence, as many of our readers may anticipate, the young
+man continued the discourse, in which the whole party had been engaged
+when they entered the gate that communicated with the street.</p>
+
+<p>"I know not whether you felt the same embarrassment as myself, to-day,
+Miss Effingham," he said, "when the orator was dilating on the glories of
+the republic, and on the high honours that accompany the American name.
+Certainly, though a pretty extensive traveller, I have never yet been able
+to discover that it is any advantage abroad to be one of the 'fourteen
+millions of freemen.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Are we to attribute the mystery that so long hung over your birth-place,
+to this fact," Eve asked, a little pointedly.</p>
+
+<p>"If I have made any seeming mystery, as to the place of my birth, it has
+been involuntary on my part, Miss Effingham, so far as you, at least, have
+been concerned. I may not have thought myself authorized to introduce my
+own history into our little discussions, but I am not conscious of aiming
+at any unusual concealments. At Vienna, and in Switzerland, we met as
+travellers; and now that you appear disposed to accuse me of concealment,
+I may retort, and say that, neither you nor your father ever expressly
+stated in my presence that you were Americans."</p>
+
+<p>"Was that necessary, Mr. Powis?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps not; and I am wrong to draw a comparison between my own
+insignificance, and the &eacute;clat that attended you and your movements."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay," interrupted Eve, "do not misconceive me. My father felt an interest
+in you, quite naturally, after what had occurred on the lake of Lucerne,
+and I believe he was desirous of making you out a countryman,--a pleasure
+that he has at length received."</p>
+
+<p>"To own the truth, I was never quite certain, until my last visit to
+England, on which side of the Atlantic I was actually born, and to this
+uncertainty, perhaps, may be attributed some of that cosmopolitism to
+which I made so many high pretensions in our late passage."</p>
+
+<p>"Not know where you were born!" exclaimed Eve, with an involuntary haste,
+that she immediately repented.</p>
+
+<p>"This, no doubt, sounds odd to you, Miss Effingham, who have always been
+the pride and solace of a most affectionate father, but it has never been
+my good fortune to know either parent. My mother, who was the sister of
+Ducie's mother, died at my birth, and the loss of my father even preceded
+hers. I may be said to have been born an orphan."</p>
+
+<p>Eve, for the first time in her life, had taken his arm, and the young man
+felt the gentle pressure of her little hand, as she permitted this
+expression of sympathy to escape her, at a moment she found so intensely
+interesting to herself.</p>
+
+<p>"It was, indeed, a misfortune, Mr. Powis, and I fear you were put into
+the navy through the want of those who would feel a natural concern in
+your welfare."</p>
+
+<p>"The navy was my own choice; partly, I think, from a certain love of
+adventure, and quite as much, perhaps, with a wish to settle the question
+of my birth-place, practically at least, by enlisting in the service of
+the one that I first knew, and certainly best loved."</p>
+
+<p>"But of that birth-place, I understand there is now no doubt?" said Eve,
+with more interest than she was herself conscious of betraying.</p>
+
+<p>"None whatever; I am a native of Philadelphia; that point was conclusively
+settled in my late visit to my aunt, Lady Dunluce, who was present at my
+birth."</p>
+
+<p>"Is Lady Dunluce also an American?"</p>
+
+<p>"She is; never having quitted the country until after her marriage to
+Colonel Ducie. She was a younger sister of my mother's, and,
+notwithstanding some jealousies and a little coldness that I trust have
+now disappeared, I am of opinion she loved her; though one can hardly
+answer for the durability of the family ties in a country where the
+institutions and habits are as artificial as in England."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think there is less family affection, then, in England than in
+America?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will not exactly say as much, though I am of opinion that neither
+country is remarkable in that way. In England, among the higher classes,
+it is impossible that the feelings should not be weakened by so many
+adverse interests. When a brother knows that nothing stands between
+himself and rank and wealth, but the claims of one who was born a
+twelvemonth earlier than himself, he gets to feel more like a rival than a
+kinsman, and the temptation to envy or dislike, or even hatred, sometimes
+becomes stronger than the duty to love."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet the English, themselves, say that the services rendered by the
+elder to the younger brother, and the gratitude of the younger to the
+elder, are so many additional ties."</p>
+
+<p>"It would be contrary to all the known laws of feeling, and all
+experience, if this were so. The younger applies to the elder for aid in
+preference to a stranger, because he thinks he has a claim; and what man
+who fancies he has a claim, is disposed to believe justice is fully done
+him; or who that is required to discharge a duty, imagines he has not done
+more than could be properly asked?"</p>
+
+<p>"I fear your opinion of men is none of the best, Mr. Powis!"</p>
+
+<p>"There may be exceptions, but such I believe to be the common fate of
+humanity. The moment a duty is created, a disposition to think it easily
+discharged follows; and of all sentiments, that of a continued and
+exacting gratitude is the most oppressive. I fear more brothers are aided,
+through family pride, than through natural affection."</p>
+
+<p>"What, then, loosens the tie among ourselves, where no law of
+primogeniture exists?"</p>
+
+<p>"That which loosens every thing. A love of change that has grown up with
+the migratory habits of the people; and which, perhaps, is, in some
+measure, fostered by the institutions. Here is Mr. Bragg to confirm what I
+say, and we may hear his sentiments on this subject."</p>
+
+<p>As Aristabulus, with whom walked Mr. Dodge, just at that moment came out
+of the shrubbery, and took the same direction with themselves, Powis put
+the question, as one addresses an acquaintance in a room.</p>
+
+<p>"Rotation in feelings, sir," returned Mr. Bragg, "is human nature, as
+rotation in office is natural justice. Some of our people are of opinion
+that it might be useful could the whole of society be made periodically to
+change places, in order that every one might know how his neighbour
+lives."</p>
+
+<p>"You are, then, an Agrarian, Mr. Bragg?"</p>
+
+<p>"As far from it as possible; nor do I believe you will find such an animal
+in this county. Where property is concerned, we are a people that never
+let go, as long as we can hold on, sir; but, beyond this we like lively
+changes. Now, Miss Effingham, every body thinks frequent changes of
+religious instructors in particular, necessary. There can be no vital
+piety without, keeping the flame alive with excitement."</p>
+
+<p>"I confess, sir, that my own reasoning would lead to a directly contrary
+conclusion, and that there can be no vital piety, as you term it, <i>with</i>
+excitement."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bragg looked at Mr. Dodge, and Mr. Dodge looked at Mr. Bragg. Then
+each shrugged his shoulders, and the former continued the discourse.</p>
+
+<p>"That may be the case in France, Miss Effingham," he said, "but, in
+America, we look to excitement as the great purifier. We should as soon
+expect the air in the bottom of a well to be elastic, as that the moral
+atmosphere shall be clear and salutary, without the breezes of excitement.
+For my part, Mr. Dodge, I think no man should be a judge, in the same
+court, more than ten years at a time, and a priest gets to be rather
+common-place and flat after five. There are men that may hold out a little
+longer, I acknowledge; but to keep real, vital, soul-saving regeneration
+stirring, a change should take place as often as once in five years, in a
+parish; that is my opinion, at least."</p>
+
+<p>"But, sir," rejoined Eve, "as the laws of religion are immutable, the
+modes by which it is known universal, and the promises, mediation, and
+obligations are every where the same, I do not see what you propose to
+gain by so many changes."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Miss Effingham, we change the dishes at table, and no family of my
+acquaintance, more than this of your honourable father's; and I am
+surprised to find you opposed to the system."</p>
+
+<p>"Our religion, sir," answered Eve, gravely, "is a duty, and rests on
+revelation and obedience; while our diet may, very innocently, be a matter
+of mere taste, even of caprice, if you will."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I confess I see no great difference, the main object in this life
+being to stir people up, and to go ahead. I presume you know, Miss Eve,
+that many people think that we ought to change our own parson, if we
+expect a blessing on the congregation."</p>
+
+<p>"I should sooner expect a curse would follow an act of so much
+heartlessness, sir. Our clergyman has been with us since his entrance into
+the duties of his holy office; and it will be difficult to suppose that
+the Divine favour would follow the commission of so selfish and capricious
+a step, with a motive no better than the desire for novelty."</p>
+
+<p>"You quite mistake the object, Miss Eve, which is to stir the people up; a
+hopeless thing, I fear, so long as they always sit under the same
+preaching."</p>
+
+<p>"I have been taught to believe that piety is increased, Mr. Bragg, by the
+aid of the Holy Spirit's sustaining and supporting us in our good desires;
+and I cannot persuade myself that the Deity finds it necessary to save a
+soul, by the means of any of those human agencies by which men sack towns,
+turn an election, or incite a mob. I hear that extraordinary scenes are
+witnessed in this country, in some of the other sects; but I trust never
+to see the day, when the apostolic, reverend, and sober church, in which I
+have been nurtured, shall attempt to advance the workings of that Divine
+power, by a profane, human hurrah."</p>
+
+<p>All this was Greek to Messrs. Dodge and Bragg, who, in furthering their
+objects, were so accustomed to "stirring people up," that they had quite
+forgotten that the more a man was in "an excitement," the less he had to
+do with reason. The exaggerated religious sects, which first peopled
+America, have had a strong influence in transmitting to their posterity
+false notions on such subjects; for while the old world is accustomed to
+see Christianity used as an ally of government, and perverted from its one
+great end to be the instrument of ambition, cupidity, and selfishness, the
+new world has been fated to witness the reaction of such abuses, and to
+run into nearly as many errors in the opposite extreme. The two persons
+just mentioned, had been educated in the provincial school of religious
+notions, that is so much in favour, in a portion of this country; and they
+were striking examples of the truth of the adage, that "what is bred in
+the bone will be seen in the flesh," for their common character, common in
+this particular at least, was a queer mixture of the most narrow
+superstitions and prejudices, that existed under the garb of religious
+training, and of unjustifiable frauds, meannesses, and even vices. Mr.
+Bragg was a better man than Mr. Dodge, for he had more self-reliance, and
+was more manly; but, on the score of religion, he had the same
+contradictory excesses, and there was a common point, in the way of vulgar
+vice, towards which each tended, simply for the want of breeding and
+tastes, as infallibly as the needle points to the pole. Cards were often
+introduced in Mr. Effingham's drawing-room, and there was one apartment
+expressly devoted to a billiard-table; and many was the secret fling, and
+biting gibe, that these pious devotees passed between themselves, on the
+subject of so flagrant an instance of immorality, in a family of so high
+moral pretensions; the two worthies not unfrequently concluding their
+comments by repairing to some secret room in a tavern, where, after
+carefully locking the door, and drawing the curtains, they would order
+brandy, and pass a refreshing hour in endeavouring to relieve each other
+of the labour of carrying their odd sixpences, by means of little
+shoemaker's loo.</p>
+
+<p>On the present occasion, however, the earnestness of Eve produced a
+pacifying effect on their consciences, for, as our heroine never raised
+her sweet voice above the tones of a gentlewoman, its very mildness and
+softness gave force to her expressions. Had John Effingham uttered the
+sentiments to which they had just listened it is probable Mr. Bragg would
+have attempted an answer; but, under the circumstances, he preferred
+making his bow, and diverging into the first path that offered, followed
+by his companion. Eve and Paul continued their circuit of the grounds, as
+if no interruption had taken place.</p>
+
+<p>"This disposition to change is getting to be universal in the country,"
+remarked the latter, as soon as Aristabulus and his friend had left them,
+"and I consider it one of the worst signs of the times; more especially
+since it has become so common to connect it with what it is the fashion to
+call excitement."</p>
+
+<p>"To return to the subject which these gentlemen interrupted," said Eve,
+"that of the family ties; I have always heard England quoted as one of the
+strongest instances of a nation in which this tie is slight, beyond its
+aristocratical influence; and I should be sorry to suppose that we are
+following in the footsteps of our good-mother, in this respect at least."</p>
+
+<p>"Has Mademoiselle Viefville never made any remark on this subject?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mademoiselle Viefville, though observant, is discreet. That she believes
+the standard of the affections as high in this as in her own country, I do
+not think; for, like most Europeans, she believes the Americans to be a
+passionless people, who are more bound up in the interests of gain, than
+in any other of the concerns of life."</p>
+
+<p>"She does not know us!" said Paul so earnestly as to cause Eve to start at
+the deep energy with which he spoke. "The passions lie as deep, and run in
+currents as strong here, as in any other part of the world, though, there
+not being as many factitious causes to dam them, they less seldom break
+through the bounds of propriety."</p>
+
+<p>For near a minute the two paced the walk in silence, and Eve began to wish
+that some one of the party would again join them, that a conversation
+which she felt was getting to be awkward, might be interrupted. But no
+one crossed their path again, and without rudeness, or affectation, she
+saw no means of effecting her object. Paul was too much occupied with his
+own feelings to observe his companion's embarrassment, and, after the
+short pause mentioned, he naturally pursued the subject, though in a less
+emphatic manner than before.</p>
+
+<p>"It was an old, and a favourite theory, with the Europeans," he said, with
+a sort of bitter irony, "that all the animals of this hemisphere have less
+gifted natures than those of the other; nor is it a theory of which they
+are yet entirely rid. The Indian was supposed to be passionless, because
+he had self-command; and what in the European would be thought exhibiting
+the feelings of a noble nature, in him has been represented as ferocity
+and revenge; Miss Effingham, you and I have seen Europe, have stood in the
+presence of its wisest, its noblest and its best; and what have they to
+boast beyond the immediate results of their factitious and laboured
+political systems, that is denied to the American--or rather would be
+denied to the American, had the latter the manliness and mental
+independence, to be equal to his fortunes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Which, you think he is not."</p>
+
+<p>"How can a people be even independent that imports its thoughts, as it
+does its wares,--that has not the spirit to invent even its own
+prejudices?"</p>
+
+<p>"Something should be allowed to habit, and to the influence of time.
+England, herself, probably has inherited some of her false notions, from
+the Saxons and Normans."</p>
+
+<p>"That is not only possible, but probable; but England, in thinking of
+Russia, France, Turkey, or Egypt, when induced to think wrong, yields to
+an English, and not to an American interest. Her errors are at least
+requited, in a degree, by serving her own ends, whereas ours are made, too
+often, to oppose our most obvious interests. We are never independent
+unless when stimulated by some strong and pressing moneyed concern, and
+not often then beyond the plainest of its effects.--Here is one,
+apparently, who does not belong to our party."</p>
+
+<p>Paul interrupted himself, in consequence of their meeting a stranger in
+the walk, who moved with the indecision of one uncertain whether to
+advance or to recede. Rockets frequently fell into the grounds, and there
+had been one or two inroads of boys, which had been tolerated on account
+of the occasion; but this intruder was a man in the decline of life, of
+the condition of a warm tradesman seemingly, and he clearly had no
+connection with sky-rockets, as his eyes were turned inquiringly on the
+persons of those who passed him, from time to time, none of whom had he
+stopped, however, until he now placed himself before Paul and Eve, in a
+way to denote a desire to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"The young people are making a merry night of it," he said, keeping a hand
+in each coat-pocket, while he unceremoniously occupied the centre of the
+narrow walk, as if determined to compel a parley.</p>
+
+<p>Although sufficiently acquainted with the unceremonious habits of the
+people of the country to feel no surprise at this intrusion, Paul was
+vexed at having his t&ecirc;te &agrave; t&ecirc;te with Eve so rudely broken; and he answered
+with more of the hauteur of the quarterdeck than he might otherwise have
+done, by saying coldly--</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps, sir, it is your wish to see Mr. Effingham--or--" hesitating an
+instant, as he scanned the stranger's appearance--"some of his people. The
+first will soon pass this spot, and you will find most of the latter on
+the lawn, watching the rockets."</p>
+
+<p>The man regarded Paul a moment, and then he removed his hat respectfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Please, sir, can you inform me if a gentleman called Captain Truck--one
+that sails the packets between New-York and England, is staying at the
+Wigwam at present."</p>
+
+<p>Paul told him that the captain was walking with Mr. Effingham, and that
+the next pair that approached would be they. The stranger fell back,
+keeping his hat respectfully in his hand, and the two passed.</p>
+
+<p>"That man has been an English servant, but has been a little spoiled by
+the reaction of an excessive liberty to do as he pleases. The 'please,
+sir,' and the attitude can hardly be mistaken, while the <i>nonchalance</i> of
+his manner '<i>&agrave; nous aborder</i>' sufficiently betrays the second edition of
+his education."</p>
+
+<p>"I am curious to know what this person can want with our excellent
+captain--it can scarcely be one of the Montauk's crew!"</p>
+
+<p>"I will answer for it, that the fellow has not enough seamanship about him
+to whip a rope," said Paul, laughing; "for if there be two temporal
+pursuits that have less affinity than any two others, they are those of
+the pantry and the tar-bucket. I think it will be seen that this man has
+been an English servant, and he has probably been a passenger on board
+some ship commanded by our honest old friend."</p>
+
+<p>Eve and Paul now turned, and they met Mr. Effingham and the captain just
+as the two latter reached the spot where the stranger still stood.</p>
+
+<p>"This is Captain Truck, the gentleman for whom you inquired," said Paul.</p>
+
+<p>The stranger looked hard at the captain, and the captain looked hard at
+the stranger, the obscurity rendering a pretty close scrutiny necessary,
+to enable either to distinguish features. The examination seemed to be
+mutually unsatisfactory, for each retired a little, like a man who had not
+found a face that he knew.</p>
+
+<p>"There must be two Captain Trucks, then, in the trade," said the stranger;
+"this is not the gentleman I used to know."</p>
+
+<p>"I think you are as right in the latter part of your remark, friend, as
+you are wrong in the first," returned the captain. "Know you, I do not,
+and yet there are no more two Captain Trucks in the English trade, than
+there are two Miss Eve Effinghams, or two Mrs. Hawkers in the universe. I
+am John Truck, and no other man of that name ever sailed a ship between
+New York and England, in my day, at least."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever command the Dawn, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Dawn! That I did; and the Regulus, and the Manhattan, and the Wilful
+Girl, and the Deborah-Angelina, and the Sukey and Katy, which, my dear
+young lady, I may say, was my first love. She was only a fore-and-after,
+carrying no standing topsail, even, and we named her after two of the
+river girls, who were flyers, in their way; at least, I thought so then;
+though a man by sailing a packet comes to alter his notions about men and
+things, or, for that matter, about women and things, too. I got into a
+category, in that schooner, that I never expect to see equalled; for I was
+driven ashore to windward in her, which is gibberish to you, my dear young
+lady, but which Mr. Powis will very well understand, though he may not be
+able to explain it."</p>
+
+<p>"I certainly know what you mean," said Paul, "though I confess I am in a
+category, as well as the schooner, so far as knowing how it could have
+happened."</p>
+
+<p>"The Sukey and Katy ran away with me, that's the upshot of it. Since that
+time I have never consented to command a vessel that was called after
+<i>two</i> of our river young women, for I do believe that one of them is as
+much as a common mariner can manage. You see, Mr. Effingham, we were
+running along a weather-shore, as close in as we could get, to be in the
+eddy, when a squall struck her a-beam, and she luffed right on to the
+beach. No helping it. Helm hard up, peak down, head sheets to windward,
+and main sheet flying, but it was all too late; away she went plump ashore
+to windward. But for that accident, I think I might have married."</p>
+
+<p>"And what connexion could you find between matrimony and this accident,
+captain?" demanded the laughing Eve.</p>
+
+<p>"There was an admonition in it, my dear young lady, that I thought was not
+to be disregarded. I tried the Wilful Girl next, and she was thrown on her
+beam-ends with me; after which I renounced all female names, and took to
+the Egyptian."</p>
+
+<p>"The Egyptian!"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, Regulus, who was a great snake-killer, they tell me, in that
+part of the world. But I never saw my way quite clear as bachelor, until I
+got the Dawn. Did you know that ship, friend?"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe, sir, I made two passages in her while you commanded her."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing more likely; we carried lots of your countrymen, though mostly
+forward of the gangways. I commanded the Dawn more than twenty years ago."</p>
+
+<p>"It is all of that time since I crossed with you, sir; you may remember
+that we fell in with a wreck, ten days after we sailed, and took off her
+crew and two passengers. Three or four of the latter had died with their
+sufferings, and several of the people."</p>
+
+<p>"All this seems but as yesterday! The wreck was a Charleston ship that had
+started a butt."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir--yes, sir--that is just it--she had started, <i>but</i> could not get
+in. That is just what they said at the time. I am David, sir--I should
+think you <i>cannot</i> have forgotten David."</p>
+
+<p>The honest captain was very willing to gratify the other's harmless
+self-importance, though, to tell the truth, he retained no more personal
+knowledge of the David of the Dawn, than he had of David, King of the
+Jews.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, David!" he cried, cordially--"are <i>you</i> David? Well, I did not
+expect to see you again in this world, though I never doubted where we
+should be, hereafter I hope you are very well, David; what sort of
+weather have you made of it since we parted? If I recollect aright, you
+worked your passage;--never at sea before."</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon, sir; I never was at sea before the <i>first</i> time, it is
+true; but I did not belong to the crew. I was a passenger."</p>
+
+<p>"I remember, now, you were in the steerage," returned the captain, who saw
+daylight ahead.</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all, sir, but in the cabin."</p>
+
+<p>"Cabin!" echoed the captain, who perceived none of the requisites of a
+cabin-passenger in the other--"Oh! I understand, in the pantry?"</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly so, sir. You may remember my master--he had the left-hand
+state-room to himself, and I slept next to the scuttle-butt. You recollect
+master, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Out of doubt, and a very good fellow he was. I hope you live with him
+still?"</p>
+
+<p>"Lord bless you, sir, he is dead!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I recollect hearing of it, at the time. Well, David. I hope if ever
+we cross again, we shall be ship-mates once more. We were beginners, then,
+but we have ships worth living in, now.--Good night."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember Dowse, sir, that we got from the wreck?" continued the
+other, unwilling to give up his gossip so soon. "He was a dark man, that
+had had the small-pox badly. I think, sir, you will recollect <i>him</i>, for
+he was a hard man in other particulars, besides his countenance."</p>
+
+<p>"Somewhat flinty about the soul; I remember the man well; and so, David,
+good night; you will come and see me, if you are ever in town. Good night,
+David."</p>
+
+<p>David was now compelled to leave the place, for Captain Truck, who
+perceived that the whole party was getting together again, in consequence
+of the halt, felt the propriety of dismissing his visiter, of whom, his
+master, and Dowse, he retained just as much recollection as one retains of
+a common stage-coach companion after twenty years. The appearance of Mr.
+Howel, who just at that moment approached them, aided the manoeuvre, and,
+in a few minutes the different groups were again in motion, though some
+slight changes had taken place in the distribution of the parties.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Chapter XXIII.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>  "How silver sweet sound lovers' tongues at night,<br />
+Like softest music to attending ears!"</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>  ROMEO AND JULIET.</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>"A poor matter, this of the fire-works," said Mr. Howel, who, with an old
+bachelor's want of tact, had joined Eve and Paul in their walk. "The
+English would laugh at them famously, I dare say. Have you heard Sir
+George allude to them at all, Miss Eve?"</p>
+
+<p>"It would be great affectation for an Englishman to deride the fire-works
+of any <i>dry</i> climate," said Eve laughing; "and I dare say, if Sir George
+Templemore has been silent on the subject, it is because he is conscious
+he knows little about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that is odd! I should think England the very first country in the
+world for fire-works. I hear, Miss Eve, that, on the whole, the baronet is
+rather pleased with us; and I must say that he is getting to be very
+popular in Templeton."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing is easier than for an Englishman to become popular in America,"
+observed Paul, "especially if his condition in life be above that of the
+vulgar. He has only to declare himself pleased with America; or, to be
+sincerely hated, to declare himself displeased."</p>
+
+<p>"And in what does America differ from any other country, in this respect?"
+asked Eve, quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Not much, certainly; love induces love, and dislike, dislike. There is
+nothing new in all this; but the people of other countries, having more
+confidence in themselves, do not so sensitively inquire what others think
+of them. I believe this contains the whole difference."</p>
+
+<p>"But Sir George does <i>rather</i> like us?" inquired Mr. Howel, with interest.</p>
+
+<p>"He likes some of us particularly well," returned Eve. "Do you not know
+that my cousin Grace is to become Mrs.--I beg her pardon--Lady Templemore,
+very shortly?"</p>
+
+<p>"Good God!--Is that possible--Lady Templemore!--Lady Grace Templemore!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not Lady Grace Templemore, but Grace, Lady Templemore, and graceful Lady
+Templemore in the bargain."</p>
+
+<p>"And this honour, my dear Miss Eve, they tell me you refused!"</p>
+
+<p>"They tell you wrong then, sir," answered the young lady, a little
+startled with the suddenness and <i>brusquerie</i> of the remark, and yet
+prompt to do justice to all concerned. "Sir George Templemore never did me
+the honour to propose <i>to</i> me, or <i>for</i> me, and consequently he <i>could</i>
+not be refused."</p>
+
+<p>"It is very extraordinary!--I hear you were actually acquainted in
+Europe?"</p>
+
+<p>"We were, Mr. Howel, actually acquainted in Europe, but I knew hundreds of
+persons in Europe, who have never dreamed of asking me to marry them."</p>
+
+<p>"This is very strange--quite unlooked for--to marry Miss Van Cortlandt! Is
+Mr. John Effingham in the grounds?"</p>
+
+<p>Eve made no answer, but Paul hurriedly observed--"You will find him in the
+next walk, I think, by returning a short distance, and taking the first
+path to the left."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Howel did as told, and was soon out of sight.</p>
+
+<p>"That is a most earnest believer in English superiority, and, one may
+say, by his strong desire to give you an English husband, Miss Effingham,
+in English merit."</p>
+
+<p>"It is the weak spot in the character of a very honest man. They tell me
+such instances were much more frequent in this country thirty years since,
+than they are to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"I can easily believe it, for I think I remember some characters of the
+sort, myself. I have heard those who are older than I am, draw a
+distinction like this between the state of feeling that prevailed forty
+years ago, and that which prevails to-day; they say that, formerly,
+England absolutely and despotically thought for America, in all but those
+cases in which the interests of the two nations conflicted; and I have
+even heard competent judges affirm, that so powerful was the influence of
+habit, and so successful the schemes of the political managers of the
+mother country, that even many of those who fought for the independence of
+America, actually doubted of the propriety of their acts, as Luther is
+known to have had fits of despondency concerning the justness of the
+reformation he was producing; while, latterly, the leaning towards England
+is less the result of a simple mental dependence,--though of that there
+still remains a disgraceful amount--than of calculation, and a desire in a
+certain class to defeat the dominion of the mass, and to establish that of
+a few in its stead."</p>
+
+<p>"It would, indeed, be a strange consummation of the history of this
+country, to find it becoming monarchical!"</p>
+
+<p>"There are a few monarchists no doubt springing up in the country, though
+almost entirely in a class that only knows the world through the
+imagination and by means of books; but the disposition, in our time, is to
+aristocracy, and not to monarchy. Most men that get to be rich, discover
+that they are no happier for their possessions; perhaps every man who has
+not been trained and prepared to use his means properly, is in this
+category, as our friend the captain would call it, and then they begin to
+long for some other untried advantages. The example of the rest of the
+world is before our own wealthy, and, <i>faute d'imagination</i>, they imitate
+because they cannot invent. Exclusive political power is also a great ally
+in the accumulation of money, and a portion have the sagacity to see it;
+though I suspect more pine for the vanities of the exclusive classes, than
+for the substance. Your sex, Miss Effingham, as a whole, is not above this
+latter weakness, as I think you must have observed in your intercourse
+with those you met abroad."</p>
+
+<p>"I met with some instances of weakness, in this way," said Eve, with
+reserve, and with the pride of a woman, "though not more, I think, than
+among the men; and seldom, in either case, among those whom we are
+accustomed to consider people of condition at home. The self-respect and
+the habits of the latter, generally preserved them from betraying this
+feebleness of character, if indeed they felt it."</p>
+
+<p>"The Americans abroad may be divided into two great classes; those who go
+for improvement in the sciences or the arts, and those who go for mere
+amusement. As a whole, the former have struck me as being singularly
+respectable, equally removed from an apish servility and a swaggering
+pretension of superiority; while, I fear, a majority of the latter have a
+disagreeable direction towards the vanities."</p>
+
+<p>"I will not affirm the contrary," said Eve, "for frivolity and pleasure
+are only too closely associated in ordinary minds. The number of those who
+prize the elegancies of life, for their intrinsic value, is every where
+small, I should think; and I question if Europe is much better off than
+ourselves, in this respect."</p>
+
+<p>"This may be true, and yet one can only regret that, in a case where so
+much depends on example, the tone of our people was not more assimilated
+to their facts. I do not know whether you were struck with the same
+peculiarity, but, whenever I felt in the mood to hear high monarchical and
+aristocratical doctrines blindly promulgated, I used to go to the nearest
+American Legation."</p>
+
+<p>"I have heard this fact commented on," Eve answered, "and even by
+foreigners, and I confess it has always struck me as singular. Why should
+the agent of a republic make a parade of his anti-republican sentiments?"</p>
+
+<p>"That there are exceptions, I will allow; but, after the experience of
+many years, I honestly think that such is the rule. I might distrust my
+own opinion, or my own knowledge; but others, with opportunities equal to
+my own, have come to the same conclusion. I have just received a letter
+from Europe, complaining that an American Envoy Extraordinary, who would
+as soon think of denouncing himself, as utter the same sentiments openly
+at home, has given an opinion against the utility of the vote by ballot;
+and this, too, under circumstances that might naturally be thought to
+produce a practical effect."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Tant pis</i>. To me all this is inexplicable!"</p>
+
+<p>"It has its solution, Miss Effingham, like any other problem. In ordinary
+times, extraordinary men seldom become prominent, power passing into the
+hands of clever managers. Now, the very vanity, and the petty desires,
+that betray themselves in glittering uniforms, puerile affectations, and
+feeble imitations of other systems, probably induce more than half of
+those who fill the foreign missions to apply for them, and it is no more
+than we ought to expect that the real disposition should betray itself,
+when there was no longer any necessity for hypocrisy."</p>
+
+<p>"But I should think this necessity for hypocrisy would never cease! Can it
+be possible that a people, as much attached to their institutions as the
+great mass of the American nation is known to be, will tolerate such a
+base abandonment of all they cherish!"</p>
+
+<p>"How are they to know any thing about it? It is a startling fact, that
+there is a man at this instant, who has not a single claim to such a
+confidence, either in the way of mind, principles, manners, or
+attainments, filling a public trust abroad, who, on all occasions except
+those which he thinks will come directly before the American people, not
+only proclaims himself opposed to the great principles of the institutions
+but who, in a recent controversy with a foreign nation, actually took
+sides against his own country, informing that of the opposing nation, that
+the administration at home would not be supported by the legislative part
+of the government!"</p>
+
+<p>"And why is not this publicly exposed?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Cui bono</i>! The presses that have no direct interest in the matter, would
+treat the affair with indifference or levity, while a few would mystify
+the truth. It is quite impossible for any man in a private station to make
+the truth available in any country, in a matter of public interest; and
+those in public stations seldom or never attempt it, unless they see a
+direct party end to be obtained. This is the reason that we see so much
+infidelity to the principles of the institutions, among the public agents
+abroad, for they very well know that no one will be able to expose them.
+In addition to this motive, there is so strong a desire in that portion of
+the community which is considered the highest, to effect a radical change
+in these very institutions, that infidelity to them, in their eyes, would
+be a merit, rather than an offence."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely, surely, other nations are not treated in this cavalier manner!"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not. The foreign agent of a prince, who should whisper a
+syllable against his master, would be recalled with disgrace; but the
+servant of the people is differently situated, since there are so many to
+be persuaded of his guilt. I could always get along with all the attacks
+that the Europeans are so fond of making on the American system, but those
+which they quoted from the mouths of our own diplomatic agents."</p>
+
+<p>"Why do not our travellers expose this?"</p>
+
+<p>"Most of them see too little to know anything of it. They dine at a
+diplomatic table, see a star or two, fancy themselves obliged, and puff
+elegancies that have no existence, except in their own brains. Some think
+with the unfaithful, and see no harm in the infidelity. Others calculate
+the injury to themselves, and no small portion would fancy it a greater
+proof of patriotism to turn a sentence in favour of the comparative
+'energies' and 'superior intelligence' of their own people, than to point
+out this or any other disgraceful fact, did they even possess the
+opportunities to discover it. Though no one thinks more highly of these
+qualities in the Americans, considered in connexion with practical things,
+than myself, no one probably gives them less credit for their ability to
+distinguish between appearances and reality, in matters of principle."</p>
+
+<p>"It is probable that were we nearer to the rest of the world, these abuses
+would not exist, for it is certain they are not so openly practised at
+home. I am glad, however, to find that, even while you felt some
+uncertainty concerning your own birth-place, you took so much interest in
+us, as to identify yourself in feeling, at least, with the nation."</p>
+
+<p>"There was one moment when I was really afraid that the truth would show I
+was actually born an Englishman--"</p>
+
+<p>"Afraid!" interrupted Eve; "that is a strong word to apply to so great and
+glorious a people."
+
+"We cannot always account for our prejudices, and perhaps this was one of
+mine; and, now that I know that to be an Englishman is not the greatest
+possible merit in your eyes, Miss Effingham, it is in no manner lessened."</p>
+
+<p>"In my eyes, Mr. Powis! I do not remember to have expressed any
+partiality for, or any prejudice against the English: so far as I can
+speak of my own feelings, I regard the English the same as any other
+foreign people."</p>
+
+<p>"In words you have not certainly; but acts speak louder than words."</p>
+
+<p>"You are disposed to be mysterious to-night. What act of mine has declared
+<i>pro</i> or <i>con</i> in this important affair."</p>
+
+<p>"You have at least done what, I fear, few of your countrywomen would have
+the moral courage and self-denial to do, and especially those who are
+accustomed to living abroad--refused to be the wife of an English baronet
+of a good estate and respectable family."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Powis," said Eve, gravely, "this is an injustice to Sir George
+Templemore, that my sense of right will not permit to go uncontradicted,
+as well as an injustice to my sex and me. As I told Mr. Howel, in your
+presence, that gentleman has never proposed for me, and of course cannot
+have been refused. Nor can I suppose that any American gentlewoman can
+deem so paltry a thing as a baronetcy, an inducement to forget her
+self-respect."</p>
+
+<p>"I fully appreciate your generous modesty, Miss Effingham; but you cannot
+expect that I, to whom Templemore's admiration gave so much uneasiness,
+not to say pain, am to understand you, as Mr. Howel has probably done, too
+broadly. Although Sir George may not have positively proposed, his
+readiness to do so, on the least encouragement, was too obvious to be
+overlooked by a near observer."</p>
+
+<p>Eve was ready to gasp for breath, so completely by surprise was she taken,
+by the calm, earnest, and yet respectful manner, in which Paul confessed
+his jealousy. There was a tremor in his voice, too, usually so clear and
+even, that touched her heart, for feeling responds to feeling, as the
+echo answers sound, when there exists a real sympathy between the sexes.
+She felt the necessity of saying something, and yet they had walked some
+distance, ere it was in her power to utter a syllable.</p>
+
+<p>"I fear my presumption has offended you, Miss Effingham," said Paul,
+speaking more like a corrected child, than the lion-hearted young man he
+had proved himself.</p>
+
+<p>There was deep homage in the emotion he betrayed, and Eve, although she
+could barely distinguish his features, was not slow in discovering this
+proof of the extent of her power over his feelings.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not call it presumption," she said; "for, one who has done so much for
+us all, can surely claim some right to take an interest in those he has so
+well served. As for Sir George Templemore, you have probably mistaken the
+feeling created by our common adventures for one of more importance. He is
+warmly and sincerely attached to my cousin, Grace Van Cortlandt."</p>
+
+<p>"That he is so now, I fully believe; but that a very different magnet
+first kept him from the Canadas, I am sure.--We treated each other
+generously, Miss Effingham, and had no concealments, during that long and
+anxious night, when all expected that the day would dawn on our captivity.
+Templemore is too manly and honest to deny his former desire to obtain you
+for a wife, and I think even he would admit that it depended entirely on
+yourself to be so, or not."</p>
+
+<p>"This is an act of self-humiliation that he is not called onto perform,"
+Eve hurriedly replied; "such allusions, now, are worse than useless, and
+they might pain my cousin, were she to hear them."</p>
+
+<p>"I am mistaken in my friend's character, if he leave his betrothed in any
+doubt, on this subject. Five minutes of perfect frankness now, might
+obviate years of distrust, hereafter."</p>
+
+<p>And would you Mr. Powis, avow a former weakness of this sort, to the
+woman you had finally selected for your wife?"</p>
+
+<p>"I ought not to quote myself for authority, for or against such a course,
+since I have never loved but one, and her with a passion too single and
+too ardent ever to admit of competition. Miss Effingham, there would be
+something worse than affectation--it would be trifling with one who is
+sacred in my eyes, were I now to refrain from speaking explicitly,
+although what I am about to say is forced from me by circumstances, rather
+than voluntary, and is almost uttered without a definite object. Have I
+your permission to proceed?'</p>
+
+<p>"You can scarcely need a permission, being the master of your own secrets,
+Mr. Powis."</p>
+
+<p>Paul, like all men agitated by strong passion, was inconsistent, and far
+from just; and Eve felt the truth of this, even while her mind was
+ingeniously framing excuses for his weaknesses. Still, the impression that
+she was about to listen to a declaration that possibly ought never to be
+made, weighed upon her, and caused her to speak with more coldness than
+she actually felt. As she continued silent, however, the young man saw
+that it had become indispensably necessary to be explicit.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall not detain you, Miss Effingham, perhaps vex you," he said, "with
+the history of those early impressions, which have gradually grown upon
+me, until they have become interwoven with my very existence. We met, as
+you know, at Vienna, for the first time. An Austrian of rank, to whom I
+had become known through some fortunate circumstances, introduced me into
+the best society of that capital, in which I found you the admiration of
+all who knew you. My first feeling was that of exultation, at seeing a
+young countrywoman--you were then almost a child, Miss Effingham--the
+greatest attraction of a capital celebrated for the beauty and grace of
+its women----"</p>
+
+<p>"Your national partialities have made you an unjust judge towards others,
+Mr. Powis." Eve interrupted him by saying, though the earnestness and
+passion with which the young man uttered his feelings, made music to her
+ears: "what had a young, frightened, half-educated American girl to boast
+of, when put in competition with the finished women of Austria?"</p>
+
+<p>"Her surpassing beauty, her unconscious superiority, her attainments, her
+trembling simplicity and modesty and her meek purity of mind. All these
+did you possess, not only in my eyes, but in those of others; for these
+are subjects on which I dwelt too fondly to be mistaken."</p>
+
+<p>A rocket passed near them at the moment, and, while both were too much
+occupied by the discourse to heed the interruption, its transient light
+enabled Paul to see the flushed cheeks and tearful eyes of Eve, as the
+latter were turned on him, in a grateful pleasure, that his ardent praises
+extorted from her, in despite of all her struggles for self-command.</p>
+
+<p>"We will leave to others this comparison, Mr. Powis," she said, "and
+confine ourselves to less doubtful subjects."</p>
+
+<p>"If I am then to speak only of that which is beyond all question, I shall
+speak chiefly of my long cherished, devoted, unceasing love. I adored you
+at Vienna, Miss Effingham, though it was at a distance, as one might
+worship the sun; for, while your excellent father admitted me to his
+society, and I even think honoured me with some portion of his esteem, I
+had but little opportunity to ascertain the value of the jewel that was
+contained in so beautiful a casket; but when we met the following summer
+in Switzerland, I first began truly to love. Then I learned the justness
+of thought, the beautiful candour, the perfectly feminine delicacy of your
+mind; and, although I will not say that these qualities were not enhanced
+in the eyes of so young a man, by the extreme beauty of their possessor, I
+will say that, as weighed against each other, I could a thousand times
+prefer the former to the latter, unequalled as the latter almost is, even
+among your own beautiful sex."</p>
+
+<p>"This is presenting flattery in its most seductive form, Powis."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps my incoherent and abrupt manner of explaining myself deserves a
+rebuke; though nothing can be farther from my intentions than to seem to
+flatter or in any manner to exaggerate. I intend merely to give a faithful
+history of the state of my feelings, and of the progress of my love."</p>
+
+<p>Eve smiled faintly, but very sweetly, as Paul would have thought, had the
+obscurity permitted more than a dim view of her lovely countenance.</p>
+
+<p>"Ought I to listen to such praises, Mr. Powis," she asked; "praises which
+only contribute to a self-esteem that is too great already?"</p>
+
+<p>"No one but yourself would say this; but your question does, indeed,
+remind me of the indiscretion that I have fallen into, by losing that
+command of my feelings, in which I have so long exulted. No man should
+make a woman the confidant of his attachment, until he is fully prepared
+to accompany the declaration with an offer of his hand;--and such is not
+my condition."</p>
+
+<p>Eve made no dramatic start, assumed no look of affected surprise, or of
+wounded dignity; but she turned on her lover, her serene eyes, with an
+expression of concern so eloquent, and of a wonder so natural, that, could
+he have seen it, it would probably have overcome every difficulty on the
+spot, and produced the usual offer, notwithstanding the difficulty that he
+seemed to think insurmountable.</p>
+
+<p>"And yet," he continued, "I have now said so much, involuntarily as it has
+been, that I feel it not only due to you, but in some measure to myself,
+to add that the fondest wish of my heart, the end and aim of all my
+day-dreams, as well as of my most sober thoughts for the future, centre
+in the common wish to obtain you for a wife."</p>
+
+<p>The eye of Eve fell, and the expression of her countenance changed, while
+a slight but uncontrollable tremor ran through her frame. After a short
+pause, she summoned all her resolution, and in a voice, the firmness of
+which surprised even herself, she asked--</p>
+
+<p>"Powis, to what does all this tend?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well may you ask that question, Miss Effingham! You have every right to
+put it, and the answer, at least, shall add no further cause of
+self-reproach. Give me, I entreat you, but a minute to collect my
+thoughts, and I will endeavour to acquit myself of an imperious duty, in a
+manner more manly and coherent, than I fear has been observed for the last
+ten minutes."</p>
+
+<p>They walked a short distance in profound silence, Eve still under the
+influence of astonishment, in which an uncertain and indefinite dread of,
+she scarce knew what, began to mingle; and Paul, endeavouring to quiet the
+tumult that had been so suddenly aroused within him. The latter then
+spoke:</p>
+
+<p>"Circumstances have always deprived me of the happiness of experiencing
+the tenderness and sympathy of your sex, Miss Effingham, and have thrown
+me more exclusively among the colder and ruder spirits of my own. My
+mother died at the time of my birth, thus cutting me off, at once, from
+one of the dearest of earthly ties. I am not certain that I do not
+exaggerate the loss in consequence of the privations I have suffered; but,
+from the hour when I first learned to feel, I have had a yearning for the
+tender, patient, endearing, disinterested love of a mother. You, too,
+suffered a similar loss, at an early period, if I have been correctly
+informed----"</p>
+
+<p>A sob--a stifled, but painful sob, escaped Eve; and, inexpressibly
+shocked, Paul ceased dwelling on his own sources of sorrow, to attend to
+those he had so unintentionally disturbed.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been selfish, dearest Miss Effingham," he exclaimed--"have
+overtaxed your patience--have annoyed you with griefs and losses that have
+no interest for you, which can have no interest, with one happy and
+blessed as yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, no, Powis--you are unjust to both. I, too, lost my mother when a
+mere child, and never knew her love and tenderness. Proceed; I am calmer,
+and earnestly intreat you to forget my weakness, and to proceed."</p>
+
+<p>Paul did proceed, but this brief interruption in which they had mingled
+their sorrows for a common misfortune, struck a new chord of feeling, and
+removed a mountain of reserve and distance, that might otherwise have
+obstructed their growing confidence.</p>
+
+<p>"Cut off in this manner, from my nearest and dearest natural friend," Paul
+continued, "I was thrown, an infant, into the care of hirelings; and, in
+this at least, my fortune was still more cruel than your own; for the
+excellent woman who has been so happy as to have had the charge of your
+infancy, had nearly the love of a natural mother, however she may have
+been wanting in the attainments of one of your own condition in life."</p>
+
+<p>"But we had both of us, our fathers, Mr. Powis. To me, my excellent, high
+principled, affectionate--nay tender father, has been every thing. Without
+him, I should have been truly miserable; and with him, notwithstanding
+these rebellious tears, tears that I must ascribe to the infection of your
+own grief, I have been truly blest."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Effingham deserves this from you, but I never knew my father, you
+will remember."</p>
+
+<p>"I am an unworthy confidant, to have forgotten this so soon. Poor Powis,
+you were, indeed, unhappy!"</p>
+
+<p>"He had parted from my mother before my birth and either died soon after,
+or has never deemed his child of sufficient worth to make him the subject
+of interest sufficient to excite a single inquiry into his fate."</p>
+
+<p>"Then he never knew that child!" burst from Eve, with a fervour and
+frankness, that set all reserves, whether of womanly training, or of
+natural timidity, at defiance.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Effingham!--dearest Miss Effingham--Eve, my own Eve, what am I to
+infer from this generous warmth! Do not mislead me! I can bear my solitary
+misery, can brave the sufferings of an isolated existence; but I could not
+live under the disappointments of such a hope, a hope fairly quickened by
+a clear expression from your lips."</p>
+
+<p>"You teach me the importance of caution, Powis, and we will now return to
+your history, and to that confidence of which I shall not again prove a
+faithless repository. For the present at least, I beg that you will forget
+all else."</p>
+
+<p>"A command so kindly--so encouragingly given--do I offend, dearest Miss
+Effingham?" Eve, for the second time in her life, placed her own light arm
+and beautiful hand, through the arm of Paul, discovering a bewitching but
+modest reliance on his worth and truth, by the very manner in which she
+did this simple and every-day act, while she said more cheerfully--</p>
+
+<p>"You forget the substance of the command, at the very moment you would
+have me suppose you most disposed to obey it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, Miss Effingham, you shall be more implicitly minded. <i>Why</i> my
+father left my mother so soon after their union, I never knew. It would
+seem that they lived together but a few months, though I have the proud
+consolation of knowing that my mother was blameless. For years I suffered
+the misery of doubt on a point that is ever the most tender with man, a
+distrust of his own mother; but all this has been happily, blessedly,
+cleared up, during my late visit to England. It is true that Lady Dunluce
+was my mother's sister, and as such might have been lenient to her
+failings; but a letter from my father, that was written only a month
+before my mother's death, leaves no doubt not only of her blamelessness as
+a wife, but bears ample testimony to the sweetness of her disposition.
+This letter is a precious document for a son to possess, Miss Effingham!"</p>
+
+<p>Eve made no answer; but Paul fancied that he felt another gentle pressure
+of the hand, which, until then, had rested so lightly on his own arm, that
+he scarcely dared to move the latter, lest he might lose the precious
+consciousness of its presence.</p>
+
+<p>"I have other letters from my father to my mother," the young man
+continued, "but none that are so cheering to my heart as this. From their
+general tone, I cannot persuade myself that he ever truly loved her. It is
+a cruel thing, Miss Effingham, for a man to deceive a woman on a point
+like that!"</p>
+
+<p>"Cruel, indeed," said Eve, firmly. "Death itself were preferable to such a
+delusion."</p>
+
+<p>"I think my father deceived himself as well as my mother; for there is a
+strange incoherence and a want of distinctness in some of his letters,
+that caused feelings, keen as mine naturally were on such a subject, to
+distrust his affection from the first."</p>
+
+<p>"Was your mother rich?" Eve asked innocently; for, an heiress herself, her
+vigilance had early been directed to that great motive of deception and
+dishonesty.</p>
+
+<p>"Not in the least. She had little besides her high lineage, and her
+beauty. I have her picture, which sufficiently proves the latter; had, I
+ought rather to say, for it was her miniature, of which I was robbed by
+the Arabs, as you may remember, and I have not seen it since. In the way
+of money, my mother had barely the competency of a gentlewoman; nothing
+more."</p>
+
+<p>The pressure on Paul was more palpable, as spoke of the miniature; and he
+ventured to touch his companion's arm, in order to give it a surer hold of
+his own.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Powis was not mercenary, then, and it is a great deal," said Eve,
+speaking as if she were scarcely conscious that she spoke at all.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Powis!--He was every thing that was noble and disinterested. A more
+generous, or a less selfish man, never existed than Francis Powis."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you never knew your father personally!" exclaimed Eve in
+surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Nor did I. But, you are in an error, in supposing that my father's name
+was Powis, when it was Assheton."</p>
+
+<p>Paul then explained the manner in which he had been adopted while still a
+child, by a gentleman called Powis, whose name he had taken, on finding
+himself deserted by his own natural parent, and to whose fortune he had
+succeeded, on the death of his voluntary protector.</p>
+
+<p>"I bore the name of Assheton until Mr. Powis took me to France, when he
+advised me to assume his own, which I did the more readily, as he thought
+he had ascertained that my father was dead, and that he had bequeathed the
+whole of a very considerable estate to his nephews and nieces, making no
+allusion to me in his will, and seemingly anxious even to deny his
+marriage; at least, he passed among his acquaintances for a bachelor to
+his dying day."</p>
+
+<p>"There is something so unusual and inexplicable in all this, Mr. Powis,
+that it strikes me you have been to blame, in not inquiring more closely
+into the circumstances than, by your own account I should think had been
+done."</p>
+
+<p>"For a long time, for many bitter years, I was afraid to inquire, lest I
+should learn something injurious to a mother's name. Then there was the
+arduous and confined service of my profession, which kept me in distant
+seas: and the last journey and painful indisposition of my excellent
+benefactor, prevented even the wish to inquire after my own family. The
+offended pride of Mr. Powis, who was justly hurt at the cavalier manner in
+which my father's relatives met his advances, aided in alienating me from
+that portion of my relatives, and put a stop to all additional proffers of
+intercourse from me. They even affected to doubt the fact that my father
+had ever married."</p>
+
+<p>"But of that you had proof?" Eve earnestly asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Unanswerable. My aunt Dunluce was present at the ceremony, and I possess
+the certificate given to my mother by the clergyman who officiated. Is it
+not strange, Miss Effingham, that with all these circumstances in favour
+of my legitimacy, even Lady Dunluce and her family, until lately, had
+doubts of the fact."</p>
+
+<p>"That is indeed unaccountable, your aunt having witnessed the ceremony."</p>
+
+<p>"Very true; but some circumstances, a little aided perhaps by the strong
+desire of her husband, General Ducie, to obtain the revival of a barony
+that was in abeyance, and of which she would be the only heir, assuming
+that my rights were invalid, inclined her to believe that my father was
+already married, when he entered into the solemn contract with my mother.
+But from that curse too, I have been happily relieved."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Powis!" said Eve, with a sympathy that her voice expressed more
+clearly even than her words; "you have, indeed, suffered cruelly, for one
+so young."</p>
+
+<p>"I have learned to bear it, dearest Miss Effingham, and have stood so long
+a solitary and isolated being, one in whom none have taken any interest--"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, say not that--<i>we</i>, at least, have always felt an interest in
+you--have always esteemed you, and now have learned to--"</p>
+
+<p>"Learned to--?"</p>
+
+<p>"Love you," said Eve, with a steadiness that afterwards astonished
+herself; but she felt that a being so placed, was entitled to be treated
+with a frankness different from the reserve that it is usual for her sex
+to observe on similar occasions.</p>
+
+<p>"Love!" cried Paul, dropping her arm. "Miss Effingham!--Eve--but that
+<i>we</i>!"
+
+"I mean my dear father--cousin Jack--myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Such a feeling will not heal a wound like mine. A love that is shared
+with even such men as your excellent father, and your worthy cousin, will
+not make me happy. But, why should I, unowned, bearing a name to which I
+have no legal title, and virtually without relatives, aspire to one like
+you!"</p>
+
+<p>The windings of the path had brought them near a window of the house,
+whence a stream of strong light gleamed upon the sweet countenance of Eve,
+as raising her eyes to those of her companion, with a face bathed in
+tears, and flushed with natural feeling and modesty, the struggle between
+which even heightened her loveliness, she smiled an encouragement that it
+was impossible to misconstrue.</p>
+
+<p>"Can I believe my senses! Will <i>you</i>--<i>do</i> you--<i>can </i> you listen to the
+suit of one like me?" the young man exclaimed, as he hurried his companion
+past the window, lest some interruption might destroy his hopes.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there any sufficient reason why I should not, Powis?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing but my unfortunate situation in respect to my family, my
+comparative poverty, and my general unworthiness."</p>
+
+<p>"Your unfortunate situation in respect to your relatives would, if any
+thing, be a new and dearer tie with us; your comparative poverty is merely
+comparative, and can be of no account, where there is sufficient already;
+and as for your general unworthiness, I fear it will find more than an
+offset, in that of the girl you have so rashly chosen from the rest of the
+world."</p>
+
+<p>"Eve--dearest Eve--" said Paul, seizing both her hands, and stopping her
+at the entrance of some shrubbery, that densely shaded the path, and where
+the little light that fell from the stars enabled him still to trace her
+features--"you will not leave me in doubt on a subject of this nature--am
+I really so blessed?"</p>
+
+<p>"If accepting the faith and affection of a heart that is wholly yours,
+Powis, can mate you happy, your sorrows will be at an end--"</p>
+
+<p>"But your father?" said the young man, almost breathless in his eagerness
+to know all.</p>
+
+<p>"Is here to confirm what his daughter has just declared," said Mr.
+Effingham, coming out of the shrubbery beyond them, and laying a hand
+kindly on Paul's shoulder. "To find that you so well understand each
+other, Powis, removes from my mind one of the greatest anxieties I have
+ever experienced. My cousin John, as he was bound to do, has made me
+acquainted with all you have, told him of your past life, and there
+remains nothing further to be revealed. We have known you for years, and
+receive you into our family with as free a welcome as we could receive any
+precious boon from Providence."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Effingham!--dear sir," said Paul, almost gasping between surprise and
+rapture--"this is indeed beyond all my hopes--and this generous frankness
+too, in your lovely daughter--"</p>
+
+<p>Paul's hands had been transferred to those of the father, he knew not how;
+but releasing them hurriedly, he now turned in quest of Eve again, and
+found she had fled. In the short interval between the address of her
+father and the words of Paul, she had found means to disappear, leaving
+the gentlemen together. The young man would have followed, but the cooler
+head of Mr. Effingham perceiving that the occasion was favourable to a
+private conversation with his accepted son-in-law, and quite as
+unfavourable to one, or at least to a very rational one, between the
+lovers, he quietly took the young man's arm, and led him towards a more
+private walk. There half an hour of confidential discourse calmed the
+feelings of both, and rendered Paul Powis one of the happiest of human
+beings.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Chapter XXIV.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>  "You shall do marvellous wisely, good Reynaldo,<br />
+Before you visit him, to make inquiry<br />
+Of his behaviour."</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>  HAMLET</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>Ann Sidley was engaged among the dresses of Eve, as she loved to be,
+although Annette held her taste in too low estimation ever to permit her
+to apply a needle, or even to fit a robe to the beautiful form that was to
+wear it, when our heroine glided into the room and sunk upon a sofa. Eve
+was too much absorbed with her own feelings to observe the presence of her
+quiet unobtrusive old nurse, and too much accustomed to her care and
+sympathy to heed it, had it been seen. For a moment she remained, her face
+still suffused with blushes, her hands lying before her folded, her eyes
+fixed on the ceiling, and then the pent emotions found an outlet in a
+flood of tears.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Ann could not have felt more shocked, had she heard of any unexpected
+calamity, than she was at this sudden outbreaking of feeling in her child.
+She went to her, and bent over her with the solicitude of a mother, as she
+inquired into the causes of her apparent sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me, Miss Eve, and it will relieve your mind," said the faithful
+woman; "your dear mother had such feelings sometimes, and I never dared to
+question her about them; but you are my own child, and nothing can grieve
+you without grieving me."</p>
+
+<p>The eyes of Eve were brilliant, her face continued to be suffused, and
+the smile which she gave through her tears was so bright, as to leave her
+poor attendant in deep perplexity as to the cause of a gush of feeling
+that was very unusual in one of the other's regulated mind.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not grief, dear Nanny,"--Eve at length murmured--"any thing but
+that! I am not unhappy. Oh! no; as far from unhappiness as possible."</p>
+
+<p>"God be praised it is so, ma'am! I was afraid that this affair of the
+English gentleman and Miss Grace might not prove agreeable to you, for he
+has not behaved as handsomely as he might, in that transaction."</p>
+
+<p>"And why not, my poor Nanny?--I have neither claim, nor the wish to
+possess a claim, on Sir George Templemore. His selection of my cousin has
+given me sincere satisfaction, rather than pain; were he a countryman of
+our own, I should say unalloyed satisfaction, for I firmly believe he will
+strive to make her happy."</p>
+
+<p>Nanny now looked at her young mistress, then at the floor; at her young
+mistress again, and afterwards at a rocket that was sailing athwart the
+sky. Her eyes, however, returned to those of Eve, and encouraged by the
+bright beam of happiness that was glowing in the countenance she so much
+loved, she ventured to say--</p>
+
+<p>"If Mr. Powis were a more presuming gentleman than he is, ma'am--"</p>
+
+<p>"You mean a less modest, Nanny," said Eve, perceiving that her nurse
+paused.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'am--one that thought more of himself, and less of other people,
+is what I wish to say."</p>
+
+<p>"And were this the case?"</p>
+
+<p>"I might think <i>he</i> would find the heart to say what I know he feels."</p>
+
+<p>"And did he find the heart to say what you know he feels, what does Ann
+Sidley think should be my answer?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, ma'am, I know it would be just as it ought to be. I cannot repeat
+what ladies say on such occasions, but I know that it is what makes the
+hearts of the gentlemen leap for joy."</p>
+
+<p>There are occasions in which woman can hardly dispense with the sympathy
+of woman. Eve loved her father most tenderly, had more than the usual
+confidence in him, for she had never known a mother; but had the present
+conversation been with him, notwithstanding all her reliance on his
+affection, her nature would have shrunk from pouring out her feelings as
+freely as she might have done with her other parent, had not death
+deprived her of such a blessing. Between our heroine and Ann Sidley, on
+the other hand, there existed a confidence of a nature so peculiar, as to
+require a word of explanation before we exhibit its effects. In all that
+related to physical wants, Ann had been a mother, or even more than a
+mother to Eve, and this alone had induced great personal dependence in the
+one, and a sort of supervisory care in the other, that had brought her to
+fancy she was responsible for the bodily health and well-doing of her
+charge. But this was not all. Nanny had been the repository of Eve's
+childish griefs, the confidant of her girlish secrets; and though the
+years of the latter soon caused her to be placed under the management of
+those who were better qualified to store her mind, this communication
+never ceased; the high-toned and educated young woman reverting with
+unabated affection, and a reliance that nothing could shake, to the
+long-tried tenderness of the being who had watched over her infancy. The
+effect of such an intimacy was often amusing; the one party bringing to
+the conferences, a mind filled with the knowledge suited to her sex and
+station, habits that had been formed in the best circles of christendom,
+and tastes that had been acquired in schools of high reputation; and the
+other, little more than her single-hearted love, a fidelity that ennobled
+her nature, and a simplicity that betokened perfect purity of thought Nor
+was this extraordinary confidence without its advantages to Eve; for,
+thrown so early among the artificial and calculating, it served to keep
+her own ingenuousness of character active, and prevented that cold,
+selfish, and unattractive sophistication, that mere women of fashion are
+apt to fall into, from their isolated and factitious mode of existence.
+When Eve, therefore, put the questions to her nurse, that have already
+been mentioned, it was more with a real wish to know how the latter would
+view a choice on which her own mind was so fully made up, than any silly
+trifling on a subject that engrossed so much of her best affections.</p>
+
+<p>"But you have not told me, dear Nanny," she continued, "what <i>you</i> would
+have that answer be. Ought I, for instance, ever to quit my beloved
+father?"</p>
+
+<p>"What necessity would there be for that, ma'am? Mr. Powis has no home of
+his own; and, for that matter, scarcely any country----"</p>
+
+<p>"How can you know this, Nanny?" demanded Eve, with the jealous
+sensitiveness of a young love.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Miss Eve, his man says this much, and he has lived with him long
+enough to know it, if he had a home. Now, I seldom sleep without looking
+back at the day, and often have my thoughts turned to Sir George Temple
+more and Mr. Powis; and when I have remembered that the first had a house
+and a home, and that the last had neither, it has always seemed to me that
+<i>he</i> ought to be the one."</p>
+
+<p>"And then, in all this matter, you have thought of convenience, and what
+might be agreeable to others, rather than of me."</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Eve!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, dearest Nanny, forgive me; I know your last thought, in every thing,
+is for yourself. But surely, the mere circumstance that he had no home
+ought not to be a sufficient reason for selecting any man, for a husband.
+With most women it would be an objection."</p>
+
+<p>"I pretend to know very little of these feelings, Miss Eve. I have been
+wooed, I acknowledge; and once I do think I might have been tempted to
+marry, had it not been for a particular circumstance."</p>
+
+<p>"You! You marry, Ann Sidley!" exclaimed Eve, to whom the bare idea seemed
+as odd and unnatural, as that her own father should forget her mother, and
+take a second wife. "This is altogether new, and I should be glad to know
+what the lucky circumstance was, which prevented what, to me, might have
+proved so great a calamity."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, ma'am, I said to myself, what does a woman do, who marries? She vows
+to quit all else to go with her husband, and to love him before father and
+mother, and all other living beings on earth--is it not so, Miss Eve?"
+
+"I believe it is so, indeed, Nanny--nay, I am quite certain it is so," Eve
+answered, the colour deepening on her cheek, as she gave this opinion to
+her old nurse, with the inward consciousness that she had just experienced
+some of the happiest moments of her life, through the admission of a
+passion that thus overshadowed all the natural affections. "It is, truly?
+as you say."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, ma'am, I investigated my feelings, I believe they call it, and
+after a proper trial, I found that I loved you so much better than any one
+else, that I could not, in conscience, make the vows."</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest Nanny! my kind, good, faithful old nurse! let me hold you in my
+arms: and, I, selfish, thoughtless, heartless girl, would forget the
+circumstance that would be most likely to keep us together, for the
+remainder of our lives! Hist! there is a tap at the door It is Mrs.
+Bloomfield; I know her light step. Admit her, my kind Ann, and leave us
+together."</p>
+
+<p>The bright searching eye of Mrs. Bloomfield was riveted on her young
+friend, as she advanced into the room; and her smile, usually so gay and
+sometimes ironical, was now thoughtful and kind.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Miss Effingham," she cried, in a manner that her looks
+contradicted, "am I to condole with you," or to congratulate?--For a more
+sudden, or miraculous change did I never before witness in a young lady,
+though whether it be for the better or the worse----These are ominous
+words, too--for 'better or worse, for richer or poorer'----"</p>
+
+<p>"You are in fine spirits this evening, my dear Mrs. Bloomfield, and appear
+to have entered into the gaieties of the Fun of Fire, with all your--"</p>
+
+<p>"Might, will be a homely, but an expressive word. Your Templeton Fun of
+Fire is fiery fun, for it has cost us something like a general
+conflagration. Mrs. Hawker has been near a downfall, like your great
+namesake, by a serpent's coming too near her dress; one barn, I hear, has
+actually been in a blaze, and Sir George Templemore's heart is in cinders.
+Mr. John Effingham has been telling me that he should not have been a
+bachelor, had there been two Mrs. Bloomfields in the world, and Mr. Powis
+looks like a rafter dugout of Herculaneum, nothing but coal."</p>
+
+<p>"And what occasions this pleasantry?" asked Eve, so composed in manner
+that her friend was momentarily deceived.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bloomfield took a seat on the sofa, by the side of our heroine, and
+regarding her steadily for near a minute, she continued--</p>
+
+<p>"Hypocrisy and Eve Effingham can have little in common, and my ears must
+have deceived me."</p>
+
+<p>"Your ears, dear Mrs. Bloomfield!"</p>
+
+<p>"My ears, dear Miss Effingham. I very well know the character of an
+eaves-dropper, but if gentlemen will make passionate declarations in the
+walk of a garden, with nothing but a little shrubbery between his ardent
+declarations and the curiosity of those who may happen to be passing,
+they must expect to be overheard."</p>
+
+<p>Eve's colour had gradually increased as her friend proceeded; and when the
+other ceased speaking, as bright a bloom glowed on her countenance, as had
+shone there when she first entered the room.</p>
+
+<p>"May I ask the meaning of all this?" she said, with an effort to appear
+calm.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, my dear; and you shall also know the <i>feelings</i> that prompt
+it, as well as the meaning," returned Mrs. Bloomfield, kindly taking Eve's
+hand in a way to show that she did not mean to trifle further on a subject
+that was of so much moment to her young friend. "Mr. John Effingham and
+myself were star-gazing at a point where two walks approach each other,
+just as you and Mr. Powis were passing in the adjoining path. Without
+absolutely stepping our ears, it was quite impossible not to hear a
+portion of your conversation. We both tried to behave honourably; for I
+coughed, and your kinsman actually hemmed, but we were unheeded."</p>
+
+<p>"Coughed and hemmed!" repeated Eve, in greater confusion than ever. "There
+must be some mistake, dear Mrs. Bloomfield, as I remember to have heard no
+such signals."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite likely, my love, for there was a time when I too had ears for only
+one voice; but you can have affidavits to the fact, <i>&agrave; la mode de New
+England</i>, if you require them. Do not mistake my motive, nevertheless,
+Miss Effingham, which is any thing but vulgar curiosity"--here Mrs.
+Bloomfield looked so kind and friendly, that Eve took both her hands and
+pressed them to her heart--"you are motherless; without even a single
+female connexion of a suitable age to consult with on such an occasion,
+and fathers after all are but men----"</p>
+
+<p>"Mine is as kind, and delicate, and tender, as any woman can be, Mrs.
+Bloomfield."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe it all, though he may not be quite as quick-sighted, in an
+affair of this nature.--Am I at liberty to speak to you as if I were an
+elder sister?"</p>
+
+<p>"Speak, Mrs. Bloomfield, as frankly as you please, but leave me the
+mistress of my answers."</p>
+
+<p>"It is, then, as I suspected," said Mrs. Bloomfield, in a sort of musing
+manner; "the men have been won over, and this young creature has
+absolutely been left without a protector in the most important moment of
+her life!"</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Bloomfield!--What does this mean?--What <i>can</i> it mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"It means merely general principles, child; that your father and cousin
+have been parties concerned, instead of vigilant sentinels; and, with all
+their pretended care, that you have been left to grope your way in the
+darkness of female uncertainty, with one of the most pleasing young men in
+the country constantly before you, to help the obscurity."</p>
+
+<p>It is a dreadful moment, when we are taught to doubt the worth of those we
+love; and Eve became pale as death, as she listened to the words of her
+friend. Once before, on the occasion of Paul's return to England, she had
+felt a pang of that sort, though reflection, and a calm revision of all
+his acts and words since they first met in Germany, had enabled her to get
+the better of indecision, and when she first saw him on the mountain,
+nearly every unpleasant apprehension and distrust had been dissipated by
+an effort of pure reason. His own explanations had cleared up the
+unpleasant affair, and, from that moment, she had regarded him altogether
+with the eyes of a confiding partiality. The speech of Mrs. Bloomfield now
+sounded like words of doom to her, and, for an instant, her friend was
+frightened with the effects of her own imperfect communication. Until that
+moment Mrs. Bloomfield had formed no just idea of the extent to which the
+feelings of Eve were interested in Paul, for she had but an imperfect
+knowledge of their early association in Europe, and she sincerely
+repented having introduced the subject at all. It was too late to retreat,
+however, and, first folding Eve in her arms, and kissing her cold
+forehead, she hastened to repair a part, at least, of the mischief she had
+done.</p>
+
+<p>"My words have been too strong, I fear," she said, "but such is my general
+horror of the manner in which the young of our sex, in this country, are
+abandoned to the schemes of the designing and selfish of the other, that I
+am, perhaps, too sensitive when I see any one that I love thus exposed.
+You are known, my dear, to be one of the richest heiresses of the country;
+and, I blush to say that no accounts of European society that we have,
+make fortune-hunting a more regular occupation there, than it has got to
+be here."</p>
+
+<p>The paleness left Eve's face, and a look of slight displeasure succeeded.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Powis is no fortune-hunter, Mrs. Bloomfield," she said, steadily;
+"his whole conduct for three years has been opposed to such a character;
+and, then, though not absolutely rich, perhaps, he has a gentleman's
+income, and is removed from the necessity of being reduced to such an act
+of baseness."</p>
+
+<p>"I perceive my error, but it is now too late to retreat. I do not say that
+Mr. Powis is a fortune-hunter, but there are circumstances connected with
+his history, that you ought at least to know, and that immediately. I have
+chosen to speak to you, rather than to speak to your father, because I
+thought you might like a female confidant on such occasion, in preference
+even to your excellent natural protector. The idea of. Mrs. Hawker
+occurred to me, on account of her age; but I did not feel authorised to
+communicate to her a secret of which I had myself become so accidentally
+possessed,'</p>
+
+<p>"I appreciate your motive fully, dearest Mrs. Bloomfield," said Eve,
+smiling with all her native sweetness, and greatly relieved, for she now
+began to think that too keen a sensitiveness on the subject of Paul had
+unnecessarily alarmed her, "and beg there may be no reserves between us.
+If you know a reason why Mr. Powis should not be received as a suitor, I
+entreat you to mention it."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he Mr. Powis at all?"</p>
+
+<p>Again Eve smiled, to Mrs. Bloomfield's great, surprise, for, as the latter
+had put the question with sincere reluctance, she was astonished at the
+coolness with which it was received.</p>
+
+<p>"He is not Mr. Powis, legally perhaps, though he might be, but that he
+dislikes the publicity of an application to the legislature. His paternal
+name is Assheton."</p>
+
+<p>"You know his history, then!"</p>
+
+<p>"There has been no reserve on the part of Mr. Powis; least of all, any
+deception."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bloomfield appeared perplexed, even distressed; and there was a brief
+space, during which her mind was undecided as to the course she ought to
+take. That she had committed an error by attempting a consultation, in a
+matter of the heart, with one of her own sex, after the affections were
+engaged, she discovered when it was too late; but she prized Eve's
+friendship too much, and had too just a sense of what was due to herself,
+to leave the affair where it was, or without clearing up her own unasked
+agency in it.</p>
+
+<p>"I rejoice to learn this," she said, as soon as her doubts had ended, "for
+frankness, while it is one of the safest, is one of the most beautiful
+traits in human character; but beautiful though it be, it is one that the
+other sex uses least to our own."</p>
+
+<p>"Is our own too ready to use it to the other?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps not: it might be better for both parties, were there less
+deception practised during the period of courtship, generally: but as this
+is hopeless, and might, destroy some of the most pleasing illusions of
+life, we will not enter into a treatise on the frauds of Cupid, Now to my
+own confessions, which I make all the more willingly, because I know they
+are uttered to the ear of one of a forgiving temperament, and who is
+disposed to view even my follies favourably."</p>
+
+<p>The kind but painful smile of Eve, assured the speaker she was not
+mistaken, and she continued, after taking time to read the expression of
+the countenance of her young friend--</p>
+
+<p>"In common with all of New-York, that town of babbling misses, who prattle
+as water flows, without consciousness or effort, and of whiskered masters,
+who fancy Broadway the world, and the flirtations of miniature
+drawing-rooms, human nature, I believed, on your return from Europe, that
+an accepted suitor followed in your train, in the person of Sir George
+Templemore."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing in my deportment, or in that of Sir George, or in that of any of
+my family, could justly have given rise to such a notion," said Eve,
+quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Justly! What has justice, or truth, or even probability, to do with a
+report, of which love and matrimony are the themes? Do you not know
+<i>society</i> better than to fancy this improbability, child?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know that our own sex would better consult their own dignity and
+respectability, my dear Mrs. Bloomfield, if they talked less of such
+matters; and that they would be more apt to acquire the habits of good
+taste, not to say of good principles, if they confined their strictures
+more to things and sentiments than they do, and meddled less with
+persons."</p>
+
+<p>"And pray, is there no tittle-tattle, no scandal, no commenting on one's
+neighbours, in other civilized nations besides this?"</p>
+
+<p>"Unquestionably; though I believe, as a rule, it is every where thought to
+be inherently vulgar, and a proof of low associations."</p>
+
+<p>"In that, we are perfectly of a mind; for, if there be any thing that
+betrays a consciousness of inferiority, it is our rendering others of so
+much obvious importance to ourselves, as to make them the subjects of our
+constant conversation. We may speak of virtues, for therein we pay an
+homage to that which is good; but when we come to dwell on personal
+faults, it is rather a proof that we have a silent conviction of the
+superiority of the subject of our comments to ourselves, either in
+character, talents, social position, or something else that is deemed
+essential, than of our distaste for his failings. Who, for instance, talks
+scandal of his grocer, or of his shoemaker? No, no, our pride forbids
+this; we always make our betters the subject of our strictures by
+preference, taking up with our equals only when we can get none of a
+higher class."</p>
+
+<p>"This quite reconciles me to having been given to Sir George Templemore,
+by the world of New-York," said Eve, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"And well it may, for they who have prattled of your engagement, have done
+so principally because they are incapable of maintaining a conversation on
+any thing else. But, all this time, I fear I stand accused in your mind,
+of having given advice unasked, and of feeling an alarm in an affair that
+affected others, instead of myself, which is the very sin that we lay at
+the door of our worthy Manhattanese. In common with all around me, then, I
+fancied Sir George Templemore an accepted lover, and, by habit, had gotten
+to associate you together in my pictures. Oh my arrival here, however, I
+will confess that Mr. Powis, whom, you will remember, I had never seen
+before, struck me as much the most dangerous man.--Shall I own all my
+absurdity?"</p>
+
+<p>"Even to the smallest shade."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, I confess to having supposed that, while the excellent father
+believed you were in a fair way to become Lady Templemore, the equally
+excellent daughter thought the other suitor, infinitely the most agreeable
+person."</p>
+
+<p>"What! in contempt of a betrothal?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I, at once, ascribed that part of the report to the usual
+embellishments. We do not like to be deceived in our calculations, or to
+discover that even our gossip has misled us. In pure resentment at my own
+previous delusion, I began to criticise this Mr. Powis--"</p>
+
+<p>"Criticise, Mrs. Bloomfield!"</p>
+
+<p>"To find fault with him, my dear; to try to think he was not just the
+handsomest and most engaging young man I had ever seen; to imagine what he
+ought to be, in place of what he was; and among other things, to inquire
+<i>who</i> he was?"</p>
+
+<p>"You did not think proper to ask that question of any of <i>us</i>," said Eve,
+gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not; for I discovered by instinct, or intuition, or
+conjecture--they mean pretty much the same thing, I believe--that there
+was a mystery about him; something that even his Templeton friends did not
+quite understand, and a lucky thought occurred of making my inquiries of
+another person."</p>
+
+<p>"They were answered satisfactorily," said Eve, looking up at her friend,
+with the artless confidence that marks her sex, when the affections have
+gotten the mastery of reason.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Cosi, cosi</i>. Bloomfield has a brother who is in the Navy, as you know,
+and I happened to remember that he had once spoken of an officer of the
+name of Powis, who had performed a clever thing in the West Indies, when
+they were employed together against the pirates. I wrote to him one of my
+usual letters, that are compounded of all things in nature and art, and
+took an occasion to allude to a certain Mr. Paul Powis, with a general
+remark that he had formerly served, together with a particular inquiry if
+he knew any thing about him. All this, no doubt, you think very officious;
+but believe me, dear Eve, where there was as much interest as I felt and
+feel in you, it was very natural."</p>
+
+<p>"So far from entertaining resentment, I am grateful for your concern,
+especially as I know it was manifested cautiously, and without any
+unpleasant allusions to third persons."</p>
+
+<p>"In that respect I believe I did pretty well. Tom Bloomfield--I beg his
+pardon, Captain Bloomfield, for so he calls himself, at present--knows Mr.
+Powis well; or, rather <i>did</i> know him, for they have not met for years,
+and he speaks of his personal qualities and professional merit highly, but
+takes occasion to remark that there was some mystery connected with his
+birth, as, before he joined the service he understood he was called
+Assheton, and at a later day, Powis, and this without any public law, or
+public avowal of a motive. Now, it struck me that Eve Effingham ought not
+to be permitted to form a connection with a man so unpleasantly situated,
+without being apprised of the fact. I was waiting for a proper occasion to
+do this ungrateful office myself, when accident made me acquainted with
+what has passed this evening, and perceiving that there was no time to
+lose, I came hither, more led by interest in you, my dear, perhaps, than
+by discretion."</p>
+
+<p>"I thank you sincerely for this kind concern in my welfare, dear Mrs.
+Bloomfield, and give you full credit for the motive. Will you permit me to
+inquire how much you know of that which passed this evening?"</p>
+
+<p>"Simply that Mr. Powis is desperately in love, a declaration that I take
+it is always dangerous to the peace of mind of a young woman, when it
+comes from a very engaging young man."</p>
+
+<p>"And my part of the dialogue--" Eve blushed to the eyes as she asked this
+question, though she made a great effort to appear calm--"my answer?"</p>
+
+<p>"There was too much of woman in me--of true, genuine, loyal, native woman,
+Miss Effingham, to listen to that had there been an opportunity. We were
+but a moment near enough to hear any thing, though that moment sufficed
+to let us know the state of feelings of the gentleman. I ask no
+confidences, my dear Eve, and now that I have made my explanations, lame
+though they be, I will kiss you and repair to the drawing-room, where we
+shall both be soon missed. Forgive me, if I have seemed impertinent in my
+interference, and continue to ascribe it to its true motive."</p>
+
+<p>"Stop, Mrs. Bloomfield, I entreat, for a single moment; I wish to say a
+word before we part. As you have been accidentally made acquainted with
+Mr. Powis's sentiments towards me, it is no more than just that you should
+know the nature of mine towards him----"</p>
+
+<p>Eve paused involuntarily, for, though she had commenced her explanation,
+with a firm intention to do justice to Paul, the bashfulness of her sex
+held her tongue tied, at the very moment her desire to speak was the
+strongest. An effort conquered the weakness, and the warm-hearted,
+generous-minded girl succeeded in commanding her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot allow you to go away with the impression, that there is a shade
+of any sort on the conduct of Mr. Powis," she said. "So far from desiring
+to profit by the accidents that have placed it in his power to render us
+such essential service, he has never spoken of his love until this
+evening, and then under circumstances in which feeling, naturally, perhaps
+I might say uncontrollably, got the ascendency."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe it all, for I feel certain Eve Effingham would not bestow her
+heart heedlessly."</p>
+
+<p>"Heart!--Mrs. Bloomfield!"</p>
+
+<p>"Heart, my dear; and now I insist on the subject's being dropped, at
+least, for the present. Your decision is probably not yet made--you are
+not yet an hour in possession of your suitor's secret, and prudence
+demands deliberation. I shall hope to see you in the drawing-room, and
+until then, adieu."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bloomfield signed for silence, and quitted the room with the same
+light tread as that with which she had entered it.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Chapter XXV.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>  "To show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age
+  and body of the time, his form and pressure."</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>  SHAKSPEARE.</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>When Mrs. Bloomfield entered the drawing-room, she found nearly the whole
+party assembled. The Fun of Fire had ceased, and the rockets no longer
+gleamed athwart the sky; but the blaze of artificial light within, was
+more than a substitute for that which had so lately existed without.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Effingham and Paul were conversing by themselves, in a window-seat,
+while John Effingham, Mrs. Hawker, and Mr. Howel were in an animated
+discussion on a sofa; Mr. Wenham had also joined the party, and was
+occupied with Captain Ducie, though not so much so as to prevent
+occasional glances at the trio just mentioned. Sir George Templemore and
+Grace Van Cortlandt were walking together in the great hall, and were
+visible through the open door, as they passed and repassed.</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad of your appearance among us, Mrs. Bloomfield," said John
+Effingham, "for, certainly more Anglo-mania never existed than that which
+my good friend Howel manifests this evening, and I have hopes that your
+eloquence may persuade him out of some of those notions, on which my logic
+has fallen like seed scattered by the way-side."</p>
+
+<p>"I can have little hopes of success where Mr. John Effingham has failed."</p>
+
+<p>"I am far from being certain of that; for, somehow Howel has taken up the
+notion that I have gotten a grudge against England, and he listens to all
+I say with distrust and distaste."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. John uses strong language habitually, ma'am," cried Mr. Howel, "and
+you will make some allowances for a vocabulary that has no very mild terms
+in it; though, to be frank, I do confess that he seems prejudiced on the
+subject of that great nation."</p>
+
+<p>"What is the point in immediate controversy, gentlemen?" asked Mrs.
+Bloomfield, taking a seat.</p>
+
+<p>"Why here is a review of a late American work, ma'am, and I insist that
+the author is skinned alive, whereas, Mr. John insists that the reviewer
+exposes only his own rage, the work having a national character, and
+running counter to the reviewer's feelings and interests."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, I protest against this statement of the case, for I affirm that the
+reviewer exposes a great deal more than his rage, since his imbecility,
+ignorance, and dishonesty, are quite as apparent as any thing else."</p>
+
+<p>"I have read the article," said Mrs. Bloomfield, after glancing her eye at
+the periodical, "and I must say that I take sides with Mr. John Effingham
+in his opinion of its character."</p>
+
+<p>"But do you not perceive, ma'am, that this is the idol of the nobility and
+gentry; the work that is more in favour with people of consequence in
+England than any other. Bishops are said to write for it!"</p>
+
+<p>"I know it is a work expressly established to sustain one of the most
+factitious political systems that ever existed, and that it sacrifices
+every high quality to attain its end."</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Bloomfield, you amaze me! The first writers of Great Britain figure
+in its pages."</p>
+
+<p>"That I much question, in the first place; but even if it were so, it
+would be but a shallow mystification. Although a man of character might
+write one article in a work of this nature, it does not follow that a man
+of no character does not write the next. The principles of the
+communications of a periodical are as different as their talents."</p>
+
+<p>"But the editor is a pledge for all.--The editor of this review is an
+eminent writer himself."</p>
+
+<p>"An eminent writer may be a very great knave, in the first place, and one
+fact is worth a thousand conjectures in such a matter. But we do not know
+that there is any responsible editor to works of this nature at all, for
+there is no name given in the title-page, and nothing is more common than
+vague declarations of a want of this very responsibility. But if I can
+prove to you that this article <i>cannot</i> have been written by a man of
+common honesty, Mr. Howel, what will you then say to the responsibility of
+your editor?"</p>
+
+<p>"In that case I shall be compelled to admit that he had no connexion with
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"Any thing in preference to giving up the beloved idol!" said John
+Effingham laughing. "Why not add at once, that he is as great a knave as
+the writer himself? I am glad, however, that Tom Howel has fallen into
+such good hands, Mrs. Bloomfield, and I devoutly pray you may not spare
+him."</p>
+
+<p>We have said that Mrs. Bloomfield had a rapid perception of things and
+principles, that amounted almost to intuition. She had read the article in
+question, and, as she glanced her eyes through its pages, had detected its
+fallacies and falsehoods, in almost every sentence. Indeed, they had not
+been put together with ordinary skill, the writer having evidently
+presumed on the easiness of the class of readers who generally swallowed
+his round assertions, and were so clumsily done that any one who had not
+the faith to move mountains would have seen through most of them without
+difficulty. But Mr. Howel belonged to another school, and he was so much
+accustomed to shut his eyes to palpable mystification mentioned by Mrs.
+Bloomfield, that a lie, which, advanced in most works, would have carried
+no weight with it, advanced in this particular periodical became elevated
+to the dignity of truth.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bloomfield turned to an article on America, in the periodical in
+question, and read from it several disparaging expressions concerning Mr.
+Howel's native country, one of which was, "The American's first plaything
+is the rattle-snake's tail."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, what do you think of this assertion in particular, Mr. Howel?" she
+asked, reading the words we have just quoted.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! that is said in mere pleasantry--it is only wit."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, what do you think of it as wit?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, it may not be of a very pure water, but the best of men are
+unequal at all times, and more especially in their wit."</p>
+
+<p>"Here," continued Mrs. Bloomfield, pointing to another paragraph, "is a
+positive statement or misstatement, which makes the cost of the 'civil
+department of the United States Government,' about six times more than it
+really is."</p>
+
+<p>"Our government is so extremely mean, that I ascribe that error to
+generosity."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," continued the lady, smiling, "here the reviewer asserts that
+Congress passed a law <i>limiting</i> the size of certain ships, in order to
+please the democracy; and that the Executive privately evaded this law,
+and built vessels of a much greater size; whereas the provision of the law
+is just the contrary, or that the ships should not be <i>less</i> than of
+seventy-four guns; a piece of information, by the way, that I obtained
+from Mr. Powis."</p>
+
+<p>"Ignorance, ma'am; a stranger cannot be supposed to know all the laws of a
+foreign country."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why make bold and false assertions about them, that are intended to
+discredit the country? Here is another assertion--'ten thousand of the
+men that fought at Waterloo would have marched through North America?' Do
+you believe that, Mr. Howel?"</p>
+
+<p>"But that is merely an opinion, Mrs. Bloomfield; any man may be wrong in
+his opinion."</p>
+
+<p>"Very true, but it is an opinion uttered in the year of our Lord one
+thousand eight hundred and twenty-eight; and after the battles of Bunker
+Hill, Cowpens, Plattsburg, Saratoga, and New-Orleans! And, moreover, after
+it had been proved that something very like ten thousand of the identical
+men who fought at Waterloo, could not march even ten miles into the
+country."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, all this shows that the reviewer is sometimes mistaken."</p>
+
+<p>"Your pardon Mr. Howel; I think it shows, according to your own admission,
+that his wit, or rather its wit, for there is no <i>his</i> about it--that its
+wit is of a very indifferent quality as witticisms even; that it is
+ignorant of what it pretends to know; and that its opinions are no better
+than its knowledge: all of which, when fairly established against one who,
+by his very pursuit, professes to know more than other people, is very
+much like making it appear contemptible."</p>
+
+<p>"This is going back eight or ten years--let us look more particularly at
+the article about which the discussion commences."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Volontiers</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bloomfield now sent to the library for the work reviewed, and opening
+the review she read some of its strictures; and then turning to the
+corresponding passages in the work itself, she pointed out the unfairness
+of the quotations, the omissions of the context, and, in several flagrant
+instances, witticisms of the reviewer, that were purchased at the expense
+of the English language. She next showed several of those audacious
+assertions, for which the particular periodical was so remarkable, leaving
+no doubt with any candid person, that they were purchased at the expense
+of truth.</p>
+
+<p>"But here is an instance that will scarce admit of cavilling or objection
+on your part, Mr. Howel," she continued; "do me the favour to read the
+passage in the review."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Howel complied, and when he had done, he looked expectingly at the
+lady.</p>
+
+<p>"The effect of the reviewer's statement is to make it appear that the
+author has contradicted himself, is it not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, nothing can be plainer."</p>
+
+<p>"According to your favourite reviewer, who accuses him of it, in terms.
+Now let us look at the fact. Here is the passage in the work itself. In
+the first place you will remark that this sentence, which contains the
+alleged contradiction, is mutilated; the part which is omitted, giving a
+directly contrary meaning to it, from that it bears under the reviewer's
+scissors."</p>
+
+<p>"It has some such appearance, I do confess."</p>
+
+<p>"Here you perceive that the closing sentence of the same paragraph, and
+which refers directly to the point at issue, is displaced, made to appear
+as belonging to a separate paragraph, and as conveying a different meaning
+from what the author has actually expressed."</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my word, I do not know but you are right!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mr. Howel, we have had wit of no very pure water, ignorance as
+relates to facts, and mistakes as regards very positive assertions. In
+what category, as Captain Truck would say, do you place this?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why does not the author reviewed expose this?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why does not a gentleman wrangle with a detected pick-pocket?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is literary swindling," said John Effingham, "and the man who did it,
+is inherently a knave."</p>
+
+<p>"I think both these facts quite beyond dispute," observed Mrs. Bloomfield,
+laying down Mr. Howel's favourite review with an air of cool contempt;
+"and I must say I did not think it necessary to prove the general
+character of the work, at this late date, to any American of ordinary
+intelligence; much less to a sensible man, like Mr. Howel."</p>
+
+<p>"But, ma'am, there may be much truth and justice in the rest of its
+remarks," returned the pertinacious Mr. Howel, "although it has fallen
+into these mistakes."</p>
+
+<p>"Were you ever on a jury, Howel?" asked John Effingham, in his caustic
+manner.</p>
+
+<p>"Often; and on grand juries, too."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, did the judge never tell you, when a witness is detected in lying
+on one point, that his testimony is valueless on all others?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very true; but this is a review, and not testimony."</p>
+
+<p>"The distinction is certainly a very good one," resumed Mrs. Bloomfield,
+laughing, "as nothing, in general, can be less like honest testimony than
+a review!"</p>
+
+<p>"But I think, my dear ma'am, you will allow that all this is excessively
+biting and severe--I can't say I ever read any thing sharper in my life."</p>
+
+<p>"It strikes me, Mr. Howel, as being nothing but epithets, the cheapest and
+most contemptible of all species of abuse. Were two men, in your presence,
+to call each other such names, I think it would excite nothing but disgust
+in your mind. When the thought is clear and poignant, there is little need
+to have recourse to mere epithets; indeed, men never use the latter,
+except when there is a deficiency of the first."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, my friends," cried Mr. Howel, as he walked away towards Grace
+and Sir George, "this is a different thing from what I at first thought
+it, but still I think you undervalue the periodical."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope this little lesson will cool some of Mr. Howel's faith in foreign
+morality," observed Mrs. Bloomfield, as soon as the gentleman named was
+out of hearing; "a more credulous and devout worshipper of the idol, I
+have never before met."</p>
+
+<p>"The school is diminishing, but it is still large. Men like Tom Howel, who
+have thought in one direction all their lives, are not easily brought to
+change their notions, especially when the admiration which proceeds from
+distance, distance 'that lends enchantment to the view,' is at the bottom
+of their faith. Had this very article been written and printed round the
+corner of the street in which he lives, Howel would be the first to say
+that it was the production of a fellow without talents or principles, and
+was unworthy of a second thought."</p>
+
+<p>"I still think he will be a wiser, if not a better man, by the exposure of
+its frauds."</p>
+
+<p>"Not he. If you will excuse a homely and a coarse simile, 'he will return
+like a dog to his vomit, or the sow to its wallowing in the mire.' I never
+knew one of that school thoroughly cured, until he became himself the
+subject of attack, or, by a close personal communication, was made to feel
+the superciliousness of European superiority. It is only a week since I
+had a discussion with him on the subject of the humanity and the relish
+for liberty in his beloved model; and when I cited the instance of the
+employment of the tomahawk, in the wars between England and this country,
+he actually affirmed that the Indian savages killed no women and children,
+but the wives and offspring of their enemies; and when I told him that the
+English, like most other people, cared very little for any liberty but
+their own, he coolly affirmed that their own was the only liberty worth
+caring for!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes," put in young Mr. Wenham, who had overheard the latter portion of
+the conversation, "Mr. Howel is so thoroughly English, that he actually
+denies that America is the most civilized country in the world, or that we
+speak our language better than any nation was ever before known to speak
+its own language."</p>
+
+<p>"This is so manifest an act of treason," said Mrs. Bloomfield,
+endeavouring to look grave, for Mr. Wenham was any thing but accurate in
+the use of words himself, commonly pronouncing "been," "ben," "does,"
+"dooze," "nothing," "nawthing," "few," "foo," &amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c., "that,
+certainly, Mr. Howel should be arraigned at the bar of public opinion for
+the outrage."</p>
+
+<p>"It is commonly admitted, even by our enemies, that our mode of speaking
+is the very best in the world, which, I suppose, is the real reason why
+our literature has so rapidly reached the top of the ladder."</p>
+
+<p>"And is that the fact?" asked Mrs. Bloomfield, with a curiosity that was
+not in the least feigned.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe no one denies <i>that. You</i> will sustain me in this, I fancy, Mr.
+Dodge?"</p>
+
+<p>The editor of the Active Inquirer had approached, and was just in time to
+catch the subject in discussion. Now the modes of speech of these two
+persons, while they had a great deal in common, had also a great deal that
+was not in common. Mr. Wenham was a native of New-York, and his dialect
+was a mixture that is getting to be sufficiently general, partaking
+equally of the Doric of New England, the Dutch cross, and the old English
+root; whereas, Mr. Dodge spoke the pure, unalloyed Tuscan of his province,
+rigidly adhering to all its sounds and significations. "Dissipation," he
+contended, meant "drunkenness;" "ugly," "vicious;" "clever,"
+"good-natured;" and "humbly," (homely) "ugly." In addition to this finesse
+in significations, he had a variety of pronunciations that often put
+strangers at fault, and to which he adhered with a pertinacity that
+obtained some of its force from the fact, that it exceeded his power to
+get rid of them. Notwithstanding all these little peculiarities,
+peculiarities as respects every one but those who dwelt in his own
+province, Mr. Dodge had also taken up the notion of his superiority on the
+subject of language, and always treated the matter as one that was placed
+quite beyond dispute, by its publicity and truth.</p>
+
+<p>"The progress of American Literature," returned the editor, "is really
+astonishing the four quarters of the world. I believe it is very generally
+admitted, now, that our pulpit and bar are at the very summit of these two
+professions. Then we have much the best poets of the age, while eleven of
+our novelists surpass any of all other countries. The American
+Philosophical Society is, I believe, generally considered the most acute
+learned body now extant, unless, indeed, the New-York Historical Society
+may compete with it, for that honour. Some persons give the palm to one,
+and some to the other; though I myself think it would be difficult to
+decide between them. Then to what a pass has the drama risen of late
+years! Genius is getting to be quite a drug in America!"</p>
+
+<p>"You have forgotten to speak of the press, in particular," put in the
+complacent Mr. Wenham. "I think we may more safely pride ourselves on the
+high character of the press, than any thing else."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, to tell you the truth, sir," answered Steadfast, taking the other by
+the arm, and leading him so slowly away, that a part of what followed was
+heard by the two amused listeners, "modesty is so infallibly the companion
+of merit, that <i>we</i> who are engaged in that high pursuit do not like to
+say any thing in our own favour. You never detect a newspaper in the
+weakness of extolling itself; but, between ourselves, I may say, after a
+close examination of the condition of the press in other countries, I have
+come to the conclusion, that, for talents, taste, candour, philosophy,
+genius, honesty, and truth, the press of the United States stands at the
+very----"</p>
+
+<p>Here Mr. Dodge passed so far from the listeners, that the rest of the
+speech became inaudible, though from the well-established modesty of the
+man and the editor, there can be little doubt of the manner in which he
+concluded the sentence.</p>
+
+<p>"It is said in Europe," observed Johr Effingham, his fine face expressing
+the cool sarcasm in which he was so apt to indulge, "that there are <i>la
+vieille</i> and <i>la Jeune France</i>. I think we have now had pretty fair
+specimens of <i>old</i> and <i>young</i> America; the first distrusting every thing
+native, even to a potatoe: and the second distrusting nothing, and least
+of all, itself."</p>
+
+<p>"There appears to be a sort of pendulum-uneasiness in mankind," said Mrs.
+Bloomfield, "that keeps opinion always vibrating around the centre of
+truth, for I think it the rarest thing in the world to find man or woman
+who has not a disposition, as soon as an error is abandoned, to fly off
+into its opposite extreme. From believing we had nothing worthy of a
+thought, there is a set springing up who appear to have jumped to the
+conclusion that we have every thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, this is <i>one</i> of the reasons that all the rest of the world laugh at
+us."</p>
+
+<p>"Laugh at us, Mr. Effingham! Even <i>I</i> had supposed the American name had,
+at last, got to be in good credit in other parts of the world."</p>
+
+<p>"Then even <i>you</i>, my dear Mrs. Bloomfield, are notably mistaken. Europe,
+it is true, is beginning to give us credit for not being quite as bad as
+she once thought us; but we are far, very far, from being yet admitted to
+the ordinary level of nations, as respects goodness."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely they give us credit for energy, enterprize, activity----"</p>
+
+<p>"Qualities that they prettily term, rapacity, cunning, and swindling! I am
+far, very far, however, from giving credit to all that it suits the
+interests and prejudices of Europe, especially of our venerable kinswoman,
+Old England, to circulate and think to the prejudice of this country,
+which, in my poor judgment, has as much substantial merit to boast of as
+any nation on earth; though, in getting rid of a set of ancient vices and
+follies, it has not had the sagacity to discover that it is fast falling
+into pretty tolerable--or if you like it better--intolerable substitutes."</p>
+
+<p>"What then do <i>you</i> deem our greatest error--our weakest point?"</p>
+
+<p>"Provincialisms, with their train of narrow prejudices, and a disposition
+to set up mediocrity as perfection, under the double influence of an
+ignorance that unavoidably arises from a want of models, and of the
+irresistible tendency to mediocrity, in a nation where the common mind so
+imperiously rules."</p>
+
+<p>"But does not the common mind rule every where? Is not public opinion
+always stronger than law?"</p>
+
+<p>"In a certain sense, both these positions may be true. But in a nation
+like this, without a capital, one <i>that is all provinces</i>, in which
+intelligence and tastes are scattered, this common mind wants the usual
+direction, and derives its impulses from the force of numbers, rather than
+from the force of knowledge. Hence the fact, that the public opinion never
+or seldom rises to absolute truth. I grant you that <i>as</i> a mediocrity, it
+is well; much better than common even; but it is still a mediocrity."</p>
+
+<p>"I see the justice of your remark, and I suppose we are to ascribe the
+general use of superlatives, which is so very obvious, to these causes."</p>
+
+<p>"Unquestionably; men have gotten to be afraid to speak the truth, when
+that truth is a little beyond the common comprehension; and thus it is
+that you see the fulsome flattery that all the public servants, as they
+call themselves, resort to, in order to increase their popularity, instead
+of telling the wholesome facts that are needed."</p>
+
+<p>"And what is to be the result?"</p>
+
+<p>"Heaven knows. While America is so much in advance of other nations, in a
+freedom from prejudices of the old school, it is fast substituting a set
+of prejudices of its own, that are not without serious dangers. We may
+live through it, and the ills of society may correct themselves, though
+there is one fact that men aces more evil than any thing I could have
+feared."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean the political struggle between money and numbers, that has so
+seriously manifested itself of late!" exclaimed the quick-minded and
+intelligent Mrs. Bloomfield.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>That</i> has its dangers; but there is still another evil of greater
+magnitude. I allude to the very general disposition to confine political
+discussions to political men. Thus, the private citizen, who should
+presume to discuss a political question, would be deemed fair game for all
+who thought differently from himself. He would be injured in his pocket,
+reputation, domestic happiness, if possible; for, in this respect, America
+is much the most intolerant nation I have ever visited. In all other
+countries, in which discussion is permitted at all, there is at least the
+<i>appearance</i> of fair play, whatever may be done covertly; but here, it
+seems to be sufficient to justify falsehood, frauds, nay, barefaced
+rascality, to establish that the injured party has had the audacity to
+meddle with public questions, not being what the public chooses to call a
+public man. It is scarcely necessary to say that, when such an opinion
+gets to be effective, it must entirely defeat the real intentions of a
+popular government."</p>
+
+<p>"Now you mention it," said Mrs. Bloomfield, "I think I have witnessed
+instances of what you mean."</p>
+
+<p>"Witnessed, dear Mrs. Bloomfield! Instances are to be seen as often as a
+man is found freeman enough to have an opinion independent of party. It is
+not for connecting himself with party that a man is denounced in this
+country, but for daring to connect himself with truth. Party will bear
+with party, but party will not bear with truth. It is in politics as in
+war, regiments or individuals may desert, and they will be received by
+their late enemies with open arms, the honour of a soldier seldom reaching
+to the pass of refusing succour of any sort; but both sides will turn and
+fire on the countrymen who wish merely to defend their homes and
+firesides."</p>
+
+<p>"You draw disagreeable pictures of human nature, Mr. Effingham."</p>
+
+<p>"Merely because they are true, Mrs. Bloomfield. Man is worse than the
+beasts, merely because he has a code of right and wrong, which he never
+respects. They talk of the variation of the compass, and even pretend to
+calculate its changes, though no one can explain the principle that causes
+the attraction or its vagaries at all. So it is with men; they pretend to
+look always at the right, though their eyes are constantly directed
+obliquely; and it is a certain calculation to allow of a pretty wide
+variation--but here comes Miss Effingham, singularly well attired, and
+more beautiful than I have ever before seen her!"</p>
+
+<p>The two exchanged quick glances, and then, as if fearful of betraying to
+each other their thoughts, they moved towards our heroine, to do the
+honours of the reception.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Chapter XXVI.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>&nbsp&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  "Haply, when I shall wed,<br />
+That lord, whose hand must take my plight, shall carry<br />
+Half my love with him, half my care and duty."</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>  CORDELIA.</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>As no man could be more gracefully or delicately polite than John
+Effingham, when the humour seized him, Mrs. Bloomfield was struck with the
+kind and gentleman-like manner with which he met his young kinswoman on
+this trying occasion, and the affectionate tones of his voice, and the
+winning expression of his eye, as he addressed her. Eve herself was not
+unobservant of these peculiarities, nor was she slow in comprehending the
+reason. She perceived at once that he was acquainted with the state of
+things between her and Paul. As she well knew the womanly fidelity of Mrs.
+Bloomfield, she rightly enough conjectured that the long observation of
+her cousin, coupled with the few words accidentally overheard that evening
+had even made him better acquainted with the true condition of her
+feelings, than was the case with the friend with whom she had so lately
+been conversing on the subject.</p>
+
+<p>Still Eve was not embarrassed by the conviction that her secret was
+betrayed to so many persons. Her attachment to Paul was not the impulse of
+girlish caprice, but the warm affection of a woman, that had grown with
+time, was sanctioned by her reason, and which, if it was tinctured with
+the more glowing imagination and ample faith of youth, was also sustained
+by her principles and her sense of right. She knew that both her father
+and cousin esteemed the man of her own choice, nor did she believe the
+little cloud that, hung over his birth could do more than have a temporary
+influence on his own sensitive feelings. She met John Effingham,
+therefore, with a frank composure, returned the kind pressure of his hand,
+with a smile such as a daughter might bestow on an affectionate parent,
+and turned to salute the remainder of the party, with that lady-like ease
+which had got to be a part of her nature.</p>
+
+<p>"There goes one of the most attractive pictures that humanity can offer,"
+said John Effingham to Mrs. Bloomfield, as Eve walked away; "a young,
+timid, modest, sensitive girl, so strong in her principles, so conscious
+of rectitude, so pure of thought, and so warm in her affections, that she
+views her selection of a husband, as others view their acts of duty and
+religious faith. With her love has no shame, as it has no weakness."</p>
+
+<p>"Eve Effingham is as faultless as comports with womanhood; and yet I
+confess ignorance of my own sex, if she receive Mr. Powis as calmly as she
+received her cousin."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps not, for in that case, she could scarcely feel the passion. You
+perceive that he avoids oppressing her with his notice, and that the
+meeting passes off without embarrassment. I do believe there is an
+elevating principle in love, that, by causing us to wish to be worthy of
+the object most prized, produces the desired effects by stimulating
+exertion. There, now, are two as perfect beings as one ordinarily meets
+with, each oppressed by a sense of his or her unworthiness to be the
+choice of the other."</p>
+
+<p>"Does love, then, teach humility; successful love too?"</p>
+
+<p>"Does it not? It would be hardly fair to press this matter on you, a
+married woman; for, by the pandects of American society, a man may
+philosophize on love, prattle about it, trifle on the subject, and even
+analyze the passion with, a miss in her teens, and yet he shall not
+allude to it, in a discourse with a matron. Well, <i>chacun &agrave; son go&ucirc;t</i>; we
+are, indeed, a little peculiar in our usages, and have promoted a good
+deal of village coquetry, and the flirtations of the may-pole, to the
+drawing-room."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it not better that such follies should be confined to youth, than that
+they should invade the sanctity of married life, as I understand is too
+much the case elsewhere?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps so; though I confess it is easier to dispose of a
+straight-forward proposition from a mother, a father, or a commissioned
+friend, than to get rid of a young lady, who, <i>propri&acirc; person&acirc;</i>, angles on
+her own account. While abroad, I had a dozen proposals--"</p>
+
+<p>"Proposals!" exclaimed Mrs. Bloomfield, holding up both hands, and shaking
+her head incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>"Proposals! Why not, ma'am?--am I more than fifty? am I not reasonably
+youthful for that period of life, and have I not six or eight thousand a
+year--"</p>
+
+<p>"Eighteen, or you are much scandalized."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, eighteen, if you will," coolly returned the other, in whose eyes
+money was no merit, for he was born to a fortune, and always treated it as
+a means, and not as the end of life; "every dollar is a magnet, after one
+has turned forty. Do you suppose that a single man, of tolerable person,
+well-born, and with a hundred thousand francs of <i>rentes</i>, could entirely
+escape proposals from the ladies in Europe?"</p>
+
+<p>"This is so revolting to all our American notions, that, though I have
+often heard of such things, I have always found it difficult to believe
+them!"</p>
+
+<p>"And is it more revolting for the friends of young ladies to look out for
+them, on such occasions, than that the young ladies should take the affair
+into their own hands, as is practised quite as openly, here?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is well you are a confirmed bachelor, or declarations like these would
+mar your fortunes. I will admit that the school is not as retiring and
+diffident as formerly; for we are all ready enough to say that no times
+are egual to our own times; but I shall strenuously protest against your
+interpretation of the nature and artlessness of an American girl."</p>
+
+<p>"Artlessness!" repeated John Effingham, with a slight lifting of the
+eye-brows; "we live in an age when new dictionaries and vocabularies are
+necessary to understand each other's meaning. It is artlessness, with a
+vengeance, to beset an old fellow of fifty, as one would besiege a town.
+Hist!--Ned is retiring with his daughter, my dear Mrs. Bloomfield, and it
+will not be long before I shall be summoned to a family council. Well, we
+will keep the secret until it is publicly proclaimed."</p>
+
+<p>John Effingham was right, for his two cousins left the room together, and
+retired to the library, but in a way to attract no particular attention,
+except in those who were enlightened on the subject of what had already
+passed that evening. When they were alone, Mr. Effingham turned the key,
+and then he gave a free vent to his paternal feelings.</p>
+
+<p>Between Eve and her parent, there had always existed a confidence
+exceeding that which it is common to find between father and daughter. In
+one sense, they had been all in all to each other, and Eve had never
+hesitated about pouring those feelings into his breast, which, had she
+possessed another parent, would more naturally have been confided to the
+affection of a mother. When their eyes first met, therefore, they were
+mutually beaming with an expression of confidence and love, such as might,
+in a measure, have been expected between two of the gentler sex. Mr
+Effingham folded his child to his heart, pressed her there tenderly for
+near a minute in silence, and then kissing her burning cheek he permitted
+her to look up.</p>
+
+<p>"This answers all my fondest hopes, Eve"--he exclaimed; "fulfils my most
+cherished wishes for thy sake."</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest sir!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my love, I have long secretly prayed that such might be your good
+fortune; for, of all the youths we have met, at home or abroad, Paul Powis
+is the one to whom I can consign you with the most confidence that he will
+cherish and love you as you deserve to be cherished and loved!"</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest father, nothing but this was wanting to complete my perfect
+happiness."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Effingham kissed his daughter again, and he was then enabled to pursue
+the conversation with greater composure.</p>
+
+<p>"Powis and I have had a full explanation," he said, "though in order to
+obtain it, I have been obliged to give him strong encouragement"</p>
+
+<p>"Father!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, my love, your delicacy and feelings nave been sufficiently
+respected, but he has so much diffidence of himself, and permits the
+unpleasant circumstances connected with his birth to weigh so much on his
+mind, that I have been compelled to tell him, what I am sure you will
+approve, that we disregard family connections, and look only to the merit
+of the individual."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope, father, nothing was said to give Mr. Powis reason to suppose we
+did not deem him every way our equal."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not. He is a gentleman, and I can claim to be no more. There is
+but one thing in which connections ought to influence an American
+marriage, where the parties are suited to each other in the main
+requisites, and that is to ascertain that neither should be carried,
+necessarily, into associations for which their habits have given them too
+much and too good tastes to enter into. A <i>woman</i>, especially, ought never
+to be transplanted from a polished to an unpolished circle; for, when this
+is the case, if really a lady, there will be a dangerous clog on her
+affection for her husband. This one great point assured, I see no other
+about which a parent need feel concern."</p>
+
+<p>"Powis, unhappily, has no connections in this country; or none with whom
+he has any communications; and those he has in England are of a class to
+do him credit."</p>
+
+<p>"We have been conversing of this, and he has manifested so much proper
+feeling that it has even raised him in my esteem. I knew his father's
+family, and must have known his father, I think, though there were two or
+three Asshetons of the name of John. It is a highly respectable family of
+the middle states, and belonged formerly to the colonial aristocracy. Jack
+Effingham's mother was an Assheton."</p>
+
+<p>"Of the same blood, do you think, sir? I remembered this when Mr. Powis
+mentioned his father's name, and intended to question cousin Jack on the
+subject."</p>
+
+<p>"Now you speak of it, Eve, there <i>must</i> be a relationship between them. Do
+you suppose that our kinsman is acquainted with the fact that Paul is, in
+truth, an Assheton?"</p>
+
+<p>Eve told her father that she had never spoken with their relative on the
+subject, at all.</p>
+
+<p>Then ring the bell and we will ascertain at once how far my conjecture is
+true. You can have no false delicacy, my child, about letting your
+engagement be known to one as near and as dear to us, as John."</p>
+
+<p>"Engagement, father!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, engagement," returned the smiling parent, "for such I already deem
+it. I have ventured, in your behalf, to plight your troth to Paul Powis,
+or what is almost equal to it; and in return I can give you back as many
+protestations of unequalled fidelity, and eternal constancy, as any
+reasonable girl can ask."</p>
+
+<p>Eve gazed at her lather in a way to show that reproach was mingled with
+fondness, for she felt that, in this instance, too much of the
+precipitation of the other sex had been manifested in her affairs; still,
+superior to coquetry and affectation, and much too warm in her attachments
+to be seriously hurt, she kissed the hand she held, shook her head
+reproachfully, even while she smiled, and did as had been desired.</p>
+
+<p>"You have, indeed, rendered it important to us to know more of Mr. Powis,
+my beloved father," she said, as she returned to her seat, "though I could
+wish matters had not proceeded quite so fast."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, all I promised was conditional, and dependent on yourself. You have
+nothing to do, if I have said too much, but to refuse to ratify the treaty
+made by your negotiator."</p>
+
+<p>"You propose an impossibility,", said Eve, taking the hand, again, that
+she had so lately relinquished, and pressing it warmly between her own;
+"the negotiator is too much revered, has too strong a right to command,
+and is too much confided in to be thus dishonoured. Father, I <i>will</i>, I
+<i>do</i>, ratify all you <i>have</i>, all you <i>can</i> promise in my behalf."</p>
+
+<p>"Even, if I annul the treaty, darling?"</p>
+
+<p>"Even, in that case, father. I will marry none without your consent, and
+have so absolute a confidence in your tender care of me, that I do not
+even hesitate to say, I will marry him to whom you contract me."</p>
+
+<p>"Bless you, bless you, Eve; I do believe you, for such have I ever found
+you, since thought has had any control over your actions. Desire Mr. John
+Effingham to come hither"--then, as the servant closed the door, he
+continued,--"and such I believe you will continue to be until your dying
+day."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, reckless, careless father, you forget that you yourself have been
+instrumental in transferring my duty and obedience to another. What if
+this sea-monster should prove a tyrant, throw off the mask, and show
+himself in his real colours? Are you prepared, then, thoughtless,
+precipitate, parent"--Eve kissed Mr, Effingham's cheek with childish
+playfulness, as she spoke, her heart swelling with happiness the whole
+time, "to preach obedience where obedience would then be due?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, precious--I hear the step of Jack; he must not catch us fooling in
+this manner."</p>
+
+<p>Eve rose; and when her kinsman entered the room, she held out her hand
+kindly to him, though it was with an averted face and a tearful eye.</p>
+
+<p>"It is time I was summoned," said John Effingham, after he had drawn the
+blushing girl to him and kissed her forehead, "for what between <i>t&ecirc;te &agrave;
+t&ecirc;tes</i> with young fellows, and <i>t&ecirc;te &agrave; t&ecirc;tes</i> with old fellows, this
+evening, I began to think myself neglected. I hope I am still in time to
+render my decided disapprobation available?"</p>
+
+<p>"Cousin Jack!" exclaimed Eve, with a look of reproachful mockery, "<i>you</i>
+are the last person who ought to speak of disapprobation, for you have
+done little else but sing the praises of the applicant, since you first
+met him."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it even so? then, like others, I must submit to the consequences of my
+own precipitation and false conclusions. Am I summoned to inquire how many
+thousands a year I shall add to the establishment of the new couple? As I
+hate business, say five at once: and when the papers are ready, I will
+sign them, without reading,"</p>
+
+<p>"Most generous cynic," cried Eve, "I would I dared, now, to ask a single
+question!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ask it without scruple, young lady, for this is the day of your
+independence and power. I am mistaken in the man, if Powis do not prove to
+be the captain of his own ship, in the end."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, in whose behalf is this liberality really meant; mine, or
+that of the gentleman?"</p>
+
+<p>"Fairly enough put," said John Effingham, laughing, again drawing Eve
+towards him and saluting her cheek; "for if I were on the rack, I could
+scarcely say which I love best, although you have the consolation of
+knowing, pert one, that you get the most kisses."</p>
+
+<p>"I am almost in the same state of feeling myself, John, for a son of my
+own could scarcely be dearer to me than Paul."</p>
+
+<p>"I see, indeed, that I <i>must</i> marry," said Eve hastily, dashing the tears
+of delight from her eyes, for what could give more delight than to hear
+the praises of her beloved, "if I wish to retain my place in your
+affections. But, father, we forget the question you were to put to cousin
+Jack."</p>
+
+<p>"True, love. John, your mother was an Assheton?"</p>
+
+<p>"Assuredly, Ned; you are not to learn my pedigree at this time of day, I
+trust."</p>
+
+<p>"We are anxious to make out a relationship between you and Paul; can it
+not be done?"</p>
+
+<p>"I would give half my fortune, Eve consenting, were it so!--What reason is
+there for supposing it probable, or even possible?"</p>
+
+<p>"You know that he bears the name of his friend, and adopted parent, while
+that of his family is really Assheton."</p>
+
+<p>"Assheton!" exclaimed the other, in a way to show that this was the first
+he had ever heard of the fact.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly; and as there is but one family of this name, which is a
+little peculiar in the spelling--for here it is spelt by Paul himself, on
+this card--we have thought that he must be a relation of yours. I hope we
+are not to be disappointed."</p>
+
+<p>"Assheton!--It is, as you say, an unusual name; nor is there more than one
+family that bears it in this country, to my knowledge. Can it be possible
+that Powis is truly an Assheton?"</p>
+
+<p>"Out of all doubt," Eve eagerly exclaimed; "we have it from his own mouth.
+His father was an Assheton, and his mother was--"</p>
+
+<p>"Who!" demanded John Effingham, with a vehemence that startled his
+companions.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, that is more than I can tell you, for he did not mention the family
+name of his mother; as she was a sister of Lady Dunluce, however, who is
+the wife of General Ducie, the father of our guest, it is probable her
+name was Dunluce."</p>
+
+<p>"I remember no relative that has made such a marriage, or who <i>can</i> have
+made such a marriage; and yet do I personally and intimately know every
+Assheton in the country."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Effingham and his daughter looked at each other, for it at once struck
+them all painfully, that there must be Asshetons of another family.</p>
+
+<p>"Were it not for the peculiar manner in which this name is spelled," said
+Mr. Effingham, "I could suppose that there are Asshetons of whom we know
+nothing, but it is difficult to believe that there can be such persons of
+a respectable family of whom we never heard, for Powis said his relatives
+were of the Middle States--"</p>
+
+<p>"And that his mother was called Dunluce?" demanded John Effingham
+earnestly, for he too appeared to wish to discover an affinity between
+himself and Paul.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, father, this I think he did not say; though it is quite probable;
+for the title of his aunt is an ancient barony, and those ancient
+baronies usually became the family name."</p>
+
+<p>"In this you must be mistaken, Eve, since he mentioned that the right was
+derived through his mother's mother, who was an Englishwoman."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not send for him at once, and put the question?" said the
+simple-minded Mr. Effingham; "next to having him for my own son, it would
+give me pleasure, John, to learn that he was lawfully entitled to that
+which I know you have done in his behalf."</p>
+
+<p>"That is impossible," returned John Effingham. "I am an only child, and as
+for cousins through my mother, there are so many who stand in an equal
+degree of affinity to me, that no one in particular can be my heir-at-law.
+If there were, I am an Effingham; my estate came from Effinghams, and to
+an Effingham it should descend in despite of all the Asshetons in
+America."</p>
+
+<p>"Paul Powis included!" exclaimed Eve, raising a finger reproachfully.</p>
+
+<p>"True, to him I have left a legacy; but it was to a Powis, and not to an
+Assheton."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet he declares himself legally an Assheton, and not a Powis."</p>
+
+<p>"Say no more of this, Eve; it is unpleasant to me. I hate the name of
+Assheton, though it was my mother's, and could wish never to hear it
+again."</p>
+
+<p>Eve and her father were mute, for their kinsman, usually so proud and
+self-restrained, spoke with suppressed emotion, and it was plain that, for
+some hidden cause, he felt even more than he expressed. The idea that
+there should be any thing about Paul that could render him an object of
+dislike to one as dear to her as her cousin, was inexpressibly painful to
+the former, and she regretted that the subject had ever been introduced.
+Not so with her father. Simple, direct, and full of truth, Mr. Effingham
+rightly enough believed that mysteries in a family could lead to no good,
+and he repeated his proposal of sending for Paul, and having the matter
+cleared up at once.</p>
+
+<p>"You are too reasonable, Jack," he concluded, "to let an antipathy against
+a name that was your mother's, interfere with your sense of right. I know
+that some unpleasant questions arose concerning your succession to my
+aunt's fortune, but that was all settled in your favour twenty years ago,
+and I had thought to your entire satisfaction."</p>
+
+<p>"Unhappily, family quarrels are ever the most bitter, and usually they are
+the least reconcileable," returned John Effingham, evasively.--"I would
+that this young man's name were any thing but Assheton! I do not wish to
+see Eve plighting her faith at the altar, to any one bearing that,
+accursed name!"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall plight my faith, if ever it be done, dear cousin John, to the
+man, and not to his name."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no--he must keep the appellation of Powis by which we have all
+learned to love him, and to which he has done so much credit."</p>
+
+<p>"This is very strange, Jack, for a man who is usually as discreet and as
+well regulated as yourself. I again propose that we send for Paul, and
+ascertain precisely to what branch of this so-much-disliked family he
+really belongs."</p>
+
+<p>"No, father, if you love me, not now!" cried Eve, arresting Mr.
+Effingham's hand as it touched the bell-cord; "it would appear
+distrustful, and even cruel, were we to enter into such an inquiry so
+soon. Powis might think we valued his family, more than we do himself,"</p>
+
+<p>"Eve is right, Ned; but I will not sleep without learning all. There is an
+unfinished examination of the papers left by poor Monday, and I will take
+an occasion to summon Paul to its completion, when an opportunity will
+offer to renew the subject of his own history; for it was at the other
+investigation that he first spoke frankly to me, concerning himself."</p>
+
+<p>"Do so, cousin Jack, and let it be at once," said Eve earnestly. "I can
+trust you with Powis alone, for I know how much you respect and esteem him
+in your heart. See, it is already ten."</p>
+
+<p>"But, he will naturally wish to spend the close of an evening like this
+engaged in investigating something very different from Mr. Monday's tale,"
+returned her cousin; the smile with which he spoke chasing away the look
+of chilled aversion that had so lately darkened his noble features.</p>
+
+<p>"No, not to-night," answered the blushing Eve. "I have confessed weakness
+enough for one day. Tomorrow, if you will--if he will,--but not to-night.
+I shall retire with Mrs. Hawker, who already complains of fatigue; and you
+will send for Powis, to meet you in your own room, without unnecessary
+delay."</p>
+
+<p>Eve kissed John Effingham coaxingly, and as they walked together out of
+the library, she pointed towards the door that led to the chambers. Her
+cousin laughingly complied, and when in his own room, he sent a message to
+Paul to join him.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, indeed, may I call you a kinsman," said John Effingham, rising to
+receive the young man, towards whom he advanced, with extended hands, in
+his most winning manner. "Eve's frankness and your own discernment have
+made us a happy family!"</p>
+
+<p>"If any thing could add to the felicity of being acceptable to Miss
+Effingham," returned Paul, struggling to command his feelings, "it is the
+manner in which her father and yourself have received my poor offers."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we will now speak of it no more. I saw from the first which way
+things were tending, and it was my plain-dealing that opened the eyes of
+Templemore to the impossibility of his ever succeeding, by which means his
+heart has been kept from breaking."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Mr. Effingham, Templemore never loved-Eve Effingham! I thought so
+once, and he thought so, too; but it could not have been a love like
+mine."</p>
+
+<p>"It certainly differed in the essential circumstance of reciprocity,
+which, in itself, singularly qualifies the passion, so far as duration is
+concerned. Templemore did not exactly know the reason why he preferred
+Eve; but, having seen so much of the society in which he lived, I was
+enabled to detect the cause. Accustomed to an elaborate sophistication,
+the singular union of refinement and nature caught his fancy; for the
+English seldom see the last separated from vulgarity; and when it is
+found, softened by a high intelligence and polished manners, it has
+usually great attractions for the <i>bias&eacute;s</i>"
+
+"He is fortunate in having so readily found a substitute for Eve
+Effingham!"</p>
+
+<p>"This change is not unnatural, neither. In the first place, I, with this
+truth-telling 'tongue, destroyed all hope, before he had committed himself
+by a declaration; and then Grace Van Cortlandt possesses the great
+attraction of nature, in a degree quite equal to that of her cousin.
+Besides, Templemore, though a gentleman, and a brave man, and a worthy
+one, is not remarkable for qualities of a very extraordinary kind. He will
+be as happy as is usual for an Englishman of his class to be, and he has
+no particular right to expect more. I sent for you, however, less to talk
+of love, than to trace its unhappy consequences in this affair, revealed
+by the papers of poor Monday. It is time we acquitted ourselves of that
+trust. Do me the favour to open the dressing-case that stands on the
+toilet-table; you will find in it the key that belongs to the bureau,
+where I have placed the secretary that contains the papers."</p>
+
+<p>Paul did as desired. The dressing-case was complicated and large, having
+several compartments, none of which were fastened. In the first opened, he
+saw a miniature of a female so beautiful, that his eve rested on it, as it
+might be, by a fascination.--Notwithstanding some difference produced by
+the fashions of different periods, the resemblance to the object of his
+love, was obvious at a glance. Borne away by the pleasure of the
+discovery, and actually believing that he saw a picture of Eve, drawn in a
+dress that did not in a great degree vary from the present attire, fashion
+having undergone no very striking revolution in the last twenty years, he
+exclaimed--</p>
+
+<p>"This is indeed a treasure, Mr. Effingham, and most sincerely do I envy
+you its possession. It is like, and yet, in some particulars, it is
+unlike--it scarcely does Miss Effingham justice about the nose and
+forehead!"</p>
+
+<p>John Effingham started when he saw the miniature in Paul's hand, but
+recovering himself, he smiled at the eager delusion of his young friend,
+and said with perfect composure--</p>
+
+<p>"It is not Eve, but her mother. The two features you have named in the
+former came from my family; but in all the others, the likeness is almost
+identical."</p>
+
+<p>"This then is Mrs. Effingham!" murmured Paul, gazing on the face of the
+mother of his love, with a respectful melancholy, and an interest that was
+rather heightened than lessened by a knowledge of the truth. "She died
+young, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite; she can scarcely be said to have become an angel too soon, for she
+was always one."</p>
+
+<p>This was said with a feeling that did not escape Paul, though it surprised
+him. There were six or seven miniature-cases in the compartment of the
+dressing-box, and supposing that the one which lay uppermost belonged to
+the miniature in his hand, he raised it, and opened the lid with a view to
+replace the picture of Eve's mother, with a species of pious reverence.
+Instead of finding an empty case, however, another miniature met his eye.
+The exclamation that now escaped the young man was one of delight and
+surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"That must be my grandmother, with whom you are in such raptures, at
+present," said John Effingham, laughing--"I was comparing it yesterday
+with the picture of Eve, which is in the Russia-leather case, that you
+will find somewhere there. I do not wonder, however, at your admiration,
+for she was a beauty in her day, and no woman is fool enough to be painted
+after she grows ugly."</p>
+
+<p>"Not so--not so--Mr. Effingham! This is the miniature I lost in the
+Montauk, and which I had given up as booty to the Arabs. It has,
+doubtless, found its way into your state-room, and has been put among your
+effects by your man, through mistake. It is very precious to me, for it is
+nearly every memorial I possess of my own mother!"</p>
+
+<p>"Your mother!" exclaimed John Effingham rising. "I think there must be
+some mistake, for I examined all those pictures this very morning, and it
+is the first time they have been opened since our arrival from Europe. It
+cannot be the missing picture."</p>
+
+<p>"Mine it is certainly; in that I cannot be mistaken!"</p>
+
+<p>"It would be odd indeed, if one of my grandmothers, for both are there,
+should prove to be your mother.--Powis, will you have the goodness to let
+me see the picture you mean."</p>
+
+<p>Paul brought the miniature and a light, placing both before the eyes of
+his friend.</p>
+
+<p>"That!" exclaimed John Effingham, his voice sounding harsh and unnatural
+to the listener,--"that picture like <i>your</i> mother!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is her miniature--<i>the</i> miniature that was transmitted to me, from
+those who had charge of my childhood. I cannot be mistaken as to the
+countenance, or the dress."</p>
+
+<p>"And your father's name was Assheton?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly--John Assheton, of the Asshetons of Pennsylvania."</p>
+
+<p>John Effingham groaned aloud; when Paul stepped back equally shocked and
+surprised, he saw that the face of his friend was almost livid, and that
+the hand which held the picture shook like the aspen.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you unwell, dear Mr. Effingham?"</p>
+
+<p>"No--no--'tis impossible! This lady never had a child. Powis, you have
+been deceived by some fancied, or some real resemblance. This picture is
+mine, and has not been out of my possession these five and twenty years."</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon me, sir, it is the picture of my mother, and no other; the very
+picture lost in the Montauk."</p>
+
+<p>The gaze that John Effingham cast upon the young man was ghastly; and Paul
+was about to ring the bell, but a gesture of denial prevented him.</p>
+
+<p>"See," said John Effingham, hoarsely, as he touched a spring in the
+setting, and exposed to view the initials of two names interwoven with
+hair--"is this, too, yours?"</p>
+
+<p>Paul looked surprised and disappointed.</p>
+
+<p>"That certainly settles the question; my miniature had no such addition;
+and yet I believe that sweet and pensive countenance to be the face of my
+own beloved mother, and of no one else."</p>
+
+<p>John Effingham struggled to appear calm; and, replacing the pictures, he
+took the key from the dressing case, and, opening the bureau, he took out
+the secretary. This he signed for Powis, who had the key, to open;
+throwing himself into a chair, though every thing was done mechanically,
+as if his mind and body had little or no connection with each other.</p>
+
+<p>"Some accidental resemblance has deceived you as to the miniature," he
+said, while Paul was looking for the proper number among the letters of
+Mr. Monday. "No--no--that <i>cannot</i> be the picture of your mother. She left
+no child. Assheton did you say, was the name of your father?"</p>
+
+<p>"Assheton--John Assheton--about that, at least, there can have been no
+mistake. This is the num her at which we left off--will you, sir, or
+shall I, read?"</p>
+
+<p>The other made a sign for Paul to read; looking, at the same time, as if
+it were impossible for him to discharge that duty himself.</p>
+
+<p>"This is a letter from the woman who appears to have been entrusted with
+the child, to the man Dowse," said Paul, first glancing his eyes over the
+page,--"it appears to be little else but gossip--ha!--what is this, I
+see?"</p>
+
+<p>John Effingham raised himself in his chair, and he sat gazing at Paul, as
+one gazes who expects some extraordinary developement, though of what
+nature he knew not.</p>
+
+<p>"This is a singular passage," Paul continued--"so much so as to need
+elucidation. 'I have taken the child with me to get the picture from the
+jeweller, who has mended the ring, and the little urchin knew it at a
+glance.'"</p>
+
+<p>"What is there remarkable in that? Others beside ourselves have had
+pictures;-and this child knows its own better than you."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Effingham, such a thing occurred to myself! It is one of those early
+events of which I still retain, have ever retained, a vivid recollection.
+Though little more than an infant at the time, well do I recollect to have
+been taken in this manner to a jeweller's, and the delight I felt at
+recovering my mother's picture, that which is now lost, after it had not
+been seen for a month or two."</p>
+
+<p>"Paul Blunt--Powis--Assheton "--said John Effingham, speaking so hoarsely
+as to be nearly unintelligible, "remain here a few minutes--I will rejoin
+you."</p>
+
+<p>John Effingham arose, and, notwithstanding he rallied all his powers, it
+was with extreme difficulty he succeeded in reaching the door, steadily
+rejecting the offered assistance of Paul, who was at a loss what to think
+of so much agitation in a man usually so self-possessed and tranquil.
+When out of the room, John Effingham did better, and he proceeded to the
+library, followed by his own man, whom he had ordered to accompany him
+with a light.</p>
+
+<p>"Desire Captain Ducie to give me the favour of his company for a moment,"
+he then said, motioning to the servant to withdraw. "You will not be
+needed any longer."</p>
+
+<p>It was but a minute before Captain Ducie stood before him. This gentleman
+was instantly struck with the pallid look, and general agitation of the
+person he had come to meet, and he expressed an apprehension that he was
+suddenly taken ill. But a motion of the hand forbade his touching the
+bell-cord, and he waited in silent wonder at the scene which he had been
+so unexpectedly called to witness.</p>
+
+<p>"A glass of that water, if you please, Captain Ducie," said John
+Effingham, endeavouring to smile with gentleman-like courtesy, as he made
+the request, though the effort, caused his countenance to appear ghastly
+again. A little recovered by this beverage, he said more steadily--</p>
+
+<p>"You are the cousin of Powis, Captain Ducie."</p>
+
+<p>"We are sisters' children, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"And your mother is"</p>
+
+<p>"Lady Dunluce--a peeress in her own right."</p>
+
+<p>"But, what--her family name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Her own family name has been sunk in that of my father, the Ducies
+claiming to be as old and as honourable a family, as that from which my
+mother inherits her rank. Indeed the Dunluce barony has gone through so
+many names, by means of females, that I believe there is no intention to
+revive the original appellation of the family which was first summoned."</p>
+
+<p>"You mistake, me--your mother--when she married--was--"</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Warrender."</p>
+
+<p>"I thank you, sir, and will trouble you no longer," returned John
+Effingham, rising and struggling to make his manner second the courtesy of
+his words--"I have troubled you, abruptly--incoherently I fear--your arm--"</p>
+
+<p>Captain Ducie stepped hastily forward, and was just in time to prevent the
+other from falling senseless on the floor, by receiving him in his own
+arms.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Chapter XXVII.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>  "What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,<br />
+That he should weep for her."</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>  HAMLET.</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>The next morning, Paul and Eve were alone in that library which had long
+been the scene of the confidential communications of the Effingham family.
+Eve had been weeping, nor were Paul's eyes entirely free from the signs of
+his having given way to strong sensations. Still happiness beamed in the
+countenance of each, and the timid but affectionate glances with which our
+heroine returned the fond, admiring look of her lover, were any thing but
+distrustful of their future felicity. Her hand was in his, and it was
+often raised to his lips, as they pursued the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"This is so wonderful," exclaimed Eve, after one of the frequent musing
+pauses in which both indulged "that I can scarcely believe myself awake.
+That you Blunt, Powis, Assheton, should, after all, prove an Effingham!</p>
+
+<p>"And I, who have so long thought myself an orphan, should find a living
+father, and he a man like Mr. John Effingham!"</p>
+
+<p>I have long thought that something heavy lay at the honest heart of cousin
+Jack--you will excuse me Powis, but I shall need time to learn to call
+him by a name of greater respect."</p>
+
+<p>"Call him always so, love, for I am certain it would pain him to meet with
+any change in you. He <i>is</i> your cousin Jack"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, he may some day unexpectedly become <i>my</i> father too, as he has so
+wonderfully become yours," rejoined Eve, glancing archly at the glowing
+face of the delighted young man; "and then cousin Jack might prove too
+familiar and disrespectful a term."</p>
+
+<p>"So much stronger does your claim to him appear than mine, that I think,
+when that blessed day shall arrive, Eve, it will convert him into <i>my</i>
+cousin Jack, instead of your father. But call <i>him</i> as you may, why do you
+still insist on calling <i>me</i> Powis?"</p>
+
+<p>"That name will ever be precious in my eyes! You abridge me of my rights,
+in denying me a change of name. Half the young ladies of the country marry
+for the novelty of being called Mrs. Somebody else, instead of the Misses
+they were, while I am condemned to remain Eve Effingham for life."</p>
+
+<p>"If you object to the appellation, I can continue to call myself Powis.
+This has been done so long now as almost to legalize the act."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, no--you are an Effingham, and as an Effingham ought you to be
+known. What a happy lot is mine! Spared even the pain of parting with my
+old friends, at the great occurrence of my life, and finding my married
+home the same as the home of my childhood!"</p>
+
+<p>"I owe every thing to you, Eve, name, happiness, and even a home."</p>
+
+<p>"I know not that. Now that it is known that you are the great-grandson of
+Edward Effingham, I think your chance of possessing the Wigwam would be
+quite equal to my own, even were we to look different ways in quest of
+married happiness. An arrangement of that nature would not be difficult to
+make, as John Effingham might easily compensate a daughter for the loss
+of her house and lands by means of those money-yielding stocks and bonds,
+of which he possesses so many."</p>
+
+<p>"I view it differently. <i>You</i> were Mr.--my father's heir--how strangely
+the word father sounds in unaccustomed ears!--But you were my father's
+chosen heir, and I shall owe to you, dearest, in addition to the treasures
+of your heart and faith, my fortune."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you so very certain of this, ingrate?--Did not Mr. John
+Effingham--cousin Jack--adopt you as his son even before he knew of the
+natural tie that actually exists between you?"</p>
+
+<p>"True, for I perceive that you have been made acquainted with most of that
+which has passed. But I hope, that in telling you his own offer, Mr.--that
+my father did not forget to tell you of the terms on which it was
+accepted?"</p>
+
+<p>"He did you ample justice, or he informed me that you stipulated there
+should be no altering of wills, but that the unworthy heir already chosen,
+should still remain the heir."</p>
+
+<p>"And to this Mr--"</p>
+
+<p>"Cousin Jack," said Eve, laughing, for the laugh comes easy to the
+supremely happy.</p>
+
+<p>"To this cousin Jack assented?"</p>
+
+<p>"Most true, again. The will would not have been altered, for your
+interests were already cared for."</p>
+
+<p>"And at the expense of yours, dearest? Eve!"</p>
+
+<p>"It would have been at the expense of my better feelings, Paul, had it not
+been so. However, that will can never do either harm or good to any, now."</p>
+
+<p>"I trust it will remain unchanged, beloved, that I may owe as much to you
+as possible."</p>
+
+<p>Eve looked kindly at her betrothed, blushed even deeper than the bloom
+which happiness had left on her cheek, and smiled like one who knew more
+than she cared to express.</p>
+
+<p>"What secret meaning is concealed behind the look of portentous
+signification?"</p>
+
+<p>"It means, Powis, that I have done a deed that is almost criminal. I have
+destroyed a will."</p>
+
+<p>"Not my father's!"</p>
+
+<p>"Even so--but it was done in his presence, and if not absolutely with his
+consent, with his knowledge. When he informed me of your superior rights,
+I insisted on its being done, at once, so, should any accident occur, you
+will be heir at law, as a matter of course. Cousin Jack affected
+reluctance, but I believe he slept more sweetly, for the consciousness
+that this act of justice had been done."</p>
+
+<p>"I fear he slept little, as it was; it was long past midnight before I
+left him, and the agitation of his spirits was such as to appear awful in
+the eyes of a son!"</p>
+
+<p>"And the promised explanation is to come, to renew his distress! Why make
+it at all? is it not enough that we are certain that you are his child?
+and for that, have we not the solemn assurance, the declaration of almost
+a dying man!"</p>
+
+<p>"There should be no shade left over my mother's fame. Faults there have
+been, somewhere, but it is painful, oh! how painful! for a child to think
+evil of a mother."</p>
+
+<p>"On this head you are already assured. Your own previous knowledge, and
+John Effingham's distinct declarations, make your mother blameless."</p>
+
+<p>"Beyond question; but this sacrifice must be made to my mother's spirit.
+It is now nine; the breakfast-bell will soon ring, and then we are
+promised the whole of the melancholy tale. Pray with me, Eve, that it may
+be such as will not wound the ear of a son!"</p>
+
+<p>Eve took the hand of Paul within both of hers, and kissed it with a sort
+of holy hope, that in its exhibition caused neither blush nor shame.
+Indeed so bound together were these young hearts, so ample and confiding
+had been the confessions of both, and so pure was their love, that neither
+regarded such a manifestation of feeling, differently from what an
+acknowledgement of a dependence on any other sacred principle would have
+been esteemed. The bell now summoned them to the breakfast-table, and Eve,
+yielding to her sex's timidity, desired Paul to precede her a few minutes,
+that the sanctity of their confidence might not be weakened by the
+observation of profane eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The meal was silent; the discovery of the previous night, which had been
+made known to all in the house, by the declarations of John Effingham as
+soon as he was restored to his senses, Captain Ducie having innocently
+collected those within hearing to his succour, causing a sort of moral
+suspense that weighed on the vivacity if not on the comforts of the whole
+party, the lovers alone excepted.</p>
+
+<p>As profound happiness is seldom talkative, the meal was a silent one,
+then; and when it was ended, they who had no tie of blood with the parties
+most concerned with the revelations of the approaching interview,
+delicately separated, making employments and engagements that left the
+family at perfect liberty; while those who had been previously notified
+that their presence would be acceptable, silently repaired to the
+dressing-room of John Effingham. The latter party was composed of Mr.
+Effingham, Paul, and Eve, only. The first passed into his cousin's
+bed-room, where he had a private conference that lasted half an hour. At
+the end of that time, the two others were summoned to join him.</p>
+
+<p>John Effingham was a strong-minded and a proud man, his governing fault
+being the self-reliance that indisposed him to throw himself on a greater
+power, for the support, guidance, and counsel, that all need. To
+humiliation before God, however, he was not unused, and of late years it
+had got to be frequent with him, and it was only in connexion with his
+fellow-creatures that his repugnance to admitting even of an equality
+existed. He felt how much more just, intuitive, conscientious even, were
+his own views than those of mankind, in general; and he seldom deigned to
+consult with any as to the opinions he ought to entertain, or as to the
+conduct he ought to pursue. It is scarcely necessary to say, that such a
+being was one of strong and engrossing passions, the impulses frequently
+proving too imperious for the affections, or even for principles. The
+scene that he was now compelled to go through, was consequently one of
+sore mortification and self-abasement; and yet, feeling its justice no
+less than its necessity, and having made up his mind to discharge what had
+now become a duty, his very pride of character led him to do it manfully,
+and with no uncalled-for reserves. It was a painful and humiliating task,
+notwithstanding; and it required all the self-command, all the sense of
+right, and all the clear perception of consequences, that one so quick to
+discriminate could not avoid perceiving, to enable him to go through it
+with the required steadiness and connexion.</p>
+
+<p>John Effingham received Paul and Eve, seated in an easy chair; for, while
+he could not be said to be ill, it was evident that his very frame had
+been shaken by the events and emotions of the few preceding hours. He gave
+a hand to each, and, drawing Eve affectionately to him, he imprinted a
+kiss on a cheek that was burning, though it paled and reddened in quick
+succession, the heralds of the tumultuous thoughts within. The look he
+gave Paul was kind and welcome, while a hectic spot glowed on each cheek,
+betraying that his presence excited pain as well as pleasure. A long pause
+succeeded this meeting, when John Effingham broke the silence.</p>
+
+<p>"There can now be no manner of question, my dear Paul," he said, smiling
+affectionately but sadly as he looked at the young man, "about your being
+my son. The letter written by John Assheton to your mother, after the
+separation of your parents, would settle that important point, had not the
+names, and the other facts that have come to our knowledge, already
+convinced me of the precious truth; for precious and very dear to me is
+the knowledge that I am the father of so worthy a child. You must prepare
+yourself to hear things that it will not be pleasant for a son to
+listen--"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no--cousin Jack--<i>dear</i> cousin Jack!" cried Eve, throwing herself
+precipitately into her kinsman's arms, "we will hear nothing of the sort.
+It is sufficient that you are Paul's father, and we wish to know no
+more--will hear no more."</p>
+
+<p>"This is like yourself, Eve, but it will not answer what I conceive to be
+the dictates of duty. Paul had two parents; and not the slightest
+suspicion ought to rest on one of them, in order to spare the feelings of
+the other. In showing me this kindness you are treating Paul
+inconsiderately."</p>
+
+<p>"I beg, dear sir, you will not think too much of me, but entirely consult
+your own judgment--your own sense of--in short, dear father, that you will
+consider yourself before your son."</p>
+
+<p>"I thank you, my children--what a word, and what a novel sensation is
+this, for me, Ned!--I feel all your kindness, but if you would consult my
+peace of mind, and wish me to regain my self-respect, you will allow me to
+disburthen my soul of the weight that oppresses it. This is strong
+language; but, while I have no confessions of deliberate criminality, or
+of positive vice to make, I feel it to be hardly too strong for the facts.
+My tale will be very short, and I crave your patience, Ned, while I expose
+my former weakness to these young people." Here John Effingham paused, as
+if to recollect himself; then he proceeded with a seriousness of manner
+that caused every syllable he uttered to tell on the ears of his
+listeners. "It is well known to your father, Eve, though it will probably
+be new to you," he said, "that I felt a passion for your sainted mother,
+such as few men ever experience for any of your sex. Your father and
+myself were suitors for her favour at the same time, though I can scarcely
+say, Edward, that any feeling of rivalry entered into the competition."</p>
+
+<p>"You do me no more than justice, John, for if the affection of my beloved
+Eve could cause me grief, it was because it brought you pain."</p>
+
+<p>"I had the additional mortification of approving of the choice she made;
+for, certainly, as respected her own happiness, your mother did more
+wisely in confiding it to the regulated, mild, and manly virtues of your
+father, than in placing her hopes on one as eccentric and violent as
+myself."</p>
+
+<p>"This is injustice, John. You may have been positive, and a little stern,
+at times, but never violent, and least of all with a woman."</p>
+
+<p>"Call it what you will, it unfitted me to make one so meek, gentle, and
+yet high-souled, as entirely happy as she deserved to be, and as you did
+make her, while she remained on earth. I had the courage to stay and learn
+that your father was accepted, (though the marriage was deferred two years
+in consideration for my feelings,) and then with a heart, in which
+mortified pride, wounded love, a resentment that was aimed rather against
+myself than against your parents, I quitted home, with a desperate
+determination never to rejoin my family again. This resolution I did not
+own to myself, even, but it lurked in my intentions unowned, festering
+like a mortal disease; and it caused me, when I burst away from the scene
+of happiness of which I had been a compelled witness, to change my name,
+and to make several inconsistent and extravagant arrangements to abandon
+my native country even."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor John!" exclaimed his cousin, involuntarily, "this would have been a
+sad blot on our felicity, had we known it!"</p>
+
+<p>"I was certain of that, even when most writhing under the blow you had so
+unintentionally inflicted, Ned; but the passions are tyrannical and
+inconsistent masters. I took my mother's name, changed my servant, and
+avoided those parts of the country where I was known. At this time, I
+feared for my own reason, and the thought crossed my mind, that by making
+a sudden marriage I might supplant the old passion, which was so near
+destroying me, by some of that gentler affection which seemed to render
+you so blest, Edward."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, John, this was, itself, a temporary tottering of the reasoning
+faculties,"</p>
+
+<p>"It was simply the effect of passions, over which reason had never been
+taught to exercise a sufficient influence. Chance brought me acquainted
+with Miss Warrender, in one of the southern states, and she promised, as I
+fancied, to realize all my wild schemes of happiness and resentment."</p>
+
+<p>"Resentment, John?"</p>
+
+<p>"I fear I must confess it, Edward, though it were anger against myself. I
+first made Miss Warrender's acquaintance as John Assheton, and some months
+had passed before I determined to try the fearful experiment I have
+mentioned. She was young, beautiful, well-born, virtuous and good; if she
+had a fault, it was her high spirit--not high temper, but she was
+high-souled and proud."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God, for this!" burst from the inmost soul of Paul, with
+unrestrainable feeling.</p>
+
+<p>"You have little to apprehend, my son, on the subject of your mother's
+character; if not perfect, she was wanting in no womanly virtue, and
+might, nay ought to have made any reasonable man happy. My offer was
+accepted, for I found her heart disengaged. Miss Warrender was not
+affluent, and, in addition to the other unjustifiable motives that
+influenced me, I thought there would be a satisfaction in believing that
+I had been chosen for myself, rather than for my wealth. Indeed, I had
+got to be distrustful and ungenerous, and then I disliked the confession
+of the weakness that had induced me to change my name. The simple, I might
+almost say, loose laws of this country, on the subject of marriage,
+removed all necessity for explanations, there being no bans nor license
+necessary, and the Christian name only being used in the ceremony. We were
+married, therefore, but I was not so unmindful of the rights of others, as
+to neglect to procure a certificate, under a promise of secrecy, in my own
+name. By going to the place where the ceremony was performed, you will
+also find the marriage of John Effingham and Mildred Warrender duly
+registered in the books of the church to which the officiating clergyman
+belonged. So far, I did what justice required, though, with a motiveless
+infatuation for which I can now hardly account, which <i>cannot</i> be
+accounted for, except by ascribing it to the inconsistent cruelty of
+passion, I concealed my real name from her with whom there should have
+been no concealment. I fancied, I tried to fancy I was no impostor, as I
+was of the family I represented myself to be, by the mother's side; and. I
+wished to believe that my peace would easily be made when I avowed myself
+to be the man I really was. I had found Miss Warrender and her sister
+living with a well-intentioned but weak aunt, and with no male relative to
+make those inquiries which would so naturally have suggested themselves to
+persons of ordinary worldly prudence. It is true, I had become known to
+them under favourable circumstances, and they had good reason to believe
+me an Assheton from some accidental evidence that I possessed, which
+unanswerably proved my affinity to that family, without, betraying my true
+name. But there is so little distrust in this country, that, by keeping at
+a distance from the places in which I was personally known, a life might
+have passed without exposure."</p>
+
+<p>"This was all wrong, dear cousin Jack," said Eve, taking his hand and
+affectionately kissing it, while her face kindled with a sense of her
+sex's rights, "and I should be unfaithful to my womanhood were I to say
+otherwise. You had entered into the most solemn of all human contracts,
+and evil is the omen when such an engagement is veiled by any untruth.
+But, still, one would think you might have been happy with a virtuous and
+affectionate wife!"</p>
+
+<p>"Alas! it is but a hopeless experiment to marry one, while the heart is
+still yearning towards another. Confidence came too late; for, discovering
+my unhappiness, Mildred extorted a tardy confession from me; a confession
+of all but the concealment of the true name; and justly wounded at the
+deception of which she had been the dupe, and yielding to the impulses of
+a high and generous spirit, she announced to me that she was unwilling to
+continue the wife of any man on such terms. We parted, and I hastened into
+the south-western states, where I passed the next twelvemonth in
+travelling, hurrying from place to place, in the vain hope of obtaining
+peace of mind. I plunged into the prairies, and most of the time mentioned
+was lost to me as respects the world, in the company of hunters and
+trappers."</p>
+
+<p>"This, then, explains your knowledge of that section of the country,"
+exclaimed Mr. Effingham, "for which I have never been able to account! We
+thought you among your old friends in Carolina, all that time."</p>
+
+<p>"No one knew where I had secreted myself, for I passed under another
+feigned name, and had no servant, even. I had, however, sent an address to
+Mildred, where a letter would find me; for, I had begun to feel a sincere
+affection for her, though it might not have amounted to passion, and
+looked forward to being reunited, when her wounded feelings had time to
+regain their tranquillity. The obligations of wedlock are too serious to
+be lightly thrown aside, and I felt persuaded that neither of us would be
+satisfied in the end, without discharging the duties of the state into
+which we had entered."</p>
+
+<p>"And why did you not hasten to your poor wife, cousin Jack," Eve
+innocently demanded, "as soon as you returned to the settlements?"</p>
+
+<p>"Alas! my-dear girl, I found letters at St. Louis announcing her death.
+Nothing was said of any child, nor did I in the least suspect that I was
+about to become a father. When Mildred died, I thought all the ties, all
+the obligations, all the traces of my ill-judged marriage were extinct;
+and the course taken by her relations, of whom, in this country, there
+remained very few, left me no inclination to proclaim it. By observing
+silence, I continued to pass as a bachelor, of course; though had there
+been any apparent reason for avowing what had occurred, I think no one who
+knows me, can suppose I would have shrunk from doing so."</p>
+
+<p>"May I inquire, my dear sir," Paul asked, with a timidity of manner that
+betrayed how tenderly he felt it necessary to touch on the subject at
+all--"may I inquire, my dear sir, what course was taken by my mother's
+relatives?"</p>
+
+<p>"I never knew Mr. Warrender, my wife's brother, but he had the reputation
+of being a haughty and exacting man. His letters were not friendly;
+scarcely tolerable; for he affected to believe I had given a false address
+at the west, when I was residing in the middle states, and he threw out
+hints that to me were then inexplicable, but which the letters left with
+me, by Paul, have sufficiently explained. I thought him cruel and
+unfeeling at the time, but he had an excuse for his conduct."</p>
+
+<p>"Which was, sir--?" Paul eagerly inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"I perceive by the letters you have given me, my son, that your mother's
+family had imbibed the opinion, that I was John Assheton, of Lancaster, a
+man of singular humours, who had made an unfortunate marriage in Spain,
+and whose wife, I believe, is still living in Paris, though lost to
+herself and her friends. My kinsman lived retired, and never recovered the
+blow. As he was one of the only persons of the name, who could have
+married your mother, her relatives appear to have taken up the idea that
+he had been guilty of bigamy, and of course that Paul was illegitimate.
+Mr. Warrender, by his letters, appears even to have had an interview with
+this person, and, on mentioning his wife, was rudely repulsed from the
+house. It was a proud family, and Mildred being dead, the concealment of
+the birth of her child was resorted to, as a means of averting a fancied
+disgrace. As for myself, I call the all-seeing eye of God to witness, that
+the thought of my being a parent never crossed my mind, until I learned
+that a John Assheton was the father of Paul, and that the miniature of
+Mildred Warrender, that I received at the period of our engagement, was
+the likeness of his mother. The simple declaration of Captain Ducie
+concerning the family name of his mother, removed all doubt."</p>
+
+<p>"But, cousin Jack, did not the mention of Lady Dunluce, of the Ducies, and
+of Paul's connections, excite curiosity?"</p>
+
+<p>"Concerning what, dear? I could have no curiosity about a child of whose
+existence I was ignorant. I did know that the Warrenders had pretensions
+to both rank and fortune in England, but never heard the title, and cared
+nothing about money that would not probably, be Mildred's. Of General
+Ducie I never even heard, as he married after my separation, and
+subsequently to the receipt of my brother-in-law's letters, I wished to
+forget the existence of the family. I went to Europe, and remained abroad
+seven years and as this was at a time when the continent was closed
+against the English, I was not in a way to hear any thing on the subject.
+On my return, my wife's aunt was dead; the last of my wife's brothers was
+dead; her sister must then have been Mrs. Ducie; no one mentioned the
+Warrenders, all traces of whom were nearly lost in this country, and to me
+the subject was too painful to be either sought or dwelt on. It is a
+curious fact, that, in 1829, during our late visit to the old world, I
+ascended the Nile with General Ducie for a travelling companion. We met at
+Alexandria, and wont to the cataracts and returned in company, He knew me
+as John Effingham, an American traveller of fortune, if of no particular
+merit, and I knew him as an agreeable English general officer. He had the
+reserve of an Englishman of rank, and seldom spoke of his family, and it
+was only on our return, that I found he had letters from his wife, Lady
+Dunluce; but little did I dream that Lady Dunluce was Mabel Warrender. How
+often are we on the very verge of important information, and yet live on
+in ignorance and obscurity! The Ducies appear finally to have arrived at
+the opinion that the marriage was legal, and that no reproach rests on the
+birth of Paul, by the inquiries made concerning the eccentric John
+Assheton."</p>
+
+<p>"They fancied, in common with my uncle Warrender, for a long time, that
+the John Assheton whom you have mentioned, sir," said Paul, "was my
+father. But. some accidental information, at a late day, convinced them of
+their error, and then they naturally enough supposed that it was the only
+other John Assheton that could be heard of, who passes, and probably with
+sufficient reason, for a bachelor. This latter gentleman I have myself
+always supposed to be my father, though he has treated two or three
+letters I have written to him, with the indifference with which one would
+be apt to treat the pretensions of an impostor. Pride has prevented me
+from attempting to renew the correspondence lately."</p>
+
+<p>"It is John Assheton of Bristol, my mother's brother's son, as inveterate
+a bachelor as is to be found in the Union" said John Effingham, smiling,
+in spite of the grave subject and deep emotions that had so lately been
+uppermost in his thoughts. "He must have supposed your letters were an
+attempt at mystification on the part of some of his jocular associates,
+and I am surprised that he thought it necessary to answer them at all."</p>
+
+<p>"He did answer but one, and that reply certainly had something of the
+character you suggest, sir. I freely forgive him, now I understand the
+truth, though his apparent contempt gave me many a bitter pang at the
+time. I saw Mr. Assheton once in public, and observed him well, for,
+strange as it is, I have been thought to resemble him."</p>
+
+<p>"Why strange? Jack Assheton and myself have, or rather had a strong family
+likeness to each other, and, though the thought is new to me, I can now
+easily trace this resemblance to myself. It is rather an Assheton than an
+Effingham look, though the latter is not wanting."</p>
+
+<p>"These explanations are very clear and satisfactory," observed Mr.
+Effingham, "and leave little doubt that Paul is the child of John
+Effingham and Mildred Warrender; but they would be beyond all cavil, were
+the infancy of the boy placed in an equally plain point of view, and could
+the reasons be known why the Warrenders abandoned him to the care of those
+who yielded him up to Mr. Powis."</p>
+
+<p>"I see but little obscurity in that," returned John Effingham. "Paul is
+unquestionably the child referred to in the papers left by poor Monday, to
+the care of whose mother he was intrusted, until, in his fourth year, she
+yielded him to Mr. Powis, to get rid of trouble and expense, while she
+kept the annuity granted by Lady Dunluce. The names appear in the
+concluding letters; and had we read the latter through at first, we should
+earlier have arrived at, the same conclusion, Could we find the man called
+Dowse, who appears to have instigated the fraud, and who married Mrs.
+Monday, the whole thing would be explained."</p>
+
+<p>"Of this I am aware," said Paul, for he and John Effingham had perused the
+remainder of the Monday papers together, after the fainting fit of the
+latter, as soon as his strength would admit; "and Captain Truck is now
+searching for an old passenger of his, who I think will furnish the clue.
+Should we get this evidence, it would settle all legal questions."</p>
+
+<p>"Such questions will never be raised," said John Effingham, holding out
+his hand affectionately to his son; "you possess the marriage certificate
+given to your mother, and I avow myself to have been the person therein
+styled John Assheton. This fact I have endorsed on the back of the
+certificate; while here is another given to me in my proper name, with the
+endorsement made by the clergyman that I passed by another name, at the
+ceremony."</p>
+
+<p>"Such a man, cousin Jack, was unworthy of his cloth!" said Eve with
+energy.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not think so, my child. He was innocent of the original deception;
+this certificate was given after the death of my wife, and might do good,
+whereas it could do no harm. The clergyman in question is now a bishop,
+and is still living. He may give evidence if necessary, to the legality of
+the marriage."</p>
+
+<p>"And the clergyman by whom I was baptized is also alive," cried Paul, "and
+has never lost sight of me He was, in part, in the confidence of my
+mother' family, and even after I was adopted by Mr. Powis he kept me in
+view as one of his little Christians as he termed me. It was no less a
+person than Dr.----."</p>
+
+<p>"This alone would make out the connection and identity," said Mr.
+Effingham, "without the aid of the Monday witnesses. The whole obscurity
+has arisen from John's change of name, and his ignorance of the fact that
+his wife had a child. The Ducies appear to have had plausible reasons,
+too, for distrusting the legality of the marriage; but all is now clear,
+and as a large estate is concerned, we will take care that no further
+obscurity shall rest over the affair."</p>
+
+<p>"The part connected with the estate is already secured," said John
+Effingham, looking at Eve with a smile. "An American can always make a
+will, and one that contains but a single bequest is soon written. Mine is
+executed, and Paul Effingham, my son by my marriage with Mildred
+Warrender, and lately known in the United States' Navy as Paul Powis, is
+duly declared my heir. This will suffice for all legal purposes, though we
+shall have large draughts of gossip to swallow."</p>
+
+<p>"Cousin Jack!"</p>
+
+<p>"Daughter Eve!"</p>
+
+<p>"Who has given cause for it?"</p>
+
+<p>"He who commenced one of the most sacred of his earthly duties, with an
+unjustifiable deception. The wisest way to meet it, will be to make our
+avowals of the relationship as open as possible."</p>
+
+<p>"I see no necessity, John, of entering into details," said Mr. Effingham;
+"you were married young, and lost your wife within a year of your
+marriage. She was a Miss Warrender, and the sister of Lady Dunluce; Paul
+and Ducie are declared cousins, and the former proves to be your son, of
+whose existence you were ignorant. No one will presume to question any of
+us, and it really strikes me that all rational people ought to be
+satisfied with this simple account of the matter."</p>
+
+<p>"Father!" exclaimed Eve, with her pretty little hands raised in the
+attitude of surprise, "in what capital even, in what part of the world,
+would such a naked account appease curiosity? Much less will it suffice
+here, where every human being, gentle or simple, learned or ignorant,
+refined or vulgar, fancies himself a constitutional judge of all the acts
+of all his fellow-creatures?"</p>
+
+<p>"We have at least the consolation of knowing that no revelations will
+make the matter any worse, or any better," said Paul, "as the gossips
+would tell their own tale, in every case, though its falsehood were as
+apparent as the noon-day sun. A gossip is essentially a liar, and truth is
+the last ingredient that is deemed necessary to his other qualifications;
+indeed, a well authenticated fact is a death-blow to a gossip. I hope, my
+dear sir, you will say no more than that I am your son, a circumstance
+much too precious to me to be omitted."</p>
+
+<p>John Effingham looked affectionately at the noble young man, whom he had
+so long esteemed and admired; and the tears forced themselves to his eyes,
+as he felt the supreme happiness that can alone gladden a parent's heart.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Chapter XXVIII.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>  "For my part, I care not: I say little; but when the time comes, there
+  shall be smiles."--NYM.</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>Although Paul Effingham was right, and Eve Effingham was also right, in
+their opinions of the art of gossiping, they both forgot one qualifying
+circumstance, that, arising from different causes, produces the same
+effect, equally in a capital and in a province. In the first, marvels form
+a nine days' wonder from the hurry of events; in the latter, from the
+hurry of talking. When it was announced in Templeton that Mr. John
+Effingham had discovered a son in Mr. Powis, as that son had conjectured,
+every thing but the truth was rumoured and believed, in connection with
+the circumstance. Of course it excited a good deal of a natural and
+justifiable curiosity and surprise in the trained and intelligent, for
+John Effingham had passed for a confirmed bachelor; but they were
+generally content to suffer a family to have feelings and incidents that
+were not to be paraded before a neighbourhood. Having some notions
+themselves of the delicacy and sanctity of the domestic affections, they
+were willing to respect the same sentiments in others. But these few
+excepted, the village was in a tumult of surmises, reports,
+contradictions, confirmations, rebutters, and sur-rebutters, for a
+fortnight. Several village <i>&eacute;l&eacute;gants</i>, whose notions of life were obtained
+in the valley in which they were born, and who had turned up their noses
+at the quiet, reserved, gentleman-like Paul, because he did not happen to
+suit their tastes, were disposed to resent his claim to be his father's
+son, as if it were an injustice done to their rights; such commentators on
+men and things uniformly bringing every thing down to the standard of
+serf. Then the approaching marriages at the Wigwam had to run the
+gauntlet, not only of village and county criticisms, but that of the
+mighty Emporium itself, as it is the fashion to call the confused and
+tasteless collection of flaring red brick houses, marten-box churches, and
+colossal taverns, that stands on the island of Manhattan; the discussion
+of marriages being a topic of never-ending interest in that well regulated
+social organization, after the subjects of dollars, lots, and wines, have
+been duly exhausted. Sir George Templemore was transformed into the
+Honourable Lord George Templemore, and Paul's relationship to Lady Dunluce
+was converted, as usual, into his being the heir apparent of a Duchy of
+that name; Eve's preference for a nobleman, as a matter of course, to the
+<i>aristocratical</i> tastes imbibed during a residence in foreign countries;
+Eve, the intellectual, feminine, instructed Eve, whose European
+associations, while they had taught her to prize the refinement, grace,
+<i>retenue</i>, and tone of an advanced condition of society, had also taught
+her to despise its mere covering and glitter! But, as there is no
+protection against falsehood, so is there no reasoning with ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>A sacred few, at the head of whom were Mr. Steadfast Dodge and Mrs.
+Widow-Bewitched Abbott, treated the matter as one of greater gravity, and
+as possessing an engrossing interest for the entire community.</p>
+
+<p>"For my part, Mr. Dodge," said Mrs. Abbott, in one of their frequent
+conferences, about a fortnight after the <i>&eacute;claircissement</i> of the last
+chapter, "I do not believe that Paul Powis is Paul Effingham at all. You
+say that you knew him by the name of Blunt when he was a younger man?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, ma'am. He passed universally by that name formerly, and it may
+be considered as at least extraordinary that he should have had so many
+aliases. The truth of the matter is, Mrs. Abbott, if truth could be come
+at, which I always contend is very difficult in the present state of the
+world--"</p>
+
+<p>"You never said a juster thing, Mr. Dodge!" interrupted the lady, feelings
+impetuous as hers seldom waiting for the completion of a sentence, "I
+never can get hold of the truth of any thing now; you may remember you
+insinuated that Mr. John Effingham himself was to be married to Eve, and,
+lo and behold! it turns out to be his son!"</p>
+
+<p>"The lady may have changed her mind, Mrs. Abbott: she gets the same estate
+with a younger man."</p>
+
+<p>"She's monstrous disagreeable, and I'm sure it will be a relief to the
+whole village when she is married, let it be to the father, or to the son.
+Now, do you know, Mr. Dodge, I have been in a desperate taking about one
+thing, and that is to find that, bony fie-dy, the two old Effinghams are
+not actually brothers! I knew that they <i>called</i> each other cousin Jack
+and cousin Ned, and that Eve affected to call her uncle <i>cousin</i> Jack, but
+then she has so many affectations, and the people are so foreign, that I
+looked upon all that as mere pretence; I said to myself a neighbourhood
+<i>ought</i> to know better about a man's family than he <i>can</i> know himself,
+and the neighbourhood all declared they were brothers; and yet it turns
+out, after all, that they are only cousins!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I do believe that, for once, the family was right in that matter,
+and the public mistaken."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I should like to know who has a better right to be mistaken than
+the public, Mr. Dodge. This is a free country, and if the people can't
+sometimes be wrong, what is the mighty use of their freedom? We are all
+sinful wretches, at the best, and it is vain to look for any thing but
+vice from sinners."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, my dear Mrs. Abbott, you are too hard on yourself, for every body
+allows that <i>you</i> are as exemplary as you are devoted to your religious
+duties."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I was not speaking particularly of myself, sir; I am no egotist in
+such things, and wish to leave my own imperfections to the charity of my
+friends and neighbours. But, do you think, Mr. Dodge, that a marriage
+between Paul Effingham, for so I suppose he must be-called, and Eve
+Effingham, will be legal? Can't it be set aside, and if that should be the
+case, wouldn't the fortune go to the public?"</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>ought</i> to be so, my dear ma'am, and I trust the day is not distant
+when it will be so. The people are beginning to understand their rights,
+and another century will not pass, before they will enforce them by the
+necessary penal statutes. We have got matters so now, that a man can no
+longer indulge in the aristocratic and selfish desire to make a will, and,
+take my word for it, we shall not stop until we bring every thing to the
+proper standard."</p>
+
+<p>The reader is not to suppose from his language that Mr. Dodge was an
+agrarian, or that he looked forward to a division of property, at some
+future day; for, possessing in his own person already, more than what
+could possibly fall to an individual share, he had not the smallest
+desire to lessen its amount by a general division. In point of fact he did
+not know his own meaning, except as he felt envy of all above him, in
+which, in truth, was to be found the whole secret of his principles, his
+impulses, and his doctrines. Any thing that would pull down those whom
+education, habits, fortune, or tastes, had placed in positions more
+conspicuous than his own, was, in his eyes, reasonable and just--as any
+thing that would serve him, in person, the same ill turn, would have been
+tyranny and oppression. The institutions of America, like every thing
+human, have their bad as well as their good side; and while we firmly
+believe in the relative superiority of the latter, as compared with other
+systems, we should fail of accomplishing the end set before us in this
+work, did we not exhibit, in strong colours, one of the most prominent
+consequences that has attended the entire destruction of factitious
+personal distinctions in the country, which has certainly aided in
+bringing out in bolder relief than common, the prevalent disposition in
+man to covet that which is the possession of another, and to decry merits
+that are unattainable.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I rejoice to hear this," returned Mrs. Abbott, whose principles
+were of the same loose school as those of her companion, "for I think no
+one should have rights but those who have experienced religion, if you
+would keep vital religion in a country. There goes that old sea-lion,
+Truck, and his fishing associate, the commodore, with their lines and
+poles, as usual, Mr. Dodge; I beg you will call to them, for I long to
+hear what the first can have to say about his beloved Effinghams, now?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Dodge complied, and the navigator of the ocean and the navigator of
+the lake, were soon seated in Mrs. Abbott's little parlour, which might be
+styled the focus of gossip, near those who were so lately its sole
+occupants.</p>
+
+<p>"This is wonderful news, gentlemen," commenced Mrs. Abbott, as soon as
+the bustle of the entrance had subsided. "Mr. Powis is Mr. Effingham, and
+it seems that Miss Effingham is to become Mrs. Effingham. Miracles will
+never cease, and I look upon this as one of the most surprising of my
+time."</p>
+
+<p>"Just so, ma'am," said the commodore, winking his eye, and giving the
+usual flourish with a hand; "your time has not been that of a day neither,
+and Mr. Powis has reason to rejoice that he is the hero of such a history.
+For my part, I could not have been more astonished, were I to bring up the
+sogdollager with a trout-hook, having a cheese paring for the bait."</p>
+
+<p>"I understand," continued the lady, "that there are doubts after all,
+whether this miracle be really a true miracle. It is hinted that Mr. Powis
+is neither Mr. Effingham nor Mr. Powis, but that he is actually a Mr.
+Blunt. Do you happen to know any thing of the matter, Captain Truck?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have been introduced to him, ma'am, by all three names, and I consider
+him as an acquaintance in each character. I can assure you, moreover, that
+he is A, No. 1, on whichever tack you take him; a man who carries a
+weather helm in the midst of his enemies."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I do not consider it a very great recommendation for one to have
+enemies, at all. Now, I dare say, Mr. Dodge, <i>you</i> have not an enemy on
+earth!"</p>
+
+<p>"I should be sorry to think that I had, Mrs. Abbott. I am every man's
+friend, particularly the poor man's friend, and I should suppose that
+every man <i>ought</i> to be my friend. I hold the whole human family to be
+brethren, and that they ought to live together as such."</p>
+
+<p>"Very true, sir; quite true--we <i>are</i> all sinners, and ought to look
+favourably on each other's failings. It is no business of mine--I say it
+is no business of ours, Mr. Dodge, who Miss Eve Effingham marries; but
+were she <i>my</i> daughter, I do think I should not like her to have three
+family names, and to keep her own in the bargain!"</p>
+
+<p>"The Effinghams hold their heads very much up, though it is not easy to
+see <i>why</i>; but so they do, and the more names the better, perhaps, for
+such people," returned the editor. "For my part, I treat them with
+condescension, just as I do every body else; for it is a rule with me,
+Captain Truck, to make use of the same deportment to a king on his throne,
+as I would to a beggar in the street."</p>
+
+<p>"Merely to show that you do not feel yourself to be above your betters. We
+have many such philosophers in this country."</p>
+
+<p>"Just so," said the commodore.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I knew," resumed Mrs. Abbott; for there existed in her head, as
+well as in that of Mr. Dodge, such a total confusion on the subject of
+deportment, that neither saw nor felt the cool sarcasm of the old sailor;
+"I wish I knew, now, whether Eve Effingham has really been regenerated!
+What is your opinion, commodore?"</p>
+
+<p>"Re-what, ma'am," said the commodore, who was not conscious of ever having
+heard the word before; for, in his Sabbaths on the water, where he often
+worshipped God devoutly in his heart, the language of the professedly
+pious was never heard; "I can only say she is as pretty a skiff as floats,
+but I can tell you nothing about resuscitation--indeed, I never heard of
+her having been drowned."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Mrs. Abbott, the very best friends of the Effinghams will not
+maintain that they are pious. I do not wish to be invidious, or to say
+unneighbourly things; but were I upon oath, I could testify to a great
+many things, which would unqualifiedly show, that none of them have ever
+experienced."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Mr. Dodge, you know how much I dislike scandal," the widow-bewitched
+cried affectedly, "and I cannot tolerate such a sweeping charge. I insist
+on the proofs of what you say, in which, no doubt, these gentlemen will
+join me."</p>
+
+<p>By proofs, Mrs. Abbott meant allegations.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, ma'am, since you insist on my <i>proving</i> what I have said, you shall
+not be disappointed. In the first place, then, they <i>read</i> their family
+prayers out of a book."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, ay," put in the captain; "but that merely shows they have some
+education; it is done every where."</p>
+
+<p>"Your pardon, sir; no people but the Catholics and the church people
+commit this impiety. The idea of <i>reading</i> to the Deity, Mrs. Abbott, is
+particularly shocking to a pious soul."</p>
+
+<p>"As if the Lord stood in need of letters! <i>That</i> is very bad, I allow; for
+at <i>family</i> prayers, a form becomes mockery."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'am; but what do you think of cards?"</p>
+
+<p>"Cards!" exclaimed Mrs. Abbott, holding up her pious hands, in holy
+horror.</p>
+
+<p>"Even so; foul paste-board, marked with kings and queens," said the
+captain. Why this is worse than a common sin, being unqualifiedly
+anti-republican."</p>
+
+<p>"I confess I did not expect-this! I had heard that Eve Effingham was
+guilty of indiscretions, but I did not think she was so lost to virtue, as
+to touch a card. Oh! Eve Effingham; Eve Effingham, for what is your poor
+diseased soul destined!"</p>
+
+<p>"She dances, too, I suppose you know that," continued Mr. Dodge, who
+finding his popularity a little on the wane, had joined the meeting
+himself, a few weeks before, and who did not fail to manifest the zeal of
+a new convert.</p>
+
+<p>"Dances!" repeated Mrs. Abbott, in holy horror.</p>
+
+<p>"Real fi diddle de di!" echoed Captain Truck.</p>
+
+<p>"Just so," put in the commodore; "I have seen it with my own eyes. But,
+Mrs. Abbott, I feel bound to tell you that your own daughter--"</p>
+
+<p>"Biansy-Alzumy-Anne!" exclaimed the mother in alarm.</p>
+
+<p>"Just so; my-aunty-all-suit-me-anne, if that is her name. Do you know,
+ma'am, that I have seen your own blessed daughter, my-aunty-Anne, do a
+worse thing, even, than dancing!"</p>
+
+<p>"Commodore, you are awful! What <i>could</i> a child of mine do that is worse
+than dancing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, ma'am, if you <i>will</i> hear all, it is my duty to tell you. I saw
+aunty-Anne (the commodore was really ignorant of the girl's name) jump a
+skipping-rope, yesterday morning, between the hours of seven and eight. As
+I hope ever to see the sogdollager, again, ma'am, I did!"
+
+"And do you this as bad as dancing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Much worse, ma'am, to my notion. It is jumping about without music, and
+without any grace, either, particularly as it was performed by
+my-aunty-Anne."</p>
+
+<p>"You are given to light jokes. Jumping the skipping-rope is not forbidden
+in the bible."</p>
+
+<p>"Just so; nor is dancing, if I know any thing about it; nor, for that
+matter, cards."</p>
+
+<p>"But waste of time is; a sinful waste of time; and evil-passions, and all
+unrighteousness."</p>
+
+<p>"Just so. My-aunty-Anne was going to the pump for water--I dare say you
+sent her--and she was misspending her time; and as for evil passions, she
+did not enjoy the hop, until she and your neighbour's daughter had pulled
+each other's hair for the rope, as if they had been two she-dragons. Take
+my word for it, ma'am, it wanted for nothing to make it sin of the purest
+water, but a cracked fiddle."</p>
+
+<p>While the commodore was holding Mrs. Abbott at bay, in this manner,
+Captain Truck, who had given him a wink to that effect, was employed in
+playing off a practical joke at the expense of the widow. It was one of
+the standing amusements of these worthies, who had gotten to be sworn
+friends and constant associates, after they had caught as many fish as
+they wished, to retire to the favourite spring, light, the one his cigar,
+the other his pipe, mix their grog, and then relieve their ennui, when
+tired of discussing men and things, by playing cards on a particular
+stump. Now, it happens that the captain had the identical pack which had
+been used on all such occasions in his pocket, as was evident in the fact
+that the cards were nearly as distinctly marked on their backs, as on
+their faces. These cards he showed secretly to his companion, and when the
+attention of Mrs. Abbott was altogether engaged in expecting the terrible
+announcement of her daughter's errors, the captain slipped them, kings,
+queens and knaves, high, low, jack and the game, without regard to rank,
+into the lady's work-basket. As soon as this feat was successfully
+performed, a sign was given to the commodore that the conspiracy was
+effected, and that disputant in theology gradually began to give ground,
+while he continued to maintain that jumping the rope was a sin, though it
+might be one of a nominal class. There is little doubt, had he possessed a
+smattering of phrases, a greater command of biblical learning, and more
+zeal, that the fisherman might have established a new shade of the
+Christian faith; for, while mankind still persevere in disregarding the
+plainest mandates of God, as respects humility, the charities, and
+obedience, nothing seems to afford them more delight than to add to the
+catalogue of the offences against his divine supremacy. It was perhaps
+lucky for the commodore, who was capital at casting a pickerel line, but
+who usually settled his polemics with the fist, when hard pushed, that
+Captain Truck found leisure to come to the rescue.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm amazed, ma'am," said the honest packet-master, "that a woman of your
+sanctity should deny that jumping the rope is a sin, for I hold that point
+to have been settled by all our people, these fifty years. You will admit
+that the rope cannot be well-jumped without levity."</p>
+
+<p>"Levity, Captain Truck! I hope you do not insinuate that a daughter of
+mine discovers levity?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, ma'am; she is called the best rope jumper in the village, I
+hear; and levity, or lightness of carriage, is the great requisite for
+skill in the art. Then there are 'vain repetitions' in doing the same
+thing over and over so often, and 'vain repetitions' are forbidden even in
+our prayers. I can call both father and mother to testify to that fact."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, this is news to me! I must speak to the minister about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Of the two, the skipping-rope is rather more sinful than dancing, for the
+music makes the latter easy; whereas, one has to force the spirit to enter
+into the other. Commodore, our hour has come, and we must make sail. May I
+ask the favour, Mrs. Abbott, of a bit of thread to fasten this hook
+afresh?"</p>
+
+<p>The widow-bewitched turned to her basket, and raising a piece of calico,
+to look for the thread "high, low, jack and the game," stared her in the
+face. When she bent her eyes towards her guests, she perceived all three
+gazing at the cards, with as much apparent surprise and curiosity, as if
+two of them knew nothing of their history.</p>
+
+<p>"Awful!" exclaimed Mrs. Abbott, shaking both hands,--"awful--awful--awful!
+The powers of darkness have been at work here!"</p>
+
+<p>"They seem to have been pretty much occupied, too," observed the captain,
+"for a better thumbed pack I never yet found in the forecastle of a ship."</p>
+
+<p>"Awful--awful--awful!--This is equal to the forty days in the wilderness,
+Mr. Dodge."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a trying cross, ma'am."</p>
+
+<p>"To my notion, now," said the captain, "those cards are not worse than the
+skipping-rope, though I allow that they might have been cleaner."</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Abbott was not disposed to view the matter so lightly. She saw
+the hand of the devil in the affair, and fancied it was a new trial
+offered to her widowed condition.</p>
+
+<p>"Are these actually cards!" she cried, like one who distrusted the
+evidence of her senses.</p>
+
+<p>"Just so, ma'am," kindly answered the commodore; "This is the ace of
+spades, a famous fellow to hold when you have the lead; and this is the
+Jack, which counts one, you know, when spades are trumps. I never saw a
+more thorough-working pack in my life."</p>
+
+<p>"Or a more thoroughly worked pack," added the captain, in a condoling
+manner. "Well, we are not all perfect, and I hope Mrs. Abbott will cheer
+up and look at this matter in a gayer point of view. For myself I hold
+that a skipping-rope is worse than the Jack of spades, Sundays or week
+days. Commodore, we shall see no pickerel to-day, unless we tear ourselves
+from this good company."</p>
+
+<p>Here the two wags took their leave, and retreated to the skiff; the
+captain, who foresaw an occasion to use them, considerately offering to
+relieve Mrs. Abbott from the presence of the odious cards, intimating that
+he would conscientiously see them fairly sunk in the deepest part of the
+lake.</p>
+
+<p>When the two worthies were at a reasonable distance from the shore, the
+commodore suddenly ceased rowing, made a flourish with his hand, and
+incontinently began to laugh, as if his mirth had suddenly broken through
+all restraint. Captain Truck, who had been lighting a cigar, commenced
+smoking, and, seldom indulging in boisterous merriment, he responded with
+his eyes, shaking his head from time to time, with great satisfaction, as
+thoughts more ludicrous than common came over his imagination.</p>
+
+<p>"Harkee, commodore," he said, blowing the smoke upward, and watching it
+with his eye until it floated away in a little cloud, "neither of us is a
+chicken. You have studied life on the fresh water, and I have studied life
+on the salt. I do not say which produces the best scholars, but I know
+that both make better Christians than the jack-screw system."</p>
+
+<p>"Just so. I tell them in the village that little is gained in the end by
+following the blind; that is my doctrine, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"And a very good doctrine it would prove, I make no doubt, were you to
+enter into it a little more fully--"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, I can explain--"</p>
+
+<p>"Not another syllable is necessary. I know what you mean as well as if I
+said it myself, and, moreover, short sermons are always the best. You mean
+that a pilot ought to know where he is steering, which is perfectly sound
+doctrine. My own experience tells me, that if you press a sturgeon's nose
+with your foot, it will spring up as soon as it is loosened. Now the
+jack-screw will heave a great strain, no doubt; but the moment it is let
+up, down comes all that rests on it, again. This Mr. Dodge, I suppose you
+know, has been a passenger with me once or twice?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have heard as much--they say he was tigerish in the fight with the
+niggers--quite an out-and-outer."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, I hear he tells some such story himself; but harkee, commodore, I
+wish to do justice to all men, and I find there is very little of it
+inland, hereaway. The hero of that day is about to marry your beautiful
+Miss Effingham; other men did their duty too, as, for instance, was the
+case with Mr. John Effingham; but Paul Blunt-Powis-Effingham finished the
+job. As for Mr. Steadfast Dodge, sir, I say nothing, unless it be to add
+that he was nowhere near <i>me</i> in that transaction; and if any man felt
+like an alligator in Lent, on that occasion, it was your humble servant."</p>
+
+<p>"Which means that he was not nigh the enemy, I'll swear before a
+magistrate."</p>
+
+<p>"And no fear of perjury. Any one who saw Mr. John Effingham and Mr. Powis
+on that day, might have sworn that they were father and son, and any one
+who <i>did not see</i> Mr. Dodge might have said at once, that he did not
+belong to their family. That is all, sir; I never disparage a passenger,
+and, therefore, shall say no more than merely to add, that Mr. Dodge is no
+warrior."</p>
+
+<p>"They say he has experienced religion, lately, as they call it."</p>
+
+<p>"It is high time, sir, for he had experienced sin quite long enough,
+according to my notion. I hear that the man goes up and down the country
+disparaging those whose shoe-ties he is unworthy to unloose, and that he
+has published some letters in his journal, that are as false as his heart;
+but let him beware, lest the world should see, some rainy day, an extract
+from a certain log-book belonging to a ship called the Montauk. I am
+rejoiced at this marriage after all, commodore, or marriages rather, for I
+understand that Mr. Paul Effingham and Sir George Templemore intend to
+make a double bowline of it to-morrow morning. All is arranged, and as
+soon as my eyes have witnessed that blessed sight, I shall trip for
+New-York again."</p>
+
+<p>"It is clearly made out then, that the young gentleman is Mr. John
+Effingham's son?"</p>
+
+<p>"As clear as the north-star in a bright night. The fellow who spoke to me
+at the Fun of Fire has put us in a way to remove the last doubt, if there
+were any doubt. Mr. Effingham himself, who is so cool-headed and cautious,
+says there is now sufficient proof to make it good in any court in
+America, That point may be set down as settled, and, for my part, I
+rejoice it is so, since Mr. John Effingham has so long passed for an old
+bachelor, that it is a credit to the corps to find one of them the father
+of so noble a son."</p>
+
+<p>Here the commodore dropped his anchor, and the two friends began to fish.
+For an hour neither talked much, but having obtained the necessary stock
+of perch, they landed at the favourite spring, and prepared a fry. While
+seated on the grass, alternating be tween the potations of punch, and the
+mastication of fish, these worthies again renewed the dialogue in their
+usual discursive, philosophical, and sentimental manner.</p>
+
+<p>"We are citizens of a surprisingly great country, commodore," commenced
+Mr. Truck, after one of his heaviest draughts; "every body says it, from
+Maine to Florida, and what every body says must be true."</p>
+
+<p>"Just so, sir. I sometimes wonder how so great a country ever came to
+produce so little a man as myself."</p>
+
+<p>"A good cow may have a bad calf, and that explains the matter. Have you
+many as virtuous and pious women in this part of the world, as Mrs.
+Abbott?"</p>
+
+<p>"The hills and valleys are filled with them. You mean persons who have got
+so much religion that they have no room for any thing else?"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall mourn to my dying day, that you were not brought up to the sea!
+If you discover so much of the right material on fresh-water, what would
+you have been on salt? The people who suck in nutriment from a brain and a
+conscience like those of Mr. Dodge, too, commodore, must get, in time, to
+be surprisingly clear-sighted."</p>
+
+<p>"Just so; his readers soon overreach themselves. But it's of no great
+consequence, sir; the people of this part of the world keep nothing long
+enough to do much good, or much harm."</p>
+
+<p>"Fond of change, ha?"</p>
+
+<p>"Like unlucky fishermen, always ready to shift the ground. I don't
+believe, sir, that in all this region you can find a dozen graves of sons,
+that lie near their fathers. Every body seems to have a mortal aversion to
+stability,"</p>
+
+<p>"It is hard to love such a country, commodore!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sir, I never try to love it. God has given me a pretty sheet of water,
+that suits my fancy and wants, a beautiful sky, fine green mountains, and
+I am satisfied. One may love God, in such a temple, though he love
+nothing else."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I suppose if you love nothing, nothing loves you, and no injustice
+is done."</p>
+
+<p>"Just, so, sir. Self has got to be the idol, though in the general
+scramble a man is sometimes puzzled to know whether he is himself, or one
+of the neighbours."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I knew your political sentiments, commodore; you have been
+communicative on all subjects but that, and I have taken up the notion
+that you are a true philosopher."</p>
+
+<p>"I hold myself to be but a babe in swaddling-clothes compared to yourself,
+sir; but such as my poor opinions are, you are welcome to them. In the
+first place, then, sir, I have lived long enough on this water to know
+that every man is a lover of liberty in his own person, and that he has a
+secret distaste for it in the persons of other people. Then, sir, I have
+got to understand that patriotism means bread and cheese, and that
+opposition is every man for himself."</p>
+
+<p>"If the truth were known, I believe, commodore, you have buoyed out the
+channel!"</p>
+
+<p>"Just so. After being pulled about by the salt of the land, and using my
+freeman's privileges at their command, until I got tired of so much
+liberty, sir, I have resigned, and retired to private life, doing most of
+my own thinking out here on the Otsego-Water, like a poor slave as I am."</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to be chosen the next President!"</p>
+
+<p>"I owe my present emancipation, sir, to the sogdollager. I first began to
+reason about such a man as this Mr. Dodge, who has thrust himself and his
+ignorance together into the village, lately, as an expounder of truth, and
+a ray of light to the blind. Well, sir, I said to myself, if this man be
+the man I know him to be as a man, can he be any thing better as an
+editor?"</p>
+
+<p>"That was a home question put to yourself, commodore; how did you answer
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>"The answer was satisfactory, sir, to myself, whatever it might be to
+other people. I stopped his paper, and set up for myself. Just about that
+time the sogdollager nibbled, and instead of trying to be a great man,
+over the shoulders of the patriots and sages of the land, I endeavoured to
+immortalize myself by hooking him. I go to the elections now, for that I
+feel to be a duty, but instead of allowing a man like this Mr. Dodge to
+tell me how to vote, I vote for the man in public that I would trust in
+private."</p>
+
+<p>"Excellent! I honour you more and more every minute I pass in your
+society. We will now drink to the future happiness of those who will
+become brides and bridegrooms to-morrow. If all men were as philosophical
+and as learned as you, commodore, the human race would be in a fairer way
+than they are to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"Just so; I drink to them with all my heart. Is it not surprising, sir,
+that people like Mrs. Abbott and Mr. Dodge should have it in their power
+to injure such as those whose happiness we have just had the honour of
+commemorating in advance?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, commodore, a fly may bite an elephant, if he can find a weak spot in
+his hide. I do not altogether understand the history of the marriage of
+John Effingham, myself; but we see the issue of it has been a fine son.
+Now I hold that when a man fairly marries, he is bound to own it, the same
+as any other crime; for he owes it to those who have not been as guilty as
+himself, to show the world that he no longer belongs to them."</p>
+
+<p>"Just so; but we have flies in this part of the world that will bite
+through the toughest hide."</p>
+
+<p>"That comes from there being no quarter-deck in your social ship,
+commodore. Now aboard of a well-regulated packet, all the thinking is done
+aft; they who are desirous of knowing whereabouts the vessel is, being
+compelled to wait till the observations are taken, or to sit down in their
+ignorance. The whole difficulty comes from the fact that sensible people
+live so far apart in this quarter of the world, that fools have more room
+than should fall to their share. You understand me, commodore?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just so," said the commodore, laughing, and winking. "Well, it is
+fortunate that there are some people who are not quite as weak-minded as
+some other people. I take it, Captain Truck, that you will be present at
+the wedding?"</p>
+
+<p>The captain now winked in his turn, looked around him to make sure no one
+was listening, and laying a finger on his nose, he answered, in a much
+lower key than was usual for him--</p>
+
+<p>"You can keep a secret, I know, commodore. Now what I have to say is not
+to be told to Mrs. Abbott, in order that it may be repeated and
+multiplied, but is to be kept as snug as your bait, in the bait-box."</p>
+
+<p>"You know your man, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Well then, about ten minutes before the clock strikes nine, to-morrow
+morning, do you slip into the gallery of New St. Paul's, and you shall see
+beauty and modesty, when 'unadorned, adorned the most.' You comprehend?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just so," and the hand was flourished even more than usual.</p>
+
+<p>"It does not become us bachelors to be too lenient to matrimony, but I
+should be an unhappy man, were I not to witness the marriage of Paul Powis
+to Eve Effingham."</p>
+
+<p>Here both the worthies, "freshened the nip," as Captain Truck called it,
+and then the conversation soon got to be too philosophical and
+contemplative for this unpretending record of events and ideas.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Chapter XXIX.</h2>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>  "Then plainly know, my heart's dear love is set<br />
+On the fair daughter of rich Capulet;<br />
+As mine on hers, so hers is set on mine;<br />
+And all combined, save what thou must confine<br />
+By holy marriage."</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>  ROMEO AND JULIET.</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>The morning chosen for the nuptials of Eve and Grace arrived, and all the
+inmates of the Wigwam were early afoot, though the utmost care had been
+taken to prevent the intelligence of the approaching ceremony from getting
+into the village. They little knew, however, how closely they were
+watched; the mean artifices that were resorted to by some who called
+themselves their neighbours, to tamper with servants, to obtain food for
+conjecture, and to justify to themselves their exaggerations, falsehoods,
+and frauds. The news did leak out, as will presently be seen, and through
+a channel that may cause the reader, who is unacquainted with some of the
+peculiarities of American life, a little surprise.</p>
+
+<p>We have frequently alluded to Annette, the <i>femme de chambre</i> that had
+followed Eve from Europe, although we have had no occasion to dwell on her
+character, which was that of a woman of her class, as they are well known
+to exist in France. Annette was young, had bright, sparkling black eyes,
+was well made, and had the usual tournure and manner of a Parisian
+grisette. As it is the besetting weakness of all provincial habits to
+mistake graces for grace, flourishes for elegance, and exaggeration for
+merit, Annette soon acquired a reputation in her circle, as a woman of
+more than usual claims to distinction. Her attire was in the height of the
+fashion, being of Eve's cast-off clothes, and of the best materials, and
+attire is also a point that is not without its influence on those who are
+unaccustomed to the world.</p>
+
+<p>As the double ceremony was to take place before breakfast, Annette was
+early employed about the person of her young mistress, adorning it in the
+bridal robes. While she worked at her usual employment, the attendant
+appeared unusually agitated, and several times pins were badly pointed,
+and new arrangements had to supersede or to supply the deficiencies of her
+mistakes. Eve was always a model of patience, and she bore with these
+little oversights with a quiet that would have given Paul an additional
+pledge of her admirable self-command, as well as of a sweetness of temper
+that, in truth, raised her almost above the commoner feelings of
+mortality.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Vous &ecirc;tes un peu agit&eacute;e, ce matin, ma bonne Annette</i>," she merely
+observed, when her maid had committed a blunder more material than common.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>J'esp&egrave;re que Mademoiselle a &eacute;t&eacute; contente de moi, jusqu' &agrave; present</i>,"
+returned Annette, vexed with her own awkwardness, and speaking in the
+manner in which it is usual to announce an intention to quit a service.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, Annette, you have conducted yourself well, and are very expert
+in your <i>m&eacute;tier</i>. But why do you ask this question, just at this moment?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Parceque</i>--because--with mademoiselle's permission, I intended to ask
+for my <i>cong&eacute;</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Cong&eacute;</i>! Do you think of quitting me, Annette?"</p>
+
+<p>"It would make me happier than anything else to die in the service of
+mademoiselle, but we are all subject to our destiny"--the conversation was
+in French--"and mine compels me to cease my services as a <i>femme de
+chambre</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"This is a sudden, and for one in a strange country, an extraordinary
+resolution. May I ask, Annette, what you propose to do?"</p>
+
+<p>Here, the woman gave herself certain airs, endeavoured to blush, did look
+at the carpet with a studied modesty that might have deceived one who did
+not know the genus, and announced her intention to get married, too, at
+the end of the present month.</p>
+
+<p>"Married!" repeated Eve--"surely not to old Pierre, Annette!"
+
+"Pierre, Mademoiselle! I shall not condescend to look at Pierre. <i>Je vais
+me marier avec un avocat</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Un avocat</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Oui, Mademoiselle</i>. I will marry myself with Monsieur Aristabule Bragg,
+if Mademoiselle shall permit."</p>
+
+<p>Eve was perfectly mute with astonishment, notwithstanding the proofs she
+had often seen of the wide range that the ambition of an American of a
+certain class allows itself. Of course, she remembered the conversation on
+the Point, and it would not have been in nature, had not a mistress who
+had been so lately wooed, felt some surprise at finding her discarded
+suitor so soon seeking consolation in the smiles of her own maid. Still
+her surprise was less than that which the reader will probably experience
+at this announcement; for, as has just been said, she had seen too much of
+the active and pliant enterprise of the lover, to feel much wonder at any
+of his moral <i>tours de force</i>. Even Eve, however, was not perfectly
+acquainted with the views and policy that had led Aristabulus to seek this
+consummation to his matrimonial schemes, which must be explained
+explicitly, in order that they may be properly understood.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bragg had no notion of any distinctions in the world, beyond those
+which came from money, and political success. For the first he had a
+practical deference that was as profound as his wishes for its enjoyments;
+and for the last he felt precisely the sort of reverence, that one
+educated under a feudal system, would feel for a feudal lord. The first,
+after several unsuccessful efforts, he had found unattainable by means of
+matrimony, and he turned his thoughts towards Annette, whom he had for
+some months held in reserve, in the event of his failing with Eve and
+Grace, for on both these heiresses had he entertained designs, as a <i>pis
+aller</i>. Annette was a dress-maker of approved taste, her person was
+sufficiently attractive, her broken English gave piquancy to thoughts of
+no great depth, she was of a suitable age, and he had made her proposals
+and been accepted, as soon as it was ascertained that Eve and Grace were
+irretrievably lost to him. Of course, the Parisienne did not hesitate an
+instant about becoming the wife of <i>un avocat;</i> for, agreeably to her
+habits, matrimony was a legitimate means of bettering her condition in
+life. The plan was soon arranged. They were to be married as soon as
+Annette's month's notice had expired, and then they were to emigrate to
+the far west, where Mr. Bragg proposed to practise law, or keep school, or
+to go to Congress, or to turn trader, or to saw lumber, or, in short, to
+turn his hand to any thing that offered; while Annette was to help along
+with the <i>m&eacute;nage</i>, by making dresses, and teaching French; the latter
+occupation promising to be somewhat peripatetic, the population being
+scattered, and few of the dwellers in the interior deeming it necessary to
+take more than a quarter's instruction in any of the higher branches of
+education; the object being to <i>study</i>, as it is called, and not to
+<i>know</i>. Aristabulus, who was filled with <i>go-aheadism</i>, would have
+shortened the delay, but this Annette positively resisted; her <i>esprit de
+corps</i> as a servant, and all her notions of justice, repudiating the
+notion that the connexion which had existed so long between Eve and
+herself, was to be cut off at a moment's warning. So diametrically were
+the ideas of the <i>fianc&eacute;s</i> opposed to each other, on this point, that at
+one time it threatened a rupture, Mr. Bragg asserting the natural
+independence of man to a degree that would have rendered him independent
+of all obligations that were not effectually enacted by the law, and
+Annette maintaining the dignity of a European <i>femme de chambre,</i> whose
+sense of propriety demanded that she should not quit her place without
+giving a month's warning. The affair was happily decided by Aristabulus's
+receiving a commission to tend a store, in the absence of its owner; Mr.
+Effingham, on a hint from his daughter, having profited by the annual
+expiration of the engagement, to bring their connexion to an end.</p>
+
+<p>This termination to the passion of Mr. Bragg would have afforded Eve a
+good deal of amusement at any other moment; but a bride cannot be expected
+to give too much of her attention to the felicity and prospects of those
+who have no natural or acquired claims to her affection. The cousins met,
+attired for the ceremony, in Mr. Effingham's room, where he soon came in
+person, to lead them to the drawing-room. It is seldom that two more
+lovely young women are brought together on similar occasions. As Mr.
+Effingham stood between them, holding a hand of each, his moistened eyes
+turned from one to the other in honest pride, and in an admiration that
+even his tenderness could not restrain. The <i>toilettes</i> were as simple as
+the marriage ceremony will permit; for it was intended that there should
+be no unnecessary parade; and, perhaps, the delicate beauty of each of the
+brides was rendered the more attractive by this simplicity, as it has
+often been justly remarked, that the fair of this country are more winning
+in dress of a less conventional character, than when in the elaborate and
+regulated attire of ceremonies. As might have been expected, there was
+most of soul and feeling in Eve's countenance, though Grace wore an air of
+charming modesty and nature. Both were unaffected, simple and graceful,
+and we may add that both trembled as Mr. Effingham took their hands.</p>
+
+<p>"This is a pleasing and yet a painful hour," said that kind and excellent
+man; "one in which I gain a son, and lose a daughter."</p>
+
+<p>
+"And <i>I</i>, dearest uncle," exclaimed Grace, whose feelings trembled on her
+eye-lids, like the dew ready to drop from the leaf, "have <i>I</i> no connexion
+with your feelings?"</p>
+
+<p>"You are the daughter that I lose, my child, for Eve will still remain
+with me. But Templemore has promised to be grateful, and I will trust his
+word."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Effingham then embraced with fervour both the charming young women,
+who stood apparelled for the most important event of their lives, lovely
+in their youth, beauty, innocence, and modesty; and taking an arm of each,
+he led them below. John Effingham, the two bridegrooms, Captain Ducie, Mr.
+and Mrs. Bloomfield, Mrs. Hawker, Captain Truck, Mademoiselle Viefville,
+Annette, and Ann Sidley, were all assembled in the drawing-room, ready to
+receive them; and as soon as shawls were thrown around Eve and Grace, in
+order to conceal the wedding dresses, the whole party proceeded to the
+church.</p>
+
+<p>The distance between the Wigwam and New St. Paul's was very trifling, the
+solemn pines of the church-yard blending, from many points, with the gayer
+trees in the grounds of the former; and as the buildings in this part of
+the village were few, the whole of the bridal train entered the tower,
+unobserved by the eyes of the curious. The clergyman was waiting in the
+chancel, and as each of the young men led the object of his choice
+immediately to the altar, the double ceremony began without delay. At this
+instant Mr. Aristabulus Dodge and Mrs. Abbot advanced from the rear of the
+gallery, and coolly took their seats in its front. Neither belonged to
+this particular church, though, having discovered that the marriages were
+to take place that morning by means of Annette, they had no scruples on
+the score of delicacy about thrusting themselves forward on the occasion;
+for, to the latest moment, that publicity-principle which appeared to be
+interwoven with their very natures, induced them to think that nothing was
+so sacred as to be placed beyond the reach of curiosity. They entered the
+church, because the church they held to be a public place, precisely on
+the principle that others of their class conceive if a gate be blown open
+by accident, it removes all the moral defences against trespassers, as it
+removes the physical.</p>
+
+<p>The solemn language of the prayers and vows proceeded none the less for
+the presence of these unwelcome intruders; for, at that grave moment, all
+other thoughts were hushed in those that more properly belonged to the
+scene. When the clergyman made the usual appeal to know if any man could
+give a reason why those who stood before him should not be united in holy
+wedlock, Mrs. Abbott nudged Mr. Dodge, and, in the fulness of her
+discontent, eagerly inquired in a whisper, if it were not possible to
+raise some valid objection. Could she have had her pious wish, the simple,
+unpretending, meek, and <i>church</i>-going Eve, should never be married. But
+the editor was not a man to act openly in any thing, his particular
+province lying in insinuations and innuendoes. As a hint would not now be
+available, he determined to postpone his revenge to a future day. We say
+revenge, for Steadfast was of the class that consider any happiness, or
+advantage, in which they are not ample participators, wrongs done to
+themselves.</p>
+
+<p>That is a wise regulation of the church, which makes the marriage ceremony
+brief, for the intensity of the feelings it often creates would frequently
+become too powerful to be suppressed, were it unnecessarily prolonged. Mr.
+Effingham gave away both the brides, the one in the quality of parent, the
+other in that of guardian, and neither of the bridegrooms got the ring on
+the wrong finger. This is all we have to of the immediate scene at the
+altar. As soon as the benediction was pronounced, and the brides were
+released from the first embraces of their husbands, Mr. Effingham, without
+even kissing Eve, threw the shawls over their shoulders, and, taking an
+arm of each, he led them rapidly from the church, for he felt reluctant to
+suffer the holy feelings that were uppermost in his heart to be the
+spectacle of rude and obtrusive observers. At the door, he relinquished
+Eve to Paul, and Grace to Sir George, with a silent pressure of the hand
+of each, and signed for them to proceed towards the Wigwam. He was obeyed,
+and in less than half an hour from the time they had left the
+drawing-room, the whole party was again assembled in it.
+
+What a change had been produced in the situation of so many, in that brief
+interval!</p>
+
+<p>"Father!" Eve whispered, while Mr. Effingham folded her to his heart, the
+unbidden tears falling from both their eyes--"I am still thine!"</p>
+
+<p>"It would break my heart to think otherwise, darling. No, no--I have not
+lost a daughter, but have gained a son."</p>
+
+<p>"And what place am I to occupy in this scene of fondness?" inquired John
+Effingham, who had considerately paid his compliments to Grace first, that
+she might not feel forgotten at such a moment, and who had so managed
+that, she was now receiving the congratulations of the rest of the party;
+"am I to lose both son and daughter?"</p>
+
+<p>Eve, smiling sweetly through her tears, raised herself from her own
+father's arms, and was received in those of her husband's parent. After he
+had fondly kissed her forehead several times, without withdrawing from his
+bosom, she parted the rich hair on his forehead, passing her hand down his
+face, like an infant, and said softly--</p>
+
+<p>"Cousin Jack!"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe this must be my rank and estimation still Paul shall make no
+difference in our feeling; we will love each other as we have ever done."</p>
+
+<p>"Paul can be nothing new between you and me. You have always been a second
+father in my eyes, and in my heart, too, dear--dear cousin Jack."</p>
+
+<p>John Effingham pressed the beautiful, ardent, blushing girl to his bosom
+again; and as he did so, both felt, notwithstanding their language, that a
+new and dearer tie than ever bound them together. Eve now received the
+compliments of the rest of the party, when the two brides retired to
+change the dresses in which they had appeared at the altar, for their more
+ordinary attire.</p>
+
+<p>In her own dressing-room, Eve found Ann Sidley, waiting with impatience to
+pour out her feelings, the honest and affectionate creature being much too
+sensitive to open the floodgates of her emotions in the presence of third
+parties.</p>
+
+<p>"Ma'am--Miss Eve--Mrs. Effingham!" she exclaimed as soon as her young
+mistress entered, afraid of saying too much, now that her nursling had
+become a married woman.</p>
+
+<p>"My kind and good Nanny!" said Eve, taking her old nurse in her arms,
+their tears mingling in silence for near a minute. "You have seen your
+child enter on the last of her great earthly engagements, Nanny, and I
+know you pray that they may prove happy."</p>
+
+<p>"I do--I do--I do--ma'am--madam--Miss Eve--what am I to call you in
+future, ma'am?"</p>
+
+<p>"Call me Miss Eve, as you have done since my childhood, dearest Nanny."
+
+Nanny received this permission with delight, and twenty times that morning
+she availed herself of the permission; and she continued to use the term
+until, two years later, she danced a miniature Eve on her knee, as she had
+done its mother before her, when matronly rank began silently to assert
+its rights, and our present bride became Mrs. Effingham.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall not quit you, ma'am, now that you are married?" Ann Sidley
+timidly asked; for, although she could scarcely think such an event within
+the bounds of probability, and Eve had already more than once assured her
+of the contrary with her own tongue, still did she love to have assurance
+made doubly sure. "I hope nothing will ever happen to make me quit you,
+ma'am?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing of that sort, with my consent, ever shall happen, my excellent
+Nanny. And now that Annette is about to get married, I shall have more
+than the usual necessity for your services."</p>
+
+<p>"And Mamerzelle, ma'am?" inquired Nanny, with sparkling eyes; "I suppose
+she, too, will return to her own country, now you know every thing, and
+have no farther occasion for her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mademoiselle Viefville will return to France in the autumn, but it will
+be with us all; for my dear father, cousin Jack, my husband--" Eve blushed
+as she pronounced the novel word--"and myself, not forgetting you my old
+nurse, will all sail for England, with Sir George and Lady Templemore, on
+our way to Italy, the first week in October."</p>
+
+<p>"I care not, ma'am, so that I go with you. I would rather we did not live
+in a country where I cannot understand all that the people say to you, but
+wherever you are will be my earthly paradise."</p>
+
+<p>Eve kissed the true-hearted woman, and, Annette entering, she changed her
+dress.</p>
+
+<p>The two brides met at the head of the great stairs, on their way back to
+the drawing-room. Eve was a little in advance, but, with a half-concealed
+smile, she gave way to Grace, curtsying gravely, and saying--</p>
+
+<p>"It does not become <i>me</i> to precede Lady Templemore--I, who am only Mrs.
+Paul Effingham."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, dear Eve, I am not so weak as you imagine. Do you not think I should
+have married him had he not been a baronet?"</p>
+
+<p>"Templemore, my dear coz, is a man any woman might love, and I believe,
+as firmly as I hope it sincerely, that he will make you happy."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet there is one woman who would not love him, Eve!"</p>
+
+<p>Eve looked steadily at her cousin for a moment, was startled, and then she
+felt gratified that Sir George had been so honest, for the frankness and
+manliness of his avowal was a pledge of the good faith and sincerity of
+his character. She took her cousin affectionately by the hand, and said--</p>
+
+<p>"Grace, this confidence is the highest compliment you can pay me, and it
+merits a return. That Sir George Templemore may have had a passing
+inclination for one who so little deserved it, is possibly true--but my
+affections were another's before I knew him."</p>
+
+<p>"You never would have married Templemore, Eve; he says himself, now, that
+you are quite too continental, as he calls it, to like an Englishman."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I shall take the first good occasion to undeceive him; for I do
+<i>like</i> an Englishman, and he is the identical man."</p>
+
+<p>As few women are jealous on their wedding-day, Grace took this in good
+part, and they descended the stairs together, side by side, reflecting
+each other's happiness, in their timid but conscious smiles. In the great
+hall, they were met by the bridegrooms, and each taking the arm of him who
+had now become of so vast importance to her, they paced the room to and
+fro, until summoned to the <i>d&eacute;j&eacute;uner &agrave; la fourchette</i>, which had been
+prepared under the especial superintendence of Mademoiselle Viefville,
+after the manner of her country.</p>
+
+<p>Wedding-days, like all formally prepared festivals, are apt to go off a
+little heavily. Such, however, was not the case with this, for every
+appearance of premeditation and preparation vanished with this meal. It is
+true the family did not quit the grounds, but, with this exception, ease
+and tranquil happiness reigned throughout. Captain Truck was alone
+disposed to be sentimental, and, more than once, as he looked about him,
+he expressed his doubts whether he had pursued the right course to attain
+happiness,</p>
+
+<p>"I find myself in a solitary category," he said, at the dinner-table, in
+the evening. "Mrs. Hawker, and both the Messrs. Effinghams, <i>have been</i>
+married; every body else <i>is</i> married, and I believe I must take refuge in
+saying that I <i>will be</i> married, if I can now persuade any one to have me.
+Even Mr. Powis, my right-hand man, in all that African affair, has
+deserted me, and left me like a single dead pine in one of your clearings,
+or a jewel-block dangling at a yard-arm, without a sheave. Mrs. Bride--"
+the captain styled Eve thus, throughout the day, to the utter neglect of
+the claims of Lady Templemore--"Mrs. Bride, we will consider my forlorn
+condition more philosophically, when I shall have the honour to take you,
+and so many of this blessed party, back again to Europe, where I found
+you. Under your advice I think I might even yet venture."</p>
+
+<p>"And I am overlooked entirely," cried Mr. Howel, who had been invited to
+make one at the wedding-feast; "what is to become of me, Captain Truck, if
+this marrying mania go any further?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have long had a plan for your welfare, my dear sir, that I will take
+this opportunity to divulge; I propose, ladies and gentlemen, that we
+enlist Mr. Howel in our project for this autumn, and that we carry him
+with us to Europe. I shall be proud to have the honour of introducing him
+to his old friend, the island of Great Britain."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! that is a happiness, I fear, that is not in reserve for me!" said Mr.
+Howel, shaking his head. "I have thought of these things, in my time, but
+age will now defeat any such hopes."</p>
+
+<p>"Age, Tom Howel!" said John Effingham; "you are but fifty, like Ned and
+myself. We were all boys together, forty years ago, and yet you find us,
+who have so lately returned, ready to take a fresh departure. Pluck up
+heart; there may be a steam-boat ready to bring you back, by the time you
+wish to return."</p>
+
+<p>"Never," said Captain Truck, positively. "Ladies and gentlemen, it is
+morally impossible that the Atlantic should ever be navigated by steamers.
+That doctrine I shall maintain to my dying day; but what need of a
+steamer, when we have packets like palaces?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did not know, captain, that you entertained so hearty a respect for
+Great Britain--it is encouraging, really, to find so generous a feeling
+toward the old island in one of her descendants. Sir George and Lady
+Templemore, permit me to drink to your lasting felicity."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay--ay--I entertain no ill-will to England, though her tobacco laws are
+none of the genteelest. But my wish to export you, Mr. Howel, is less from
+a desire to show you England, than to let you perceive that there are
+other countries in Europe--"</p>
+
+<p>"Other countries!--Surely you do not suppose I am so ignorant of
+geography, as to believe that there are no other countries in Europe--no
+such places as Hanover, Brunswick, and Brunswick Lunenberg, and Denmark;
+the sister of old George the Third married the king of that country; and
+Wurtemberg, the king of which married the Princess Royal--"</p>
+
+<p>"And Mecklenburg-Strelitz," added John Effingham, gravely, "a princess of
+which actually married George the Third <i>propri&acirc; person&acirc;</i>, as well as by
+proxy. Nothing can be plainer than your geography, Howel; but, in addition
+to these particular regions, our worthy friend the captain wishes you to
+know also, that there are such places as France, and Austria, and Russia,
+and Italy; though the latter can scarcely repay a man for the trouble of
+visiting it."</p>
+
+<p>"You have guessed my motive, Mr. John Effingham, and expressed it much
+more discreetly than I could possibly have done," cried the captain. "If
+Mr. Howel will do me the honour to take passage with me, going and
+coming, I shall consider the pleasure of his remarks on men and things, as
+one of the greatest advantages I ever possessed."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know but I might be induced to venture as far as England, but
+not a foot farther."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Pas &agrave; Paris!</i>" exclaimed Mademoiselle Viefville, who wondered why any
+rational being would take the trouble to cross the Atlantic, merely to see
+<i>Ce melancolique Londres;</i> "you will go to <i>Paris</i>, for my sake, Monsieur
+Howel?"</p>
+
+<p>"For your sake, indeed, Mam'selle, I would do any thing, but hardly for my
+own. I confess I have thought of this, and I will think of it farther. I
+should like to see the King of England and the House of Lords, I confess,
+before I die."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, and the Tower, and the Boar's-Head at East-Cheap, and the statue of
+the Duke of Wellington, and London Bridge, and Richmond Hill, and Bow
+Street, and Somerset House, and Oxford Road, and Bartlemy Fair, and
+Hungerford Market, and Charing-Cross--<i>old</i> Charing-Cross, Tom
+Howel!"--added John Effingham, with a good-natured nod of the head.</p>
+
+<p>"A wonderful nation!" cried Mr. Howel, whose eyes sparkled as the other
+proceeded in his enumeration of wonders. "I do not think, after all, that
+I can die in peace, without seeing <i>some</i> of these things--<i>all</i> would be
+too much for me. How far is the Isle of Dogs, now, from St. Catherine's
+Docks, captain?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! but a few cables' lengths. If you will only stick to the ship until
+she is fairly docked, I will promise you a sight of the Isle of Dogs
+before you land, even. But then you must promise me to carry out no
+tobacco!"</p>
+
+<p>"No fear of me; I neither smoke nor chew, and it does not surprise me that
+a nation as polished as the English should have this antipathy to tobacco.
+And one might really see the Isle of Dogs before landing? It <i>is</i> a
+wonderful country! Mrs. Bloomfield, will you ever be able to die
+tranquilly without seeing England?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hope, sir, whenever that event shall arrive, that it may be met
+tranquilly, let what may happen previously. I do confess, in common with
+Mrs. Effingham, a longing desire to see Italy; a wish that I believe she
+entertains from her actual knowledge, and which I entertain from my
+anticipations."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, this really surprises me. What <i>can</i> Italy possess to repay one for
+the trouble of travelling so far?"</p>
+
+<p>"I trust, cousin Jack," said Eve, colouring at the sound of her own voice,
+for on that day of supreme happiness and intense emotions, she had got to
+be so sensitive as to be less self-possessed than common, "that our friend
+Mr. Wenham will not be forgotten, but that he may be invited to join the
+party."</p>
+
+<p>This representative of <i>la jeune Am&eacute;rique</i> was also present at the dinner,
+out of regard to his deceased father, who was a very old friend of Mr.
+Effingham's, and, being so favourably noticed by the bride, he did not
+fail to reply.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe an American has little to learn from any nation but his own,"
+observed Mr. Wenham, with the complacency of the school to which he
+belonged, "although one might wish that all of this country should travel,
+in order that the rest of the world might have the benefit of the
+intercourse."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a thousand pities," said John Effingham, "that one of our
+universities, for instance, was not ambulant. Old Yale was so, in its
+infancy; but unlike most other creatures, it went about with greater ease
+to itself when a child, than it can move in manhood."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. John Effingham loves to be facetious," said Mr. Wenham with dignity;
+for, while he was as credulous as could be wished, on the subject of
+American superiority, he was not quite as blind as the votaries of the
+Anglo-American school, who usually yield the control of all their
+faculties and common sense to their masters, on the points connected with
+their besetting weaknesses. "Every body is agreed, I believe, that the
+American imparts more than he receives, in his intercourse with
+Europeans."</p>
+
+<p>The smiles of the more experienced of this young man's listeners were
+well-bred and concealed, and the conversation turned to other subjects. It
+was easy to raise the laugh on such an occasion, and contrary to the usage
+of the Wigwam, where the men usually left the table with the other sex,
+Captain Truck, John Effingham, Mr. Bloomfield, and Mr. Howel, made what is
+called a night of it. Much delicious claret was consumed, and the honest
+captain was permitted to enjoy his cigar. About midnight he swore he had
+half a mind to write a letter to Mrs. Hawker, with an offer of his hand;
+as for his heart, that she well knew she had possessed for a long time.</p>
+
+<p>The next day, about the hour when the house was tranquil, from the
+circumstance that most of its inmates were abroad on their several
+avocations of boating, riding, shopping, or walking, Eve was in the
+library, her father having left it, a few minutes before, to mount his
+horse. She was seated at a table, writing a letter to an aged relative of
+her own sex, to communicate the circumstance of her marriage. The door was
+half open, and Paul appeared at it unexpectedly, coming in search of his
+young bride. His step had been so light, and so intently was our heroine
+engaged with her letter, that his approach was unnoticed, though it had
+now been a long time that the ear of Eve had learned to know his tread,
+and her heart to beat at its welcome sound. Perhaps a beautiful woman is
+never so winningly lovely as when, in her neat morning attire, she seems
+fresh and sweet as the new-born day. Eve had paid a little more attention
+to her toilette than usual even, admitting just enough of a properly
+selected jewelry, a style of ornament, that so singularly denotes the
+refinement of a gentlewoman, when used understandingly, and which so
+infallibly betrays vulgarity under other circumstances, while her attire
+had rather more than its customary finish, though it was impossible not
+to perceive, at a glance, that she was in an undress. The Parisian skill
+of Annette, on which Mr. Bragg based so many of his hopes of future
+fortune, had cut and fitted the robe to her faultlessly beautiful person,
+with a tact, or it might be truer to say a contact, so perfect, that it
+even left more charms to be imagined than it displayed, though the outline
+of the whole figure was that of the most lovely womanhood. But,
+notwithstanding the exquisite modelling of the whole form, the almost
+fairy lightness of the full, swelling, but small foot, about which nothing
+seemed lean and attenuated, the exquisite hand that appeared from among
+the ruffles of the dress, Paul stood longest in nearly breathless
+admiration of the countenance of his "bright and blooming bride." Perhaps
+there is no sentiment so touchingly endearing to a man, as that which
+comes over him as he contemplates the beauty, confiding faith, holy purity
+and truth that shine in the countenance of a young, unpractised, innocent
+woman, when she has so far overcome her natural timidity as to pour out
+her tenderness in his behalf, and to submit to the strongest impulses of
+her nature. Such was now the fact with Eve. She was writing of her
+husband, and, though her expressions were restrained by taste and
+education, they partook of her unutterable fondness and devotion. The
+tears stood in her eyes, the pen trembled in her hand, and she shaded her
+face as if to conceal the weakness from herself. Paul was alarmed, he knew
+not why, but Eve in tears was a sight painful to him. In a moment he was
+at her side, with an arm placed gently around her waist, and he drew her
+fondly towards his bosom.</p>
+
+<p>"Eve--dearest Eve!" he said--"what mean these tears?"</p>
+
+<p>The serene eye, the radiant blush, and the meek tenderness that rewarded
+his own burst of feeling, reassured the young husband, and, deferring to
+the sensitive modesty of so young a bride, he released hold, retaining
+only a hand.</p>
+
+<p>"It is happiness, Powis--nothing but excess of happiness, which makes us
+women weaker, I fear, than even sorrow."</p>
+
+<p>Paul kissed her hands, regarded her with an intensity of admiration,
+before which the eyes of Eve rose and fell, as if dazzled while meeting
+his looks, and yet unwilling to lose them; and then he reverted to the
+motive which had brought him to the library.</p>
+
+<p>"My father--<i>your</i> father, that is now--"</p>
+
+<p>"Cousin Jack!"</p>
+
+<p>"Cousin Jack, if you will, has just made me a present, which is second
+only to the greater gift I received from your own excellent parent,
+yesterday, at the altar. See, dearest Eve, he has bestowed this lovely
+image of yourself on me; lovely, though still so far from the truth. And
+here is the miniature of my poor mother, also, to supply the place of the
+one carried away by the Arabs."</p>
+
+<p>Eve gazed long and wistfully at the beautiful features of this image of
+her husband's mother. She traced in them that pensive thought, that
+winning kindness, that had first softened her heart towards Paul, and her
+lips trembled as she pressed the insensible glass against them.</p>
+
+<p>"She must have been very handsome, Eve, and there is a look of melancholy
+tenderness in the face, that would seem almost to predict an unhappy
+blighting of the affections."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet this young, ingenuous, faithful woman entered on the solemn
+engagement we have just made, Paul, with as many reasonable hopes of a
+bright future as we ourselves!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not so, Eve--confidence and holy truth were wanting at the nuptials of my
+parents. When there is deception at the commencement of such a contract,
+it is not difficult to predict the end."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not think, Paul, you ever deceived; that noble heart of yours is
+too generous!"</p>
+
+<p>"If any thing can make a man worthy of such a love, dearest, it is the
+perfect and absorbing confidence with which your sex throw themselves on
+the justice and faith of ours. Did that spotless heart ever entertain a
+doubt of the worth of any living being on which It had set its
+affections?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of itself, often, and they say self-love lies at the bottom of all our
+actions."</p>
+
+<p>"You are the last person to hold this doctrine, beloved, for those who
+live most in your confidence declare that all traces of self are lost in
+your very nature."</p>
+
+<p>"Most in my confidence! My father--- my dear, kind father, has then been
+betraying his besetting weakness, by extolling the gift he has made."</p>
+
+<p>"Your kind, excellent father, knows too well the total want of necessity
+for any such thing. If the truth must be confessed, I have been passing a
+quarter of an hour with worthy Ann Sidley."</p>
+
+<p>"Nanny--dear old Nanny!--and you have been weak enough, traitor, to listen
+to the eulogiums of a nurse on her child!"</p>
+
+<p>"All praise of thee, my blessed Eve, is grateful to my ears, and who can
+speak more understandingly of those domestic qualities which lie at the
+root of domestic bliss, than those who have seen you in your most intimate
+life, from childhood down to the moment when you have assumed the duties
+of a wife?"</p>
+
+<p>"Paul, Paul, thou art beside thyself; too much learning hath made thee
+mad!"</p>
+
+<p>"I am not mad, most beloved and beautiful Eve, but blessed to a degree
+that might indeed upset a stronger reason."</p>
+
+<p>"We will now talk of other things," said Eve, raising his hand to her lips
+in respectful affection, and looking gratefully up into his fond and
+eloquent eyes; "I hope the feeling of which you so lately spoke has
+subsided, and that you no longer feel yourself a stranger in the dwelling
+of your own family."</p>
+
+<p>"Now that I can claim a right through you, I confess that my conscience is
+getting to be easier on this point. Have you been yet told of the
+arrangement that the older heads meditate in reference to our future
+means?"</p>
+
+<p>"I would not listen to my dear father when he wished to introduce the
+subject, for I found that it was a project that made distinctions between
+Paul Effingham and Eve Effingham, two that I wish, henceforth, to consider
+as one in all things."</p>
+
+<p>"In this, darling, you may do yourself injustice as well as me. But
+perhaps you may not wish <i>me</i> to speak on the subject, neither."</p>
+
+<p>"What would my lord?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then listen, and the tale is soon told. We are each other's natural
+heirs. Of the name and blood of Effingham, neither has a relative nearer
+than the other, for, though but cousins in the third degree, our family is
+so small as to render the husband, in this case, the natural heir of the
+wife, and the wife the natural heir of the husband. Now your father
+proposes that his estates be valued, and that my father settle on you a
+sum of equal amount, which his wealth, will fully enable him to do, and
+that I become the possessor in reversion, of the lands that would
+otherwise have been yours."</p>
+
+<p>"You possess me, my heart, my affections, my duty; of what account is
+money after this!"</p>
+
+<p>"I perceive that you are so much and so truly woman, Eve, that we must
+arrange all this without consulting you at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Can I be in safer hands? A father that has always been too indulgent of
+my unreasonable wishes--a second parent that has only contributed too much
+to spoil me in the same thoughtless manner--and a----"</p>
+
+<p>"Husband," added Paul, perceiving that Eve hesitated at pronouncing to his
+face a name so novel though so endearing, "who will strive to do more
+than either in the same way."</p>
+
+<p>"Husband," she added, looking up into his face with a smile innocent as
+that of an infant, while the crimson tinge covered her forehead, "if the
+formidable word must be uttered, who is doing all he can to increase a
+self-esteem that is already so much greater than it ought to be."</p>
+
+<p>A light tap at the door caused Eve to start and look embarrassed, like one
+detected in a fault, and Paul to release the hand that he had continued to
+hold during the brief dialogue.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir--ma'am"--said the timid, meek voice of Ann Sidley, as she held the
+door ajar, without presuming to look into the room; "Miss Eve--Mr. Powis."</p>
+
+<p>"Enter, my good Nanny," said Eve, recovering her self-composure in a
+moment, the presence of her nurse always appearing to her as no more than
+a duplication of herself. "What is your wish?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hope I am not unreasonable, but I knew that Mr. Effingham was alone
+with you, here, and I wished--that is, ma'am,--Miss Eve--Sir--"</p>
+
+<p>"Speak your wishes, my good old nurse--am I not your own child, and is not
+this your own child's"--again Eve hesitated, blushed, and smiled, ere she
+pronounced the formidable word--"husband."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'am; and God be praised that it is so. I dreamt, it is now four
+years, Miss Eve; we were then travelling among the Denmarkers, and I
+dreamt that you were married to a great prince--"</p>
+
+<p>"But your dream has not come true, my good Nanny, and you see by this fact
+that it is not always safe to trust in dreams."</p>
+
+<p>"Ma'am, I do not esteem princes by the kingdoms and crowns, but by their
+qualities--and if Mr. Powis be not a prince, who is?"</p>
+
+<p>"That, indeed, changes the matter," said the gratified young wife; "and I
+believe, after all, dear Nanny, that I must become a convert to your
+theory of dreams."</p>
+
+<p>"While I must always deny it, good Mrs Sidley, if this is a specimen of
+its truth," said Paul, laughing. "But, perhaps this prince proved unworthy
+of Miss Eve, after all?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not he, sir; he made her a most kind and affectionate husband; not
+humouring all her idle wishes, if Miss Eve could have had such wishes, but
+cherishing her, and counselling her, and protecting her, showing as much
+tenderness for her as her own father, and as much love for her as I had
+myself."</p>
+
+<p>"In which case, my worthy nurse, he proved an invaluable husband," said
+Eve, with glistening eyes--"and I trust, too, that he was considerate and
+friendly to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"He took me by the hand, the morning after the marriage, and said,
+Faithful Ann Sidley, you have nursed and attended my beloved when a child,
+and as a young lady; and I now entreat you will continue to wait on and
+serve her as a wife to your dying day. He did, indeed, ma'am; and I think
+I can now hear the very words he spoke so kindly. The dream, so far, has
+come good."</p>
+
+<p>"My faithful Ann," said Paul, smiling, and taking the hand of the nurse,
+"you have been all that is good and true to my best beloved, as a child,
+and as a young lady; and now I earnestly entreat you to continue to wait
+on her, and to serve her as <i>my</i> wife, to your dying day."</p>
+
+<p>Nanny clapped her hands with a scream of delight, and bursting into tears,
+she exclaimed, as she hurried from the room,</p>
+
+<p>"It has all come true--it has all come true!"</p>
+
+<p>A pause of several minutes succeeded this burst of superstitious but
+natural feeling.</p>
+
+<p>"All who live near you appear to think you the common centre of their
+affections," Paul resumed; when his swelling heart permitted him to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"We have hitherto been a family of love--God grant it may always continue
+so."</p>
+
+<p>Another delicious silence, which lasted still longer than the other,
+followed. Eve then looked up into her husband's face with a gentle
+curiosity, and observed--</p>
+
+<p>"You have told me a great deal, Powis--explained all but one little thing,
+that, at the time, caused me great pain. Why did Ducie, when you were
+about to quit the Montauk together, so unceremoniously stop you, as you
+were about to get into the boat first; is the etiquette of a man-of-war so
+rigid as to justify so much rudeness, I had almost called it--?"</p>
+
+<p>"The etiquette of a vessel of war is rigid certainly, and wisely so. But
+what you fancied rudeness, was in truth a compliment. Among us sailors, it
+is the inferior who goes first <i>into</i> a boat, and who <i>quits</i> it last."</p>
+
+<p>"So much, then, for forming a judgment, ignorantly! I believe it is always
+safer to have no opinion, than to form one without a perfect knowledge of
+all the accompanying circumstances."</p>
+
+<p>"Let us adhere to this safe rule through life, dearest, and we may find
+its benefits. An absolute confidence, caution in drawing conclusions, and
+a just reliance on each other, may keep us as happy to the end of our
+married life, as we are at this blessed moment, when it is commencing
+under auspices so favourable as to seem almost providential."</p>
+<br />
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Home as Found, by James Fenimore Cooper
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Home as Found
+
+Author: James Fenimore Cooper
+
+Release Date: November 20, 2003  [eBook #10149]
+
+Language: English
+
+Chatacter set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOME AS FOUND***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+Home as Found.
+
+Sequel to "Homeward Bound."
+
+By J. Fenimore Cooper.
+
+Complete in one volume.
+
+1871.
+
+
+
+
+
+    "Thou art perfect."
+                PR. HON
+
+
+
+
+
+Preface
+
+
+
+Those who have done us the favour to read "Homeward Bound" will at
+once perceive that the incidents of this book commence at the point
+where those of the work just mentioned ceased. We are fully aware of
+the disadvantage of dividing the interest of a tale in this manner;
+but in the present instance, the separation has been produced by
+circumstances over which the writer had very little control. As any
+one who may happen to take up this volume will very soon discover
+that there is other matter which it is necessary to know it may be as
+well to tell all such persons, in the commencement, therefore, that
+their reading will be bootless, unless they have leisure to turn to
+the pages of Homeward Bound for their cue.
+
+We remember the despair with which that admirable observer of men,
+Mr. Mathews the comedian, confessed the hopelessness of success, in
+his endeavours to obtain a sufficiency of prominent and distinctive
+features to compose an entertainment founded on American character.
+The whole nation struck him as being destitute of salient points, and
+as characterized by a respectable mediocrity, that, however useful it
+might be in its way, was utterly without poetry, humour, or interest
+to the observer. For one who dealt principally with the more
+conspicuous absurdities of his fellow-creatures, Mr. Mathews was
+certainly right; we also believe him to have been right in the main,
+in the general tenor of his opinion; for this country, in its
+ordinary aspects, probably presents as barren a field to the writer
+of fiction, and to the dramatist, as any other on earth; we are not
+certain that we might not say the most barren. We believe that no
+attempt to delineate ordinary American life, either on the stage, or
+in the pages of a novel, has been rewarded with success. Even those
+works in which the desire to illustrate a principle has been the aim,
+when the picture has been brought within this homely frame, have had
+to contend with disadvantages that have been commonly found
+insurmountable. The latter being the intention of this book, the task
+has been undertaken with a perfect consciousness of all its
+difficulties, and with scarcely a hope of success. It would be indeed
+a desperate undertaking, to think of making anything interesting in
+the way of a _Roman de Societe_ in this country; still useful glances
+may possibly be made even in that direction, and we trust that the
+fidelity of one or two of our portraits will be recognized by the
+looker-on, although they will very likely be denied by the sitters
+themselves.
+
+There seems to be a pervading principle in things, which gives an
+accumulating energy to any active property that may happen to be in
+the ascendant, at the time being.--Money produces money; knowledge is
+the parent of knowledge; and ignorance fortifies ignorance.--In a
+word, like begets like. The governing social evil of America is
+provincialism; a misfortune that is perhaps inseparable from her
+situation. Without a social capital, with twenty or more communities
+divided by distance and political barriers, her people, who are
+really more homogenous than any other of the same numbers in the
+world perhaps, possess no standard for opinion, manners, social
+maxims, or even language.
+
+Every man, as a matter of course, refers to his own particular
+experience, and praises or condemns agreeably to notions contracted
+in the circle of his own habits, however narrow, provincial, or
+erroneous they may happen to be. As a consequence, no useful stage
+can exist; for the dramatist who should endeavour to delineate the
+faults of society, would find a formidable party arrayed against him,
+in a moment, with no party to defend. As another consequence, we see
+individuals constantly assailed with a wolf-like ferocity, while
+society is everywhere permitted to pass unscathed.
+
+That the American nation is a great nation, in some particulars the
+greatest the world ever saw, we hold to be true, and are as ready to
+maintain as any one can be; but we are also equally ready to concede,
+that it is very far behind most polished nations in various
+essentials, and chiefly, that it is lamentably in arrears to its own
+avowed principles. Perhaps this truth will be found to be the
+predominant thought, throughout the pages of "Home As Found."
+
+Home as Found.
+
+Chapter I.
+
+  "Good morrow, coz. Good morrow, sweet Hero."
+
+  SHAKSPEARE.
+
+When Mr. Effingham determined to return home, he sent orders to his
+agent to prepare his town-house in New-York for his reception,
+intending to pass a month or two in it, then to repair to Washington
+for a few weeks, at the close of its season, and to visit his country
+residence when the spring should fairly open. Accordingly, Eve now
+found herself at the head of one of the largest establishments, in
+the largest American town, within an hour after she had landed from
+the ship. Fortunately for her, however, her father was too just to
+consider a wife, or a daughter, a mere upper servant, and he rightly
+judged that a liberal portion of his income should be assigned to the
+procuring of that higher quality of domestic service, which can alone
+relieve the mistress of a household from a burthen so heavy to be
+borne. Unlike so many of those around him, who would spend on a
+single pretending and comfortless entertainment, in which the
+ostentatious folly of one contended with the ostentatious folly of
+another a sum that, properly directed, would introduce order and
+system into a family for a twelvemonth, by commanding the time and
+knowledge of those whose study they had been, and who would be
+willing to devote themselves to such objects, and then permit their
+wives and daughters to return to the drudgery to which the sex seems
+doomed in this country, he first bethought him of the wants of social
+life before he aspired to its parade. A man of the world, Mr.
+Effingham possessed the requisite knowledge, and a man of justice,
+the requisite fairness, to permit those who depended on him so much
+for their happiness, to share equitably in the good things that
+Providence had so liberally bestowed on himself. In other words, he
+made two people comfortable, by paying a generous price for a
+housekeeper; his daughter, in the first place, by releasing her from
+cares that, necessarily, formed no more a part of her duties than it
+would be a part of her duty to sweep the pavement before the door;
+and, in the next place, a very respectable woman who was glad to
+obtain so good a home on so easy terms. To this simple and just
+expedient, Eve was indebted for being at the head of one of the
+quietest, most truly elegant, and best, ordered establishments in
+America, with no other demands on her time than that which was
+necessary to issue a few orders in the morning, and to examine a few
+accounts once a week.
+
+One of the first and the most acceptable of the visits that Eve
+received, was from her cousin, Grace Van Cortlandt, who was in the
+country at the moment of her arrival, but who hurried back to town to
+meet her old school-fellow and kinswoman, the instant she heard of
+her having landed. Eve Effingham and Grace Van Cortlandt were
+sisters' children, and had been born within a month of each other. As
+the latter was without father or mother, most of their time had been
+passed together, until the former was taken abroad, when a separation
+unavoidably ensued. Mr. Effingham ardently desired, and had actually
+designed, to take his niece with him to Europe, but her paternal
+grandfather, who was still living, objected his years and affection,
+and the scheme was reluctantly abandoned. This grandfather was now
+dead, and Grace had been left with a very ample fortune, almost
+entirely the mistress of her own movements.
+
+The moment of the meeting between these two warm-hearted and
+sincerely attached young women, was one of great interest and anxiety
+to both. They retained for each other the tenderest love, though the
+years that had separated them had given rise to so many new
+impressions and habits that they did not prepare themselves for the
+interview without apprehension. This interview took place about a
+week after Eve was established in Hudson Square, and at an hour
+earlier than was usual for the reception of visits. Hearing a
+carriage stop before the door, and the bell ring, our heroine stole a
+glance from behind a curtain and recognized her cousin as she
+alighted.
+
+"_Qu'avez-vous, ma chere_?" demanded Mademoiselle Viefville,
+observing that her _eleve_ trembled and grew pale.
+
+"It is my cousin, Miss Van Cortlandt--she whom I loved as a sister--
+we now meet for the first time in so many years!"
+
+"_Bien_--_c'est une tres jolie jeune personne_!" returned the
+governess, taking a glance from the spot Eve had just quitted. "_Sur
+le rapport de la personne, ma chere, vous devriez etre contente, au
+moins_."
+
+"If you will excuse me, Mademoiselle, I will go down alone--I think I
+should prefer to meet Grace without witnesses in the first
+interview."
+
+"_Tres volontiers. Elle est parente, et c'est bien naturel."_
+
+Eve, on this expressed approbation, met her maid at the door, as she
+came to announce that _Mademoiselle de Cortlandt_ was in the library,
+and descended slowly to meet her. The library was lighted from above
+by means of a small dome, and Grace had unconsciously placed herself
+in the very position that a painter would have chosen, had she been
+about to sit for her portrait. A strong, full, rich light fell
+obliquely on her as Eve entered, displaying her fine person and
+beautiful features to the very best advantage, and they were features
+and a person that are not seen every day even in a country where
+female beauty is so common. She was in a carriage dress, and her
+toilette was rather more elaborate than Eve had been accustomed to
+see, at that hour, but still Eve thought she had seldom seen a more
+lovely young creature. Some such thoughts, also, passed through the
+mind of Grace herself, who, though struck, with a woman's readiness
+in such matters, with the severe simplicity of Eve's attire, as well
+as with its entire elegance, was more struck with the charms of her
+countenance and figure. There was, in truth, a strong resemblance
+between them, though each was distinguished by an expression suited
+to her character, and to the habits of her mind.
+
+"Miss Effingham!" said Grace, advancing a step to meet the lady who
+entered, while her voice was scarcely audible and her limbs trembled.
+
+"Miss Van Cortlandt!" said Eve, in the same low, smothered tone.
+
+This formality caused a chill in both, and each unconsciously stopped
+and curtsied. Eve had been so much struck with the coldness of the
+American manner, during the week she had been at home, and Grace was
+so sensitive on the subject of the opinion of one who had seen so
+much of Europe, that there was great danger, at that critical moment,
+the meeting would terminate unpropitiously.
+
+Thus far, however, all had been rigidly decorous, though the strong
+feelings that were glowing in the bosoms of both, had been so
+completely suppressed. But the smile, cold and embarrassed as it was,
+that each gave as she curtsied, had the sweet character of her
+childhood in it, and recalled to both the girlish and affectionate
+intercourse of their younger days.
+
+"Grace!" said Eve, eagerly, advancing a step or two impetuously, and
+blushing like the dawn.
+
+"Eve!"
+
+Each opened her arms, and in a moment they were locked in a long and
+fervent embrace. This was the commencement of their former intimacy,
+and before night Grace was domesticated in her uncle's house. It is
+true that Miss Effingham perceived certain peculiarities about Miss
+Van Cortlandt, that she had rather were absent; and Miss Van
+Cortlandt would have felt more at her ease, had Miss Effingham a
+little less reserve of manner, on certain subjects that the latter
+had been taught to think interdicted. Notwithstanding these slight
+separating shades in character, however, the natural affection was
+warm and sincere; and if Eve, according to Grace's notions, was a
+little stately and formal, she was polished and courteous, and if
+Grace, according to Eve's notions, was a little too easy and
+unreserved, she was feminine and delicate.
+
+We pass over the three or four days that succeeded, during which Eve
+had got to understand something of her new position, and we will come
+at once to a conversation between the cousins, that will serve to let
+the reader more intimately into the opinions, habits and feelings of
+both, as well as to open the real subject of our narrative. This
+conversation took place in that very library which had witnessed
+their first interview, soon after breakfast, and while the young
+ladies were still alone.
+
+"I suppose, Eve, you will have to visit the Green's.--They are
+Hajjis, and were much in society last winter."
+
+"Hajjis!--You surely do not mean, Grace, that they have been to
+Mecca?"
+
+"Not at all: only to Paris, my dear; that makes a Hajji in New-York."
+
+"And does it entitle the pilgrim to wear the green turban?" asked
+Eve, laughing.
+
+"To wear any thing, Miss Effingham; green, blue, or yellow, and to
+cause it to pass for elegance."
+
+"And which is the favourite colour with the family you have
+mentioned?"
+
+"It ought to be the first, in compliment to the name, but, if truth
+must be said, I think they betray an affection for all, with not a
+few of the half-tints in addition."
+
+"I am afraid they are too _prononcees_ for us, by this description. I
+am no great admirer, Grace, of walking rainbows."
+
+"_Too_ Green, you would have said, had you dared; but you are a Hajji
+too, and even the Greens know that a Hajji never puns, unless,
+indeed, it might be one from Philadelphia. But you will visit these
+people?"
+
+"Certainly, if they are in society and render it necessary by their
+own civilities."
+
+"They _are_ in society, in virtue of their rights as Hajjis; but, as
+they passed three months at Paris, you probably know something of
+them."
+
+"They may not have been there at the same time with ourselves,"
+returned Eve, quietly, "and Paris is a very large town. Hundreds of
+people come and go, that one never hears of. I do not remember those
+you have mentioned."
+
+"I wish you may escape them, for, in my untravelled judgment, they
+are anything but agreeable, notwithstanding all they have seen, or
+pretend to have seen."
+
+"It is very possible to have been all over christendom, and to remain
+exceedingly disagreeable; besides one may see a great deal, and yet
+see very little of a good quality."
+
+A pause of two or three minutes followed, during which Eve read a
+note, and her cousin played with the leaves of a book.
+
+"I wish I knew your real opinion of us, Eve," the last suddenly
+exclaimed. "Why not be frank with so near a relative; tell me
+honestly, now--are you reconciled to your country?"
+
+"You are the eleventh person who has asked me this question, which I
+find very extraordinary, as I have never quarrelled with my country."
+
+"Nay, I do not mean exactly that. I wish to hear how our society has
+struck one who has been educated abroad."
+
+"You wish, then, for opinions that can have no great value, since my
+experience at home, extends only to a fortnight. But you have many
+books on the country, and some written by very clever persons; why
+not consult them?"
+
+"Oh! you mean the travellers. None of them are worth a second
+thought, and we hold them, one and all, in great contempt."
+
+"Of that I can have no manner of doubt, as one and all, you are
+constantly protesting it, in the highways and bye-ways. There is no
+more certain sign of contempt, than to be incessantly dwelling on its
+intensity!"
+
+Grace had great quickness, as well as her cousin, and though provoked
+at Eve's quiet hit, she had the good sense and the good nature to
+laugh.
+
+"Perhaps we do protest and disdain a little too strenuously for good
+taste, if not to gain believers; but surely, Eve, you do not support
+these travellers in all that they have written of us?"
+
+"Not in half, I can assure you. My father and cousin Jack have
+discussed them too often in my presence to leave me in ignorance of
+the very many political blunders they have made in particular."
+
+"Political blunders!--I know nothing of them, and had rather thought
+them right, in most of what they said about our politics. But,
+surely, neither your father nor Mr. John Effingham corroborates what
+they say of our society!"
+
+"I cannot answer for either, on that point."
+
+"Speak then for yourself. Do _you_ think them right?"
+
+"You should remember, Grace, that I have not yet seen any society in
+New-York."
+
+"No society, dear!--Why you were at the Henderson's, and the
+Morgan's, and the Drewett's; three of the greatest _reunions_ that we
+have had in two winters!"'
+
+"I did not know that you meant those unpleasant crowds, by society."
+
+"Unpleasant crowds! Why, child, that _is_ society, is it not?'
+
+"Not what I have been taught to consider such; I rather think it
+would be better to call it company."
+
+"And is not this what is called society in Paris?"
+
+"As far from it as possible; it may be an excrescence of society; one
+of its forms; but, by no means, society itself. It would be as true
+to call cards, which are sometimes introduced in the world, society,
+as to call a ball given in two small and crowded rooms, society. They
+are merely two of the modes in which idlers endeavour to vary their
+amusements."
+
+"But we have little else than these balls, the morning visits, and an
+occasional evening, in which there is no dancing."
+
+"I am sorry to hear it; for, in that case, you can have no society."
+
+"And is it different at Paris--or Florence, or Rome?"
+
+"Very. In Paris there are many houses open every evening to which one
+can go, with little ceremony. Our sex appears in them, dressed
+according to what a gentleman I overheard conversing at Mrs.
+Henderson's would call their 'ulterior intentions,' for the night;
+some attired in the simplest manner, others dressed for concerts, for
+the opera, for court even; some on the way from a dinner, and others
+going to a late ball. All this matter of course variety, adds to the
+case and grace of the company, and coupled with perfect good manners,
+a certain knowledge of passing events, pretty modes of expression, an
+accurate and even utterance, the women usually find the means of
+making themselves agreeable. Their sentiment is sometimes a little
+heroic, but this one must overlook, and it is a taste, moreover, that
+is falling into disuse, as people read better books."
+
+"And you prefer this heartlessness, Eve, to the nature of your own
+country!"
+
+"I do not know that quiet, _retenue_, and a good tone, are a whit
+more heartless than flirting, giggling and childishness. There may be
+more nature in the latter, certainly, but it is scarcely as
+agreeable, after one has fairly got rid of the nursery."
+
+Grace looked vexed, but she loved her cousin too sincerely to be
+angry, A secret suspicion that Eve was right, too, came in aid of her
+affection, and while her little foot moved, she maintained her good-
+nature, a task not always attainable for those who believe that their
+own "superlatives" scarcely reach to other people's "positives." At
+this critical moment, when there was so much danger of a jar in the
+feelings of these two young females, the library door opened and
+Pierre, Mr. Effingham's own man, announced--
+
+"Monsieur Bragg."
+
+"Monsieur who?" asked Eve, in surprise.
+
+"Monsieur Bragg," returned Pierre, in French, "desires to see
+Mademoiselle."
+
+"You mean my father,--I know no such person."
+
+"He inquired first for Monsieur, but understanding Monsieur was out,
+he next asked to have the honour of seeing Mademoiselle."
+
+"Is it what they call a _person_ in England, Pierre?"
+
+Old Pierre smiled, as he answered--
+
+"He has the air, Mademoiselle, though he esteems himself a
+_personnage_, if I might take the liberty of judging."
+
+"Ask him for his card,--there must be a mistake, I think."
+
+While this short conversation took place, Grace Van Cortlandt was
+sketching a cottage with a pen, without attending to a word that was
+said. But, when Eve received the card from Pierre and read aloud,
+with the tone of surprise that the name would be apt to excite in a
+novice in the art of American nomenclature, the words "Aristabulus
+Bragg," her cousin began to laugh.
+
+"Who can this possibly be, Grace?--Did you ever hear of such a
+person, and what right can he have to wish to see me?"
+
+"Admit him, by all means; it is your father's land agent, and he may
+wish to leave some message for my uncle. You will be obliged to make
+his acquaintance, sooner or later, and it may as well be done now as
+at another time."
+
+"You have shown this gentleman into the front drawing-room, Pierre?"
+
+"Oui, Mademoiselle."
+
+"I will ring when you are wanted."
+
+Pierre withdrew, and Eve opened her secretary, out of which she took
+a small manuscript book, over the leaves of which she passed her
+fingers rapidly.
+
+"Here it is," she said, smiling, "Mr. Aristabulus Bragg, Attorney and
+Counsellor at Law, and the agent of the Templeton estate." This
+precious little work, you must understand, Grace, contains sketches
+of the characters of such persons as I shall be the most likely to
+see, by John Effingham, A.M. It is a sealed volume, of course, but
+there can be no harm in reading the part that treats of our present
+visiter, and, with your permission, we will have it in common.--'Mr.
+Aristabulus Bragg was born in one of the western counties of
+Massachusetts, and emigrated to New-York, after receiving his
+education, at the mature age of nineteen; at twenty-one he was
+admitted to the bar, and for the last seven years he has been a
+successful practitioner in all the courts of Otsego, from the
+justice's to the circuit. His talents are undeniable, as he commenced
+his education at fourteen and terminated it at twenty-one, the law-
+course included. This man is an epitome of all that is good and all
+that is bad, in a very large class of his fellow citizens. He is
+quick-witted, prompt in action, enterprising in all things in which
+he has nothing to lose, but wary and cautious in all things in which
+he has a real stake, and ready to turn not only his hand, but his
+heart and his principles to any thing that offers an advantage. With
+him, literally, "nothing is too high to be aspired to, nothing too
+low to be done." He will run for Governor, or for town-clerk, just as
+opportunities occur, is expert in all the _practices_ of his
+profession, has had a quarter's dancing, with three years in the
+classics, and turned his attention towards medicine and divinity,
+before he finally settled down into the law. Such a compound of
+shrewdness, impudence, common-sense, pretension, humility,
+cleverness, vulgarity, kind-heartedness, duplicity, selfishness, law-
+honesty, moral fraud and mother wit, mixed up with a smattering of
+learning and much penetration in practical things, can hardly be
+described, as any one of his prominent qualities is certain to be met
+by another quite as obvious that is almost its converse. Mr. Bragg,
+in short, is purely a creature of circumstances, his qualities
+pointing him out for either a member of congress or a deputy sheriff,
+offices that he is equally ready to fill. I have employed him to
+watch over the estate of your father, in the absence of the latter,
+on the principle that one practised in tricks is the best qualified
+to detect and expose them, and with the certainty that no man will
+trespass with impunity, so long as the courts continue to tax bills
+of costs with their present liberality.' You appear to know the
+gentleman, Grace; is this character of him faithful?"
+
+"I know nothing of bills of costs and deputy sheriffs, but I do know
+that Mr. Aristabulus Bragg is an amusing mixture of strut, humility,
+roguery and cleverness. He is waiting all this time in the drawing-
+room, and you had better see him, as he may, now, be almost
+considered part of the family. You know he has been living in the
+house at Templeton, ever since he was installed by Mr. John
+Effingham. It was there I had the honour first to meet him,"
+
+"First!--Surely you have never seen him any where else!"
+
+"Your pardon, my dear. He never comes to town without honouring me
+with a call. This is the price I pay for having had the honour of
+being an inmate of the same house with him for a week."
+
+Eve rang the bell, and Pierre made his appearance.
+
+"Desire Mr. Bragg to walk into the library."
+
+Grace looked demure while Pierre was gone to usher in their visiter,
+and Eve was thinking of the medley of qualities John Effingham had
+assembled in his description, as the door opened, and the subject of
+her contemplation entered.
+
+"_Monsieur Aristabule_" said Pierre, eyeing the card, but sticking at
+the first name.
+
+Mr. Aristabulus Bragg was advancing with an easy assurance to make
+his bow to the ladies, when the more finished air and quiet dignity
+of Miss Effingham, who was standing, so far disconcerted him, as
+completely to upset his self-possession. As Grace had expressed it,
+in consequence of having lived three years in the old residence at
+Templeton, he had begun to consider himself a part of the family, and
+at home he never spoke of the young lady without calling her "Eve,"
+or "Eve Effingham." But he found it a very different thing to affect
+familiarity among his associates, and to practise it in the very face
+of its subject; and, although seldom at a loss for words of some sort
+or another, he was now actually dumb-founded. Eve relieved his
+awkwardness by directing Pierre, with her eye, to hand a chair, and
+first speaking.
+
+"I regret that my father is not in," she said, by way of turning the
+visit from herself; "but he is to be expected every moment. Are you
+lately from Templeton?"
+
+Aristabulus drew his breath, and recovered enough of his ordinary
+tone of manner to reply with a decent regard to his character for
+self-command. The intimacy that he had intended to establish on the
+spot, was temporarily defeated, it is true, and without his exactly
+knowing how it had been effected; for it was merely the steadiness of
+the young lady, blended as it was with a polished reserve, that had
+thrown him to a distance he could not explain. He felt immediately,
+and with taste that did his sagacity credit, that his footing in this
+quarter was only to be obtained by unusually slow and cautious means.
+Still, Mr. Bragg was a man of great decision, and, in his way, of
+very far-sighted views; and, singular as it may seem, at that
+unpropitious moment, he mentally determined that, at no very distant
+day, he would make Miss Eve Effingham his wife.
+
+"I hope Mr. Effingham enjoys good health," he said, with some such
+caution as a rebuked school-girl enters on the recitation of her
+task--"he enjoyed bad health I hear, (Mr. Aristabulus Bragg, though
+so shrewd, was far from critical in his modes of speech) when he went
+to Europe, and after travelling so far in such bad company, it would
+be no more than fair that he should have a little respite as he
+approaches home and old age."
+
+Had Eve been told that the man who uttered this nice sentiment, and
+that too in accents as uncouth and provincial as the thought was
+finished and lucid, actually presumed to think of her as his bosom
+companion, it is not easy to say which would have predominated in her
+mind, mirth or resentment. But Mr. Bragg was not in the habit of
+letting his secrets escape him prematurely, and certainly this was
+one that none but a wizard could have discovered without the aid of a
+direct oral or written communication.
+
+"Are you lately from Templeton?" repeated Eve a little surprised that
+the gentleman did not see fit to answer the question, which was the
+only one that, as it seemed to her, could have a common interest with
+them both.
+
+"I left home the day before yesterday," Aristabulus now deigned to
+reply.
+
+"It is so long since I saw our beautiful mountains and I was then so
+young, that I feel a great impatience to revisit them, though the
+pleasure must be deferred until spring."
+
+"I conclude they are the handsomest mountains in the known world,
+Miss Effingham!"
+
+"That is much more than I shall venture to claim for them; but,
+according to my imperfect recollection, and, what I esteem of far
+more importance, according to the united testimony of Mr. John
+Effingham and my father, I think they must be very beautiful."
+
+Aristabulus looked up, as if he had a facetious thing to say, and he
+even ventured on a smile, while he made his answer.
+
+"I hope Mr. John Effingham has prepared you for a great change in the
+house?"
+
+"We know that it has been repaired and altered under his directions.
+That was done at my father's request."
+
+"We consider it denationalized, Miss Effingham, there being nothing
+like it, west of Albany at least."
+
+"I should be sorry to find that my cousin has subjected us to this
+imputation," said Eve smiling--perhaps a little equivocally; "the
+architecture of America being generally so simple and pure. Mr.
+Effingham laughs at his own improvements, however, in which, he says,
+he has only carried out the plans of the original _artiste_, who
+worked very much in what was called the composite order.
+
+"You allude to Mr. Hiram Doolittle, a gentleman I never saw; though I
+hear he has left behind him many traces of his progress in the newer
+states. _Ex pede Herculem_, as we say, in the classics, Miss
+Effingham I believe it is the general sentiment that Mr. Doolittle's
+designs have been improved on, though most people think that the
+Grecian or Roman architecture, which is so much in use in America,
+would be more republican. But every body knows that Mr. John
+Effingham is not much of a republican."
+
+Eve did not choose to discuss her kinsman's opinions with Mr.
+Aristabulus Bragg, and she quietly remarked that she "did not know
+that the imitations of the ancient architecture, of which there are
+so many in the country, were owing to attachment to republicanism."
+
+"To what else can it be owing, Miss Eve?"
+
+"Sure enough," said Grace Van Cortlandt; "it is unsuited to the
+materials, the climate, and the uses; and some very powerful motive,
+like that mentioned by Mr. Bragg, could alone overcome these
+obstacles."
+
+Aristabulus started from his seat, and making sundry apologies,
+declared his previous unconsciousness that Miss Van Cortlandt was
+present; all of which was true enough, as he had been so much
+occupied mentally, with her cousin, as not to have observed her,
+seated as she was partly behind a screen. Grace received the excuses
+favourably, and the conversation was resumed.
+
+"I am sorry that my cousin should offend the taste of the country,"
+said Eve, "but as we are to live in the house, the punishment will
+fall heaviest on the offenders."
+
+"Do not mistake me, Miss Eve," returned Aristabulus, in a little
+alarm, for he too well understood the influence and wealth of John
+Effingham, not to wish to be on good terms with him; "do not mistake
+me, I admire the house, and know it to be a perfect specimen of a
+pure architecture in its way, but then public opinion is not yet
+quite up to it. I see all its beauties, I would wish you to know, but
+then there are many, a majority perhaps, who do not, and these
+persons think they ought to be consulted about such matters."
+
+"I believe Mr. John Effingham thinks less of his own work than you
+seem to think of it yourself, sir, for I have frequently heard him
+laugh at it, as a mere enlargement of the merits of the composite
+order. He calls it a caprice, rather than a taste: nor do I see what
+concern a majority, as you term them, can have with a house that does
+not belong to them."
+
+Aristabulus was surprised that any one could disregard a majority;
+for, in this respect, he a good deal resembled Mr. Dodge, though
+running a different career; and the look of surprise he gave was
+natural and open.
+
+"I do not mean that the public has a legal right to control the
+tastes of the citizen," he said, "but in a _republican_ government,
+you undoubtedly understand, Miss Eve, it _will_ rule in all things."
+
+"I can understand that one would wish to see his neighbour use good
+taste, as it helps to embellish a country; but the man who should
+consult the whole neighbourhood before he built, would be very apt to
+cause a complicated house to be erected, if he paid much respect to
+the different opinions he received; or, what is quite as likely, apt
+to have no house at all."
+
+"I think you are mistaken, Miss Effingham, for the public sentiment,
+just now, runs almost exclusively and popularly into the Grecian
+school. We build little besides temples for our churches, our banks,
+our taverns, our court-houses, and our dwellings. A friend of mine
+has just built a brewery on the model of the Temple of the Winds."
+
+"Had it been a mill, one might understand the conceit," said Eve, who
+now began to perceive that her visiter had some latent humour, though
+he produced it in a manner to induce one to think him any thing but a
+droll. "The mountains must be doubly beautiful, if they are decorated
+in the way you mention. I sincerely hope, Grace, that I shall find
+the hills as pleasant as they now exist in my recollection!"
+
+"Should they not prove to be quite as lovely as you imagine, Miss
+Effingham," returned Aristabulus, who saw no impropriety in answering
+a remark made to Miss Van Cortlandt, or any one else, "I hope you
+will have the kindness to conceal the fact from the world."
+
+"I am afraid that would exceed my power, the disappointment would be
+so strong. May I ask why you show so much interest in my keeping so
+cruel a mortification to myself?"
+
+"Why, Miss Eve," said Aristabulus, looking grave, "I am afraid that
+_our_ people would hardly bear the expression of such an opinion from
+_you_"
+
+"From _me!_--and why not from _me_, in particular?"
+
+"Perhaps it is because they think you have travelled, and have seen
+other countries."
+
+"And is it only those who have _not_ travelled, and who have no means
+of knowing the value of what they say, that are privileged to
+criticise?"
+
+"I cannot exactly explain my own meaning, perhaps, but I think Miss
+Grace will understand me. Do you not agree with me, Miss Van
+Cortlandt, in thinking it would be safer for one who never saw any
+other mountains to complain of the tameness and monotony of our own,
+than for one who had passed a whole life among the Andes and the
+Alps?"
+
+Eve smiled, for she saw that Mr. Bragg was capable of detecting and
+laughing at provincial pride, even while he was so much under its
+influence; and Grace coloured, for she had the consciousness of
+having already betrayed some of this very silly sensitiveness, in her
+intercourse with her cousin, in connexion with other subjects. A
+reply was unnecessary, however, as the door just then opened, and
+John Effingham made his appearance. The meeting between the two
+gentlemen, for we suppose Aristabulus must be included in the
+category by courtesy, if not of right, was more cordial than Eve had
+expected to witness, for each really entertained a respect for the
+other, in reference to a merit of a particular sort; Mr. Bragg
+esteeming Mr. John Effingham as a wealthy and caustic cynic, and Mr.
+John Effingham regarding Mr. Bragg much as the owner of a dwelling
+regards a valuable house-dog. After a few moments of conversation,
+the two withdrew together, and just as the ladies were about to
+descend to the drawing-room, previously to dinner, Pierre announced
+that a plate had been ordered for the land agent.
+
+Chapter II.
+
+  "I know that Deformed; he has been a vile thief this seven year he
+  goes up and down like a gentleman."
+
+  MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.
+
+Eve, and her cousin, found Sir George Templemore and Captain Truck in
+the drawing-room, the former having lingered in New-York, with a
+desire to be near his friends, and the latter being on the point of
+sailing for Europe, in his regular turn. To these must be added Mr.
+Bragg and the ordinary inmates of the house, when the reader will get
+a view of the whole party.
+
+Aristabulus had never before sat down to as brilliant a table, and
+for the first time in his life, he saw candles lighted at a dinner;
+but he was not a man to be disconcerted at a novelty. Had he been a
+European of the same origin and habits, awkwardness would have
+betrayed him fifty times, before the dessert made its appearance;
+but, being the man he was, one who overlooked a certain prurient
+politeness that rather illustrated his deportment, might very well
+have permitted him to pass among the _oi polloi_ of the world, were
+it not for a peculiar management in the way of providing for himself.
+It is true, he asked every one near him to eat of every thing he
+could himself reach, and that he used his knife as a coal-heaver uses
+a shovel; but the company he was in, though fastidious in its own
+deportment, was altogether above the silver-forkisms, and this
+portion of his demeanour, if it did not escape undetected, passed
+away unnoticed. Not so, however, with the peculiarity already
+mentioned as an exception. This touch of deportment, (or management,
+perhaps, is the better word,) being characteristic of the man, it
+deserves to be mentioned a little in detail.
+
+The service at Mr. Effingham's table was made in the quiet, but
+thorough manner that distinguishes a French dinner. Every dish was
+removed, carved by the domestics, and handed in turn to each guest.
+But there were a delay and a finish in this arrangement that
+suited neither Aristabulus's go-a-head-ism, nor his organ of
+acquisitiveness. Instead of waiting, therefore, for the more
+graduated movements of the domestics, he began to take care of
+himself, an office that he performed with a certain dexterity that he
+had acquired by frequenting ordinaries--a school, by the way, in
+which he had obtained most of his notions of the proprieties of the
+table. One or two slices were obtained in the usual manner, or by
+means of the regular service; and, then, like one who had laid the
+foundation of a fortune, by some lucky windfall in the commencement
+of his career, he began to make accessions, right and left, as
+opportunity offered. Sundry _entremets_, or light dishes that had a
+peculiarly tempting appearance, came first under his grasp. Of these
+he soon accumulated all within his reach, by taxing his neighbours,
+when he ventured to send his plate, here and there, or wherever he
+saw a dish that promised to reward his trouble. By such means, which
+were resorted to, however, with a quiet and unobtrusive assiduity
+that escaped much observation, Mr. Bragg contrived to make his own
+plate a sample epitome of the first course. It contained in the
+centre, fish, beef, and ham; and around these staple articles, he had
+arranged _croquettes, rognons, ragouts_, vegetables, and other light
+things, until not only was the plate completely covered, but it was
+actually covered in double and triple layers; mustard, cold butter,
+salt, and even pepper, garnishing its edges. These different
+accumulations were the work of time and address, and most of the
+company had repeatedly changed their plates before Aristabulus had
+eaten a mouthful, the soup excepted. The happy moment when his
+ingenuity was to be rewarded, had now arrived, and the land agent was
+about to commence the process of mastication, or of deglutition
+rather, for he troubled himself very little with the first operation,
+when the report of a cork drew his attention towards the chaimpaigne.
+To Aristabulus this wine never came amiss, for, relishing its
+piquancy, he had never gone far enough into the science of the table
+to learn which were the proper moments for using it. As respected all
+the others at table, this moment had in truth arrived, though, as
+respected himself, he was no nearer to it, according to a regulated
+taste, than when he first took his seat. Perceiving that Pierre was
+serving it, however, he offered his own glass, and enjoyed a
+delicious instant, as he swallowed a beverage that much surpassed any
+thing he had ever known to issue out of the waxed and leaded nozles
+that, pointed like so many enemies' batteries, loaded with headaches
+and disordered stomachs, garnished sundry village bars of his
+acquaintance.
+
+Aristabulus finished his glass at a draught, and when he took breath,
+he fairly smacked his lips. That was an unlucky instant, his plate,
+burthened with all its treasures, being removed, at this unguarded
+moment; the man who performed the unkind office, fancying that a
+dislike to the dishes could alone have given rise to such an omnium-
+gatherum.
+
+It was necessary to commence _de novo_, but this could no longer be
+done with the first course, which was removed, and Aristabulus set-
+to, with zeal, forthwith, on the game. Necessity compelled him to
+eat, as the different dishes were offered; and, such was his ordinary
+assiduity with the knife and fork, that, at the end of the second
+remove, he had actually disposed of more food than any other person
+at table. He now began to converse, and we shall open the
+conversation at the precise point in the dinner, when it was in the
+power of Aristabulus to make one of the interlocutors.
+
+Unlike Mr. Dodge, he had betrayed no peculiar interest in the
+baronet, being a man too shrewd and worldly to set his heart on
+trifles of any sort; and Mr. Bragg no more hesitated about replying
+to Sir George Templemore, or Mr. Effingham, than he would have
+hesitated about answering one of his own nearest associates. With him
+age and experience formed no particular claims to be heard, and, as
+to rank, it is true he had some vague ideas about there being such a
+thing in the militia, but as it was unsalaried rank, he attached no
+great importance to it. Sir George Templemore was inquiring
+concerning the recording of deeds, a regulation that had recently
+attracted attention in England; and one of Mr. Effingham's replies
+contained some immaterial inaccuracy, which Aristabulus took occasion
+to correct, as his first appearance in the general discourse.
+
+"I ask pardon, sir," he concluded his explanations by saying, "but I
+ought to know these little niceties, having served a short part of a
+term as a county clerk, to fill a vacancy occasioned by a death."
+
+"You mean, Mr. Bragg, that you were employed to _write_ in a county
+clerk's office," observed John Effingham, who so much disliked
+untruth, that he did not hesitate much about refuting it; or what he
+now fancied to be an untruth.
+
+"As county clerk, sir. Major Pippin died a year before his time was
+out, and I got the appointment. As regular a county clerk, sir, as
+there is in the fifty-six counties of New-York."
+
+"When I had the honour to engage you as Mr. Effingham's agent, sir,"
+returned the other, a little sternly, for he felt his own character
+for veracity involved in that of the subject of his selection, "I
+believe, indeed, that you were writing in the office, but I did not
+understand it was as _the_ clerk."
+
+"Very true, Mr. John," returned Aristabulus, without discovering the
+least concern, "I was _then_ engaged by my successor as _a_ clerk;
+but a few months earlier, I filled the office myself."
+
+"Had you gone on, in the regular line of promotion, my dear sir,"
+pithily inquired Captain Truck, "to what preferment would you have
+risen by this time?"
+
+"I believe I understand you, gentlemen," returned the unmoved
+Aristabulus, who perceived a general smile. "I know that some people
+are particular about keeping pretty much on the same level, as to
+office: but I hold to no such doctrine. If one good thing cannot be
+had, I do not see that it is a reason for rejecting another. I ran
+that year for sheriff, and finding I was not strong enough to carry
+the county, I accepted my successor's offer to write in the office,
+until something better might turn up."
+
+"You practised all this time, I believe, Mr. Bragg," observed John
+Effingham.
+
+"I did a little in that way, too, sir; or as much as I could. Law is
+flat with us, of late, and many of the attorneys are turning their
+attention to other callings."
+
+"And pray, sir," asked Sir George, "what is the favourite pursuit
+with most of them, just now?"
+
+"Some our way have gone into the horse-line; but much the greater
+portion are, just now, dealing in western cities.
+
+"In western cities!" exclaimed the baronet, looking as if he
+distrusted a mystification.
+
+"In such articles, and in mill-seats, and rail-road lines, and other
+expectations."
+
+"Mr. Bragg means that they are buying and selling lands on which it
+is hoped all these conveniences may exist, a century hence,"
+explained John Effingham.
+
+"The _hope_ is for next year, or next week, even, Mr. John," returned
+Aristabulus, with a sly look, "though you may be very right as to the
+_reality_. Great fortunes have been made on a capital of hopes,
+lately, in this country."
+
+"And have you been able, yourself, to resist these temptations?"
+asked Mr. Effingham. "I feel doubly indebted to you, sir, that you
+should have continued to devote your time to my interests, while so
+many better things were offering."
+
+"It was my duty, sir," said Aristabulus, bowing so much the lower,
+from the consciousness that he had actually deserted his post for
+some months, to embark in the western speculations that were then so
+active in the country, "not to say my pleasure. There are many
+profitable occupations in this country, Sir George, that have been
+overlooked in the eagerness to embark in the town-trade--"
+
+"Mr. Bragg does not mean trade in town, but trade in towns,"
+explained John Effingham.
+
+"Yes, sir, the traffic in cities. I never come this way, without
+casting an eye about me, in order to see if there is any thing to be
+done that is useful; and I confess that several available
+opportunities have offered, if one had capital. Milk is a good
+business."
+
+"_Le lait!_" exclaimed Mademoiselle Viefville, involuntarily.
+
+"Yes, ma'am, for ladies as well as gentlemen. Sweet potatoes I have
+heard well spoken of, and peaches are really making some rich men's
+fortunes."
+
+"All of which are honester and better occupations than the traffic in
+cities, that you have mentioned," quietly observed Mr. Effingham.
+
+Aristabulus looked up in a little surprise, for with him every thing
+was eligible that returned a good profit, and all things honest that
+the law did not actually punish. Perceiving, however, that the
+company was disposed to listen, and having, by this time, recovered
+the lost ground, in the way of food, he cheerfully resumed his theme.
+
+"Many families have left Otsego, this and the last summer, Mr.
+Effingham, as emigrants for the west. The fever has spread far and
+wide."
+
+"The fever! Is _old_ Otsego," for so its inhabitants loved to call a
+county of half a century's existence, it being venerable by
+comparison, "is _old_ Otsego losing its well established character
+for salubrity?"
+
+"I do not allude to an animal fever, but to the western fever."
+
+"_Ce pays de l'ouest, est-il bien malsain_?" whispered Mademoiselle
+Viefville.
+
+"_Apparemment, Mademoiselle, sur plusieurs rapports."_
+
+"The western fever has seized old and young, and it has carried off
+many active families from our part of the world," continued
+Aristabulus, who did not understand the little aside just mentioned,
+and who, of course, did not heed it; "most of the counties adjoining
+our own have lost a considerable portion of their population."
+
+"And they who have gone, do they belong to the permanent families, or
+are they merely the floating inhabitants?" inquired Mr. Effingham.
+
+"Most of them belong to the regular movers."
+
+"Movers!" again exclaimed Sir George--"is there any material part of
+your population who actually deserve this name?"
+
+"As much so as the man who shoes a horse ought to be called a smith,
+or the man who frames a house a carpenter," answered John Effingham.
+
+"To be sure," continued Mr. Bragg, "we have a pretty considerable
+leaven of them in our political dough, as well as in our active
+business. I believe, Sir George, that in England, men are tolerably
+stationary."
+
+"We love to continue for generations on the same spot. We love the
+tree that our forefathers planted, the roof that they built, the
+fire-side by which they sat, the sods that cover their remains."
+
+"Very poetical, and I dare say there are situations in life, in which
+such feelings come in without much effort. It must be a great check
+to business operations, however, in your part of the world, sir!"
+
+"Business operations!--what is business, as you term it, sir, to the
+affections, to the recollections of ancestry, and to the solemn
+feelings connected with history and tradition?"
+
+"Why, sir, in the way of history, one meets with but few incumbrances
+in this country, but he may do very much as interest dictates, so far
+as that is concerned, at least. A nation is much to be pitied that is
+weighed down by the past, in this manner, since its industry and
+enterprize are constantly impeded by obstacles that grow out of its
+recollections. America may, indeed, be termed a happy and a free
+country, Mr. John Effingham, in this, as well as in all other
+things!"
+
+Sir George Templemore was too well-bred to utter all he felt at that
+moment, as it would unavoidably wound the feelings of his hosts, but
+he was rewarded for his forbearance by intelligent smiles from Eve
+and Grace, the latter of whom the young baronet fancied, just at that
+moment, was quite as beautiful as her cousin, and if less finished in
+manners, she had the most interesting _naivete_.
+
+"I have been told that most old nations have to struggle with
+difficulties that we escape," returned John Effingham, "though I
+confess this is a superiority on our part, that never before
+presented itself to my mind."
+
+"The political economists, and even the geographers have overlooked
+it, but practical men see and feel its advantages, every hour in the
+day. I have been told, Sir George Templemore, that in England, there
+are difficulties in running highways and streets through homesteads
+and dwellings; and that even a rail-road, or a canal, is obliged to
+make a curve to avoid a church-yard or a tomb-stone?"
+
+"I confess to the sin, sir."
+
+"Our friend Mr. Bragg," put in John Effingham, "considers life as all
+_means_ and no _end_."
+
+"An end cannot be got at without the means, Mr. John Effingham, as I
+trust you will, yourself, admit. I am for the end of the road, at
+least, and must say that I rejoice in being a native of a country in
+which as few impediments as possible exist to onward impulses. The
+man who should resist an improvement, in our part of the country, on
+account of his forefathers, would fare badly among his contemporaries."
+
+"Will you permit me to ask, Mr. Bragg, if you feel no local
+attachments yourself," enquired the baronet, throwing as much
+delicacy into the tones of his voice, as a question that he felt
+ought to be an insult to a man's heart, would allow--"if one tree is
+not more pleasant than another; the house you were born in more
+beautiful than a house into which you never entered; or the altar at
+which you have long worshipped, more sacred than another at which you
+never knelt?"
+
+"Nothing gives me greater satisfaction than to answer the questions
+of gentlemen that travel through our country," returned Aristabulus,
+"for I think, in making nations acquainted with each other, we
+encourage trade and render business more secure. To reply to your
+inquiry, a human being is not a cat, to love a locality rather than
+its own interests. I have found some trees much pleasanter than
+others, and the pleasantest tree I can remember was one of my own,
+out of which the sawyers made a thousand feet of clear stuff, to say
+nothing of middlings. The house I was born in was pulled down,
+shortly after my birth, as indeed has been its successor, so I can
+tell you nothing on that head; and as for altars, there are none in
+my persuasion."
+
+"The church of Mr. Bragg has stripped itself as naked as he would
+strip every thing else, if he could," said John Effingham. "I much
+question if he ever knelt even; much less before an altar."
+
+"We are of the standing order, certainly," returned Aristabulus,
+glancing towards the ladies to discover how they took his wit, "and
+Mr. John Effingham is as near right as a man need be, in a matter of
+faith. In the way of houses, Mr. Effingham, I believe it is the
+general opinion you might have done better with your own, than to
+have repaired it. Had the materials been disposed of, they would have
+sold well, and by running a street through the property, a pretty sum
+might have been realized."
+
+"In which case I should have been without a home, Mr. Bragg."
+
+"It would have been no great matter to get another on cheaper land.
+The old residence would have made a good factory, or an inn."
+
+"Sir, I _am_ a cat, and like the places I have long frequented."
+
+Aristabulus, though not easily daunted, was awed by Mr. Effingham's
+manner, and Eve saw that her father's fine face had flushed. This
+interruption, therefore, suddenly changed the discourse, which has
+been recreated at some length, as likely to give the reader a better
+insight into a character that will fill some space in our narrative,
+than a more laboured description.
+
+"I trust your owners, Captain Truck," said John Effingham, by way of
+turning the conversation into another channel, "are fully satisfied
+with the manner in which you saved their property from the hands of
+the Arabs?"
+
+"Men, when money is concerned, are more disposed to remember how it
+was lost than how it was recovered, religion and trade being the two
+poles, on such a point," returned the old seaman, with a serious
+face. "On the whole, my dear sir, I have reason to be satisfied,
+however; and so long as you, my passengers and my friends, are not
+inclined to blame me, I shall feel as if I had done at least a part
+of my duty."
+
+Eve rose from table, went to a side-board and returned, when she
+gracefully placed before the master of the Montauk a rich and
+beautifully chased punch-bowl, in silver. Almost at the same moment,
+Pierre offered a salver that contained a capital watch, a pair of
+small silver tongs to hold a coal, and a deck trumpet, in solid
+silver.
+
+"These are so many faint testimonials of our feelings," said
+Eve--"and you will do us the favour to retain them, as evidences of
+the esteem created by skill, kindness, and courage."
+
+"My dear young lady!" cried the old tar, touched to the soul by the
+feeling with which Eve acquitted herself of this little duty, "my
+dear young lady--well, God bless you--God bless you all--you too, Mr.
+John Effingham, for that matter--and Sir George--that I should ever
+have taken that runaway for a gentleman and a baronet--though I
+suppose there are some silly baronets, as well as silly lords--retain
+them?"--glancing furiously at Mr. Aristabulus Bragg, "may the Lord
+forget me, in the heaviest hurricane, if I ever forget whence these
+things came, and why they were given."
+
+Here the worthy captain was obliged to swallow some wine, by way of
+relieving his emotions, and Aristabulus, profiting by the
+opportunity, coolly took the bowl, which, to use a word of his own,
+he _hefted_ in his hand, with a view to form some tolerably accurate
+notion of its intrinsic value. Captain Truck's eye caught the action,
+and he reclaimed his property quite as unceremoniously as it had been
+taken away, nothing but the presence of the ladies preventing an
+outbreaking that would have amounted to a declaration of war.
+
+"With your permission, sir," said the captain, drily, after he had
+recovered the bowl, not only without the other's consent, but, in
+some degree, against his will; "this bowl is as precious in my eyes
+as if it were made of my father's bones."
+
+"You may indeed think so," returned the land-agent, "for its cost
+could not be less than a hundred dollars."
+
+"Cost, sir!--But, my dear young lady, let us talk of the real value.
+For what part of these things am I indebted to you?"
+
+"The bowl is my offering," Eve answered, smilingly, though a tear
+glistened in her eye, as she witnessed the strong unsophisticated
+feeling of the old tar. "I thought it might serve sometimes to bring
+me to your recollection, when it was well filled in honour of
+'sweethearts and wives.'"
+
+"It shall--it shall, by the Lord; and Mr. Saunders needs look to it,
+if he do not keep this work as bright as a cruising frigate's bottom.
+To whom do I owe the coal-tongs?"
+
+"Those are from Mr. John Effingham, who insists that he will come
+nearer to your heart than any of us, though the gift be of so little
+cost."
+
+"He does not know me, my dear young lady--nobody ever got as near my
+heart as you; no, not even my own dear pious old mother. But I thank
+Mr. John Effingham from my inmost spirit, and shall seldom smoke
+without thinking of him. The watch I know is Mr. Effingham's, and I
+ascribe the trumpet to Sir George."
+
+The bows of the several gentlemen assured the captain he was right,
+and he shook each of them cordially by the hand, protesting, in the
+fulness of his heart, that nothing would give him greater pleasure
+than to be able to go through the same perilous scenes as those from
+which they had so lately escaped, in their good company again.
+
+While this was going on, Aristabulus, notwithstanding the rebuke he
+had received, contrived to get each article, in succession, into his
+hands, and by dint of poising it on a finger, or by examining it, to
+form some approximative notion of its inherent value. The watch he
+actually opened, taking as good a survey of its works as the
+circumstances of the case would very well allow.
+
+"I respect these things, sir, more than you respect your father's
+grave," said Captain Truck sternly, as he rescued the last article
+from what he thought the impious grasp of Aristabulus again, "and cat
+or no cat, they sink or swim with me for the remainder of the cruise.
+If there is any virtue in a will, which I am sorry to say I hear
+there is not any longer, they shall share my last bed with me, be it
+ashore or be it afloat. My dear young lady, fancy all the rest, but
+depend on it, punch will be sweeter than ever taken from this bowl,
+and 'sweethearts and wives' will never be so honoured again."
+
+"We are going to a ball this evening, at the house of one with whom I
+am sufficiently intimate to take the liberty of introducing a
+stranger, and I wish, gentlemen," said Mr. Effingham, bowing to
+Aristabulus and the captain, by way of changing the conversation,
+"you would do me the favour to be of our party."
+
+Mr. Bragg acquiesced very cheerfully, and quite as a matter of
+course; while Captain Truck, after protesting his unfitness for such
+scenes, was finally prevailed on by John Effingham, to comply with
+the request also. The ladies remained at table but a few minutes
+longer, when they retired, Mr. Effingham having dropped into the old
+custom of sitting at the bottle, until summoned to the drawing-room,
+a usage that continues to exist in America, for a reason no better
+than the fact that it continues to exist in England;--it being almost
+certain that it will cease in New-York, the season after it is known
+to have ceased in London.
+
+Chapter III.
+
+  "Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful!"
+
+  SHAKSPEARE.
+
+As Captain Truck asked permission to initiate the new coal-tongs by
+lighting a cigar, Sir George Templemore contrived to ask Pierre, in
+an aside, if the ladies would allow him to join them. The desired
+consent having been obtained, the baronet quietly stole from table,
+and was soon beyond the odours of the dining-room.
+
+"You miss the censer and the frankincense," said Eve, laughing, as
+Sir George entered the drawing-room; "but you will remember we have
+no church establishment, and dare not take such liberties with the
+ceremonials of the altar."
+
+"That is a short-lived custom with us, I fancy, though far from an
+unpleasant one. But you do me injustice in supposing I am merely
+running away from the fumes of the dinner."
+
+"No, no; we understand perfectly well that you have something to do
+with the fumes of flattery, and we will at once fancy all has been
+said that the occasion requires. Is not our honest old captain a
+jewel in his way?"
+
+"Upon my word, since you allow me to speak of your father's guests, I
+do not think it possible to have brought together two men who are so
+completely the opposites of each other, as Captain Truck and this Mr
+Aristabulus Bragg. The latter is quite the most extraordinary person
+in his way, it was ever my good fortune to meet with."
+
+"You call him a _person_, while Pierre calls him a _personnage;_ I
+fancy he considers it very much as a matter of accident, whether he
+is to pass his days in the one character or in the other. Cousin Jack
+assures me, that, while this man accepts almost any duty that he
+chooses to assign him, he would not deem it at all a violation of the
+_convenances_ to aim at the throne in the White House."
+
+"Certainly with no hopes of ever attaining it!"
+
+"One cannot answer for that. The man must undergo many essential
+changes, and much radical improvement, before such a climax to his
+fortunes can ever occur; but the instant you do away with the claims
+of hereditary power, the door is opened to a new chapter of
+accidents. Alexander of Russia styled himself _un heureux accident_;
+and should it ever be our fortune to receive Mr. Bragg as President,
+we shall only have to term him _un malheureux accident_. I believe
+that will contain all the difference."
+
+"Your republicanism is indomitable, Miss Effingham, and I shall
+abandon the attempt to convert you to safer principles, more
+especially as I find you supported by both the Mr. Effinghams, who,
+while they condemn so much at home, seem singularly attached to their
+own system at the bottom."
+
+"They condemn, Sir George Templemore, because they know that
+perfection is hopeless, and because they feel it to be unsafe and
+unwise to eulogize defects, and they are attached, because near views
+of other countries have convinced them that, comparatively at last,
+bad as we are, we are still better than most of our neighbours."
+
+"I can assure you," said Grace, "that many of the opinions of Mr John
+Effingham, in particular, are not at all the opinions that are most
+in vogue here; he rather censures what we like, and likes what we
+censure. Even my dear uncle is thought to be a little heterodox on
+such subjects."
+
+"I can readily believe it," returned Eve, steadily. "These gentlemen,
+having become familiar with better things, in the way of the tastes,
+and of the purely agreeable, cannot discredit their own knowledge so
+much as to extol that which their own experience tells them is
+faulty, or condemn that which their own experience tells them is
+relatively good. Now, Grace, if you will reflect a moment, you will
+perceive that people necessarily like the best of their own tastes,
+until they come to a knowledge of better; and that they as
+necessarily quarrel with the unpleasant facts that surround them;
+although these facts, as consequences of a political system, may be
+much less painful than those of other systems of which they have no
+knowledge. In the one case, they like their own best, simply because
+it is their own best; and they dislike their own worst, because it is
+their own worst. We cherish a taste, in the nature of things, without
+entering into any comparisons, for when the means of comparison
+offer, and we find improvements, it ceases to be a taste at all;
+while to complain of any positive grievance, is the nature of man, I
+fear!"
+
+"I think a republic odious!"
+
+"_Le republique est une horreur!_"
+
+Grace thought a republic odious, without knowing any thing of any
+other state of society, and because it contained odious things; and
+Mademoiselle Viefville called a republic _une horreur_, because heads
+fell and anarchy prevailed in her own country, during its early
+struggles for liberty. Though Eve seldom spoke more sensibly, and
+never more temperately, than while delivering the foregoing opinions,
+Sir George Templemore doubted whether she had all that exquisite
+_finesse_ and delicacy of features, that he had so much admired; and
+when Grace burst out in the sudden and senseless exclamation we have
+recorded, he turned towards her sweet and animated countenance,
+which, for the moment, he fancied the loveliest of the two.
+
+Eve Effingham had yet to learn that she had just entered into the
+most intolerant society, meaning purely as society, and in connexion
+with what are usually called liberal sentiments, in Christendom. We
+do not mean by this, that it would be less safe to utter a generous
+opinion in favour of human rights in America than in any other
+country, for the laws and the institutions become active in this
+respect, but simply, that the resistance of the more refined to the
+encroachments of the unrefined, has brought about a state of
+feeling--a feeling that is seldom just and never philosophical--which
+has created a silent, but almost unanimous bias against the effects
+of the institutions, in what is called the world. In Europe, one
+rarely utters a sentiment of this nature, under circumstances in
+which it is safe to do so at all, without finding a very general
+sympathy in the auditors; but in the circle into which Eve had now
+fallen, it was almost considered a violation of the proprieties. We
+do not wish to be understood as saying more than we mean, however,
+for we have no manner of doubt that a large portion of the
+dissentients even, are so idly, and without reflection; or for the
+very natural reasons already given by our heroine; but we do wish to
+be understood as meaning that such is the outward appearance which
+American society presents to every stranger, and to every native of
+the country too, on his return from a residence among other people.
+Of its taste, wisdom and safety we shall not now speak, but content
+ourselves with merely saying that the effect of Grace's exclamation
+on Eve was unpleasant, and that, unlike the baronet, she thought her
+cousin was never less handsome than while her pretty face was covered
+with the pettish frown it had assumed for the occasion.
+
+Sir George Templemore had tact enough to perceive there had been a
+slight jar in the feelings of these two young women, and he adroitly
+changed the conversation. With Eve he had entire confidence on the
+score of provincialisms, and, without exactly anticipating the part
+Grace would be likely to take in such a discussion, he introduced the
+subject of general society in New-York.
+
+"I am desirous to know," he said, "if you have your sets, as we have
+them in London and Paris. Whether you have your _Faubourg St.
+Germain_ and your _Chaussee d'Antin;_ your Piccadilly, Grosvenor and
+Russel Squares."
+
+"I must refer you to Miss Van Cortlandt for an answer to that
+question," said Eve.
+
+Grace looked up blushing, for there were both novelty and excitement
+in having an intelligent foreigner question her on such a subject.
+
+"I do not know that I rightly understand the allusion," she said,
+"although I am afraid Sir George Templemore means to ask if we have
+distinctions in society?"
+
+"And why _afraid_, Miss Van Cortlandt?"
+
+"Because it strikes me such a question would imply a doubt of our
+civilization."
+
+"There are frequently distinctions made, when the differences are not
+obvious," observed Eve. "Even London and Paris are not above the
+imputation of this folly. Sir George Templemore, if I understand him,
+wishes to know if we estimate gentility by streets, and quality by
+squares."
+
+"Not exactly that either, Miss Effingham--but, whether among those,
+who may very well pass for gentlemen and ladies, you enter into the
+minute distinctions that are elsewhere found. Whether you have your
+exclusive, and your _elegants_ and _elegantes_; or whether you deem
+all within the pale as on an equality."
+
+"_Les femmes Americaines sont bien jolies!_" exclaimed Mademoiselle
+Viefville.
+
+"It is quite impossible that _coteries_ should not form in a town of
+three hundred thousand souls."
+
+"I do not mean exactly even that. Is there no distinction between
+_coteries;_ is not one placed by opinion, by a silent consent, if not
+by positive ordinances, above another?"
+
+"Certainly, that to which Sir George Templemore alludes, is to be
+found," said Grace, who gained courage to speak, as she found the
+subject getting to be more clearly within her comprehension. "All the
+old families, for instance, keep more together than the others;
+though it is the subject of regret that they are not more particular
+than they are."
+
+"Old families!" exclaimed Sir George Templemore, with quite as much
+stress as a well-bred man could very well lay on the words, in such
+circumstances.
+
+"Old families," repeated Eve, with all that emphasis which the
+baronet himself had hesitated about giving. "As old, at least, as two
+centuries can make them; and this, too, with origins beyond that
+period, like those of the rest of the world. Indeed, the American has
+a better gentility than common, as, besides his own, he may take root
+in that of Europe."
+
+"Do not misconceive me, Miss Effingham; I am fully aware that the
+people of this country are exactly like the people of all other
+civilized countries, in this respect; but my surprise is that, in a
+republic, you should have such a term even as that of 'old
+families.'"
+
+"The surprise has arisen, I must be permitted to say, from not having
+sufficiently reflected on the real state of the country. There are
+two great causes of distinction every where, wealth and merit. Now,
+if a race of Americans continue conspicuous in their own society,
+through either or both of these causes, for a succession of
+generations, why have they not the same claims to be considered
+members of old families, as Europeans under the same circumstances? A
+republican history is as much history as a monarchical history; and a
+historical name in one, is quite as much entitled to consideration,
+as a historical name in another. Nay, you admit this in your European
+republics, while you wish to deny it in ours."
+
+"I must insist on having proofs; if we permit these charges to be
+brought against us without evidence, Mademoiselle Viefville, we shall
+finally be defeated through our own neglect."
+
+"_C'est une belle illustration, celle de l'antiquite_" observed the
+governess, in a matter of course tone.
+
+"If you insist on proof, what answer can you urge to the _Capponi_?
+'_Sonnez vos trompettes, et je vais faire sonner mes cloches_,'--or
+to the _Von Erlachs_, a family that has headed so many resistances to
+oppression and invasion, for five centuries?"
+
+"All this is very true," returned Sir George, "and yet I confess it
+is not the way in which it is usual with us to consider American
+society."
+
+"A descent from Washington, with a character and a social position to
+correspond, would not be absolutely vulgar, notwithstanding!"
+
+"Nay, if you press me so hard, I must appeal to Miss Van Cortlandt
+for succour."
+
+"On this point you will find no support in that quarter. Miss Van
+Cortlandt has an historical name herself, and will not forego an
+honest pride, in order to relieve one of the hostile powers from a
+dilemma."
+
+"While I admit that time and merit must, in a certain sense, place
+families in America in the same situation with families in Europe, I
+cannot see that it is in conformity with your institutions to lay the
+same stress on the circumstance."
+
+"In that we are perfectly of a mind, as I think the American has much
+the best reason to be proud of his family," said Eve, quietly.
+
+"You delight in paradoxes, apparently, this evening, Miss Effingham,
+for I now feel very certain you can hardly make out a plausible
+defence of this new position."
+
+"If I had my old ally, Mr. Powis, here," said Eve touching the fender
+unconsciously with her little foot, and perceptibly losing the
+animation and pleasantry of her voice, in tones that were gentler, if
+not melancholy, "I should ask him to explain this matter to you, for
+he was singularly ready in such replies. As he is absent, however, I
+will attempt the duty myself. In Europe, office, power, and
+consequently, consideration, are all hereditary; whereas, in this
+country, they are not, but they depend on selection. Now, surely, one
+has more reason to be proud of ancestors who have been chosen to fill
+responsible stations, than of ancestors who have filled them through
+the accidents, _heureux ou malkeureux_, of birth. The only difference
+between England and America, as respects family, is that you add
+positive rank to that to which we only give consideration. Sentiment
+is at the bottom of our nobility, and the great seal at the bottom of
+yours. And now, having established the fact that there are families
+in America, let us return whence we started, and enquire how far they
+have an influence in every-day society."
+
+"To ascertain which, we must apply to Miss Van Cortlandt."
+
+"Much less than they ought, if my opinion is to be taken," said
+Grace, laughing, "for the great inroad of strangers has completely
+deranged all the suitablenesses, in that respect."
+
+"And yet, I dare say, these very strangers do good," rejoined Eve.
+"Many of them must have been respectable in their native places, and
+ought to be an acquisition to a society that, in its nature, must be,
+Grace, _tant soit peu_, provincial."
+
+"Oh!" cried Grace, "I can tolerate any thing but the Hajjis!"
+
+"The what?" asked Sir George, eagerly--"will you suffer me to ask an
+explanation, Miss Van Cortlandt."
+
+"The Hajjis," repeated Grace laughing, though she blushed to the
+eyes.
+
+The baronet looked from one cousin to the other, and then turned an
+inquiring glance on Mademoiselle Viefville. The latter gave a slight
+shrug, and seemed to ask an explanation of the young lady's meaning
+herself.
+
+"A Hajji is one of a class, Sir George Templemore," Eve at length
+said, "to which you and I have both the honour of belonging."
+
+"No, not Sir George Templemore," interrupted Grace, with a
+precipitation that she instantly regretted; "he is not an American."
+
+"Then I, alone, of all present, have that honour. It means the
+pilgrimage to Paris, instead of Mecca; and the Pilgrim must be an
+American, instead of a Mahommedan."
+
+"Nay, Eve, _you_ are not a Hajji, neither."
+
+"Then there is some qualification with which I am not yet acquainted.
+Will you relieve our doubts, Grace, and let us know the precise
+character of the animal."
+
+"_You_ stayed too long to be a Hajji--- one must get innoculated
+merely; not take the disease and become cured, to be a true Hajji."
+
+"I thank you, Miss Van Cortlandt, for this description," returned Eve
+in her quiet way. "I hope, as I have gone through the malady, it has
+not left me pitted."
+
+"I should like to see one of these Hajjis," cried Sir George.--"Are
+they of both sexes?"
+
+Grace laughed and nodded her head.
+
+"Will you point it out to me, should we be so fortunate as to
+encounter one this evening?"
+
+Again Grace laughed and nodded her head.
+
+"I have been thinking, Grace," said Eve, after a short pause, "that
+we may give Sir George Templemore a better idea of the sets about
+which he is so curious, by doing what is no more than a duty of our
+own, and by letting him profit by the opportunity. Mrs. Hawker
+receives this evening without ceremony; we have not yet sent our
+answer to Mrs. Jarvis, and might very well look in upon her for half
+an hour, after which we shall be in very good season for Mrs.
+Houston's ball."
+
+"Surely, Eve, you would not wish to take Sir George Templemore to
+such a house as that of Mrs. Jarvis!"
+
+"_I_ do not wish to take Sir George Templemore any where, for your
+Hajjis have opinions of their own on such subjects. But, as cousin
+Jack will accompany us, _he_ may very well confer that important
+favour. I dare say, Mrs. Jarvis will not look upon it as too great a
+liberty."
+
+"I will answer for it, that nothing Mr. John Effingham can do will be
+thought _mal a propos_ by Mrs. Jared Jarvis. His position in society
+is too well established, and hers is too equivocal, to leave any
+doubt on that head."
+
+"This, you perceive, settles the point of _coteries,_" said Eve to
+the baronet. "Volumes might be written to establish principles; but
+when one can do any thing he or she pleases, any where that he or she
+likes, it is pretty safe to say that he or she is privileged."
+
+"All very true, as to the fact, Miss Effingham; but I should like
+exceedingly to know the reason."
+
+"Half the time, such things are decided without a reason at all. You
+are a little exacting in requiring a reason in New-York for that
+which is done in London without even the pretence of such a thing. It
+is sufficient that Mrs. Jarvis will be delighted to see you without
+an invitation, and that Mrs. Houston would, at least, think it odd,
+were you to take the same liberty with her."
+
+"It follows," said Sir George, smiling, "that Mrs. Jarvis is much the
+most hospitable person of the two."
+
+"But, Eve, what shall be done with Captain Truck and Mr. Bragg?"
+asked Grace. "We cannot take _them_ to Mrs. Hawker's!"
+
+"Aristabulus would, indeed, be a little out of place in such a house,
+but as for our excellent, brave, straight-forward, old captain, he is
+worthy to go any where. I shall be delighted to present _him_ to Mrs.
+Hawker, myself."
+
+After a little consultation between the ladies, it was settled that
+nothing should be said of the two first visits to Mr. Bragg, but that
+Mr. Effingham should be requested to bring him to the ball, at the
+proper hour, and that the rest of the party should go quietly off to
+the other places, without mentioning their projects. As soon as this
+was arranged the ladies retired to dress, Sir George Templemore
+passing into the library to amuse himself with a book the while;
+where, however, he was soon joined by John Effingham. Here the former
+revived the conversation on distinctions in society, with the
+confusion of thought that usually marks a European's notions of such
+matters.
+
+Chapter IV.
+
+  "Ready." "And I." "And I." "Where shall we go?"
+
+  MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.
+
+Grace Van Cortlant was the first to make her appearance after the
+retreat from the drawing-room. It has often been said that, pretty as
+the American females incontestably are, as a whole they appear better
+in _demi-toilette,_ than when attired for a ball. With what would be
+termed high dress in other parts of the world, they are little
+acquainted; but reversing the rule of Europe, where the married
+bestow the most care on their personal appearance, and the single are
+taught to observe a rigid simplicity, Grace now seemed sufficiently
+ornamented in the eyes of the fastidious baronet, while, at the same
+time, he thought her less obnoxious to the criticism just mentioned,
+than most of her young countrywomen, in general.
+
+An _embonpoint_ that was just sufficient to distinguish her from most
+of her companions, a fine colour, brilliant eyes, a sweet smile, rich
+hair, and such feet and hands as Sir George Templemore had, somehow--
+he scarcely knew how, himself--fancied could only belong to the
+daughters of peers and princes, rendered Grace so strikingly
+attractive this evening, that the young baronet began to think her
+even handsomer than her cousin. There was also a charm in the
+unsophisticated simplicity of Grace, that was particularly alluring
+to a man educated amidst the coldness and mannerism of the higher
+classes of England. In Grace, too, this simplicity was chastened by
+perfect decorum and _retenue_ of deportment; the exuberance of the
+new school of manners not having helped to impair the dignity of her
+character, or to weaken the charm of diffidence. She was less
+finished in her manners than Eve, certainly; a circumstance, perhaps,
+that induced Sir George Templemore to fancy her a shade more simple,
+but she was never unfeminine or unladylike; and the term vulgar, in
+despite of all the capricious and arbitrary rules of fashion, under
+no circumstances, could ever be applied to Grace Van Cortlandt. In
+this respect, nature seemed to have aided her; for had not her
+associations raised her above such an imputation, no one could
+believe that she would be obnoxious to the charge, had her lot in
+life been cast even many degrees lower than it actually was.
+
+It is well known that, after a sufficient similarity has been created
+by education to prevent any violent shocks to our habits or
+principles, we most affect those whose characters and dispositions
+the least resemble our own. This was probably one of the reasons why
+Sir George Templemore, who, for some time, had been well assured of
+the hopelessness of his suit with Eve, began to regard her scarcely
+less lovely cousin, with an interest of a novel and lively nature.
+Quick-sighted and deeply interested in Grace's happiness, Miss
+Effingham had already detected this change in the young baronet's
+inclinations, and though sincerely rejoiced on her own account, she
+did not observe it without concern; for she understood better than
+most of her countrywomen, the great hazards of destroying her peace
+of mind, that are incurred by transplanting an American woman into
+the more artificial circles of the old world.
+
+"I shall rely on your kind offices, in particular, Miss Van
+Cortlandt, to reconcile Mrs. Jarvis and Mrs. Hawker to the liberty I
+am about to take," cried Sir George, as Grace burst upon them in the
+library, in a blaze of beauty that, in her case, was aided by her
+attire; "and cold-hearted and unchristian-like women they must be,
+indeed, to resist such a mediator!"
+
+Grace was unaccustomed to adulation of this sort; for though the
+baronet spoke gaily, and like one half trifling, his look of
+admiration was too honest to escape the intuitive perception of
+woman. She blushed deeply, and then recovering herself instantly,
+said with a _naivete_ that had a thousand charms with her listener--
+
+"I do not see why Miss Effingham and myself should hesitate about
+introducing you at either place. Mrs. Hawker is a relative and an
+intimate--an intimate of mine, at least--and as for poor Mrs. Jarvis,
+she is the daughter of an old neighbour, and will be too glad to see
+us, to raise objections. I fancy any one of a certain--" Grace
+hesitated and laughed.
+
+"Any one of a certain--?" said Sir George inquiringly.
+
+"Any one from this house," resumed the young lady, correcting the
+intended expression, "will be welcome in Spring street."
+
+"Pure, native aristocracy!" exclaimed the baronet with an air of
+affected triumph. "This you see, Mr. John Effingham, is in aid of my
+argument."
+
+"I am quite of your opinion," returned the gentleman addressed--"as
+much native aristocracy as you please, but no hereditary."
+
+The entrance of Eve and Mademoiselle Viefville interrupted this
+pleasantry, and the carriages being just then announced, John
+Effingham went in quest of Captain Truck, who was in the drawing-room
+with Mr. Effingham and Aristabulus.
+
+"I have left Ned to discuss trespass suits and leases with his land-
+agent," said John Effingham, as he followed Eve to the street-door.
+"By ten o'clock, they will have taxed a pretty bill of costs between
+them!"
+
+Mademoiselle Viefville followed John Effingham; Grace came next, and
+Sir George Templemore and the Captain brought up the rear. Grace
+wondered the young baronet did not offer her his arm, for she had
+been accustomed to receive this attention from the other sex, in a
+hundred situations in which it was rather an incumbrance than a
+service; while on the other hand, Sir George himself would have
+hesitated about offering such assistance, as an act of uncalled-for
+familiarity.
+
+Miss Van Cortlandt, being much in society, kept a chariot for her own
+use, and the three ladies took their seats in it, while the gentlemen
+took possession of Mr. Effingham's coach. The order was given to
+drive to Spring street, and the whole party proceeded.
+
+The acquaintance between the Effinghams and Mr. Jarvis had arisen
+from the fact of their having been near, and, in a certain sense,
+sociable neighbours in the country. Their town associations, however,
+were as distinct as if they dwelt in different hemispheres, with the
+exception of an occasional morning call, and, now and then, a family
+dinner given by Mr. Effingham. Such had been the nature of the
+intercourse previously to the family of the latter's having gone
+abroad, and there were symptoms of its being renewed on the same
+quiet and friendly footing as formerly. But no two beings could be
+less alike, in certain essentials, than Mr. Jarvis and his wife. The
+former was a plain pains-taking, sensible man of business, while the
+latter had an itching desire to figure in the world of fashion. The
+first was perfectly aware that Mr. Effingham, in education, habits,
+associations and manners, was, at least, of a class entirely distinct
+from his own; and without troubling himself to analyze causes, and
+without a feeling of envy, or unkindness of any sort, while totally
+exempt from any undue deference or unmanly cringing, he quietly
+submitted to let things take their course. His wife expressed her
+surprise that any one in New-York should presume to be _better_ than
+themselves; and the remark gave rise to the following short
+conversation, on the very morning of the day she gave the party, to
+which we are now conducting the reader.
+
+"How do you know, my dear, that any one does think himself our
+_better_?" demanded the husband.
+
+"Why do they not all visit us then!"
+
+"Why do you not visit everybody yourself? A pretty household we
+should have, if you did nothing but visit every one who lives even in
+this street!"
+
+"You surely would not have _me_ visiting the grocers' wives at the
+corners, and all the other rubbish of the neighbourhood. What I mean
+is that all the people of a certain sort ought to visit all the other
+people of a certain sort, in the same town."
+
+"You surely will make an exception, at least on account of numbers. I
+saw number three thousand six hundred and fifty this very day on a
+cart, and if the wives of all these carmen should visit one another,
+each would have to make ten visits daily in order to get through with
+the list in a twelvemonth."
+
+"I have always bad luck in making you comprehend these things, Mr.
+Jarvis."
+
+"I am afraid, my dear, it is because you do not very clearly
+comprehend them yourself. You first say that everybody ought to visit
+everybody, and then you insist on it, _you_ will visit none but those
+you think good enough to be visited by Mrs. Jared Jarvis."
+
+"What I mean is, that no one in New-York has a right to think
+himself, or herself, better than ourselves."
+
+"Better?--In what sense better?"
+
+"In such a sense as to induce them to think themselves too good to
+visit us."
+
+"That may be your opinion, my dear, but others may judge differently.
+You clearly think yourself too good to visit Mrs. Onion, the grocer's
+wife, who is a capital woman in her way; and how do we know that
+certain people may not fancy we are not quite refined enough for
+them? Refinement is a positive thing, Mrs. Jarvis, and one that has
+much more influence on the pleasures of association than money. We
+may want a hundred little perfections that escape our ignorance, and
+which those who are trained to such matters deem essentials."
+
+"I never met with a man of so little social spirit, Mr. Jarvis!
+Really, you are quite unsuited to be a citizen of a republican
+country."
+
+"Republican!--I do not really see what republican has to do with the
+question. In the first place, it is a droll word for _you_ to use in
+this sense at least; for, taking your own meaning of the term, you
+are as anti-republican as any woman I know. But a republic does not
+necessarily infer equality of condition, or even equality of
+rights,--it meaning merely the substitution of the right of the
+commonwealth for the right of a prince. Had you said a democracy
+there would have been some plausibility in using the word, though
+even then its application would have been illogical. If I am a
+freeman and a democrat, I hope I have the justice to allow others to
+be just as free and democratic as I am myself."
+
+"And who wishes the contrary?--all I ask is a claim to be considered
+a fit associate for anybody in this country--in these United States
+of America."
+
+"I would quit these United States of America next week, if I thought
+there existed any necessity for such an intolerable state of things."
+
+"Mr. Jarvis!--and you, too, one of the Committee of Tammany Hall!"
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Jarvis, and I one of the Committee of Tammany Hall! What,
+do you think I want the three thousand six hundred and fifty carmen
+running in and out of my house, with their tobacco saliva and pipes,
+all day long?"
+
+"Who is thinking of your carmen and grocers!--I speak now only of
+genteel people."
+
+"In other words, my dear, you are thinking only of those whom you
+fancy to have the advantage of you, and keep those who think of you
+in the same way, quite out of sight This is not my democracy and
+freedom. I believe that it requires two people to make a bargain, and
+although I may consent to dine with A----, if A---- will not consent
+to dine with me, there is an end of the matter."
+
+"Now, you have come to a case in point. You often dined with Mr.
+Effingham before he went abroad, and yet you would never allow me to
+ask Mr. Effingham to dine with us. That is what I call meanness."
+
+"It might be so, indeed, if it were done to save my money. I dined
+with Mr. Effingham because I like him; because he was an old
+neighbour; because he asked me, and because I found a pleasure in the
+quiet elegance of his table and society; and I did not ask him to
+dine with me, because I was satisfied he would be better pleased with
+such a tacit acknowledgement of his superiority in this respect, than
+by any bustling and ungraceful efforts to pay him in kind. Edward
+Effingham has dinners enough, without keeping a debtor and credit
+account with his guests, which is rather too New-Yorkish, even for
+me."
+
+"Bustling and ungraceful!" repeated Mrs. Jarvis, bitterly; "I do not
+know that you are at all more bustling and ungraceful than Mr.
+Effingham himself."
+
+"No, my dear, I am a quiet, unpretending man, like the great majority
+of my countrymen, thank God."
+
+"Then why talk of these sorts of differences in a country in which
+the law establishes none?"
+
+"For precisely the reason that I talk of the river at the foot of
+this street, or because there is a river. A thing may exist without
+there being a law for it. There is no law for building this house,
+and yet it is built. There is no law for making Dr. Verse a better
+preacher than Dr. Prolix, and yet he is a much better preacher;
+neither is there any law for making Mr. Effingham a more finished
+gentleman than I happen to be, and yet I am not fool enough to deny
+the fact. In the way of making out a bill of parcels, I will not turn
+my back to him, I can promise you."
+
+"All this strikes me as being very spiritless, and as particularly
+anti-republican," said Mrs. Jarvis, rising to quit the room; "and if
+the Effinghams do not come this evening, I shall not enter their
+house this winter. I am sure they have no right to pretend to be our
+betters, and I feel no disposition to admit the impudent claim."
+
+"Before you go, Jane, let me say a parting word," rejoined the
+husband, looking for his hat, "which is just this. If you wish the
+world to believe you the equal of any one, no matter whom, do not be
+always talking about it, lest they see you distrust the fact
+yourself. A positive thing will surely be seen, and they who have the
+highest claims are the least disposed to be always pressing them on
+the attention of the world. An outrage may certainly be done those
+social rights which have been established by common consent, and then
+it may be proper to resent it; but beware betraying a consciousness
+of your own inferiority, by letting every one see you are jealous of
+your station. 'Now, kiss me; here is the money to pay for your finery
+this evening, and let me see you as happy to receive Mrs. Jewett from
+Albion Place, as you would be to receive Mrs. Hawker herself."
+
+"Mrs. Hawker!" cried the wife, with a toss of her head, "I would not
+cross the street to invite Mrs. Hawker and all her clan." Which was
+very true, as Mrs. Jarvis was thoroughly convinced the trouble would
+be unavailing, the lady in question being as near the head of fashion
+in New-York, as it was possible to be in a town that, in a moral
+sense, resembles an encampment, quite as much as it resembles a
+permanent and a long-existing capital.
+
+Notwithstanding a great deal of management on the part of Mrs. Jarvis
+to get showy personages to attend her entertainment, the simple
+elegance of the two carriages that bore the Effingham party, threw
+all the other equipages into the shade. The arrival, indeed, was
+deemed a matter of so much moment, that intelligence was conveyed to
+the lady, who was still at her post in the inner drawing-room, of the
+arrival of a party altogether superior to any thing that had yet
+appeared in her rooms. It is true, this was not expressed in words,
+but it was made sufficiently obvious by the breathless haste and the
+air of importance of Mrs. Jarvis' sister, who had received the news
+from a servant, and who communicated it _propria persona_ to the
+mistress of the house.
+
+The simple, useful, graceful, almost indispensable usage of
+announcing at the door, indispensable to those who receive much, and
+where there is the risk of meeting people known to us by name and not
+in person, is but little practised in America. Mrs. Jarvis would have
+shrunk from such an innovation, had she known that elsewhere the
+custom prevailed, but she was in happy ignorance on this point, as on
+many others that were more essential to the much-coveted social
+_eclat_ at which she aimed. When Mademoiselle Viefville appeared,
+therefore, walking unsupported, as if she were out of leading-
+strings, followed by Eve and Grace and the gentlemen of their party,
+she at first supposed there was some mistake, and that her visitors
+had got into the wrong house; there being an opposition party in the
+neighbourhood.
+
+"What brazen people!" whispered Mrs. Abijah Gross, who having removed
+from an interior New-England village, fully two years previously,
+fancied herself _an fait_ of all the niceties of breeding and social
+tact. "There are positively two young ladies actually walking about
+without gentlemen!"
+
+But it was not in the power of Mrs. Abijah Gross, with her audible
+whisper and obvious sneer and laugh, to put down two such lovely
+creatures as Eve and her cousin. The simple elegance of their attire,
+the indescribable air of polish, particularly in the former, and the
+surpassing beauty and modesty of mien of both, effectually silenced
+criticism, after this solitary outbreaking of vulgarity. Mrs. Jarvis
+recognized Eve and John Effingham, and her hurried compliments and
+obvious delight proclaimed to all near her, the importance she
+attached to their visit. Mademoiselle Viefville she had not
+recollected in her present dress, and even she was covered with
+expressions of delight and satisfaction.
+
+"I wish particularly to present to you a friend that we all prize
+exceedingly," said Eve, as soon as there was an opportunity of
+speaking. "This is Captain Truck, the gentleman who commands the
+Montauk, the ship of which you have heard so much. Ah! Mr. Jarvis,"
+offering a hand to him with sincere cordiality, for Eve had known him
+from childhood, and always sincerely respected him--"_you_ will
+receive my friend with a cordial welcome, I am certain."
+
+She then explained to Mr. Jarvis who the honest captain was, when the
+former, first paying the proper respect to his other guests, led the
+old sailor aside, and began an earnest conversation on the subject of
+the recent passage.
+
+John Effingham presented the baronet, whom Mrs. Jarvis, out of pure
+ignorance of his rank in his own country, received with perfect
+propriety and self-respect.
+
+"We have very few people of note in town at present, I believe," said
+Mrs. Jarvis to John Effingham. "A great traveller, a most interesting
+man, is the only person of that sort I could obtain for this evening,
+and I shall have great pleasure in introducing you. He is there in
+that crowd, for he is in the greatest possible demand; he has seen so
+much.--Mrs. Snow, with your permission--really the ladies are
+thronging about him as if he were a Pawnee,--have the goodness to
+step a little this way, Mr. Effingham--Miss Effingham--Mrs. Snow,
+just touch his arm and let him know I wish to introduce a couple of
+friends.--Mr. Dodge, Mr. John Effingham, Miss Effingham, Miss Van
+Cortlandt. I hope you may succeed in getting him a little to
+yourselves, ladies, for he can tell you all about Europe--saw the
+king of France riding out to Nully, and has a prodigious knowledge of
+things on the other side of the water."
+
+It required a good deal of Eve's habitual self-command to prevent a
+smile, but she had the tact and discretion to receive Steadfast as an
+utter stranger. John Effingham bowed as haughtily as man can bow, and
+then it was whispered that he and Mr. Dodge were rival travellers.
+The distance of the former, coupled with an expression of countenance
+that did not invite familiarity, drove nearly all the company over to
+the side of Steadfast, who, it was soon settled, had seen much the
+most of the world, understood society the best, and had moreover
+travelled as far as Timbuctoo in Africa. The _clientele_ of Mr. Dodge
+increased rapidly, as these reports spread in the rooms, and those
+who had not read the "delightful letters published in the Active
+Inquirer," furiously envied those who had enjoyed that high
+advantage.
+
+"It is Mr. Dodge, the great traveller," said one young lady, who had
+extricated herself from the crowd around the 'lion,' and taken a
+station near Eve and Grace, and who, moreover, was a 'blue' in her
+own set; "his beautiful and accurate descriptions have attracted
+great attention in England, and it is said they have actually been
+republished!"
+
+"Have you read them, Miss Brackett?"
+
+"Not the letters themselves, absolutely; but all the remarks on them
+in the last week's Hebdomad. Most delightful letters, judging from
+those remarks; full of nature and point, and singularly accurate in
+all their facts. In this respect they are invaluable, travellers do
+fall into such extraordinary errors!"
+
+"I hope, ma'am," said John Effingham, gravely, "that the gentleman
+has avoided the capital mistake of commenting on things that actually
+exist. Comments on its facts are generally esteemed by the people of
+a country, impertinent and unjust; and your true way to succeed, is
+to treat as freely as possible its imaginary peculiarities."
+
+Miss Brackett had nothing to answer to this observation, the Hebdomad
+having, among its other profundities, never seen proper to touch on
+the subject. She went on praising the "Letters," however, not one of
+which had she read, or would she read; for this young lady had
+contrived to gain a high reputation in her own _coterie_ for taste
+and knowledge in books, by merely skimming the strictures of those
+who do not even skim the works they pretend to analyze.
+
+Eve had never before been in so close contact with so much flippant
+ignorance, and she could not but wonder at seeing a man like her
+kinsman overlooked, in order that a man like Mr. Dodge should be
+preferred. All this gave John Effingham himself no concern, but
+retiring a little from the crowd, he entered into a short
+conversation with the young baronet.
+
+"I should like to know your real opinions of this set," he said; "not
+that I plead guilty to the childish sensibility that is so common in
+all provincial circles to the judgments of strangers, but with a view
+to aid you in forming a just estimate of the real state of the
+country."
+
+"As I know the precise connexion between you and our host, there can
+be no objection to giving a perfectly frank reply. The women strike
+me as being singularly delicate and pretty; well dressed, too, I
+might add; but, while there is a great air of decency, there is very
+little high finish; and what strikes me as being quite odd, under
+such circumstances, scarcely any downright vulgarity, or coarseness."
+
+"A Daniel come to judgment! One who had passed a life here, would not
+have come so near the truth, simply because he would not have
+observed peculiarities, that require the means of comparison to be
+detected. You are a little too indulgent in saying there is no
+downright vulgarity; for some there is; though surprisingly little
+for the circumstances. But of the coarseness that would be so
+prominent elsewhere, there is hardly any. True, so great is the
+equality in all things, in this country, so direct the tendency to
+this respectable mediocrity, that what you now see here, to-night,
+may be seen in almost every village in the land, with a few
+immaterial exceptions in the way of furniture and other city
+appliances, and not much even in these."
+
+"Certainly, as a mediocrity, this is respectable though a fastidious
+taste might see a multitude of faults."
+
+"I shall not say that the taste would be merely fastidious, for much
+is wanting that would add to the grace and beauty of society, while
+much that is wanting would be missed only by the over-sophisticated.
+Those young-men, who are sniggering over some bad joke in the corner,
+for instance, are positively vulgar, as is that young lady who is
+indulging in practical coquetry; but, on the whole, there is little
+of this; and, even our hostess, a silly woman, devoured with the
+desire of being what neither her social position, education, habits
+nor notions fit her to be, is less obtrusive, bustling, and
+offensive, than a similar person, elsewhere."
+
+"I am quite of your way of thinking, and intended to ask you to
+account for it."
+
+"The Americans are an imitative people of necessity, and they are apt
+at this part of imitation, in particular. Then they are less
+artificial in all their practices, than older and more sophisticated
+nations; and this company has got that essential part of good
+breeding, simplicity, as it were _per force_. A step higher in the
+social scale, you will see less of it; for greater daring and bad
+models lead to blunders in matters that require to be exceedingly
+well done, if done at all. The faults here would be more apparent, by
+an approach near enough to get into the tone of mind, the forms of
+speech, and the attempts at wit."
+
+"Which I think we shall escape to-night, as I see the ladies are
+already making their apologies and taking leave. We must defer this
+investigation to another time."
+
+"It may be indefinitely postponed, as it would scarcely reward the
+trouble of an inquiry."
+
+The gentlemen now approached Mrs. Jarvis, paid their parting
+compliments, hunted up Captain Truck, whom they tore by violence from
+the good-natured hospitality of the master of the house, and then saw
+the ladies into their carriage. As they drove off, the worthy mariner
+protested that Mr. Jarvis was one of the honestest men he had ever
+met, and announced that he intended giving him a dinner on board the
+Montauk, the very next day.
+
+The dwelling of Mrs. Hawker was in Hudson Square; or in a portion of
+the city that the lovers of the grandiose are endeavouring to call
+St. John's Park; for it is rather an amusing peculiarity among a
+certain portion of the emigrants who have flocked into the Middle
+States, within the last thirty years, that they are not satisfied
+with permitting any family, or thing, to possess the name it
+originally enjoyed, if there exists the least opportunity to change
+it. There was but a carriage or two before the door, though the
+strong lights in the house showed that company had collected.
+
+"Mrs. Hawker is the widow and the daughter of men of long established
+New-York families; she is childless, affluent, and universally
+respected where known, for her breeding, benevolence, good sense, and
+heart," said John Effingham, while the party was driving from one
+house to the other. "Were you to go into most of the sets of this
+town, and mention Mrs. Hawker's name, not one person in ten would
+know there is such a being in their vicinity; the _pele mele_ of a
+migratory population keeping persons of her character and condition
+in life, quite out of view. The very persons who will prattle by the
+hour, of the establishments of Mrs. Peleg Pond, and Mrs. Jonah Twist,
+and Mrs. Abiram Wattles, people who first appeared on this island
+five or six years since, and, who having accumulated what to them are
+relatively large fortunes, have launched out into vulgar and
+uninstructed finery, would look with surprise at hearing Mrs. Hawker
+mentioned as one having any claims to social distinction. Her
+historical names are overshadowed in their minds by the parochial
+glories of certain local prodigies in the townships whence they
+emigrated; her manners would puzzle the comprehension of people whose
+imitation has not gone beyond the surface, and her polished and
+simple mind would find little sympathy among a class who seldom rise
+above a common-place sentiment without getting upon stilts."
+
+"Mrs. Hawker, then, is a lady," observed Sir George Templemore.
+
+"Mrs. Hawker is a lady, in every sense of the word; by position,
+education, manners, association, mind, fortune and birth. I do not
+know that we ever had more of her class than exist to-day, but
+certainly we once had them more prominent in society."
+
+"I suppose, sir," said Captain Truck, "that this Mrs. Hawker is of
+what is called the old school?"
+
+"Of a very ancient school, and one that is likely to continue, though
+it may not be generally attended."
+
+"I am afraid, Mr. John Effingham, that I shall be like a fish out of
+water in such a house. I can get along very well with your Mrs.
+Jarvis, and with the dear young lady in the other carriage; but the
+sort of woman you have described, will be apt to jam a plain mariner
+like myself. What in nature should I do, now, if she should ask me to
+dance a minuet?"
+
+"Dance it agreeably to the laws of nature," returned John Effingham,
+as the carriages stopped.
+
+A respectable, quiet, and an aged black admitted the party, though
+even he did not announce the visiters, while he held the door of the
+drawing-room open for them, with respectful attention. Mrs. Hawker
+arose, and advanced to meet Eve and her companions, and though she
+kissed the cousins affectionately, her reception of Mademoiselle
+Viefville was so simply polite as to convince the latter she was
+valued on account of her services. John Effingham, who was ten or
+fifteen years the junior of the old lady, gallantly kissed her hand,
+when he presented his two male companions. After paying the proper
+attention to the greatest stranger, Mrs. Hawker turned to Captain
+Truck and said--
+
+"This, then, is the gentleman to whose skill and courage you all owe
+so much--_we_ all owe so much, I might better have said--the
+commander of the Montauk?"
+
+"I have the honour of commanding that vessel, ma'am," returned
+Captain Truck, who was singularly awed by the dignified simplicity of
+his hostess, although her quiet, natural, and yet finished manner,
+which extended even to the intonation of the voice, and the smallest
+movement, were as unlike what he had expected as possible; "and with
+such passengers as she had last voyage I can only say, it is a pity
+that she is not better off for one to take care of her."
+
+"Your passengers give a different account of the matter, but, in
+order that I may judge impartially, do me the favour to take this
+chair, and let me learn a few of the particulars from yourself."
+
+Observing that Sir George Templemore had followed Eve to the other
+side of the room, Mrs. Hawker now resumed her seat, and, without
+neglecting any to attend to one in particular, or attending to one in
+a way to make him feel oppressed, she contrived, in a few minutes, to
+make the captain forget all about the minuet, and to feel much more
+at his ease than would have been the case with Mrs. Jarvis, in a
+month's intercourse.
+
+In the mean time, Eve had crossed the room to join a lady whose smile
+invited her to her side. This was a young, slightly framed female, of
+a pleasing countenance, but who would not have been particularly
+distinguished, in such a place, for personal charms. Still, her smile
+was sweet, her eyes were soft, and the expression of her face was
+what might almost be called illuminated As Sir George Templemore
+followed her, Eve mentioned his name to her acquaintance, whom she
+addressed as Mrs. Bloomfield.
+
+"You are bent on perpetrating further gaiety to-night," said the
+latter, glancing at the ball-dresses of the two cousins; "are you in
+the colours of the Houston faction, or in those of the Peabody."
+
+"Not in pea-green, certainly," returned Eve, laughing--"as you may
+see; but in simple white."
+
+"You intend then to be 'led a measure' at Mrs. Houston's. It were
+more suitable than among the other faction."
+
+"Is fashion, then, faction, in New-York?" inquired Sir George.
+
+"Fractions would be a better word, perhaps. But we have parties in
+almost every thing, in America; in politics, religion, temperance,
+speculations, and taste; why not in fashion?"
+
+"I fear we are not quite independent enough to form parties on such a
+subject," said Eve.
+
+"Perfectly well said, Miss Effingham; one must think a little
+originally, let it be ever so falsely, in order to get up a fashion.
+I fear we shall have to admit our insignificance on this point. You
+are a late arrival, Sir George Templemore?"
+
+"As lately as the commencement of this month; I had the honour of
+being a fellow-passenger with Mr. Effingham and his family."
+
+"In which voyage you suffered shipwreck, captivity, and famine, if
+half we hear be true."
+
+"Report has a little magnified our risks; we encountered some serious
+dangers, but nothing amounting to the sufferings you have mentioned."
+
+"Being a married woman, and having passed the crisis in which
+deception is not practised, I expect to hear truth again," said Mrs.
+Bloomfield, smiling. "I trust, however, you underwent enough to
+qualify you all for heroes and heroines, and shall content myself
+with knowing that you are here, safe and happy--if," she added,
+looking inquiringly at Eve, "one who has been educated abroad _can_
+be happy at home."
+
+"One educated abroad _may_ be happy at home, though possibly not in
+the modes most practised by the world," said Eve firmly.
+
+"Without an opera, without a court, almost without society!"
+
+"An opera would be desirable, I confess; of courts I know nothing,
+unmarried females being cyphers in Europe; and I hope better things
+than to think I shall be without society."
+
+"Unmarried females are considered cyphers too, here, provided there
+be enough of them with a good respectable digit at their head. I
+assure you no one quarrels with the cyphers under such circumstances.
+I think, Sir George Templemore, a town like this must be something of
+a paradox to you."
+
+"Might I venture to inquire the reason for this opinion!"
+
+"Merely because it is neither one thing nor another. Not a capital,
+nor yet merely a provincial place; with something more than commerce
+in its bosom, and yet with that something hidden under a bushel. A
+good deal more than Liverpool, and a good deal less than London.
+Better even than Edinburgh, in many respects, and worse than Wapping,
+in others."
+
+"You have been abroad, Mrs. Bloomfield?"
+
+"Not a foot out of my own country; scarcely a foot out of my own
+state. I have been at Lake George, the Falls, and the Mountain House;
+and, as one does not travel in a balloon, I saw some of the
+intermediate places. As for all else, I am obliged to go by report."
+
+"It is a pity Mrs. Bloomfield was not with us, this evening, at Mrs.
+Jarvis's," said Eve, laughing. "She might then have increased her
+knowledge, by listening to a few cantos from the epic of Mr. Dodge."
+
+"I have glanced at some of that author's wisdom," returned Mrs.
+Bloomfield, "but I soon found it was learning backwards. There is a
+never-failing rule, by which it is easy to arrive at a traveller's
+worth, in a negative sense, at least."
+
+"That is a rule which may be worth knowing," said the baronet, "as it
+would save much useless wear of the eyes."
+
+"When one betrays a profound ignorance of his own country, it is a
+fair presumption that he cannot be very acute in his observation of
+strangers. Mr. Dodge is one of these writers, and a single letter
+fully satisfied my curiosity. I fear, Miss Effingham, very inferior
+wares, in the way of manners, have been lately imported, in large
+quantities, into this country, as having the Tower mark on them."
+
+Eve laughed, but declared that Sir George Templemore was better
+qualified than herself to answer such a question.
+
+"We are said to be a people of facts, rather than a people of
+theories," continued Mrs. Bloomfield, without attending to the
+reference of the young lady, "and any coin that offers passes, until
+another that is better, arrives. It is a singular, but a very general
+mistake, I believe, of the people of this country, in supposing that
+they can exist under the present regime, when others would fail,
+because their opinions keep even pace with, or precede the actual
+condition of society; whereas, those who have thought and observed
+most on such subjects, agree in thinking the very reverse to be the
+case."
+
+"This would be a curious condition for a government so purely
+conventional," observed Sir George, with interest, "and it certainly
+is entirely opposed to the state of things all over Europe."
+
+"It is so, and yet there is no great mystery in it after all.
+Accident has liberated us from trammels that still fetter you. We are
+like a vehicle on the top of a hill, which, the moment it is pushed
+beyond the point of resistance, rolls down of itself, without the aid
+of horses. One may follow with the team, and hook on when it gets to
+the bottom, but there is no such thing as keeping company with it
+until it arrives there."
+
+"You will allow, then, that there is a bottom?'
+
+"There is a bottom to every thing--to good and bad; happiness and
+misery; hope, fear, faith and charity; even to a woman's mind, which
+I have sometimes fancied the most bottomless thing in nature. There
+may, therefore, well be a bottom even to the institutions of
+America."
+
+Sir George listened with the interest with which an Englishman of his
+class always endeavours to catch a concession that he fancies is
+about to favour his own political predilections, and he felt
+encouraged to push the subject further.
+
+"And you think the political machine is rolling downwards towards
+this bottom?" he said, with an interest in the answer that, living in
+the quiet and forgetfulness of his own home, he would have laughed at
+himself for entertaining. But our sensibilities become quickened by
+collision, and opposition is known even to create love.
+
+Mrs. Bloomfield was quick-witted, intelligent, cultivated and shrewd.
+She saw the motive at a glance, and, notwithstanding she saw and felt
+all its abuses, strongly attached to the governing principle of her
+country's social organization, as is almost universally the case with
+the strongest minds and most generous hearts of the nation, she was
+not disposed to let a stranger carry away a false impression of her
+sentiments on such a point.
+
+"Did you ever study logic, Sir George Templemore?" she asked, archly.
+
+"A little, though not enough I fear to influence my mode of
+reasoning, or even to leave me familiar with the terms."
+
+"Oh! I am not about to assail you with _sequiturs_ and _non
+sequiturs_ dialectics and all the mysteries of _Denk-Lehre,_ but
+simply to remind you there is such a thing as the bottom of a
+subject. When I tell you we are flying towards the bottom of our
+institutions, it is in the intellectual sense, and not, as you have
+erroneously imagined, in an unintellectual sense. I mean that we are
+getting to understand them, which, I fear, we did not absolutely do
+at the commencement of the 'experiment.'"
+
+"But I think you will admit, that as the civilization of the country
+advances, some material changes must occur; your people cannot always
+remain stationary; they must either go backwards or forward."
+
+"Up or down, if you will allow me to correct your phraseology. The
+civilization of the country, in one sense at least, is retrogressive,
+and the people, as they cannot go 'up,' betray a disposition to go
+'down.'"
+
+"You deal in enigmas, and I am afraid to think I understand you."
+
+"I mean, merely, that gallowses are fast disappearing, and that the
+people--_le peuple_ you will understand--begin to accept money. In
+both particulars, I think there is a sensible change for the worse,
+within my own recollection."
+
+Mrs. Bloomfield then changed her manner, and from using that light-
+hearted gaiety with which she often rendered her conversation
+_piquante_, and even occasionally brilliant, she became more grave
+and explicit. The subject soon turned to that of punishments, and few
+men could have reasoned more sensibly, justly or forcibly, on such a
+subject, than this slight and fragile-looking young woman. Without
+the least pedantry, with a beauty of language that the other sex
+seldom attains, and with a delicacy of discrimination, and a
+sentiment that were strictly feminine, she rendered a theme
+interesting, that, however important in itself, is forbidding,
+veiling all its odious and revolting features in the refinement and
+finesse of her own polished mind.
+
+Eve could have listened all night, and, at every syllable that fell
+from the lips of her friend, she felt a glow of triumph; for she was
+proud of letting an intelligent foreigner see that America did
+contain women worthy to be ranked with the best of other countries, a
+circumstance that they who merely frequented what is called the
+world, she thought might be reasonably justified in distrusting. In
+one respect, she even fancied Mrs. Bloomfield's knowledge and
+cleverness superior to those which she had so often admired in her
+own sex abroad. It was untrammelled, equally by the prejudices
+incident to a factitious condition of society, or by their reaction;
+two circumstances that often obscured the sense and candour of those
+to whom she had so often listened with pleasure in other countries.
+The singularly feminine tone, too, of all that Mrs. Bloomfield said
+or thought, while it lacked nothing in strength, added to the charm
+of her conversation, and increased the pleasure of those that
+listened.
+
+"Is the circle large to which Mrs. Hawker and her friends belong?"
+asked Sir George, as he assisted Eve and Grace to cloak, when they
+had taken leave. "A town which can boast of half-a-dozen such houses
+need not accuse itself of wanting society."
+
+"Ah! there is but one Mrs. Hawker in New-York," answered Grace, "and
+not many Mrs. Bloomfields in the world. It would be too much to say,
+we have even half-a-dozen such houses."
+
+"Have you not been struck with the admirable tone of this drawing-
+room," half whispered Eve. "It may want a little of that lofty ease
+that one sees among the better portion of the old _Princesses et
+Duchesses_, which is a relic of a school that, it is to be feared, is
+going out; but in its place there is a winning nature, with as much
+dignity as is necessary, and a truth that gives us confidence in the
+sincerity of those around us."
+
+"Upon my word, I think Mrs. Hawker quite fit for a Duchess."
+
+"You mean a _Duchesse_" said Eve, "and yet she is without the manner
+that we understand by such a word. Mrs. Hawker is a lady, and there
+can be no higher term."
+
+"She is a delightful old woman," cried John Effingham, "and if twenty
+years younger and disposed to change her condition, I should really
+be afraid to enter the house."
+
+"My dear sir," put in the captain, "I will make her Mrs. Truck to-
+morrow, and say nothing of years, if she could be content to take up
+with such an offer. Why, sir, she is no woman, but a saint in
+petticoats! I felt the whole time as if talking to my own mother, and
+as for ships, she knows more about them than I do!"
+
+The whole party laughed at the strength of the captain's admiration,
+and getting into the carriages proceeded to the last of the houses
+they intended visiting that night.
+
+Chapter V.
+
+  "So turns she every man the wrong side out; And never gives to
+  truth and virtue, that Which simpleness and merit purchaseth."
+
+  MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.
+
+Mrs. Houston was what is termed a fashionable woman in New-York. She,
+too, was of a family of local note, though of one much less elevated
+in the olden time than that of Mrs. Hawker. Still her claims were
+admitted by the most fastidious on such points, for a few do remain
+who think descent indisputable to gentility; and as her means were
+ample, and her tastes perhaps superior to those of most around her,
+she kept what was thought a house of better tone than common, even in
+the highest circle. Eve had but a slight acquaintance with her; but
+in Grace's eyes, Mrs. Houston's was the place of all others that she
+thought might make a favourable impression on her cousin. Her wish
+that this should prove to be the case was so strong, that, as they
+drove towards the door, she could not forbear from making an attempt
+to prepare Eve for what she was to meet.
+
+"Although Mrs. Houston has a very large house for New-York, and lives
+in a uniform style, you are not to expect ante-chambers, and vast
+suites of rooms, Eve," said Grace; "such as you have been accustomed
+to see abroad."
+
+"It is not necessary, my dear cousin, to enter a house of four or
+five windows in front, to see it is not a house of twenty or thirty.
+I should be very unreasonable to expect an Italian palazzo, or a
+Parisian hotel, in this good town."
+
+"We are not old enough for that yet, Eve; a hundred years hence,
+Mademoiselle Viefville, such things may exist here."
+
+"_Bien sur. C'est naturel._"
+
+"A hundred years hence, as the world tends, Grace, they are not
+likely to exist any where, except as taverns, or hospitals, or
+manufactories. But what have we to do, coz, with a century ahead of
+us? young as we both are, we cannot hope to live that time."
+
+Grace would have been puzzled to account satisfactorily to herself,
+for the strong desire she felt that neither of her companions should
+expect to see such a house as their senses so plainly told them did
+not exist in the place; but her foot moved in the bottom of the
+carriage, for she was not half satisfied with her cousin's answer.
+
+"All I mean. Eve," she said, after a pause, "is, that one ought not
+to expect in a town as new as this, the improvements that one sees in
+an older state of society."
+
+"And have Mademoiselle Viefville, or I, ever been so weak as to
+suppose, that New-York is Paris, or Rome, or Vienna?"
+
+Grace was still less satisfied, for, unknown to herself, she _had_
+hoped that Mrs. Houston's ball might be quite equal to a ball in
+either of those ancient capitals; and she was now vexed that her
+cousin considered it so much a matter of course that it should not
+be. But there was no time for explanations, as the carriage now
+stopped.
+
+The noise, confusion, calling out, swearing, and rude clamour before
+the house of Mrs. Houston, said little for the out-door part of the
+arrangements. Coachmen are nowhere a particularly silent and civil
+class; but the uncouth European peasants, who have been preferred to
+the honours of the whip in New-York, to the usual feelings of
+competition and contention, added that particular feature of humility
+which is known to distinguish "the beggar on horseback." The imposing
+equipages of our party, however, had that effect on most of these
+rude brawlers, which a display of wealth is known to produce on the
+vulgar-minded; and the ladies got into the house, through a lane of
+coachmen, by yielding a little to a _chevau de frise_ of whips,
+without any serious calamity.
+
+"One hardly knows which is the most terrific," said Eve,
+involuntarily, as soon as the door closed on them--"the noise within,
+or the noise without!"
+
+This was spoken rapidly, and in French, to Mademoiselle Viefville,
+but Grace heard and understood it, and for the first time in her
+life, she perceived that Mrs. Houston's company was not composed of
+nightingales. The surprise is that the discovery should have come so
+late.
+
+"I am delighted at having got into this house," said Sir George, who,
+having thrown his cloak to his own servant, stood with the two other
+gentlemen waiting the descent of the ladies from the upper room,
+where the bad arrangements of the house compelled them to uncloak and
+to put aside their shawls, "as I am told it is the best house in town
+to see the other sex."
+
+"To _hear them_, would be nearer the truth, perhaps," returned John
+Effingham. "As for pretty women, one can hardly go amiss in New-York;
+and your ears now tell you, that they do not come into the world to
+be seen only."
+
+The baronet smiled, but he was too well bred to contradict or to
+assent. Mademoiselle Viefville, unconscious that she was violating
+the proprieties, walked into the rooms by herself, as soon as she
+descended, followed by Eve; but Grace shrank to the side of John
+Effingham, whose arm she took as a step necessary even to decorum.
+
+Mrs. Houston received her guests with ease and dignity. She was one
+of those females that the American world calls gay; in other words,
+she opened her own house to a very promiscuous society, ten or a
+dozen times in a winter, and accepted the greater part of the
+invitations she got to other people's. Still, in most other
+countries, as a fashionable woman, she would have been esteemed a
+model of devotion to the duties of a wife and a mother, for she paid
+a personal attention to her household, and had actually taught all
+her children the Lord's prayer, the creed, and the ten commandments.
+She attended church twice every Sunday, and only staid at home from
+the evening lectures, that the domestics might have the opportunity
+of going (which, by the way, they never did) in her stead. Feminine,
+well-mannered, rich, pretty, of a very positive social condition, and
+naturally kind-hearted and disposed to sociability, Mrs. Houston,
+supported by an indulgent husband, who so much loved to see people
+with the appearance of happiness, that he was not particular as to
+the means, had found no difficulty in rising to the pinnacle of
+fashion, and of having her name in the mouths of all those who find
+it necessary to talk of somebodies, in order that they may seem to be
+somebodies themselves. All this contributed to Mrs. Houston's
+happiness, or she fancied it did; and as every passion is known to
+increase by indulgence, she had insensibly gone on in her much-envied
+career until, as has just been said, she reached the summit.
+
+"These rooms are very crowded," said Sir George, glancing his eyes
+around two very pretty little narrow drawing-rooms, that were
+beautifully, not to say richly, furnished; "one wonders that the same
+contracted style of building should be so very general, in a town
+that increases as rapidly as this, and where fashion has no fixed
+abode, and land is so abundant."
+
+"Mrs. Bloomfield would tell you," said Eve, "that these houses are
+types of the social state of the country, in which no one is
+permitted to occupy more than his share of ground."
+
+"But there are reasonably large dwellings in the place. Mrs. Hawker
+has a good house, and your father's for instance, would be thought
+so, too, in London even; and yet I fancy you will agree with me in
+thinking that a good room is almost unknown in New-York."
+
+"I do agree with you, in this particular, certainly, for to meet with
+a good room, one must go into the houses built thirty years ago. We
+have inherited these snuggeries, however, England not having much to
+boast of in the way of houses."
+
+"In the way of town residences, I agree with you entirely, as a
+whole, though we have some capital exceptions. Still, I do not think
+we are quite as compact as this--do you not fancy the noise increased
+in consequence of its being so confined?"
+
+Eve laughed and shook her head quite positively.
+
+"What would it be if fairly let out!" she said. "But we will not
+waste the precious moments, but turn our eyes about us in quest of
+the _belles_. Grace, you who are so much at home, must be our
+cicerone, and tell us which are the idols we are to worship."
+
+"_Dites moi premierement; que veut dire une belle a New-York?_"
+demanded Mademoiselle Viefville. "_Apparemment, tout le monde est
+joli._"
+
+"A _belle_, Mademoiselle," returned John Effingham, "is not
+necessarily beautiful, the qualifications for the character, being
+various and a little contradictory. One may be a _belle_ by means of
+money, a tongue, an eye, a foot, teeth, a laugh, or any other
+separate feature, or grace; though no woman was ever yet a _belle_, I
+believe, by means of the head, considered collectively. But why deal
+in description, when the thing itself confronts us? The young lady
+standing directly before us, is a _belle_ of the most approved stamp
+and silvery tone. Is it not Miss Ring, Grace?"
+
+The answer was in the affirmative, and the eyes of the whole party
+turned towards the subject of this remark. The young lady in question
+was about twenty, rather tall for an American woman, not
+conspicuously handsome, but like most around her of delicate features
+and frame, and with such a _physique_, as, under proper training,
+would have rendered her the _beau ideal_ of feminine delicacy and
+gentleness. She had natural spirit, likewise, as appeared in her
+clear blue eye, and moreover she had the spirit to be a _belle_.
+
+Around this young creature were clustered no less than five young
+men, dressed in the height of the fashion, all of whom seemed to be
+entranced with the words that fell from her lips, and each of whom
+appeared anxious to say something clever in return. They all laughed,
+the lady most, and sometimes all spoke at once. Notwithstanding these
+outbreakings, Miss Ring did most of the talking, and once or twice,
+as a young man would gape after a most exhilarating show of
+merriment, and discover an inclination to retreat, she managed to
+recall him to his allegiance, by some remark particularly pertinent
+to himself, or his feelings.
+
+"_Qui est cette dame?_" asked Mademoiselle Viefville, very much as
+one would put a similar question, on seeing a man enter a church
+during service with his hat on.
+
+"_Elle est demoiselle_," returned Eve.
+
+"_Quelle horreur!_"
+
+"Nay, nay, Mademoiselle, I shall not allow you to set up France as
+immaculate on this point, neither--" said John Effingham, looking at
+the last speaker with an affected frown--"A young lady may have a
+tongue, and she may even speak to a young gentleman, and not be
+guilty of felony; although I will admit that five tongues are
+unnecessary, and that five listeners are more than sufficient, for
+the wisdom of twenty in petticoats."
+
+"_C'est une horreur!_"
+
+"I dare say Miss Ring would think it a greater horror to be obliged
+to pass an evening in a row of girls, unspoken to, except to be asked
+to dance, and admired only in the distance. But let us take seats on
+that sofa, and then we may go beyond the pantomime, and become
+partakers in the sentiment of the scene."
+
+Grace and Eve were now led off to dance, and the others did as John
+Effingham had suggested. In the eyes of the _belle_ and her admirers,
+they who had passed thirty were of no account, and our listeners
+succeeded in establishing themselves quietly within ear-shot--this
+was almost at duelling distance, too,--without at all interrupting
+the regular action of the piece. We extract a little of the dialogue,
+by way of giving a more dramatic representation of the scene.
+
+"Do you think the youngest Miss Danvers beautiful?" asked the
+_belle_, while her eye wandered in quest of a sixth gentleman to
+"entertain," as the phrase is. "In my opinion, she is absolutely the
+prettiest female in Mrs. Houston's rooms this night."
+
+The young men, one and all, protested against this judgment, and with
+perfect truth, for Miss Ring was too original to point out charms
+that every one could see.
+
+"They say it will not be a match between her and Mr. Egbert, after
+every body has supposed it settled so long. What is your opinion, Mr.
+Edson?"
+
+This timely question prevented Mr. Edson's retreat, for he had
+actually got so far in this important evolution, as to have gaped and
+turned his back. Recalled, as it were by the sound of the bugle, Mr.
+Edson was compelled to say something, a sore affliction to him
+always.
+
+"Oh! I'm quite of your way of thinking; they have certainly courted
+too long to think of marrying."
+
+"I detest long courtships; they must be perfect antidotes to love;
+are they not, Mr. Moreland?"
+
+A truant glance of Mr. Moreland's eye was rebuked by this appeal, and
+instead of looking for a place of refuge, he now merely looked
+sheepish. He, however, entirely agreed with the young lady, as the
+surer way of getting out of the difficulty.
+
+"Pray, Mr. Summerfield, how do you like the last Hajji--Miss Eve
+Effingham? To my notion, she is prettyish, though by no means as well
+as her cousin, Miss Van Cortlandt, who is really rather good-
+looking."
+
+As Eve and Grace were the two most truly lovely young women in the
+rooms, this opinion, as well as the loud tone in which it was given,
+startled Mademoiselle Viefville quite as much as the subjects that
+the belle had selected for discussion. She would have moved, as
+listening to a conversation that was not meant for their ears; but
+John Effingham quietly assured her that Miss Ring seldom spoke in
+company without intending as many persons as possible to hear her.
+
+"Miss Effingham is very plainly dressed for an only daughter"
+continued the young lady, "though that lace of her cousin's is real
+point! I'll engage it cost every cent of ten dollars a yard! They are
+both engaged to be married, I hear."
+
+"_Ciel!_" exclaimed Mademoiselle Viefville.
+
+"Oh! That is nothing," observed John Effingham coolly. "Wait a
+moment, and you'll hear that they have been privately married these
+six months, if, indeed, you hear no more."
+
+"Of course this is but an idle tale?" said Sir George Templemore with
+a concern, which, in despite of his good breeding, compelled him to
+put a question that, under other circumstances, would scarcely have
+been permissible.
+
+"As true as the gospel. But listen to the _bell_, it is _ringing_ for
+the good of the whole parish."
+
+"The affair between Miss Effingham and Mr. Morpeth, who knew her
+abroad, I understand is entirely broken off; some say the father
+objected to Mr. Morpeth's want of fortune; others that the lady was
+fickle, while some accuse the gentleman of the same vice. Don't you
+think it shocking to jilt, in either sex, Mr. Mosely?"
+
+The _retiring_ Mr. Mosely was drawn again within the circle, and was
+obliged to confess that he thought it was very shocking, in either
+sex, to jilt.
+
+"If I were a man," continued the _belle_, "I would never think of a
+young woman who had once jilted a lover. To my mind, it bespeaks a
+bad heart, and a woman with a bad heart cannot make a very amiable
+wife."
+
+"What an exceedingly clever creature she is," whispered Mr. Mosely to
+Mr. Moreland, and he now made up his mind to remain and be
+'entertained' some time longer.
+
+"I think poor Mr. Morpeth greatly to be pitied; for no man would be
+so silly as to be attentive seriously to a lady without
+encouragement. Encouragement is the _ne plus ultra_ of courtship; are
+you not of my opinion, Mr. Walworth?"
+
+Mr. Walworth was number five of the entertainees, and he did
+understand Latin, of which the young lady, though fond of using
+scraps, knew literally nothing. He smiled an assent, therefore, and
+the _belle_ felicitated herself in having 'entertained' _him_
+effectually; nor was she mistaken.
+
+"Indeed, they say Miss Effingham had several affairs of the heart,
+while in Europe, but it seems she was unfortunate in them all."
+
+"_Mais, ceci est trop fort! Je ne peux plus ecouter._"
+
+"My dear Mademoiselle, compose yourself. The crisis is not yet
+arrived, by any means."
+
+"I understand she still corresponds with a German Baron, and an
+Italian Marquis, though both engagements are absolutely broken off.
+Some people say she walks into company alone, unsupported by any
+gentleman, by way of announcing a firm determination to remain single
+for life."
+
+A common exclamation from the young men proclaimed their
+disapprobation; and that night three of them actually repeated the
+thing, as a well established truth, and two of the three, failing of
+something better to talk about, also announced that Eve was actually
+engaged to be married.
+
+"There is something excessively indelicate in a young lady's moving
+about a room without having a gentleman's arm to lean on! I always
+feel as if such a person was out of her place, and ought to be in the
+kitchen."
+
+"But, Miss Ring, what well-bred person does it?" sputtered Mr.
+Moreland. "No one ever heard of such a thing in good society. 'Tis
+quite shocking! Altogether unprecedented."
+
+"It strikes me as being excessively coarse!"
+
+"Oh! manifestly; quite rustic!" exclaimed Mr. Edson.
+
+"What can possibly be more vulgar?" added Mr. Walworth.
+
+"I never heard of such a thing among the right sort!" said Mr.
+Mosely.
+
+"A young lady who can be so brazen as to come into a room without a
+gentleman's arm to lean on, is, in my judgment at least, but
+indifferently educated, Hajji or no Hajji. Mr. Edson, have you ever
+felt the tender passion? I know you have been desperately in love,
+once, at least; do describe to me some of the symptoms, in order that
+I may know when I am seriously attacked myself by the disease."
+
+"_Mais, ceci est ridicule! L'enfant s'est sauvee du Charenton de New-
+York._"
+
+"From the nursery rather, Mademoiselle; you perceive she does not yet
+know how to walk alone."
+
+Mr. Edson now protested that he was too stupid to feel a passion as
+intellectual as love, and that he was afraid he was destined by
+nature to remain as insensible as a block.
+
+"One never knows, Mr. Edson," said the young lady, encouragingly.
+"Several of my acquaintances, who thought themselves quite safe, have
+been seized suddenly, and, though none have actually died, more than
+one has been roughly treated, I assure you."
+
+Here the young men, one and all, protested that she was excessively
+clever. Then succeeded a pause, for Miss Ring was inviting, with her
+eyes, a number six to join the circle, her ambition being
+dissatisfied with five entertainees, as she saw that Miss Trumpet, a
+rival belle, had managed to get exactly that number, also, in the
+other room. All the gentlemen availed themselves of the cessation in
+wit to gape, and Mr. Edson took the occasion to remark to Mr.
+Summerfield that he understood "lots had been sold in seven hundredth
+street that morning, as high as two hundred dollars a lot."
+
+The _quadrille_ now ended, and Eve returned towards her friends. As
+she approached, the whole party compared her quiet, simple, feminine,
+and yet dignified air, with the restless, beau-catching, and worldly
+look of the belle, and wondered by what law of nature, or of fashion,
+the one could possibly become the subject of the other's comments.
+Eve never appeared better than that evening. Her dress had all the
+accuracy and finish of a Parisian toilette, being equally removed
+from exaggeration and neglect; and it was worn with the ease of one
+accustomed to be elegantly attired, and yet never decked with finery.
+Her step even was that of a lady, having neither the mincing tread of
+a Paris grisette, a manner that sometimes ascends even to the
+_bourgeoise_ the march of a cockneyess, nor the tiptoe swing of a
+_belle_; but it was the natural though regulated step, of a trained
+and delicate woman. Walk alone she could certainly, and always did,
+except on those occasions of ceremony that demanded a partner. Her
+countenance, across which an unworthy thought had never left a trace,
+was an index, too, to the purity, high principles and womanly self-
+respect that controlled all her acts, and, in these particulars was
+the very reverse of the feverish, half-hoydenish half-affected
+expression of that of Miss Ring.
+
+"They may say what they please," muttered Captain Truck, who had been
+a silent but wondering listener of all that passed; "she is worth as
+many of them as could be stowed in the Montauk's lower hold."
+
+Miss Ring perceiving Eve approach, was desirous of saying something
+to her, for there was an _eclat_ about a Hajji, after all, that
+rendered an acquaintance, or even an intimacy desirable, and she
+smiled and curtsied. Eve returned the salutation, but as she did not
+care to approach a group of six, of which no less than five were men,
+she continued to move towards her own party. This reserve compelled
+Miss Ring to advance a step or two, when Eve was obliged to stop
+Curtsying to her partner, she thanked him for his attention,
+relinquished his arm, and turned to meet the lady. At the same
+instant the five 'entertainees' escaped in a body, equally rejoiced
+at their release, and proud of their captivity.
+
+"I have been dying to come and speak to you, Miss Effingham,"
+commenced Miss Ring, "but these _five_ giants (she emphasized the
+word we have put in italics) so beset me, that escape was quite
+impossible. There ought to be a law that but one gentleman should
+speak to a lady at a time."
+
+"I thought there was such a law already;" said Eve, quietly.
+
+"You mean in good breeding; but no one thinks of those antiquated
+laws now-a-days. Are you beginning to be reconciled, a little, to
+your own country?"
+
+"It is not easy to effect a reconciliation where there has been no
+misunderstanding. I hope I have never quarrelled with my country, or
+my country with me."
+
+"Oh! it is not exactly that I mean. Cannot one need a reconciliation
+without a quarrel? What do you say to this, Mr. Edson?"
+
+Miss Ring having detected some symptoms of desertion in the gentleman
+addressed, had thrown in this question by way of recal; when turning
+to note its effect, she perceived that all of her _clientelle_ had
+escaped. A look of surprise and mortification and vexation it was not
+in her power to suppress, and then came one of horror.
+
+"How conspicuous we have made ourselves, and it is all my fault!" she
+said, for the first time that evening permitting her voice to fall to
+a becoming tone. 'Why, here we actually are, two ladies conversing
+together, and no gentleman near us!"
+
+"Is that being conspicuous?" asked Eve, with a simplicity that was
+entirely natural.
+
+"I am sure, Miss Effingham, one who has seen as much of society as
+you, can scarcely ask that question seriously. I do not think I have
+done so improper a thing, since I was fifteen; and, dear me! dear me!
+how to escape is the question. You have permitted your partner to go,
+and I do not see a gentleman of my acquaintance near us, to give me
+his arm!"
+
+"As your distress is occasioned by my company," said Eve, "it is
+fortunately in my power to relieve it." Thus saying, she quietly
+walked across the room, and took her seat next to Mademoiselle
+Viefville.
+
+Miss Ring held up her hands in amazement, and then fortunately
+perceiving one of the truants gaping at no great distance, she
+beckoned him to her side.
+
+"Have the goodness to give me your arm, Mr. Summerfield," she said,
+"I am dying to get out of this unpleasantly conspicuous situation;
+but you are the first gentleman that has approached me this
+twelvemonth. I would not for the world do so brazen a thing as Miss
+Effingham has just achieved; would you believe it, she positively
+went from this spot to her seat, quite alone!"
+
+"The Hajjis are privileged."
+
+"They make themselves so. But every body knows how bold and unwomanly
+the French females are. One could wish, notwithstanding, that our own
+people would not import their audacious usages into this country."
+
+"It is a thousand pities that Mr. Clay, in his compromise, neglected
+to make an exception against that article. A tariff on impudence
+would not be at all sectional."
+
+"It might interfere with the manufacture at home, notwithstanding,"
+said John Effingham; for the lungs were strong, and the rooms of Mrs.
+Houston so small, that little was said that evening, which was not
+heard by any who chose to listen. But Miss Ring never listened, it
+being no part of the vocation of a _belle_ to perform that inferior
+office, and sustained by the protecting arm of Mr. Summerfield, she
+advanced more boldly into the crowd, where she soon contrived to
+catch another group of even six "entertainees." As for Mr.
+Summerfield, he lived a twelvemonth on the reputation of the
+exceedingly clever thing he had just uttered.
+
+"There come Ned and Aristabulus," said John Effingham, as soon as the
+tones of Miss Ring's voice were lost in the din of fifty others,
+pitched to the same key. "_A present, Mademoiselle, je vais nous
+venger_."
+
+As John Effingham uttered this, he took Captain Truck by the arm, and
+went to meet his cousin and the land agent. The latter he soon
+separated from Mr. Effingham, and with this new recruit, he managed
+to get so near to Miss Ring as to attract her attention. Although
+fifty, John Effingham was known to be a bachelor, well connected, and
+to have twenty thousand a year. In addition, he was well preserved
+and singularly handsome, besides having an air that set all
+pretending gentility at defiance. These were qualities that no
+_belle_ despised, and ill-assorted matches were, moreover, just
+coming into fashion in New-York. Miss Ring had an intuitive knowledge
+that he wished to speak to her, and she was not slow in offering the
+opportunity. The superior tone of John Effingham, his caustic wit and
+knowledge of the world, dispersed the five _beaux_, incontinently;
+these persons having a natural antipathy to every one of the
+qualities named.
+
+"I hope you will permit me to presume on an acquaintance that extends
+back as far as your grandfather, Miss Ring," he said, "to present two
+very intimate friends; Mr. Bragg and Mr. Truck; gentlemen who will
+well reward the acquaintance."
+
+The lady bowed graciously, for it was a matter of conscience with her
+to receive every man with a smile. She was still too much in awe of
+the master of ceremonies to open her batteries of attack, but John
+Effingham soon relieved her, by affecting a desire to speak to
+another lady. The _belle_ had now the two strangers to herself, and
+having heard that the Effinghams had an Englishman of condition as a
+companion, who was travelling under a false name, she fancied herself
+very clever in detecting him at once in the person of Aristabulus;
+while by the aid of a lively imagination, she thought Mr. Truck was
+his travelling Mentor, and a divine of the church of England. The
+incognito she was too well bred to hint at, though she wished both
+the gentlemen to perceive that a _belle_ was not to be mystified in
+this easy manner. Indeed, she was rather sensitive on the subject of
+her readiness in recognizing a man of fashion under any
+circumstances, and to let this be known was her very first object, as
+soon as she was relieved from the presence of John Effingham.
+
+"You must be struck with the unsophisticated nature and the extreme
+simplicity of our society, Mr. Bragg," she said, looking at him
+significantly; "we are very conscious it is not what it might be, but
+do you not think it pretty well for beginners?"
+
+Now, Mr. Bragg had an entire consciousness that he had never seen any
+society that deserved the name before this very night, but he was
+supported in giving his opinions by that secret sense of his
+qualifications to fill any station, which formed so conspicuous a
+trait in his character, and his answer was given with an _aplomb_
+that would have added weight to the opinion of the veriest _elegant_
+of the _Chaussee d'Antin._
+
+"It is indeed a good deal unsophisticated," he said, "and so simple
+that any body can understand it. I find but a single fault with this
+entertainment, which is, in all else, the perfection of elegance in
+my eyes, and that is, that there is too little room to swing the legs
+in dancing."
+
+"Indeed!--I did not expect that--is it not the best usage of Europe,
+now, to bring a quadrille into the very minimum of space?"
+
+"Quite the contrary, Miss. All good dancing requires evolutions. The
+dancing Dervishes, for instance would occupy quite as much space as
+both of these sets that are walking before us, and I believe it is
+now generally admitted that all good dancing needs room for the
+legs."
+
+"We necessarily get a little behind the fashions, in this distant
+country. Pray, sir, is it usual for ladies to walk alone in society?"
+
+"Woman was not made to move through life alone, Miss," returned
+Aristabulus with a sentimental glance of the eye, for he never let a
+good opportunity for preferment slip through his fingers, and,
+failing of Miss Effingham, or Miss Van Cortlandt, of whose estates
+and connections he had some pretty accurate notions, it struck him
+Miss Ring might, possibly, be a very eligible connection, as all was
+grist that came to his mill; "this I believe, is an admitted truth."
+
+"By life you mean matrimony, I suppose."
+
+"Yes, Miss, a man always means matrimony, when he speaks to a young
+lady."
+
+This rather disconcerted Miss Ring, who picked her nosegay, for she
+was not accustomed to hear gentlemen talk to ladies of matrimony, but
+ladies to talk to gentlemen. Recovering her self-possession, however,
+she said with a promptitude that, did the school to which she
+belonged infinite credit,--
+
+"You speak, sir, like one having experience."
+
+"Certainly, Miss; I have been in love ever since I was ten years old;
+I may say I was born in love, and hope to die in love."
+
+This a little out-Heroded Herod, but the _belle_ was not a person to
+be easily daunted on such a subject. She smiled graciously,
+therefore, and continued the conversation with renewed spirit.
+
+"You travelled gentleman get odd notions," she said, "and more
+particularly on such subjects. I always feel afraid to discuss them
+with foreigners, though with my own countrymen I have few reserves.
+Pray, Mr. Truck, are you satisfied with America?--Do you find it the
+country you expected to see?"
+
+"Certainly, marm;" for so they pronounced this word in the river, and
+the captain cherished his first impressions; "when we sailed from
+Portsmouth. I expected that the first land we should make would be
+the Highlands of Navesink; and, although a little disappointed, I
+have had the satisfaction of laying eyes on it at last."
+
+"Disappointment, I fear, is the usual fate of those who come from the
+other side. Is this dwelling of Mrs. Houston's equal to the residence
+of an English nobleman, Mr. Bragg?"
+
+"Considerably better, Miss, especially in the way of republican
+comfort."
+
+Miss Ring, like all _belles_, detested the word republican, their
+vocation being clearly to exclusion, and she pouted a little
+affectedly.
+
+"I should distrust the quality of such comfort, sir," she said, with
+point; "but, are the rooms at all comparable with the rooms in Apsley
+House, for instance?"
+
+"My dear Miss, Apsley House is a toll-gate lodge, compared to this
+mansion! I doubt if there be a dwelling in all England half as
+magnificent--indeed, I cannot imagine any thing more brilliant and
+rich."
+
+Aristabulus was not a man to do things by halves, and it was a point
+of honour with him to know something of every thing. It is true he no
+more could tell where Apsley House is, or whether it was a tavern or
+a gaol, than he knew half the other things on which he delivered
+oracular opinions; but when it became necessary to speak, he was not
+apt to balk conversation from any ignorance, real or affected. The
+opinion he had just given, it is true, had a little surpassed Miss
+Ring's hopes; for the next thing, in her ambition to being a _belle_,
+and of "entertaining" gentlemen, was to fancy she was running her
+brilliant career in an orbit of fashion that lay parallel to that of
+the "nobility and gentry" of Great Britain.
+
+"Well, this surpasses my hopes," she said, "although I was aware we
+are nearly on a level with the more improved tastes of Europe: still,
+I thought we were a little inferior to that part of the world, yet."
+
+"Inferior, Miss! That is a word that should never pass your lips; you
+are inferior to nothing, whether in Europe or America, Asia or
+Africa."
+
+As Miss Ring had been accustomed to do most of the flattering
+herself, as behoveth a _belle_, she began to be disconcerted with the
+directness of the compliments of Aristabulus, who was disposed to
+'make hay while the sun shines;' and she turned, in a little
+confusion, to the captain, by way of relief; we say confusion, for
+the young lady, although so liable to be misunderstood, was not
+actually impudent, but merely deceived in the relations of things;
+or, in other words, by some confusion in usages, she had hitherto
+permitted herself to do that in society, which female performers
+sometimes do on the stage; enact the part of a man.
+
+"You should tell Mr. Bragg, sir," she said, with an appealing look at
+the captain, "that flattery is a dangerous vice, and one altogether
+unsuited to a Christian."
+
+"It is, indeed, marm, and one that I never indulge in. No one under
+my orders, can accuse me of flattery."
+
+By 'under orders,' Miss Ring understood curates and deacons; for she
+was aware the church of England had clerical distinctions of this
+sort, that are unknown in America.
+
+"I hope, sir, you do not intend to quit this country without
+favouring us with a discourse."
+
+"Not I, marm--I am discoursing pretty much from morning till night,
+when among my own people, though I own that this conversing rather
+puts me out of my reckoning. Let me get my foot on the planks I love,
+with an attentive audience, and a good cigar in my mouth, and I'll
+hold forth with any bishop in the universe."
+
+"A cigar!" exclaimed Miss Ring, in surprise. "Do gentlemen of your
+profession use cigars when on duty!"
+
+"Does a parson take his fees? Why, Miss, there is not a man among us,
+who does not smoke from morning till night."
+
+"Surely not on Sundays!"
+
+"Two for one, on those days, more than on any other."
+
+"And your people, sir, what do they do, all this time?'
+
+"Why, marm, most of them chew; and those that don't, if they cannot
+find a pipe, have a dull time of it. For my part, I shall hardly
+relish the good place itself, if cigars are prohibited."
+
+Miss Ring was surprised; but she had heard that the English clergy
+were more free than our own, and then she had been accustomed to
+think every thing English of the purest water. A little reflection
+reconciled her to the innovation; and the next day, at a dinner
+party, she was heard defending the usage as a practice that had a
+precedent in the ancient incense of the altar. At the moment,
+however, she was dying to impart her discoveries to others; and she
+kindly proposed to the captain and Aristabulus to introduce them to
+some of her acquaintances, as they must find it dull, being
+strangers, to know no one. Introductions and cigars were the
+captain's hobbies, and he accepted the offer with joy, Aristabulus
+uniting cordially in the proposition, as, he fancied he had a right,
+under the Constitution of the United States of America, to be
+introduced to every human being with whom he came in contact.
+
+It is scarcely necessary to say how much the party with whom the two
+neophytes in fashion had come, enjoyed all this, though they
+concealed their amusement under the calm exterior of people of the
+world. From Mr. Effingham the mystification was carefully concealed
+by his cousin, as the former would have felt it due to Mrs. Houston,
+a well-meaning, but silly woman, to put an end to it. Eve and Grace
+laughed, as merry girls would be apt to laugh, at such an occurrence,
+and they danced the remainder of the evening with lighter hearts than
+ever. At one, the company retired in the same informal manner, as
+respects announcements and the calling of carriages, as that in which
+they had entered; most to lay their drowsy heads on their pillows,
+and Miss Ring to ponder over the superior manners of a polished young
+Englishman, and to dream of the fragrance of a sermon that was
+preserved in tobacco.
+
+Chapter VI.
+
+  "Marry, our play is the most lamentable Comedy, and most cruel
+  death of Pyramus and Thisby."
+
+  PETER QUINCE.
+
+Our task in the way of describing town society will soon be ended.
+The gentlemen of the Effingham family had been invited to meet Sir
+George Templemore at one or two dinners, to which the latter had been
+invited in consequence of his letters, most of which were connected
+with his pecuniary arrangements. As one of these entertainments was
+like all the rest of the same character, a very brief account of it
+will suffice to let the reader into the secret of the excellence of
+the genus.
+
+A well-spread board, excellent viands, highly respectable cookery,
+and delicious wines, were every where met. Two rows of men clad in
+dark dresses, a solitary female at the head of the table, or, if
+fortunate, with a supporter of the same sex near her, invariably
+composed the _convives_. The exaggerations of a province were seen
+ludicrously in one particular custom. The host, or perhaps it might
+have been the hostess, had been told there should be a contrast
+between the duller light of the reception-room, and the brilliancy of
+the table, and John Effingham actually hit his legs against a stool,
+in floundering through the obscurity of the first drawing-room he
+entered on one of the occasions in question.
+
+When seated at table, the first great duty of restauration performed,
+the conversation turned on the prices of lots, speculations in towns,
+or the currency. After this came the regular assay of wines, during
+which it was easy to fancy the master of the house a dealer, for he
+usually sat either sucking a syphon or flourishing a cork-screw. The
+discourse would now have done credit to the annual meeting and dinner
+of the German exporters, assembled at Rudesheim to bid for the
+article.
+
+Sir George was certainly on the point of forming a very erroneous
+judgment concerning the country, when Mr. Effingham extricated him
+from this set, and introduced him properly into his own. Here,
+indeed, while there was much to strike a European as peculiar, and
+even provincial, the young baronet fared much better. He met with the
+same quality of table, relieved by an intelligence that was always
+respectable, and a manliness of tone which, if not unmixed, had the
+great merit of a simplicity and nature that are not always found in
+more sophisticated circles. The occasional incongruities struck them
+all, more than the positive general faults and Sir George Templemore
+did justice to the truth, by admitting frankly, the danger he had
+been in of forming a too hasty opinion.
+
+All this time, which occupied a month, the young baronet got to be
+more and more intimate in Hudson Square, Eve gradually becoming more
+frank and unreserved with him, as she grew sensible that he had
+abandoned his hopes of success with herself, and Grace gradually more
+cautious and timid, as she became conscious of his power to please,
+and the interest he took in herself.
+
+It might have been three days after the ball at Mrs. Houston's that
+most of the family was engaged to look in on a Mrs. Legend, a lady of
+what was called a literary turn, Sir George having been asked to make
+one of their party. Aristabulus was already returned to his duty in
+the country, where we shall shortly have occasion to join him, but an
+invitation had been sent to Mr. Truck, under the general, erroneous
+impression of his real character.
+
+Taste, whether in the arts, literature, or any thing else, is a
+natural impulse, like love. It is true both may be cultivated and
+heightened by circumstances, but the impulses must be voluntary, and
+the flow of feeling, or of soul, as it has become a law to style it,
+is not to be forced, or commanded to come and go at will. This is the
+reason that all premeditated enjoyments connected with the intellect,
+are apt to baffle expectations, and why academies, literary clubs,
+coteries and dinners are commonly dull. It is true that a body of
+clever people may be brought together, and, if left to their own
+impulses, the characters of their mind will show themselves; wit will
+flash, and thought will answer thought spontaneously; but every
+effort to make the stupid agreeable, by giving a direction of a
+pretending intellectual nature to their efforts, is only rendering
+dullness more conspicuous by exhibiting it in contrast with what it
+ought to be to be clever, as a bad picture is rendered the more
+conspicuous by an elaborate and gorgeous frame.
+
+The latter was the fate of most of Mrs. Legend's literary evenings,
+at which it was thought an illustration to understand even one
+foreign language. But, it was known that Eve was skilled in most of
+the European tongues, and, the good lady, not feeling that such
+accomplishments are chiefly useful as a means, looked about her in
+order to collect a set, among whom our heroine might find some one
+with whom to converse in each of her dialects. Little was said about
+it, it is true, but great efforts were made to cause this evening to
+be memorable in the annals of _conversazioni_.
+
+In carrying out this scheme, nearly all the wits, writers, artists
+and _literati_, as the most incorrigible members of the book clubs
+were styled, in New-York, were pressingly invited to be present.
+Aristabulus had contrived to earn such a reputation for the captain,
+on the night of the ball, that he was universally called a man of
+letters, and an article had actually appeared in one of the papers,
+speaking of the literary merits of the "Hon. and Rev. Mr. Truck, a
+gentleman travelling in our country, from whose liberality and just
+views, an account of our society was to be expected, that should, at
+last, do justice to our national character." With such expectations,
+then, every true American and Americaness, was expected to be at his
+or her post, for the solemn occasion. It was a rally of literature,
+in defence of the institutions--no, not of the institutions, for they
+were left to take care of themselves--but of the social character of
+the community.
+
+Alas! it is easier to feel high aspirations on such subjects, in a
+provincial town, than to succeed; for merely calling a place an
+Emporium, is very far from giving it the independence, high tone,
+condensed intelligence and tastes of a capital. Poor Mrs. Legend,
+desirous of having all the tongues duly represented, was obliged to
+invite certain dealers in gin from Holland, a German linen merchant
+from Saxony, an Italian _Cavaliero_, who amused himself in selling
+beads, and a Spanish master, who was born in Portugal, all of whom
+had just one requisite for conversation in their respective
+languages, and no more. But such assemblies were convened in Paris,
+and why not in New-York?
+
+We shall not stop to dwell on the awful sensations with which Mrs.
+Legend heard the first ring at her door, on the eventful night in
+question. It was the precursor of the entrance of Miss Annual, as
+regular a devotee of letters as ever conned a primer. The meeting was
+sentimental and affectionate. Before either had time, however, to
+disburthen her mind of one half of its prepared phrases, ring upon
+ring proclaimed more company, and the rooms were soon as much
+sprinkled with talent, as a modern novel with jests. Among those who
+came first, appeared all the foreign corps, for the refreshments
+entered as something into the account with them; every blue of the
+place, whose social position in the least entitled her to be seen in
+such a house, Mrs. Legend belonging quite positively to good society.
+
+The scene that succeeded was very characteristic. A professed genius
+does nothing like other people, except in cases that require a
+display of talents. In all minor matters he, or she, is _sui
+generis_; for sentiment is in constant ebullition in their souls;
+this being what is meant by the flow of that part of the human
+system.
+
+We might here very well adopt the Homeric method, and call the roll
+of heroes and heroines, in what the French would term a _catalogue
+raisonnee_; but our limits compel us to be less ambitions, and to
+adopt a simpler mode of communicating facts. Among the ladies who now
+figured in the drawing-room of Mrs. Legend, besides Miss Annual, were
+Miss Monthly, Mrs. Economy, S.R.P., Marion, Longinus, Julietta,
+Herodotus, D.O.V.E., and Mrs. Demonstration; besides many others of
+less note; together with at least a dozen female Hajjis, whose claims
+to appear in such society were pretty much dependent on the fact,
+that having seen pictures and statues abroad, they necessarily must
+have the means of talking of them at home. The list of men was still
+more formidable in numbers, if not in talents. At its head stood
+Steadfast Dodge, Esquire, whose fame as a male Hajji had so far
+swollen since Mrs Jarvis's _reunion_, that, for the first time in his
+life, he now entered one of the better houses of his own country.
+Then there were the authors of "Lapis Lazuli," "The Aunts," "The
+Reformed," "The Conformed," "The Transformed," and "The Deformed;"
+with the editors of "The Hebdomad," "The Night Cap," "The Chrysalis,"
+"The Real Maggot," and "The Seek no Further;" as also, "Junius,"
+"Junius Brutus," "Lucius Junius Brutus," "Captain Kant," "Florio,"
+the 'Author of the History of Billy Linkum Tweedle', the celebrated
+Pottawattamie Prophet, "Single Rhyme," a genius who had prudently
+rested his fame in verse, on a couplet composed of one line; besides
+divers _amateurs_ and _connoisseurs_, Hajjis, who _must_ be men of
+talents, as they had acquired all they knew, very much as American
+Eclipse gained his laurels on the turf; that is to say, by a free use
+of the whip and spur.
+
+As Mrs. Legend sailed about her rooms amid such a circle, her mind
+expanded, her thoughts diffused themselves among her guests on the
+principle of Animal Magnetism, and her heart was melting with the
+tender sympathies of congenial tastes. She felt herself to be at the
+head of American talents, and, in the secret recesses of her reason,
+she determined that, did even the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah menace
+her native town, as some evil disposed persons had dared to insinuate
+might one day be the case, here was enough to save it from
+destruction.
+
+It was just as the mistress of the mansion had come to this consoling
+conclusion, that the party from Hudson Square rang. As few of her
+guests came in carriages, Mrs. Legend, who heard the rolling of
+wheels, felt persuaded that the lion of the night was now indeed at
+hand; and with a view to a proper reception, she requested the
+company to divide itself into two lines, in order that he might
+enter, as it were, between lanes of genius.
+
+It may be necessary to explain, at this point of our narrative, that
+John Effingham was perfectly aware of the error which existed in
+relation to the real character of Captain Truck, wherein he thought
+great injustice had been done the honest seaman; and, the old man
+intending to sail for London next morning, had persuaded him to
+accept this invitation, in order that the public mind might be
+disabused in a matter of so much importance. With a view that this
+might be done naturally and without fuss, however, he did not explain
+the mistake to his nautical friend, believing it most probable that
+this could be better done incidentally, as it were, in the course of
+the evening; and feeling certain of the force of that wholesome
+apothegm, which says that "truth is powerful and must prevail" "If
+this be so," added John Effingham, in his explanations to Eve, "there
+can be no place where the sacred quality will be so likely to assert
+itself, as in a galaxy of geniuses, whose distinctive characteristic
+is 'an intuitive perception of things in their real colours."
+
+When the door of Mrs. Legend's drawing-room opened, in the usual
+noiseless manner, Mademoiselle Viefville, who led the way, was
+startled at finding herself in the precise situation of one who is
+condemned to run the gauntlet. Fortunately, she caught a glimpse of
+Mrs. Legend, posted at the other end of the proud array, inviting
+her, with smiles, to approach. The invitation had been to a
+"_literary fete_," and Mademoiselle Viefville was too much of a
+Frenchwoman to be totally disconcerted at a little scenic effect on
+the occasion of a _fete_ of any sort. Supposing she was now a witness
+of an American ceremony for the first time, for the want of
+_representation_ in the country had been rather a subject of
+animadversion with her, she advanced steadily towards the mistress of
+the house, bestowing smile for smile, this being a part of the
+_programme_ at which a _Parisienne_ was not easily outdone. Eve
+followed, as usual, _sola_; Grace came next; then Sir George; then
+John Effingham; the captain bringing up the rear. There had been a
+friendly contest, for the precedency, between the two last, each
+desiring to yield it to the other on the score of merit; but the
+captain prevailed, by declaring "that he was navigating an unknown
+sea, and that he could do nothing wiser than to sail in the wake of
+so good a pilot as Mr. John Effingham."
+
+As Hajjis of approved experience, the persons who led the advance in
+this little procession, were subjects of a proper attention and
+respect; but as the admiration of mere vulgar travelling would in
+itself be vulgar, care was taken to reserve the condensed feeling of
+the company for the celebrated English writer and wit, who was known
+to bring up the rear. This was not a common house, in which dollars
+had place, or _belles_ rioted, but the temple of genius; and every
+one felt an ardent desire to manifest a proper homage to the
+abilities of the established foreign writer, that should be in exact
+proportion to their indifference to the twenty thousand a year of
+John Effingham, and to the nearly equal amount of Eve's expectations.
+
+The personal appearance of the honest tar was well adapted to the
+character he was thus called on so unexpectedly to support. His hair
+had long been getting grey, but the intense anxiety of the chase, of
+the wreck, and of his other recent adventures, had rapidly, but
+effectually, increased this mark of time; and his head was now nearly
+as white as snow. The hale, fresh, red of his features, which was in
+truth the result of exposure, might very well pass for the tint of
+port, and his tread, which had always a little of the quarterdeck
+swing about it, might quite easily be mistaken by a tyro, for the
+human frame staggering under a load of learning. Unfortunately for
+those who dislike mystifications, the captain had consulted John
+Effingham on the subject of the toilette, and that kind and indulgent
+friend had suggested the propriety of appearing in black small-
+clothes for the occasion, a costume that he often wore himself of an
+evening. Reality, in this instance, then, did not disappoint
+expectation, and the burst of applause with which the captain was
+received, was accompanied by a general murmur in commendation of the
+admirable manner in which he "looked the character."
+
+"What a Byronic head," whispered the author of "The Transformed" to
+D.O.V.E.; "and was there ever such a curl of the lip, before, to
+mortal man!"
+
+The truth is, the captain had thrust his tobacco into "an aside," as
+a monkey is known to _empocher_ a spare nut, or a lump of sugar.
+
+"Do you think him Byronic?--To my eye, the cast of his head is
+Shaksperian, rather; though I confess there is a little of Milton
+about the forehead!"
+
+"Pray," said Miss Annual, to Lucius Junius Brutus, "which is commonly
+thought to be the best of his works; that on a--a--a,--or that on e--
+e--e?"
+
+Now, so it happened, that not a soul in the room, but the lion
+himself, had any idea what books he had written, and he knew only of
+some fifteen or twenty log-books. It was generally understood, that
+he was a great English writer, and this was more than sufficient.
+
+"I believe the world generally prefers the a--a--a," said Lucius
+Junius Brutus; "but the few give a decided preference to the e--e--
+e----"
+
+"Oh! out of all question preferable!" exclaimed half a dozen, in
+hearing.
+
+"With what a classical modesty he pays his compliments to Mrs.
+Legend," observed "S. R. P."--"One can always tell a man of real
+genius, by his _tenu_!"
+
+"He is so English!" cried Florio. "Ah! _they_ are the only people,
+after all!"
+
+This Florio was one of those geniuses who sigh most for the things
+that they least possess.
+
+By this time Captain Truck had got through with listening to the
+compliments of Mrs. Legend, when he, was seized upon by a circle of
+rabid literati, who badgered him with questions concerning his
+opinions, notions, inferences, experiences, associations, sensations,
+sentiments and intentions, in a way that soon threw the old man into
+a profuse perspiration. Fifty times did he wish, from the bottom of
+his soul, that soul which the crowd around him fancied dwelt so nigh
+in the clouds, that he was seated quietly by the side of Mrs. Hawker,
+who, he mentally swore, was worth all the _literati_ in Christendom.
+But fate had decreed otherwise, and we shall leave him to his
+fortune, for a time, and return to our heroine and her party.
+
+As soon as Mrs. Legend had got through with her introductory
+compliments to the captain, she sought Eve and Grace, with a
+consciousness that a few civilities were now their due.
+
+"I fear, Miss Effingham, after the elaborate _soirees_ of the
+literary circles in Paris, you will find our _reunions_ of the same
+sort, a little dull; and yet I flatter myself with having assembled
+most of the talents of New-York on this memorable occasion, to do
+honour to your friend. Are you acquainted with many of the company?"
+
+Now, Eve had never seen nor ever heard of a single being in the room,
+with the exception of Mr. Dodge and her own party, before this night,
+although most of them had been so laboriously employed in puffing
+each other into celebrity, for many weary years; and, as for
+elaborate _soirees_, she thought she had never seen one half as
+elaborate as this of Mrs. Legend's. As it would not very well do,
+however, to express all this in words, she civilly desired the lady
+to point out to her some of the most distinguished of the company.
+
+"With the greatest pleasure, Miss Effingham," Mrs. Legend taking
+pride in dwelling on the merits of her guests.--"This heavy, grand-
+looking personage, in whose air one sees refinement and modesty at a
+glance, is Captain Kant, the editor of one of our most decidedly
+pious newspapers. His mind is distinguished for its intuitive
+perception of all that is delicate, reserved and finished in the
+intellectual world, while, in opposition to this quality, which is
+almost feminine, his character is just as remarkable for its
+unflinching love of truth. He was never known to publish a falsehood,
+and of his foreign correspondence, in particular, he is so
+exceedingly careful, that he assures me he has every word of it
+written under his own eye."
+
+"On the subject of his religious scruples," added John Effingham, "he
+is so fastidiously exact, that I hear he 'says grace' over every
+thing that goes _from_ his press, and 'returns thanks' for every
+thing that comes _to_ it."
+
+"You know him, Mr. Effingham, by this remark? Is he not, truly, a man
+of a vocation?"
+
+"That, indeed, he is, ma'am. He may be succinctly said to have a
+newspaper mind, as he reduces every thing in nature or art to news,
+and commonly imparts to it so much of his own peculiar character,
+that it loses all identity with the subjects to which it originally
+belonged. One scarcely knows which to admire most about this man, the
+atmospheric transparency of his motives, for he is so disinterested
+as seldom even to think of paying for a dinner when travelling, and
+yet so conscientious as always to say something obliging of the
+tavern as soon as he gets home--his rigid regard to facts; or the
+exquisite refinement and delicacy that he imparts to every thing he
+touches. Over all this, too, he throws a beautiful halo of morality
+and religion, never even prevaricating in the hottest discussion,
+unless with the unction of a saint!"
+
+"Do you happen to know Florio?" asked Mrs. Legend, a little
+distrusting John Effingham's account of Captain Kant.
+
+"If I do, it must indeed be by accident. What are his chief
+characteristics, ma'am?"
+
+"Sentiment, pathos, delicacy, and all in rhyme, too. You no doubt,
+have heard of his triumph over Lord Byron, Miss Effingham?"
+
+Eve was obliged to confess that it was new to her.
+
+"Why, Byron wrote an ode to Greece, commencing with 'The Isles of
+Greece! the Isles of Greece!' a very feeble line, as any one will
+see, for it contained a useless and an unmeaning repetition."
+
+"And you might add vulgar, too, Mrs. Legend," said John Effingham,
+"since it made a palpable allusion to all those vulgar incidents that
+associate themselves in the mind, with these said common-place isles.
+The arts, philosophy, poetry, eloquence, and even old Homer, are
+brought unpleasantly to one's recollection, by such an indiscreet
+invocation."
+
+"So Florio thought, and, by way of letting the world perceive the
+essential difference between the base and the pure coin, _he_ wrote
+an ode on England, which commenced as such an ode _should_!"
+
+"Do you happen to recollect any of it, ma'am?"
+
+"Only the first line, which I greatly regret, as the rhyme is
+Florio's chief merit. But this line is, of itself, sufficient to
+immortalize a man."
+
+"Do not keep us in torment, dear Mrs. Legend, but let us have it, of
+heaven's sake!"
+
+"It began in this sublime strain, sir--'Beyond the wave!--Beyond the
+wave!' Now, Miss Effingham, that is what _I_ call poetry!"
+
+"And well you may, ma'am," returned the gentleman, who perceived Eve
+could scarce refrain from breaking out in a very unsentimental
+manner--"So much pathos."
+
+"And so sententious and flowing!"
+
+"Condensing a journey of three thousand miles, as it might be, into
+three words, and a note of admiration. I trust it was printed with a
+note of admiration, Mrs. Legend?"
+
+"Yes, sir, with two--one behind each wave--and such waves, Mr.
+Effingham!"
+
+"Indeed, ma'am, you may say so. One really gets a grand idea of them,
+England lying beyond each."
+
+"So much expressed in so few syllables!"
+
+"I think I see every shoal, current, ripple, rock, island, and whale,
+between Sandy Hook and the Land's End."
+
+"He hints at an epic."
+
+"Pray God he may execute one. Let him make haste, too, or he may get
+'behind the age,' 'behind the age.'"
+
+Here the lady was called away to receive a guest.
+
+"Cousin Jack!"
+
+"Eve Effingham?"
+
+"Do you not sometimes fear offending?"
+
+"Not a woman who begins with expressing her admiration of such a
+sublime thing as this. You are safe with such a person, any where
+short of a tweak of the nose."
+
+"_Mais, tout ceci est bien drole!_"
+
+"You never were more mistaken in your life, Mademoiselle; every body
+here looks upon it as a matter of life and death."
+
+The new guest was Mr. Pindar, one of those careless, unsentimental
+fellows, that occasionally throw off an ode that passes through
+Christendom, as dollars are known to pass from China to Norway, and
+yet, who never fancied spectacles necessary to his appearance,
+solemnity to his face, nor _soirees_ to his renown. After quitting
+Mrs. Legend, he approached Eve, to whom he was slightly known, and
+accosted her.
+
+"This is the region of taste, Miss Effingham," he said, with a shrug
+of the jaw, if such a member can shrug; "and I do not wonder at
+finding you here."
+
+He then chatted pleasantly a moment, with the party, and passed on,
+giving an ominous gape, as he drew nearer to the _oi polloi_ of
+literature. A moment after appeared Mr. Gray, a man who needed
+nothing but taste in the public, and the encouragement that would
+follow such a taste, to stand at, or certainty near, the head of the
+poets of our own time. He, too, looked shily at the galaxy, and took
+refuge in a corner. Mr. Pith followed; a man whose caustic wit needs
+only a sphere for its exercise, manners to portray, and a society
+with strong points about it to illustrate, in order to enrol his name
+high on the catalogue of satirists. Another ring announced Mr. Fun, a
+writer of exquisite humour, and of finished periods, but who, having
+perpetrated a little too much sentiment, was instantly seized upon by
+all the ultra ladies who were addicted to the same taste in that way,
+in the room.
+
+These persons came late, like those who had already been too often
+dosed in the same way, to be impatient of repetitions. The three
+first soon got together in a corner, and Eve fancied they were
+laughing at the rest of the company; whereas, in fact, they were
+merely laughing at a bad joke of their own; their quick perception of
+the ludicrous having pointed out a hundred odd combinations and
+absurdities, that would have escaped duller minds.
+
+"Who, in the name of the twelve Caesars, has Mrs. Legend got to
+lionize, yonder, with the white summit and the dark base?' asked the
+writer of odes.
+
+"Some English pamphleteer, by what I can learn," answered he of
+satire; "some fellow who has achieved a pert review, or written a
+Minerva Pressism, and who now flourishes like a bay tree among us. A
+modern Horace, or a Juvenal on his travels."
+
+"Fun is well badgered," observed Mr. Gray.--"Do you not see that Miss
+Annual, Miss Monthly, and that young alphabet D.O.V.E., have got him
+within the circle of their petticoats, where he will be martyred on a
+sigh?"
+
+"He casts tanging looks this way; he wishes you to go to his rescue,
+Pith."
+
+"I!--Let him take his fill of sentiment! I am no homoepathist in such
+matters. Large doses in quick succession will soonest work a cure.
+Here comes the lion and he breaks loose from his cage, like a beast
+that has been poked up with sticks."
+
+"Good evening, gentlemen," said Captain Truck, wiping his face
+intensely, and who having made his escape from a throng of admirers,
+took refuge in the first port that offered. "You seem to be enjoying
+yourselves here in a rational and agreeable way. Quite cool and
+refreshing in this corner."
+
+"And yet we have no doubt that both our reason and our amusement will
+receive a large increase from the addition of your society, sir,"
+returned Mr. Pith.--"Do us the favour to take a seat, I beg of you,
+and rest yourself."
+
+"With all my heart, gentlemen; for, to own the truth, these ladies
+make warm work about a stranger. I have just got out of what I call a
+category."
+
+"You appear to have escaped with life, sir," observed Pindar, taking
+a cool survey of the other's person.
+
+"Yes, thank God, I have done that, and it is pretty much all,"
+answered the captain, wiping his face. "I served in the French war--
+Truxtun's war, as we call it--and I had a touch with the English in
+the privateer trade, between twelve and fifteen; and here, quite
+lately, I was in an encounter with the savage Arabs down on the coast
+of Africa; and I account them all as so much snow-balling, compared
+with the yard-arm and yard-arm work of this very night. I wonder if
+it is permitted to try a cigar at these conversation-onies,
+gentlemen?"
+
+"I believe it is, sir," returned Pindar, coolly. "Shall I help you to
+a light?"
+
+"Oh! Mr. Truck!" cried Mrs. Legend, following the chafed animal to
+his corner, as one would pursue any other runaway, "instinct has
+brought you into this good company. You are, now, in the very focus
+of American talents."
+
+"Having just escaped from the focus of American talons," whispered
+Pith.
+
+"I must be permitted to introduce you myself. Mr. Truck, Mr. Pindar--
+Mr. Pith--- Mr. Gray--gentlemen, you must be so happy to be
+acquainted, being, as it were, engaged in the same pursuits!"
+
+The captain rose and shook each of the gentlemen cordially by the
+hand, for he had, at least, the consolation of a great many
+introductions that night. Mrs. Legend disappeared to say something to
+some other prodigy.
+
+"Happy to meet you, gentlemen," said the captain "In what trade do
+you sail?"
+
+"By whatever name we may call it," answered Mr. Pindar--"we can
+scarcely be said to go before the wind."
+
+"Not in the Injee business, then, or the monsoons would keep the
+stun'sails set, at least."
+
+"No, sir.--But yonder is Mr. Moccasin, who has lately set up,
+_secundum artem_, in the Indian business, having written two novels
+in that way already, and begun a third."
+
+"Are you all regularly employed, gentlemen?"
+
+"As regularly as inspiration points," said Mr. Pith. "Men of our
+occupation must make fair weather of it, or we had better be doing
+nothing."
+
+"So I often tell my owners, but 'go ahead' is the order. When I was a
+youngster, a ship remained in port for a fair wind; but, now, she
+goes to work and makes one. The world seems to get young, as I get
+old."
+
+"This is a _rum litterateur_," Gray whispered to Pindar.
+
+"It is an obvious mystification," was the answer; "poor Mrs. Legend
+has picked up some straggling porpoise, and converted him, by a touch
+of her magical wand, into a Boanerges of literature. The thing is as
+clear as day, for the worthy fellow smells of tar and cigar smoke. I
+perceive that Mr. Effingham is laughing out of the corner of his
+eyes, and will step across the room, and get the truth, in a minute."
+
+The rogue was as good as his word, and was soon back again, and
+contrived to let his friends understand the real state of the case. A
+knowledge of the captain's true character encouraged this trio in the
+benevolent purpose of aiding the honest old seaman in his wish to
+smoke, and Pith managed to give him a lighted paper, without becoming
+an open accessary to the plot.
+
+"Will you take a cigar yourself, sir," said the captain, offering his
+box to Mr. Pindar.
+
+"I thank you, Mr. Truck, I never smoke, but am a profound admirer of
+the flavour. Let me entreat you to begin as soon as possible."
+
+Thus encouraged, Captain Truck drew two or three whiffs, when the
+rooms were immediately filled with the fragrance of a real Havana. At
+the first discovery, the whole literary pack went off on the scent.
+As for Mr. Fun, he managed to profit by the agitation that followed,
+in order to escape to the three wags in the corner, who were enjoying
+the scene, with the gravity of so many dervishes.
+
+"As I live," cried Lucius Junius Brutus, "there is the author of a--
+a--a--actually smoking a cigar!--How excessively _piquant!_"
+
+"Do my eyes deceive me, or is not that the writer of e--e--e--
+fumigating us all!" whispered Miss Annual.
+
+"Nay, this cannot certainly be right," put in Florio, with a
+dogmatical manner. "All the periodicals agree that smoking is
+ungenteel in England."
+
+"You never were more mistaken, dear Florio," replied D.O.V.E. in a
+cooing tone. "The very last novel of society has a chapter in which
+the hero and heroine smoke in the declaration scene."
+
+"Do they, indeed!--That alters the case. Really, one would not wish
+to get behind so great a nation, nor yet go much before it. Pray,
+Captain Kant, what do your friends in Canada say; is, or is not
+smoking permitted in good society there? the Canadians must, at
+least, be ahead of us."
+
+"Not at all, sir," returned the editor in his softest tones; "it is
+revolutionary and jacobinical."
+
+But the ladies prevailed, and, by a process that is rather peculiar
+to what may be called a "credulous" state of society, they carried
+the day. This process was simply to make one fiction authority for
+another. The fact that smoking was now carried so far in England,
+that the clergy actually used cigars in the pulpits, was affirmed on
+the authority of Mr. Truck himself, and, coupled with his present
+occupation, the point was deemed to be settled. Even Florio yielded,
+and his plastic mind soon saw a thousand beauties in the usage, that
+had hitherto escaped it. All the literati drew round the captain in a
+circle, to enjoy the spectacle, though the honest old mariner
+contrived to throw out such volumes of vapour as to keep them at a
+safe distance. His four demure-looking neighbours got behind the
+barrier of smoke, where they deemed themselves entrenched against the
+assaults of sentimental petticoats, for a time, at least.
+
+"Pray, Mr. Truck," inquired S.R.P., "is it commonly thought in the
+English literary circles, that Byron was a developement of
+Shakspeare, or Shakspeare a shadowing forth of Byron?"
+
+"Both, marm," said the captain, with a coolness that would have done
+credit to Aristabulus, for he had been fairly badgered into
+impudence, profiting by the occasion to knock the ashes off his
+cigar; "all incline to the first opinion, and most to the last."
+
+"What finesse!" murmured one. "How delicate!" whispered a second. "A
+dignified reserve!" ejaculated a third. "So English!" exclaimed
+Florio.
+
+"Do you think, Mr. Truck," asked D.O.V.E. "that the profane songs of
+Little have more pathos than the sacred songs of Moore; or that the
+sacred songs of Moore have more sentiment than the profane songs of
+Little?"
+
+"A good deal of both, marm, and something to spare. I think there is
+little in one, and more in the other."
+
+"Pray, sir," said J.R.P., "do you pronounce the name of Byron's lady-
+love, Guy-kee-oh-_ly_, or, Gwy-ky-o-_lee_?"
+
+"That depends on how the wind is. If on shore, I am apt to say 'oh-
+lee;' and if off shore, 'oh-lie.'"
+
+"That's capital!" cried Florio, in an extasy of admiration. "What man
+in this country could have said as crack a thing as that?"
+
+"Indeed it is very witty," added Miss Monthly--"what does it mean?"
+
+"Mean! More than is seen or felt by common minds. Ah! the English are
+truly a great nation!--How delightfully he smokes!"
+
+"I think he is much the most interesting man we have had out here,"
+observed Miss Annual, "since the last bust of Scott!"
+
+"Ask him, dear D.O.V.E.," whispered Julietta, who was timid, from the
+circumstance of never having published, "which he thinks the most
+ecstatic feeling, hope or despair?"
+
+The question was put by the more experienced lady, according to
+request, though she first said, in a hurried tone, to her youthful
+sister--"you can have felt but little, child, or you would know that
+it is despair, as a matter of course."
+
+The honest captain, however, did not treat the matter so lightly, for
+he improved the opportunity to light a fresh cigar, throwing the
+still smoking stump into Mrs. Legend's grate, through a lane of
+literati, as he afterwards boasted, as coolly as he could have thrown
+it overboard, under other circumstances. Luckily for his reputation
+for sentiment, he mistook "ecstatic," a word he had never heard
+before, for "erratic;" and recollecting sundry roving maniacs that he
+had seen, he answered promptly--
+
+"Despair, out and out."
+
+"I knew it," said one.
+
+"It's in nature," added a second.
+
+"All can feel its truth," rejoined a third.
+
+"This point may now be set down as established," cried Florio, "and I
+hope no more will be said about it."
+
+"This is encouragement to the searchers after truth," put in Captain
+Kant.
+
+"Pray, Hon. and Rev. Mr. Truck," asked Lucius Junius Brutus, at the
+joint suggestion of Junius Brutus and Brutus, "does the Princess
+Victoria smoke?"
+
+"If she did not, sir, where would be the use in being a princess. I
+suppose you know that all the tobacco seized in England, after a
+deduction to informers, goes to the crown."
+
+"I object to this usage," remarked Captain Kant, "as irreligious,
+French, and tending to _sans-culotteism_. I am willing to admit of
+this distinguished instance as an exception; but on all other
+grounds, I shall maintain that it savours of infidelity to smoke. The
+Prussian government, much the best of our times, never smokes."
+
+"This man thinks he has a monopoly of the puffing, himself," Pindar
+whispered into the captain's ear; "whiff away, my dear sir, and
+you'll soon throw him into the shade."
+
+The captain winked, drew out his box, lighted another cigar, and, by
+way of reply to the envious remark, he put one in each corner of his
+mouth, and soon had both in full blast, a state in which he kept them
+for near a minute.
+
+"This is the very picturesque of social enjoyment," exclaimed Florio,
+holding up both hands in a glow of rapture. "It is absolutely
+Homeric, in the way of usages! Ah! the English are a great nation!"
+
+"I should like to know excessively if there was really such a person
+as Baron Mun-chaw-sen?" said Julietta, gathering courage from the
+success of her last question.
+
+"There was, Miss," returned the captain, through his teeth, and
+nodding his head in the affirmative. "A regular traveller, that; and
+one who knew him well, swore to me that he hadn't related one half of
+what befel him."
+
+"How very delightful to learn this from the highest quarter!"
+exclaimed Miss Monthly.
+
+"Is Gatty (Goethe) really dead?" inquired Longinus, "or, is the
+account we have had to that effect, merely a metaphysical apotheosis
+of his mighty soul?"
+
+"Dead, marm--stone dead--dead as a door-nail," returned the captain,
+who saw a relief in killing as many as possible.
+
+"You have been in France, Mr. Truck, beyond question?" observed
+Lucius Junius Brutus, in the way one puts a question.
+
+"France!--I was in France before I was ten years old. I know every
+foot of the coast, from Havre de Grace to Marseilles."
+
+"Will you then have the goodness to explain to us whether the soul of
+Chat-_to_-bri-_ong_ is more expanded than his reason, or his reason
+more expanded than his soul?"
+
+Captain Truck had a very tolerable notion of Baron Munchausen and of
+his particular merits; but Chateaubriant was a writer of whom he knew
+nothing. After pondering a moment, and feeling persuaded that a
+confession of ignorance might undo him; for the old man had got to be
+influenced by the atmosphere of the place; he answered coolly--
+
+"Oh! Chat-_to_-bri-_ong_, is it you mean?--As whole-souled a fellow
+as I know. All soul, sir, and lots of reason, besides."
+
+"How simple and unaffected!"
+
+"Crack!" exclaimed Florio.
+
+"A thorough Jacobin!" growled Captain Kant, who was always offended
+when any one but himself took liberties with the truth.
+
+Here the four wags in the corner observed that head went to head in
+the crowd, and that the rear rank of the company began to disappear,
+while Mrs. Legend was in evident distress. In a few minutes, all the
+Romans were off; Florio soon after vanished, grating his teeth in a
+poetical frenzy; and even Captain Kant, albeit so used to look truth
+in the face, beat a retreat. The alphabet followed, and even the
+Annual and the Monthly retired, with leave-takings so solemn and
+precise, that poor Mrs. Legend was in total despair.
+
+Eve, foreseeing something unpleasant, had gone away first, and, in a
+few minutes, Mr. Dodge, who had been very active in the crowd,
+whispering and gesticulating, made his bow also. The envy of this man
+had, in fact, become so intolerable, that he had let the cat out of
+the bag. No one now remained but the party entrenched behind the
+smoke, and the mistress of the house. Pindar solemnly proposed to the
+captain that they should go and enjoy an oyster-supper, in company;
+and, the proposal being cordially accepted, they rose in a body, to
+take leave.
+
+"A most delightful evening, Mrs. Legend," said Pindar, with perfect
+truth, "much the pleasantest I ever passed in a house, where one
+passes so many that are agreeable."
+
+"I cannot properly express my thanks for the obligation you have
+conferred by making me acquainted with Mr. Truck," added Gray. "I
+shall cultivate it as far as in my power, for a more capital fellow
+never breathed."
+
+"Really, Mrs. Legend, this has been a Byronic night!" observed Pith,
+as he made his bow. "I shall long remember it, and I think it
+deserves to be commemorated in verse"
+
+Fun endeavoured to look sympathetic and sentimental, though the
+spirit within could scarcely refrain from grinning in Mrs. Legend's
+face. He stammered out a few compliments, however, and disappeared.
+
+"Well, good night, marm," said Captain Truck, offering his hand
+cordially. "This has been a pleasant evening, altogether, though it
+was warm work at first. If you like ships, I should be glad to show
+you the Montauk's cabins when we get back; and if you ever think of
+Europe, let me recommend the London line as none of the worst. We'll
+try to make you comfortable, and trust to me to choose a state-room,
+a thing I am experienced in."
+
+Not one of the wags laughed until they were fairly confronted with
+the oysters. Then, indeed, they burst out into a general and long fit
+of exuberant merriment, returning to it, between the courses from the
+kitchen, like the _refrain_ of a song. Captain Truck, who was
+uncommonly well satisfied with himself, did not understand the
+meaning of all this boyishness, but he has often declared since, that
+a heartier or a funnier set of fellows he never fell in with, than
+his four companions proved to be that night.
+
+As for the literary _soiree_, the most profound silence has been
+maintained concerning it, neither of the wits there assembled having
+seen fit to celebrate it in rhyme, and Florio having actually torn up
+an impromptu for the occasion, that he had been all the previous day
+writing.
+
+Chapter VII.
+
+  "There is a history in all men's lives, Figuring the nature of the
+  times deceased, The which observed, a man may prophesy With a near
+  aim, of the main chance of things, As yet not come to life."
+
+  KING HENRY VI
+
+The following morning the baronet breakfasted in Hudson Square. While
+at table, little was said concerning the events of the past night,
+though sundry smiles were exchanged, as eye met eye, and the
+recollection of the mystification returned. Grace alone looked grave,
+for she had been accustomed to consider Mrs. Legend a very
+discriminating person, and she had even hoped that most of those who
+usually figured in her rooms, were really the clever persons they
+laid claim to be.
+
+The morning was devoted to looking at the quarter of the town which
+is devoted to business, a party having been made for that express
+purpose under the auspices of John Effingham. As the weather was very
+cold, although the distances were not great, the carriages were
+ordered, and they all set off about noon.
+
+Grace had given up expecting a look of admiration from Eve in behalf
+of any of the lions of New-York, her cousin having found it necessary
+to tell her, that, in a comparative sense at least, little was to be
+said in behalf of these provincial wonders. Even Mademoiselle
+Viefville, now that the freshness, of her feelings were abated, had
+dropped quietly down into a natural way of speaking of these things;
+and Grace, who was quick-witted, soon discovered that when she did
+make any allusions to similar objects in Europe, it was always to
+those that existed in some country town. A silent convention existed,
+therefore, to speak no more on such subjects; or if any thing was
+said, it arose incidentally and as inseparable from the regular
+thread of the discourse.
+
+When in Wall street, the carriages stopped and the gentlemen
+alighted. The severity of the weather kept the ladies in the chariot,
+where Grace endeavoured to explain things as well as she could to her
+companions.
+
+"What are all these people running after, so intently?" inquired
+Mademoiselle Viefville, the conversation being in French, but which
+we shall render freely into English, for the sake of the general
+reader.
+
+"Dollars, I believe, Mademoiselle; am I right, Grace?"
+
+"I believe you are," returned Grace, laughing, "though I know little
+more of this part of the town than yourself."
+
+"_Quelle foule_! Is that building filled with dollars, into which the
+gentlemen are now entering? Its steps are crowded."
+
+"That is the _Bourse_, Mademoiselle, and it ought to be well lined,
+by the manner in which some who frequent it live. Cousin Jack and Sir
+George are going into the crowd, I see."
+
+We will leave the ladies in their seats, a few minutes, and accompany
+the gentlemen on their way into the Exchange.
+
+"I shall now show you, Sir George Templemore," said John Effingham,
+"what is peculiar to this country, and what, if properly improved, it
+is truly worth a journey across the ocean to see. You have been at
+the Royal Exchange in London, and at the _Bourse_ of Paris, but you
+have never witnessed a scene like that which I am about to introduce
+you to. In Paris, you have beheld the unpleasant spectacle of women
+gambling publicly in the funds; but it was in driblets, compared to
+what you will see here."
+
+While speaking, John Effingham led the way upstairs into the office
+of one of the most considerable auctioneers. The walls were lined
+with maps, some representing houses, some lots, some streets, some
+entire towns.
+
+"This is the focus of what Aristabulus Bragg calls the town trade,"
+said John Effingham, when fairly confronted with all these wonders.
+"Here, then, you may suit yourself with any species of real estate
+that heart can desire. If a villa is wanted, there are a dozen. Of
+farms, a hundred are in market; that is merely half-a-dozen streets;
+and here are towns, of dimensions and value to suit purchasers."
+
+"Explain this; it exceeds comprehension."
+
+"It is simply what it professes to be. Mr. Hammer, do us the favour
+to step this way. Are you selling to-day?"
+
+"Not much, sir. Only a hundred or two lots on this island, and some
+six or eight farms, with one western village."
+
+"Can you tell us the history of this particular piece of property,
+Mr. Hammer?"
+
+"With great pleasure, Mr. Effingham; we know you to have means, and
+hope you may be induced to purchase. This was the farm of old Volkert
+Van Brunt, five years since, off of which he and his family had made
+a livelihood for more than a century, by selling milk. Two years
+since, the sons sold it to Peter Feeler for a hundred an acre; or for
+the total sum of five thousand dollars. The next spring Mr. Feeler
+sold it to John Search, as keen a one as we have, for twenty-five
+thousand. Search sold it, at private sale, to Nathan Rise for fifty
+thousand, the next week, and Rise had parted with it, to a company,
+before the purchase, for a hundred and twelve thousand cash. The map
+ought to be taken down, for it is now eight months since we sold it
+out in lots, at auction, for the gross sum of three hundred thousand
+dollars. As we have received our commission, we look at that land as
+out of the market, for a time."
+
+"Have you other property, sir, that affords the same wonderful
+history of a rapid advance in value?" asked the baronet.
+
+"These walls are covered with maps of estates in the same
+predicament. Some have risen two or three thousand per cent. within
+five years, and some only a few hundred. There is no calculating in
+the matter, for it is all fancy."
+
+"And on what is this enormous increase in value founded?--Does the
+town extend to these fields?"
+
+"It goes much farther, sir; that is to say, on paper. In the way of
+houses, it is still some miles short of them. A good deal depends on
+what you _call_ a thing, in this market. Now, if old Volkert Van
+Brunt's property had been still called a farm, it would have brought
+a farm price; but, as soon as it was surveyed into lots and mapped--"
+
+"Mapped!"
+
+"Yes, sir; brought into visible lines, with feet and inches. As soon
+as it was properly mapped, it rose to its just value. We have a good
+deal of the bottom of the sea that brings fair prices in consequence
+of being well mapped."
+
+Here the gentlemen expressed their sense of the auctioneer's
+politeness, and retired.
+
+"We will now go into the sales-room," said John Effingham, "where you
+shall judge of the spirit, or _energy_, as it is termed, which, at
+this moment, actuates this great nation."
+
+Descending, they entered a crowd, where scores were eagerly bidding
+against each other, in the fearful delusion of growing rich by
+pushing a fancied value to a point still higher. One was purchasing
+ragged rocks, another the bottom of rivers, a third a bog, and all on
+the credit of maps. Our two observers remained some time silent
+spectators of the scene.
+
+"When I first entered that room," said John Effingham, as they left
+the place, "it appeared to me to be filled with maniacs. Now, that I
+have been in it several times, the impression is not much altered."
+
+"And all those persons are hazarding their means of subsistence on
+the imaginary estimate mentioned by the auctioneer?"
+
+"They are gambling as recklessly as he who places his substance on
+the cast of the die. So completely has the mania seized every one,
+that the obvious truth, a truth which is as apparent as any other law
+of nature, that nothing can be sustained without a foundation, is
+completely overlooked, and he who should now proclaim, in this
+building, principles that bitter experience will cause every man to
+feel, within the next few years, would be happy if he escaped being
+stoned. I have witnessed many similar excesses in the way of
+speculations; but never an instance as gross, as wide-spread, and as
+alarming as this."
+
+"You apprehend serious consequences, then, from the reaction?"
+
+"In that particular, we are better off than older nations, the youth
+and real stamina of the country averting much of the danger; but I
+anticipate a terrible blow, and that the day is not remote when this
+town will awake to a sense of its illusion. What you see here is but
+a small part of the extravagance that exists, for it pervades the
+whole community, in one shape or another. Extravagant issues of
+paper-money, inconsiderate credits that commence in Europe; and
+extend throughout the land, and false notions as to the value of
+their possessions, in men who five years since had nothing, has
+completely destroyed the usual balance of things, and money has got
+to be so completely the end of life, that few think of it as a means.
+The history of the world, probably, cannot furnish a parallel
+instance, of an extensive country that is so absolutely under this
+malign influence, as is the fact with our own at this present
+instant. All principles are swallowed up in the absorbing desire for
+gain; national honour, permanent security, the ordinary rules of
+society, law, the constitution, and every thing that is usually so
+dear to men, are forgotten, or are perverted, in order to sustain
+this unnatural condition of things."
+
+"This is not only extraordinary, but it is fearful!"
+
+"It is both. The entire community is in the situation of a man who is
+in the incipient stages of an exhilarating intoxication, and who
+keeps pouring down glass after glass, in the idle notion that he is
+merely sustaining nature in her ordinary functions. This wide-spread
+infatuation extends from the coast to the extremest frontiers of the
+west; for, while there is a justifiable foundation for a good deal of
+this fancied prosperity, the true is so interwoven with the false,
+that none but the most observant can draw the distinction, and, as
+usual, the false predominates."
+
+"By your account, sir, the tulip mania of Holland was trifling
+compared to this?"
+
+"That was the same in principle as our own, but insignificant in
+extent. Could I lead you through these streets, and let you into the
+secret of the interests, hopes, infatuations and follies that prevail
+in the human breast, you, as a calm spectator, would be astonished at
+the manner in which your own species can be deluded. But let us move,
+and something may still occur to offer an example."
+
+"Mr. Effingham--I beg pardon--Mr. Effingham," said a very
+gentlemanly-looking merchant, who was walking about the hall of the
+exchange, "what do you think now of our French quarrel?"
+
+"I have told you, Mr. Bale, all I have to say on that subject. When
+in France, I wrote you that it was not the intention of the French
+government to comply with the treaty; you have since seen this
+opinion justified in the result; you have the declaration of the
+French minister of state, that, without an apology from this
+government, the money will not be paid; and I have given it as my
+opinion, that the vane on yonder steeple will not turn more readily
+than all this policy will be abandoned, should any thing occur in
+Europe to render it necessary, or could the French ministry believe
+it possible for this country to fight for a principle. These are my
+opinions, in all their phases, and you may compare them with facts
+and judge for yourself."
+
+"It is all General Jackson, sir--all that monster's doings. But for
+his message, Mr. Effingham, we should have had the money long ago."
+
+"But for his message, or some equally decided step, Mr. Bale, you
+would never have it."
+
+"Ah, my dear sir, I know your intentions, but I fear you are
+prejudiced against that excellent man, the King of France! Prejudice,
+Mr. Effingham, is a sad innovator on justice."
+
+Here Mr. Bale shook his head, laughed, and disappeared in the crowd,
+perfectly satisfied that John Effingham was a prejudiced man, and
+that he, himself, was only liberal and just.
+
+"Now, that is a man who wants for neither abilities nor honesty, and
+yet he permits his interests, and the influence of this very
+speculating mania, to overshadow all his sense of right, facts plain
+as noon-day, and the only principles that can rule a country in
+safety."
+
+"He apprehends war, and has no desire to believe even facts, so long
+as they serve to increase the danger."
+
+"Precisely so; for even prudence gets to be a perverted quality, when
+men are living under an infatuation like that which now exists. These
+men live like the fool who says there is no death."
+
+Here the gentlemen rejoined the ladies, and the carriages drove
+through a succession of narrow and crooked streets, that were lined
+with warehouses filled with the products of the civilized world.
+
+"Very much of all this is a part of the same lamentable illusion,"
+said John Effingham, as the carriages made their way slowly through
+the encumbered streets. "The man who sells his inland lots at a
+profit, secured by credit, fancies himself enriched, and he extends
+his manner of living in proportion; the boy from the country becomes
+a merchant, or what is here called a merchant, and obtains a credit
+in Europe a hundred times exceeding his means, and caters to these
+fancied wants; and thus is every avenue of society thronged with
+adventurers, the ephemera of the same wide-spread spirit of reckless
+folly. Millions in value pass out of these streets, that go to feed
+the vanity of those who fancy themselves wealthy, because they hold
+some ideal pledges for the payment of advances in price like those
+mentioned by the auctioneer, and which have some such security for
+the eventual payment, as one can find in _calling_ a thing, that is
+really worth a dollar, worth a hundred."
+
+"Are the effects of this state of things apparent in your ordinary
+associations?"
+
+"In every thing. The desire to grow suddenly rich has seized on all
+classes. Even women and clergymen are infected, and we exist under
+the active control of the most corrupting of all influences--'the
+love of money.' I should despair of the country altogether, did I not
+feel certain that the disease is too violent to last, and entertain a
+hope that the season of calm reflection and of repentance, that is to
+follow, will be in proportion to its causes."
+
+After taking this view of the town, the party returned to Hudson
+Square, where the baronet dined, it being his intention to go to
+Washington on the following day. The leave-taking in the evening was
+kind and friendly; Mr. Effingham, who had a sincere regard for his
+late fellow-traveller, cordially inviting him to visit him in the
+mountains in June.
+
+As Sir George took his leave, the bells began to ring for a fire. In
+New-York one gets so accustomed to these alarms, that near an hour
+had passed before any of the Effingham family began to reflect on the
+long continuance of the cries. A servant was then sent out to
+ascertain the reason, and his report made the matter more serious
+than usual.
+
+We believe that, in the frequency of these calamities, the question
+lies between Constantinople and New-York. It is a common occurrence
+for twenty or thirty buildings to be burnt down, in the latter place,
+and for the residents of the same ward to remain in ignorance of the
+circumstance, until enlightened on the fact by the daily prints; the
+constant repetition of the alarms hardening the ear and the feelings
+against the appeal. A fire of greater extent than common, had
+occurred only a night or two previously to this; and a rumour now
+prevailed, that the severity of the weather, and the condition of the
+hoses and engines, rendered the present danger double. On hearing
+this intelligence, the Messrs. Effinghams wrapped themselves up in
+their over-coats, and went together into the streets.
+
+"This seems something more than usual, Ned," said John Effingham,
+glancing his eye upward at the lurid vault, athwart which gleams of
+fiery light began to shine; "the danger is not distant, and it seems
+serious."
+
+Following the direction of the current, they soon found the scene of
+the conflagration, which was in the very heart of those masses of
+warehouses, or stores, that John Effingham had commented on, so
+lately. A short street of high buildings was already completely in
+flames, and the danger of approaching the enemy, added to the frozen
+condition of the apparatus, the exhaustion of the firemen from their
+previous efforts, and the intense coldness of the night, conspired to
+make the aspect of things in the highest degree alarming.
+
+The firemen of New-York have that superiority over those of other
+places, that the veteran soldier obtains over the recruit. But the
+best troops can be appalled, and, on this memorable occasion, these
+celebrated firemen, from a variety of causes, became for a time,
+little more than passive spectators of the terrible scene.
+
+There was an hour or two when all attempts at checking the
+conflagration seemed really hopeless, and even the boldest and the
+most persevering scarcely knew which way to turn, to be useful. A
+failure of water, the numerous points that required resistance, the
+conflagration extending in all directions from a common centre, by
+means of numberless irregular and narrow streets, and the
+impossibility of withstanding the intense heat, in the choked
+passages, soon added despair to the other horrors of the scene.
+
+They who stood the fiery masses, were freezing on one side with the
+Greenland cold of the night, while their bodies were almost blistered
+with the fierce flames on the other. There was something frightful in
+this contest of the elements, nature appearing to condense the heat
+within its narrowest possible limits, as if purposely to increase its
+fierceness. The effects were awful; for entire buildings would seem
+to dissolve at their touch, as the forked flames enveloped them in
+sheets of fire.
+
+Every one being afoot, within sound of the alarm, though all the more
+vulgar cries had ceased, as men would deem it mockery to cry murder
+in a battle, Sir George Templemore met his friends, on the margin of
+this sea of fire. It was now drawing towards morning, and the
+conflagration was at its height, having already laid waste a nucleus
+of _blocks_, and it was extending by many lines, in every possible
+direction.
+
+"Here is a fearful admonition for those who set their hearts on
+riches," observed Sir George Templemore, recalling the conversation
+of the previous day. "What, indeed, are the designs of man, as
+compared with the will of Providence!"
+
+"I foresee that this is _le commencement de la fin_," returned John
+Effingham. "The destruction is already so great, as to threaten to
+bring down with it the usual safe-guards against such losses, and one
+pin knocked out of so frail and delicate a fabric, the whole will
+become loose, and fall to pieces."
+
+"Will nothing be done to arrest the flames?"
+
+"As men recover from the panic, their plans will improve and their
+energies will revive. The wider streets are already reducing the fire
+within more certain limits, and they speak of a favourable change of
+wind. It is thought five hundred buildings have already been
+consumed, in scarcely half a dozen hours."
+
+That Exchange, which had so lately resembled a bustling temple of
+Mammon, was already a dark and sheeted ruin, its marble walls being
+cracked, defaced, tottering, or fallen. It lay on the confines of the
+ruin, and our party was enabled to take their position near it, to
+observe the scene. All in their immediate vicinity was assuming the
+stillness of desolation, while the flushes of fierce light in the
+distance marked the progress of the conflagration. Those who knew the
+localities, now began to speak of the natural or accidental barriers,
+such as the water, the slips, and the broader streets, as the only
+probable means of arresting the destruction. The crackling of the
+flames grew distant fast, and the cries of the firemen were now
+scarcely audible.
+
+At this period in the frightful scene, a party of seamen arrived,
+bearing powder, in readiness to blow up various buildings, in the
+streets that possessed of themselves, no sufficient barriers to the
+advance of the flame. Led by their officers, these gallant fellows,
+carrying in their arms the means of destruction, moved up steadily to
+the verge of the torrents of fire, and planted their kegs; laying
+their trains with the hardy indifference that practice can alone
+create, and with an intelligence that did infinite credit to their
+coolness. This deliberate courage was rewarded with complete success,
+and house crumbled to pieces after house under the dull explosions,
+happily without an accident.
+
+From this time the flames became less ungovernable, though the day
+dawned and advanced, and another night succeeded, before they could
+be said to be got fairly under. Weeks, and even months passed,
+however, ere the smouldering ruins ceased to send up smoke, the
+fierce element continuing to burn, like a slumbering volcano, as it
+might be in the bowels of the earth.
+
+The day that succeeded this disaster, was memorable for the rebuke it
+gave the rapacious longing for wealth. Men who had set their hearts
+on gold, and who prided themselves on their possession, and on that
+only, were made to feel its insanity; and they who had walked abroad
+as gods, so lately, began to experience how utterly insignificant are
+the merely rich, when stripped of their possessions. Eight hundred
+buildings containing fabrics of every kind, and the raw material in
+various forms, had been destroyed, as it were in the twinkling of an
+eye.
+
+A faint voice was heard from the pulpit, and there was a moment when
+those who remembered a better state of things, began to fancy that
+principles would once more assert their ascendency, and that the
+community would, in a measure, be purified. But this expectation
+ended in disappointment, the infatuation being too wide-spread and
+corrupting, to be stopped by even this check, and the rebuke was
+reserved for a form that seems to depend on a law of nature, that of
+causing a vice to bring with it its own infallible punishment.
+
+Chapter VIII.
+
+  "First, tell me, have you ever been at Pisa."
+
+  SHAKSPEARE.
+
+The conflagration alluded to, rather than described, in the
+proceeding chapter, threw a gloom over the gaieties of New-York, if
+that ever could be properly called gay, which was little more than a
+strife in prodigality and parade, and leaves us little more to say of
+the events of the winter. Eve regretted very little the interruption
+to scenes in which she had found no pleasure, however much she
+lamented the cause; and she and Grace passed the remainder of the
+season quietly, cultivating the friendship of such women as Mrs.
+Hawker and Mrs. Bloomfield, and devoting hours to the improvement of
+their minds and tastes, without ever again venturing however, within
+the hallowed precincts of such rooms as those of Mrs. Legend.
+
+One consequence of a state of rapacious infatuation, like that which
+we have just related, is the intensity of selfishness which smothers
+all recollection of the past, and all just anticipations of the
+future, by condensing life, with its motives and enjoyments, into the
+present moment. Captain Truck, therefore, was soon forgotten, and the
+literati, as that worthy seaman had termed the associates of Mrs.
+Legend, remained just as vapid, as conceited, as ignorant, as
+imitative, as dependent, and as provincial as ever.
+
+As the season advanced, our heroine began to look with longings
+towards the country. The town life of an American offers little to
+one accustomed to a town life in older and more permanently regulated
+communities; and Eve was already heartily weary of crowded and noisy
+balls, (for a few were still given;) _belles_, the struggles of an
+uninstructed taste, and a representation in which extravagance was so
+seldom relieved by the elegance and convenience of a condition of
+society, in which more attention is paid to the fitness of things.
+
+The American spring is the least pleasant of its four seasons, its
+character being truly that of "winter lingering in the lap of May."
+Mr. Effingham, who the reader will probably suspect, by this time, to
+be a descendant of a family of the same name, that we have had
+occasion to introduce into another work, had sent orders to have his
+country residence prepared for the reception of our party; and it was
+with a feeling of delight that Eve stepped on board a steam-boat to
+escape from a town that, while it contains so much that is worthy of
+any capital, contains so much more that is unfit for any place, in
+order to breathe the pure air, and to enjoy the tranquil pleasare of
+the country. Sir George Templemore had returned from his southern
+journey, and made one of the party, by express arrangement.
+
+"Now, Eve," said Grace Van Cortlandt, as the boat glided along the
+wharves, "if it were any person but you, I should feel confident of
+having something to show that _would_ extort admiration."
+
+"You are safe enough, in that respect, for a more imposing object in
+its way, than this very vessel, eye of mine, never beheld. It is
+positively the only thing that deserves the name of magnificent I
+have yet seen, since our return,--unless, indeed, it may be
+magnificent projects."
+
+"I am glad, dear coz, there is this one magnificent object, then, to
+satisfy a taste so fastidious."
+
+As Grace's little foot moved, and her voice betrayed vexation, the
+whole party smiled; for the whole party, while it felt the justice of
+Eve's observation, saw the real feeling that was at the bottom of her
+cousin's remark. Sir George, however, though he could not conceal
+from himself the truth of what had been said by the one party, and
+the weakness betrayed by the other had too much sympathy for the
+provincial patriotism of one so young and beautiful, not to come to
+the rescue.
+
+"You should remember, Miss Van Cortlandt," he said, "that Miss
+Effingham has not had the advantage yet of seeing the Delaware,
+Philadelphia, the noble bays of the south, nor so much that is to be
+found out of the single town of New-York."
+
+"Very true, and I hope yet to see her a sincere penitent for all her
+unpatriotic admissions against her own country. _You_ have seen the
+Capitol, Sir George Templemore; is it not, truly, one of the finest
+edifices of the world?"
+
+"You will except St. Peter's, surely, my child," observed Mr.
+Effingham, smiling, for he saw that the baronet was embarrassed to
+give a ready answer.
+
+"And the Cathedral at Milan," said Eve, laughing.
+
+"_Et le Louvre_!" cried Mademoiselle Viefville, who had some such
+admiration for every thing Parisian, as Eve had for every thing
+American.
+
+"And, most especially, the north-east corner of the south-west end of
+the north-west wing of Versailles," said John Effingham, in his usual
+dry manner.
+
+"I see you are all against me," Grace rejoined, "but I hope, one day,
+to be able to ascertain for myself the comparative merits of things.
+As nature makes rivers, I hope the Hudson, at least, will not be
+found unworthy of your admiration, gentlemen and ladies."
+
+"You are safe enough, there, Grace," observed Mr Effingham; "for few
+rivers, perhaps no river, offers so great and so pleasing a variety,
+in so short a distance, as this."
+
+It was a lovely, bland morning, in the last week of May; and the
+atmosphere was already getting the soft hues of summer, or assuming
+the hazy and solemn calm that renders the season so quiet and soothing,
+after the fiercer strife of the elements. Under such a sky, the
+Palisadoes, in particular, appeared well; for, though wanting in the
+terrific grandeur of an Alpine nature, and perhaps disproportioned
+to the scenery they adorned, they were bold and peculiar.
+
+The great velocity of the boat added to the charm of the passage, the
+scene scarce finding time to pall on the eye; for, no sooner was one
+object examined in its outlines, than it was succeeded by another.
+
+"An extraordinary taste is afflicting this country, in the way of
+architecture," said Mr. Effingham, as they stood gazing at the
+eastern shore; "nothing but a Grecian temple being now deemed a
+suitable residence for a man, in these classical times. Yonder is a
+structure, for instance, of beautiful proportions, and, at this
+distance, apparently of a precious material, and yet it seems better
+suited to heathen worship than to domestic comfort."
+
+"The malady has infected, the whole nation," returned his cousin,
+"like the spirit of speculation. We are passing from one extreme to
+the other, in this, as in other things. One such temple, well placed
+in a wood, might be a pleasant object enough, but to see a river
+lined with them, with children trundling hoops before their doors,
+beef carried into their kitchens, and smoke issuing, moreover, from
+those unclassical objects chimnies, is too much even of a high taste;
+one might as well live in a fever. Mr. Aristabulus Bragg, who is a
+wag in his way, informs me that there is one town in the interior
+that has actually a market-house on the plan of the Parthenon!"
+
+"_Il Cupo di Bove_ would be a more suitable model for such a
+structure," said Eve, smiling. "But I think I have heard that the
+classical taste of our architects is any thing but rigid."
+
+"This _was_ the case, rather than _is_" returned John Effingham, "as
+witness all these temples. The country has made a quick and a great
+_pas, en avant_, in the way of the fine arts, and the fact shows what
+might be done with so ready a people, under a suitable direction. The
+stranger who comes among us is apt to hold the art of the nation
+cheap, but, as all things are comparative, let him inquire into its
+state ten years since, and look at it to-day. The fault just now, is
+perhaps to consult the books too rigidly, and to trust too little to
+invention; for no architecture, and especially no domestic
+architecture, can ever be above serious reproach, until climate, the
+uses of the edifice, and the situation, are respected as leading
+considerations. Nothing can be uglier, _per se_, than a Swiss
+cottage, or any thing more beautiful under its precise circumstances.
+As regards these mushroom temples, which are the offspring of Mammon,
+let them be dedicated to whom they may, I should exactly reverse the
+opinion, and say, that while nothing can be much more beautiful, _per
+se_, nothing can be in worse taste, than to put them where they are."
+
+"We shall have an opportunity of seeing what Mr. John Effingham can
+do in the way of architecture," said Grace, who loved to revenge some
+of her fancied wrongs, by turning the tables on her assailant, "for I
+understand he has been improving on the original labours of that
+notorious Palladio, Master Hiram Doolittle!"
+
+The whole party laughed, and every eye was turned on the gentleman
+alluded to, expecting his answer.
+
+"You will remember, good people," answered the accused by
+implication, "that my plans were handed over to me from my great
+predecessor, and that they were originally of the composite order.
+If, therefore, the house should turn out to be a little complex and
+mixed, you will do me the justice to remember this important fact. At
+all events, I have consulted comfort; and that I would maintain, in
+the face of Vitruvius himself, is a _sine qua non_ in domestic
+architecture."
+
+"I took a run into Connecticut the other day," said Sir George
+Templemore, "and, at a place called New Haven, I saw the commencement
+of a taste that bids fair to make a most remarkable town. It is true,
+you cannot expect structures of much pretension in the way of cost
+and magnitude in this country, but, so far as fitness and forms are
+concerned, if what I hear be true, and the next fifty years do as
+much in proportion for that little city, as I understand has been
+done in the last five, it will be altogether a wonder in its way.
+There are some abortions, it is true, but there are also some little
+jewels."
+
+The baronet was rewarded for this opinion, by a smile from Grace, and
+the conversation changed. As the boat approached the mountains, Eve
+became excited, a very American state of the system by the way, and
+Grace still more anxious.
+
+"The view of that bluff is Italian;" said our heroine, pointing down
+the river at a noble headland of rock, that loomed grandly in the
+soft haze of the tranquil atmosphere. "One seldom sees a finer or a
+softer outline on the shores of the Mediterranean itself."
+
+"But the Highlands, Eve!" whispered the uneasy Grace. "We are
+entering the mountains."
+
+The river narrowed suddenly, and the scenery became bolder, but
+neither Eve nor her father expressed the rapture that Grace expected.
+
+"I must confess, Jack," said the mild, thoughtful Mr. Effingham,
+"that these rocks strike my eyes as much less imposing than formerly.
+The passage is fine, beyond question, but it is hardly grand
+scenery."
+
+"You never uttered a juster opinion, Ned, though after your eye loses
+some of the forms of the Swiss and Italian lakes, and of the shores
+of Italy, you will think better of these. The Highlands are
+remarkable for their surprises, rather than for their grandeur, as we
+shall presently see. As to the latter, it is an affair of feet and
+inches, and is capable of arithmetical demonstration. We have often
+been on lakes, beneath beetling cliffs of from three to six thousand
+feet in height; whereas, here, the greatest elevation is materially
+less than two. But, Sir George Templemore, and you, Miss Effingham,
+do me the favour to combine your cunning, and tell me whence this
+stream cometh, and whither we are to go?"
+
+The boat had now approached a point where the river was narrowed to a
+width not much exceeding a quarter of a mile, and in the direction in
+which it was steering, the water seemed to become still more
+contracted until they were lost in a sort of bay, that appeared to be
+closed by high hills, through which, however, there were traces of
+something like a passage.
+
+"The land in that direction looks as if it had a ravine-like
+entrance," said the baronet; "and yet it is scarcely possible that a
+stream like this can flow there!"
+
+"If the Hudson truly passes through those mountains," said Eve, "I
+will concede all in its favour that you can ask, Grace."
+
+"Where else can it pass?" demanded Grace, exultingly.
+
+"Sure enough--I see no other place, and that seems insufficient."
+
+The two strangers to the river now looked curiously around them, in
+every direction. Behind them was a broad and lake-like basin, through
+which they had just passed; on the left, a barrier of precipitous
+hills, the elevation of which was scarcely less than a thousand feet;
+on their right, a high but broken country, studded with villas, farm-
+houses, and hamlets; and in their front the deep but equivocal bay
+mentioned.
+
+"I see no escape!" cried the baronet, gaily, "unless indeed, it be by
+returning."
+
+A sudden and broad sheer of the boat caused him to turn to the left,
+and then they whirled round an angle of the precipice, and found
+themselves in a reach of the river, between steep declivities,
+running at right angles to their former course.
+
+"This is one of the surprises of which I spoke," said John Effingham,
+"and which render the highlands so _unique_; for, while the Rhine is
+very sinuous, it has nothing like this."
+
+The other travellers agreed in extolling this and many similar
+features of the scenery, and Grace was delighted; for, warm-hearted,
+affectionate, and true, Grace loved her country like a relative or a
+friend, and took an honest pride in hearing its praises. The
+patriotism of Eve, if a word of a meaning so lofty can be applied to
+feelings of this nature, was more discriminating from necessity, her
+tastes having been formed in a higher school, and her means of
+comparison being so much more ample. At West Point they stopped for
+the night, and here every body was in honest raptures; Grace, who had
+often visited the place before, being actually the least so of the
+whole party.
+
+"Now, Eve, I know that you _do_ love your country," she said, as she
+slipped an arm affectionately through that of her cousin. "This is
+feeling and speaking like an American girl, and as Eve Effingham
+should!"
+
+Eve laughed, but she had discovered that the provincial feeling was
+so strong in Grace, that its discussion would probably do no good.
+She dwelt, therefore, with sincere eloquence on the beauties of the
+place, and for the first time since they had met, her cousin felt as
+if there was no longer any point of dissension between them.
+
+The following morning was the first of June, and it was another of
+those drowsy, dreamy days, that so much aid a landscape. The party
+embarked in the first boat that came up, and as they entered Newburgh
+bay, the triumph of the river was established. This is a spot, in
+sooth, that has few equals in any region, though Eve still insisted
+that the excellence of the view was in its softness rather than in
+its grandeur. The country-houses, or boxes, for few could claim to be
+much more, were neat, well placed, and exceedingly numerous. The
+heights around the town of Newburgh, in particular, were fairly
+dotted with them, though Mr. Effingham shook his head as he saw one
+Grecian temple appear after another.
+
+"As we recede from the influence of the vulgar architects," he said,
+"we find imitation taking the place of instruction. Many of these
+buildings are obviously disproportioned, and then, like vulgar
+pretension of any sort, Grecian architecture produces less pleasure
+than even Dutch."
+
+"I am surprised at discovering how little of a Dutch character
+remains in this state," said the baronet; "I can scarcely trace that
+people in any thing, and yet, I believe, they had the moulding of
+your society, having carried the colony through its infancy."
+
+"When you know us better, you will be surprised at discovering how
+little of any thing remains a dozen years," returned John Effingham.
+"Our towns pass away in generations like their people, and even the
+names of a place undergo periodical mutations, as well as every thing
+else. It is getting to be a predominant feeling in the American
+nature, I fear, to love change."
+
+"But, cousin Jack, do you not overlook causes, in your censure. That
+a nation advancing as fast as this in wealth and numbers, should
+desire better structures than its fathers had either the means or the
+taste to build, and that names should change with persons, are both
+things quite in rule."
+
+"All very true, though it does not account for the peculiarity I
+mean. Take Templeton, for instance; this little place has not
+essentially increased in numbers, within my memory, and yet fully
+one-half its names are new. When he reaches his own home, your father
+will not know even the names of one-half his neighbours. Not only
+will he meet with new faces, but he will find new feelings, new
+opinions in the place of traditions that he may love, an indifference
+to every thing but the present moment, and even those who may have
+better feelings, and a wish to cherish all that belongs to the holier
+sentiments of man, afraid to utter them, lest they meet with no
+sympathy."
+
+"No cats, as Mr. Bragg would say."
+
+"Jack is one who never paints _en beau_," said Mr. Effingham. "I
+should be very sorry to believe that a dozen short years can have
+made all these essential changes in my neighbourhood."
+
+"A dozen years, Ned! You name an age. Speak of three or four, if you
+wish to find any thing in America where you left it! The whole
+country is in such a constant state of mutation, that I can only
+liken it to that game of children, in which as one quits his corner,
+another runs into it, and he that finds no corner to get into, is the
+laughing-stock of the others. Fancy that dwelling the residence of
+one man from childhood to old age; let him then quit it for a year or
+two, and on his return he would find another in possession, who would
+treat him as an impertinent intruder, because he had been absent two
+years. An American 'always,' in the way of usages, extends no further
+back than eighteen months. In short, every thing is condensed into
+the present moment; and services, character, for evil as well as good
+unhappily, and all other things, cease to have weight, except as they
+influence the interests of the day."
+
+"This is the colouring of a professed cynic," observed Mr. Effingham,
+smiling.
+
+"But the law, Mr. John Effingham," eagerly inquired the
+baronet--"surely the law would not permit a stranger to intrude in
+this manner on the rights of an owner."
+
+"The law-_books_ would do him that friendly office, perhaps, but what
+is a precept in the face of practices so ruthless. '_Les absents out
+toujours tort_,' is a maxim of peculiar application in America."
+
+"Property is as secure in this country as in any other, Sir George;
+and you will make allowances for the humours of the present
+annotator."
+
+"Well, well, Ned; I hope you will find every thing _couleur de rose_,
+as you appear to expect. You will get quiet possession of your house,
+it is true, for I have put a Cerberus in it, that is quite equal to
+his task, difficult as it may be, and who has quite as much relish
+for a bill of costs, as any squatter can have for a trespass; but
+without some such guardian of your rights, I would not answer for it,
+that you would not be compelled to sleep in the highway."
+
+"I trust Sir George Templemore knows how to make allowances for Mr.
+John Effingham's pictures," cried Grace, unable to refrain from
+expressing her discontent any longer.
+
+A laugh succeeded, and the beauties of the river again attracted
+their attention. As the boat continued to ascend, Mr. Effingham
+triumphantly affirmed that the appearance of things more than
+equalled his expectations, while both Eve and the baronet declared
+that a succession of lovelier landscapes could hardly be presented to
+the eye.
+
+"Whited sepulchres!" muttered John Effingham--"all outside. Wait
+until you get a view of the deformity within."
+
+As the boat approached Albany, Eve expressed her satisfaction in
+still stronger terms; and Grace was made perfectly happy, by hearing
+her and Sir George declare that the place entirely exceeded their
+expectations.
+
+"I am glad to find, Eve, that you are so fast recovering your
+American feelings," said her beautiful cousin, after one of those
+expressions of agreeable disappointment, as they were seated at a
+late dinner, in an inn. "You have at last found words to praise the
+exterior of Albany; and I hope, by the time we return, you will be
+disposed to see New-York with different eyes."
+
+"I expected to see a capital in New-York, Grace, and in this I have
+been grievously disappointed. Instead of finding the tastes, tone,
+conveniences, architecture, streets, churches, shops, and society of
+a capital, I found a huge expansion of common-place things, a
+commercial town, and the most mixed and the least regulated society,
+that I had ever met with. Expecting so much, where so little was
+found, disappointment was natural. But in Albany, although a
+political capital, I knew the nature of the government too well, to
+expect more than a provincial town; and in this respect, I have found
+one much above the level of similar places in other parts of the
+world. I acknowledge that Albany has as much exceeded my expectations
+in one sense, as New-York has fallen short of them in another."
+
+"In this simple fact, Sir George Templemore," said Mr. Effingham,
+"you may read the real condition of the country. In all that requires
+something more than usual, a deficiency; in all that is deemed an
+average, better than common. The tendency is to raise every thing
+that is elsewhere degraded to a respectable height, when there
+commences an attraction of gravitation that draws all towards the
+centre; a little closer too than could be wished perhaps."
+
+"Ay, ay, Ned; this is very pretty, with your attractions and
+gravitations; but wait and judge for yourself of this average, of
+which you now speak so complacently.
+
+"Nay, John, I borrowed the image from you; if it be not accurate, I
+shall hold you responsible for its defects."
+
+"They tell me," said Eve, "that all American villages are the towns
+in miniature; children dressed in hoops and wigs. Is this so, Grace?"
+
+"A little; there is too much desire to imitate the towns, perhaps,
+and possibly too little feeling for country life."
+
+"This is a very natural consequence, after all, of people's living
+entirely in such places," observed Sir George Templemore. "One sees
+much of this on the continent of Europe, because the country
+population is purely a country population; and less of it in England,
+perhaps, because those who are at the head of society, consider town
+and country as very distinct things."
+
+"_La campagne est vraiment delicieuse en Amerique_," exclaimed
+Mademoiselle Viefville, in whose eyes the whole country was little
+more than _campagne_.
+
+The next morning, our travellers proceeded by the way of Schenectady,
+whence they ascended the beautiful valley of the Mohawk, by means of
+a canal-boat, the cars that now rattle along its length not having
+commenced their active flights, at that time. With the scenery, every
+one was delighted; for while it differed essentially from that the
+party had passed through the previous day, it was scarcely less
+beautiful.
+
+At a point where the necessary route diverged from the direction of
+the canal, carriages of Mr. Effingham's were in readiness to receive
+the travellers, and here they were also favoured by the presence of
+Mr. Bragg, who fancied such an attention might be agreeable to the
+young ladies, as well as to his employer.
+
+Chapter IX.
+
+  "Tell me, where is fancy bred--
+  Or in the heart, or in the head?
+  How begot, how nourished?"
+
+  SONG IN SHAKSPEARE.
+
+The travellers were several hours ascending into the mountains, by a
+country road that could scarcely be surpassed by a French wheel-track
+of the same sort, for Mademoiselle Viefville protested, twenty times
+in the course of the morning, that it was a thousand pities Mr.
+Effingham had not the privilege of the _corvee_, that he might cause
+the approach to his _terres_ to be kept in better condition. At
+length they reached the summit, a point where the waters began to
+flow south, when the road became tolerably level. From this time
+their progress became more rapid, and they continued to advance two
+or three hours longer at a steady pace.
+
+Aristabulus now informed his companions that, in obedience to
+instructions from John Effingham, he had ordered the coachmen to take
+a road that led a little from the direct line of their journey, and
+that they had now been travelling for some time on the more ancient
+route to Templeton.
+
+"I was aware of this," said Mr. Effingham, "though ignorant of the
+reason. We are on the great western turnpike."
+
+"Certainly, sir, and all according to Mr. John's request. There would
+have been a great saving in distance, and agreeably to my notion, in
+horse-flesh, had we quietly gone down the banks of the lake."
+
+"Jack will explain his own meaning," returned Mr. Effingham, "and he
+has stopped the other carriage, and alighted with Sir George,--a
+hint, I fancy, that we are to follow their example."
+
+Sure enough, the second carriage was now stopped, and Sir George
+hastened to open its door.
+
+"Mr. John Effingham, who acts as cicerone," cried the baronet,
+"insists that every one shall put _pied a terre_ at this precise
+spot, keeping the important reason still a secret, in the recesses of
+his own bosom."
+
+The ladies complied, and the carriages were ordered to proceed with
+the domestics, leaving the rest of the travellers by themselves,
+apparently in the heart of a forest.
+
+"It is to be hoped, Mademoiselle, there are no banditti in America,"
+said Eve, as they looked around them at the novel situation in which
+they were placed, apparently by a pure caprice of her cousin.
+
+"_Ou des sauvages_," returned the governess, who, in spite of her
+ordinary intelligence and great good sense, had several times that
+day cast uneasy and stolen glances into the bits of dark wood they
+had occasionally passed.
+
+"I will ensure your purses and your scalps, _mesdames_," cried John
+Effingham gaily, "on condition that you will follow me implicitly;
+and by way of pledge for my faith, I solicit the honour of supporting
+Mademoiselle Viefville on this unworthy arm."
+
+The governess laughingly accepted the conditions, Eve took the arm of
+her father, and Sir George offered his to Grace; Aristabulus, to his
+surprise, being left to walk entirely alone. It struck him, however,
+as so singularly improper that a young lady should be supported on
+such an occasion by her own father, that he frankly and gallantly
+proposed to Mr. Effingham to relieve him of his burthen, an offer
+that was declined with quite as much distinctness as it was made.
+
+"I suppose cousin Jack has a meaning to his melodrama," said Eve, as
+they entered the forest, "and I dare say, dearest father, that you
+are behind the scenes, though I perceive determined secrecy in your
+face."
+
+"John may have a cave to show us, or some tree of extraordinary
+height; such things existing in the country."
+
+"We are very confiding, Mademoiselle, for I detect treachery in every
+face around us. Even Miss Van Cortlandt has the air of a conspirator,
+and seems to be in league with something or somebody. Pray Heaven, it
+be not with wolves."
+
+"_Des loups_!" exclaimed Mademoiselle Viefville, stopping short, with
+a mien so alarmed as to excite a general laugh--"_est ce qu'il y a
+des loups et des sangliers dans cette foret_?"
+
+"No, Mademoiselle," returned her companion--"this is only barbarous
+America, and not civilized France. Were we in _le departement de la
+Seine_, we might apprehend some such dangers, but being merely in the
+mountains of Otsego, we are reasonably safe."
+
+"_Je l'espere_," murmured the governess, as she reluctantly and
+distrustfully proceeded, glancing her eyes incessantly to the right
+and left. The path now became steep and rather difficult; so much so,
+indeed, as to indispose them all to conversation. It led beneath the
+branches of lofty pines, though there existed, on every side of them,
+proofs of the ravages man had committed in that noble forest. At
+length they were compelled to stop for breath, after having ascended
+considerably above the road they had left.
+
+"I ought to have said that the spot where we entered on this path, is
+memorable in the family history," observed John Effingham, to
+Eve--"for it was the precise spot where one of our predecessors
+lodged a shot in the shoulder of another."
+
+"Then I know precisely where we are!" cried our heroine, "though I
+cannot yet imagine why we are led into this forest, unless it be to
+visit some spot hallowed by a deed of Natty Bumppo's!"
+
+"Time will solve this mystery, as well as all others. Let us
+proceed."
+
+Again they ascended, and, after a few more minutes of trial, they
+reached a sort of table-land, and drew near an opening in the trees,
+where a small circle had evidently been cleared of its wood, though
+it was quite small and untilled. Eve looked curiously about her, as
+did all the others to whom the place was novel, and she was lost in
+doubt.
+
+"There seems to be a void beyond us," said the baronet--- "I rather
+think Mr. John Effingham has led us to the verge of a view."
+
+At this suggestion the party moved on in a body, and were well
+rewarded for the toil of the ascent, by a _coup d'oeil_ that was
+almost Swiss in character and beauty.
+
+"Now do I know where we are," exclaimed Eve, clasping her hands in
+rapture--"this is the 'Vision,' and yonder, indeed, is our blessed
+home!"
+
+The whole artifice of the surprise was exposed, and after the first
+bursts of pleasure had subsided, all to whom the scene was novel
+felt, that they would not have missed this _piquante_ introduction to
+the valley of the Susquehannah, on any account. That the reader may
+understand the cause of so much delight, and why John Effingham had
+prepared this scene for his friends, we shall stop to give a short
+description of the objects that first met the eyes of the travellers.
+
+It is known that they were in a small open spot in a forest, and on
+the verge of a precipitous mountain. The trees encircled them on
+every side but one, and on that lay the panorama, although the tops
+of tall pines, that grew in lines almost parallel to the declivity,
+rose nearly to a level with the eye. Hundreds of feet beneath them,
+directly in front, and stretching leagues to the right, was a lake
+embedded in woods and hills. On the side next the travellers, a
+fringe of forest broke the line of water; tree tops that intercepted
+the view of the shores; and on the other, high broken hills, or low
+mountains rather, that were covered with farms, beautifully relieved
+by patches of wood, in a way to resemble the scenery of a vast park,
+or a royal pleasure ground, limited the landscape. High valleys lay
+among these uplands, and in every direction comfortable dwellings
+dotted the fields. The contrast between the dark hues of the
+evergreens, with which all the heights near the water were shaded,
+was in soft contrast to the livelier green of the other foliage,
+while the meadows and pastures were luxuriant with a verdure
+unsurpassed by that of England. Bays and points added to the
+exquisite outline of the glassy lake on this shore, while one of the
+former withdrew towards the north-west, in a way to leave the eye
+doubtful whether it was the termination of the transparent sheet or
+not. Towards the south, bold, varied, but cultivated hills, also
+bounded the view, all teeming with the fruits of human labour, and
+yet all relieved by pieces of wood, in the way already mentioned, so
+as to give the entire region the character of park scenery. A wide,
+deep, even valley, commenced at the southern end of the lake, or
+nearly opposite to the stand of our travellers, and stretched away
+south, until concealed by a curvature in the ranges of the mountains.
+Like all the mountain-tops, this valley was verdant, peopled, wooded
+in places, though less abundantly than the hills, and teeming with
+the signs of life. Roads wound through its peaceful retreats, and
+might be traced working their way along the glens, and up the weary
+ascents of the mountains, for miles, in every direction.
+
+At the northern termination of this lovely valley, and immediately on
+the margin of the lake, lay the village of Templeton, immediately
+under the eyes of the party. The distance, in an air line, from their
+stand to the centre of the dwellings, could not be much less than a
+mile, but the air was so pure, and the day so calm, that it did not
+seem so far. The children and even the dogs were seen running about
+the streets, while the shrill cries of boys at their gambols,
+ascended distinctly to the ear.
+
+As this was the Templeton of the Pioneers, and the progress of
+society during half a century is connected with the circumstance, we
+shall give the reader a more accurate notion of its present state,
+than can be obtained from incidental allusions. We undertake the
+office more readily because this is not one of those places that
+shoot up in a day, under the unnatural efforts of speculation, or
+which, favoured by peculiar advantages in the way of trade, becomes a
+precocious city, while the stumps still stand in its streets; but a
+sober county town, that has advanced steadily, _pari passu_ with the
+surrounding country, and offers a fair specimen of the more regular
+advancement of the whole nation, in its progress towards
+civilization.
+
+The appearance of Templeton, as seen from the height where it is now
+exhibited to the reader, was generally beautiful and map-like. There
+might be a dozen streets, principally crossing each other at right-
+angles, though sufficiently relieved from this precise delineation,
+to prevent a starched formality. Perhaps the greater part of the
+buildings were painted white, as is usual in the smaller American
+towns; though a better taste was growing in the place, and many of
+the dwellings had the graver and chaster hues of the grey stones of
+which they were built. A general air of neatness and comfort pervaded
+the place, it being as unlike a continental European town, south of
+the Rhine, in this respect, as possible, if indeed we except the
+picturesque bourgs of Switzerland. In England, Templeton would be
+termed a small market-town, so far as size was concerned; in France,
+a large _bourg_; while in America it was, in common parlance, and
+legal appellation, styled a village.
+
+Of the dwellings of the place, fully twenty were of a quality that
+denoted ease in the condition of their occupants, and bespoke the
+habits of those accustomed to live in a manner superior to the _oi
+polloi_ of the human race. Of these, some six or eight had small
+lawns, carriage sweeps, and the other similar appliances of houses
+that were not deemed unworthy of the honour of bearing names of their
+own. No less than five little steeples, towers, or belfries, for
+neither word is exactly suitable to the architectural prodigies we
+wish to describe, rose above the roofs, denoting the sites of the
+same number of places of worship; an American village usually
+exhibiting as many of these proofs of liberty of conscience--
+_caprices of conscience_ would perhaps be a better term--as dollars
+and cents will by any process render attainable. Several light
+carriages, such as were suitable to a mountainous country, were
+passing to and fro in the streets; and, here and there, a single-
+horse vehicle was fastened before the door of a shop, or a lawyer's
+office, denoting the presence of some customer, or client, from among
+the adjacent hills.
+
+Templeton was not sufficiently a thoroughfare to possess one of those
+monstrosities, a modern American tavern, or a structure whose roof
+should overtop that of all its neighbours. Still its inns were of
+respectable size, well piazzaed, to use a word of our own invention,
+and quite enough frequented.
+
+Near the centre of the place, in grounds of rather limited extent,
+still stood that model of the composite order, which owed its
+existence to the combined knowledge and taste, in the remoter ages of
+the region, of Mr. Richard Jones and Mr. Hiram Doolittle. We will not
+say that it had been modernized, for the very reverse was the effect,
+in appearance at least; but, it had since undergone material changes,
+under the more instructed intelligence of John Effingham.
+
+This building was so conspicuous by position and size, that as soon
+as they had taken in glimpses of the entire landscape, which was not
+done without constant murmurs of pleasure, every eye became fastened
+on it, as the focus of interest. A long and common silence denoted
+how general was this feeling, and the whole party took seats on
+stumps and fallen trees before a syllable was uttered, after the
+building had attracted their gaze. Aristabulus alone permitted his
+look to wander, and he was curiously examining the countenance of Mr.
+Effingham, near whom he sate, with a longing to discover whether the
+expression was that of approbation, or of disapprobation, of the
+fruits of his cousin's genius.
+
+"Mr. John Effingham has considerably regenerated and revivified, not
+to say transmogrified, the old dwelling," he said, cautiously using
+terms that might have his own opinion of the changes doubtful. "The
+work of his hand has excited some speculation, a good deal of
+inquiry, and a little conversation, throughout the country. It has
+almost produced an excitement!"
+
+"As my house came to me from my father," said Mr. Effingham, across
+whose mild and handsome face a smile was gradually stealing, "I knew
+its history, and when called on for an explanation of its
+singularities, could refer all to the composite order. But, you,
+Jack, have supplanted all this, by a style of your own, for which I
+shall be compelled to consult the authorities for explanations."
+
+"Do you dislike my taste, Ned?--To my eye, now, the structure has no
+bad appearance from this spot!"
+
+"Fitness and comfort are indispensable requisites for domestic
+architecture, to use your own argument. Are you quite sure that
+yonder castellated roof, for instance, is quite suited to the deep
+snows of these mountains?"
+
+John Effingham whistled, and endeavoured to look unconcerned, for he
+well knew that the very first winter had demonstrated the
+unsuitableness of his plans for such a climate. He had actually felt
+disposed to cause the whole to be altered privately, at his own
+expense; but, besides feeling certain his cousin would resent a
+liberty that inferred his indisposition to pay for his own buildings,
+he had a reluctance to admit, in the face of the whole country, that
+he had made so capital a mistake, in a branch of art in which he
+prided himself rather more than common; almost as much as his
+predecessor in the occupation, Mr. Richard Jones.
+
+"If you are not pleased with your own dwelling, Ned," he answered,
+"you can have, at least, the consolation of looking at some of your
+neighbours' houses, and of perceiving that they are a great deal
+worse off. Of all abortions of this sort, to my taste, a Grecian
+abortion is the worst--mine is only Gothic, and that too, in a style
+so modest, that I should think it might pass unmolested."
+
+It was so unusual to see John Effingham on the defensive, that the
+whole party smiled, while Aristabulus who stood in salutary fear of
+his caustic tongue, both smiled and wondered.
+
+"Nay, do not mistake me, John," returned the proprietor of the
+edifice under discussion--"it is not your _taste_ that I call in
+question, but your provision against the seasons. In the way of mere
+outward show, I really think you deserve high praise, for you have
+transformed a very ugly dwelling into one that is almost handsome, in
+despite of proportions and the necessity of regulating the
+alterations by prescribed limits. Still, I think, there is a little
+of the composite left about even the exterior."
+
+"I hope, cousin Jack, you have not innovated on the interior," cried
+Eve; "for I think I shall remember that, and nothing is more pleasant
+than the _cattism_ of seeing objects that you remember in childhood--
+pleasant, I mean, to those whom the mania of mutation has not
+affected."
+
+"Do not be alarmed, Miss Effingham," replied her kinsman, with a
+pettishness of manner that was altogether extraordinary, in a man
+whose mien, in common, was so singularly composed and masculine; "you
+will find all that you knew, when a kitten, in its proper place. I
+could not rake together, again, the ashes of Queen Dido, which were
+scattered to the four winds of Heaven, I fear; nor could I discover a
+reasonably good bust of Homer; but respectable substitutes are
+provided, and some of them have the great merit of puzzling all
+beholders to tell to whom they belong, which I believe was the great
+characteristic of most of Mr. Jones's invention."
+
+"I am glad to see, cousin Jack, that you have, at least, managed to
+give a very respectable 'cloud-colour' to the whole house."
+
+"Ay, it lay between that and an invisible green," the gentleman
+answered, losing his momentary spleen in his natural love of the
+ludicrous--"but finding that the latter would be only too conspicuous
+in the droughts that sometimes prevail in this climate, I settled
+down into the yellowish drab, that is, indeed, not unlike some of the
+richer volumes of the clouds."
+
+"On the whole, I think you are fairly entitled, as Steadfast Dodge,
+Esquire, would say, to 'the meed of our thanks.'"
+
+"What a lovely spot!" exclaimed Mr. Effingham, who had already ceased
+to think of his own dwelling, and whose eye was roaming over the soft
+landscape, athwart which the lustre of a June noontide was throwing
+its richest glories. "This is truly a place where one might fancy
+repose and content were to be found for the evening of a troubled
+life."
+
+"Indeed, I have seldom looked upon a more bewitching scene," answered
+the baronet. "The lakes of Cumberland will scarce compete with this!"
+
+"Or that of Brienz, or Lungeren, or Nemi," said Eve, smiling in a way
+that the other understood to be a hit at his nationality.
+
+"_C'est charmant!_" murmured Mademoiselle Viefville. "_On pense a
+l'eternite, dans une telle calme!_"
+
+"The farm you can see lying near yonder wood, Mr. Effingham," coolly
+observed Aristabulus, "sold last spring for thirty dollars the acre,
+and was bought for twenty, the summer-before!"
+
+"_Chacun a son gout!_" said Eve.
+
+"And yet, I fear, this glorious scene is marred by the envy,
+rapacity, uncharitableness, and all the other evil passions of man!"
+continued the more philosophical Mr. Effingham. "Perhaps, it were
+better as it was so lately, when it lay in the solitude and peace of
+the wilderness, the resort of birds and beasts."
+
+"Who prey on each other, dearest father, just as the worst of our own
+species prey on their fellows."
+
+"True, child--true. And yet, I never gaze on one of these scenes of
+holy calm, without wishing that the great tabernacle of nature might
+be tenanted only by those who have a feeling for its perfection."
+
+"Do you see the lady," said Aristabulus, "that is just coming out on
+the lawn, in front of the 'Wig-wam?'" for that was the name John
+Effingham had seen fit to give the altered and amended abode. "Here,
+Miss Effingham, more in a line with the top of the pine beneath us."
+
+"I see the person you mean; she seems to be looking in this
+direction."
+
+"You are quite right, miss; she knows that we are to stop on the
+Vision, and no doubt sees us. That lady is your father's cook, Miss
+Effingham, and is thinking of the late breakfast that has been
+ordered to be in readiness against our arrival."
+
+Eve concealed her amusement, for, by this time, she had discovered
+that Mr. Bragg had a way peculiar to himself, or at least to his
+class, of using many of the commoner words of the English language.
+It would perhaps be expecting too much of Sir George Templemore, not
+to expect him to smile, on such an occasion.
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Aristabulus, pointing towards the lake, across which
+several skiffs were stealing, some in one direction, and some in
+another, "there is a boat out, that I think must contain the poet."
+
+"Poet!" repeated John Effingham. "Have we reached that pass at
+Templeton?"
+
+"Lord, Mr. John Effingham, you must have very contracted notions of
+the place, if you think a poet a great novelty in it. Why, sir, we
+have caravans of wild beasts, nearly every summer!"
+
+"This is, indeed, a step in advance, of which I was ignorant. Here
+then, in a region, that so lately was tenanted by beasts of prey,
+beasts are already brought as curiosities. You perceive the state of
+the country in this fact, Sir George Templemore."
+
+"I do indeed; but I should like to hear from Mr Bragg, what sort of
+animals are in these caravans?"
+
+"All sorts, from monkeys to elephants. The last had a rhinoceros."
+
+"Rhinoceros!--Why there was but one, lately, in all Europe. Neither
+the Zoological Gardens, nor the _Jardin des Plantes_, had a
+rhinoceros! I never saw but one, and that was in a caravan at Rome,
+that travelled between St. Petersburgh and Naples."
+
+"Well, sir, we have rhinoceroses here;--and monkeys, and zebras, and
+poets, and painters, and congressmen, and bishops, and governors, and
+all other sorts of creatures."
+
+"And who may the particular poet be, Mr. Bragg," Eve asked, "who
+honours Templeton, with his presence just at this moment?"
+
+"That is more than I can tell you, miss, for, though some eight or
+ten of us have done little else than try to discover his name for the
+last week, we have not got even as far as that one fact. He and the
+gentleman who travels with him, are both uncommonly close on such
+matters, though I think we have some as good catechisers in
+Templeton, as can be found any where within fifty miles of us!"
+
+"There is another gentleman with him--do you suspect them both of
+being poets?"
+
+"Oh, no, Miss, the other is the waiter of the poet; that we know, as
+he serves him at dinner, and otherwise superintends his concerns;
+such as brushing his clothes, and keeping his room in order."
+
+"This is being in luck for a poet, for they are of a class that are a
+little apt to neglect the decencies. May I ask why you suspect the
+master of being a poet, if the man be so assiduous?"
+
+"Why, what else can he be? In the first place, Miss Effingham, he has
+no name."
+
+"That is a reason in point," said John Effingham "very few poets
+having names."
+
+"Then he is out on the lake half his time, gazing up at the 'Silent
+Pine,' or conversing with the 'Speaking Rocks,' or drinking at the
+'Fairy Spring.'"
+
+"All suspicious, certainly; especially the dialogue with the rocks;
+though not absolutely conclusive."
+
+"But, Mr. John Effingham, the man does not take his food like other
+people. He rises early, and is out on the water, or up in the forest,
+all the morning, and then returns to eat his breakfast in the middle
+of the forenoon; he goes into the woods again, or on the lake, and
+comes back to dinner, just as I take my tea."
+
+"This settles the matter. Any man who presumes to do all this, Mr.
+Bragg, deserves to be called by some harder name, even, than that of
+a poet. Pray, sir, how long has this eccentric person been a resident
+of Templeton?"
+
+"Hist--there he is, as I am a sinner; and it was not he and the other
+gentlemen that were in the boat."
+
+The rebuked manner of Aristabulus, and the dropping of his voice,
+induced the whole party to look in the direction of his eye, and,
+sure enough, a gentleman approached them, in the dress a man of the
+world is apt to assume in the country, an attire of itself that was
+sufficient to attract comment in a place where the general desire was
+to be as much like town as possible, though it was sufficiently neat
+and simple. He came from the forest, along the table-land that
+crowned the mountain for some distance, following one of the foot-
+paths that the admirers of the beautiful landscape have made all over
+that pleasant wood. As he came out into the cleared spot, seeing it
+already in possession of a party, he bowed, and was passing on, with
+a delicacy that Mr. Bragg would be apt to deem eccentric, when
+suddenly stopping, he gave a look of intense and eager interest at
+the whole party, smiled, advanced rapidly nearer, and discovered his
+entire person.
+
+"I ought not to be surprised," he said, as he advanced so near as to
+render doubt any longer impossible, "for I knew you were expected,
+and indeed waited for your arrival, and yet this meeting has been so
+unexpected as to leave me scarcely in possession of my faculties."
+
+It is needless to dwell upon the warmth and number of the greetings.
+To the surprise of Mr. Bragg, his poet was not only known, but
+evidently much esteemed by all the party, with the exception of Miss
+Van Cortlandt, to whom he was cordially presented by the name of Mr.
+Powis. Eve managed, by an effort of womanly pride, to suppress the
+violence of her emotions, and the meeting passed off as one of mutual
+surprise and pleasure, without any exhibition of unusual feeling to
+attract comment.
+
+"We ought to express our wonder at finding you here before us, my
+dear young friend," said Mr. Effingham, still holding Paul's hand
+affectionately between his own; "and, even now, that my own eyes
+assure me of the fact, I can hardly believe you would arrive at New-
+York, and quit it, without giving us the satisfaction of seeing you."
+
+"In that, sir, you are not wrong; certainly nothing could have
+deprived me of that pleasure, but the knowledge that it would not
+have been agreeable to yourselves. My sudden appearance here,
+however, will be without mystery, when I tell you that I returned
+from England, by the way of Quebec, the Great Lakes, and the Falls,
+having been induced by my friend Ducie to take that route, in
+consequence of his ship's being sent to the St. Lawrence. A desire
+for novelty, and particularly a desire to see the celebrated
+cataract, which is almost _the_ lion of America, did the rest."
+
+"We are glad to have you with us on any terms, and I take it as
+particularly kind, that you did not pass my door. You have been here
+some days?"
+
+"Quite a week. On reaching Utica I diverged from the great route to
+see this place, not anticipating the pleasure of meeting you here so
+early; but hearing you were expected, I determined to remain, with a
+hope, which I rejoice to find was not vain, that you would not be
+sorry to see an old fellow-traveller again."
+
+Mr. Effingham pressed his hands warmly again, before he relinquished
+them; an assurance of welcome that Paul received with thrilling
+satisfaction.
+
+"I have been in Templeton almost long enough," the young man resumed,
+laughing, "to set up as a candidate for the public favour, if I
+rightly understand the claims of a denizen. By what I can gather from
+casual remarks, the old proverb that 'the new broom sweeps clean'
+applies with singular fidelity throughout all this region.
+
+"Have you a copy of your last ode, or a spare epigram, in your
+pocket?" inquired John Effingham.
+
+Paul looked surprised, and Aristabulus, for a novelty, was a little
+dashed. Paul looked surprised, as a matter of course, for, although
+he had been a little annoyed by the curiosity that is apt to haunt a
+village imagination, since his arrival in Templeton, he did not in
+the least suspect that his love of a beautiful nature had been
+imputed to devotion to the muses. Perceiving, however, by the smiles
+of those around him, that there was more meant than was expressed, he
+had the tact to permit the explanation to come from the person who
+had put the question, if it were proper it should come at all.
+
+"We will defer the great pleasure that is in reserve," continued John
+Effingham, "to another time. At present, it strikes me that the lady
+of the lawn is getting to be impatient, and the _dejeuner a la
+fourchette_, that I have had the precaution to order, is probably
+waiting our appearance. It must be eaten, though under the penalty of
+being thought moon-struck rhymers by the whole State. Come, Ned; if
+you are sufficiently satisfied with looking at the Wigwam in a
+bird's-eye view, we will descend and put its beauties to the severer
+test of a close examination."
+
+This proposal was readily accepted, though all tore themselves from
+that lovely spot with reluctance, and not until they had paused to
+take another look.
+
+"Fancy the shores of this lake lined with villas." said Eve, "church-
+towers raising their dark heads among these hills; each mountain
+crowned with a castle, or a crumbling ruin, and all the other
+accessories of an old state of society, and what would then be the
+charms of the view!"
+
+"Less than they are to-day, Miss Effingham," said Paul Powis; "for
+though poetry requires--you all smile, is it forbidden to touch on
+such subjects?"
+
+"Not at all, so it be done in wholesome rhymes," returned the
+baronet. "You ought to know that you are expected even to speak in
+doggerel."
+
+Paul ceased, and the whole party walked away from the place, laughing
+and light-hearted.
+
+Chapter X.
+
+  "It is the spot, I came to seek, My father's ancient burial place--
+
+  "It is the spot--I know it well, Of which our old traditions tell."
+
+  BRYANT.
+
+From the day after their arrival in New-York, or that on which the
+account of the arrests by the English cruiser had appeared in the
+journals, little had been said by any of our party concerning Paul
+Powis, or of the extraordinary manner in which he had left the
+packet, at the very moment she was about to enter her haven. It is
+true that Mr. Dodge, arrived at Dodgeopolis, had dilated on the
+subject in his hebdomadal, with divers additions and conjectures of
+his own, and this, too, in a way to attract, a good deal of attention
+in the interior; but, it being a rule with those who are supposed to
+dwell at the fountain of foreign intelligence, not to receive any
+thing from those who ought not to be better informed than themselves,
+the Effinghams and their friends had never heard of his account of
+the matter.
+
+While all thought the incident of the sudden return extraordinary, no
+one felt disposed to judge the young man harshly. The gentlemen knew
+that military censure, however unpleasant, did not always imply moral
+unworthiness; and as for the ladies, they retained too lively a sense
+of his skill and gallantry, to wish to imagine evil on grounds so
+slight and vague. Still, it had been impossible altogether to prevent
+the obtrusion of disagreeable surmises, and all now sincerely
+rejoiced at seeing their late companion once more among them,
+seemingly in a state of mind that announced neither guilt nor
+degradation.
+
+On quitting the mountain, Mr. Effingham, who had a tender regard for
+Grace, offered her his arm as he would have given it to a second
+daughter, leaving Eve to the care of John Effingham. Sir George
+attended to Mademoiselle Viefville, and Paul walked by the side of
+our heroine and her cousin, leaving Aristabulus to be what he himself
+called a "miscellaneous companion;" or, in other words, to thrust
+himself into either set, as inclination or accident might induce. Of
+course the parties conversed as they walked, though those in advance
+would occasionally pause to say a word to those in the rear; and, as
+they descended, one or two changes occurred to which we may have
+occasion to allude.
+
+"I trust you have had pleasant passages," said John Effingham to
+Paul, as soon as they were separated in the manner just mentioned.
+"Three trips across the Atlantic in so short a time would be hard
+duty to a landsman, though you, as a sailor, will probably think less
+of it."
+
+"In this respect I have been fortunate; the Foam, as we know from
+experience, being a good traveller, and Ducie is altogether a fine
+fellow and an agreeable messmate. You know I had him for a companion
+both going and coming."
+
+This was said naturally; and, while it explained so little directly,
+it removed all unpleasant uncertainty, by assuring his listeners that
+he had been on good terms at least, with the person who had seemed to
+be his pursuer. John Effingham, too, well understood that no one
+messed with the commander of a vessel of war, in his own ship, who
+was, in any way, thought to be an unfit associate.
+
+"You have made a material circuit to reach us, the distance by Quebec
+being nearly a fourth more than the direct road."
+
+"Ducie desired it so strongly, that I did not like to deny him.
+Indeed, he made it a point, at first, to obtain permission to land me
+at New-York, where he had found me, as he said; but to this I would
+not listen, as I feared it might interfere with his promotion, of
+which he stood so good a chance, in consequence of his success in the
+affair of the money. By keeping constantly before the eyes of his
+superiors, on duty of interest, I thought his success would be more
+certain."
+
+"And has his government thought his perseverance in the chase worthy
+of such a reward?"
+
+"Indeed it has. He is now a post, and all owing to his good luck and
+judgment in that affair; though in his country, rank in private life
+does no harm to one in public life."
+
+Eve liked the emphasis that Paul laid on "his country," and she
+thought the whole remark was made in a spirit that an Englishman
+would not be apt to betray.
+
+"Has it ever occurred to you," continued John Effingham, "that our
+sudden and unexpected separation, has caused a grave neglect of duty
+in me, if not in both of us?"
+
+Paul looked surprised, and, by his manner, he demanded an
+explanation.
+
+"You may remember the sealed package of poor Mr. Monday, that we were
+to open together on our arrival in New-York, and on the contents of
+which, we were taught to believe depended the settling of some
+important private rights. I gave that package to you, at the moment
+it was received, and, in the hurry of leaving us, you overlooked the
+circumstance."
+
+"All very true, and to my shame I confess that, until this instant,
+the affair has been quite forgotten by me. I had so much to occupy my
+mind while in England, that it was not likely to be remembered, and
+then the packet itself has scarce been in my possession since the day
+I left you,"
+
+"It is not lost, I trust!" said John Effingham quickly.
+
+"Surely not--it is safe, beyond a question, in the writing-desk in
+which I deposited it. But the moment we got to Portsmouth, Ducie and
+myself proceeded to London together, and, as soon as he had got
+through at the Admiralty, we went into Yorkshire, where we remained,
+much occupied with private matters of great importance to us both,
+while his ship was docked; and then it became necessary to make
+sundry visits to our relations--"
+
+"Relations!" repeated Eve involuntarily, though she did not cease to
+reproach herself for the indiscretion, during the rest of the walk.
+
+"Relations--" returned Paul, smiling. "Captain Ducie and myself are
+cousins-german, and we made pilgrimages together, to sundry family
+shrines. This duty occupied us until a few days before we sailed for
+Quebec. On reaching our haven, I left the ship to visit the great
+lakes and Niagara, leaving most of my effects with Ducie, who has
+promised to bring them on with himself, when he followed on my track,
+as he expected soon to do, on his way to the West Indies, where he is
+to find a frigate. He owed me this attention, as he insisted, on
+account of having induced me to go so far out of my way, with so much
+luggage, to oblige him. The packet is, unluckily, left behind with
+the other things."
+
+"And do you expect Captain Ducie to arrive in this country soon?--The
+affair of the packet ought not to be neglected much longer, for a
+promise to a dying man is doubly binding, as it appeals to all our
+generosity. Rather than neglect the matter much longer, I would
+prefer sending a special messenger to Quebec."
+
+"That will be quite unnecessary, as, indeed, it would be useless.
+Ducie left Quebec yesterday, and has sent his and my effects direct
+to New-York, under the care of his own steward. The writing-case,
+containing other papers that are of interest to us both, he has
+promised not to lose sight of, but it will accompany him on the same
+tour, as that I have just made; for, he wishes to avail himself of
+this opportunity to see Niagara and the lakes, also: he is now on my
+track, and will notify me by letter of the day he will be in Utica,
+in order that we may meet on the line of the canal, near this place,
+and proceed to New-York, in company."
+
+His companions listened to this brief statement with an intense
+interest, with which the packet of poor Mr. Monday, however, had very
+little connection. John Effingham called to his cousin, and, in a few
+words, stated the circumstances as they had just been related to
+himself, without adverting to the papers of Mr. Monday, which was an
+affair that he had hitherto kept to himself.
+
+"It will be no more than a return of civility, if we invite Captain
+Ducie to diverge from his road, and pass a few days with us, in the
+mountains," he added. "At what precise time do you expect him to
+pass, Powis?"
+
+"Within the fortnight. I feel certain he would be glad to pay his
+respects to this party, for he often expressed his sincere regrets at
+having been employed on a service that exposed the ladies to so much
+peril and delay."
+
+"Captain Ducie is a near kinsman of Mr. Powis, dear father," added
+Eve, in a way to show her parent, that the invitation would be
+agreeable to herself, for Mr. Effingham was so attentive to the
+wishes of his daughter, as never to ask a guest to his house, that he
+thought would prove disagreeable to its mistress.
+
+"I shall do myself the pleasure to write to Captain Ducie, this
+evening, urging him to honour us with his company," returned Mr.
+Effingham. "We expect other friends in a few days, and I hope he will
+not find his time heavy on his hands, while in exile among us. Mr.
+Powis will enclose my note in one of his letters, and will, I trust,
+second the request by his own solicitations."
+
+Paul made his acknowledgments, and the whole party proceeded, though
+the interruption caused such a change in the _figure_ of the
+promenade, as to leave the young man the immediate escort of Eve. The
+party, by this time, had not only reached the highway, but it had
+again diverged from it, to follow the line of an old and abandoned
+wheel-track, that descended the mountain, along the side of the
+declivity, by a wilder and more perilous direction than suited a
+modern enterprise; it having been one of those little calculated and
+rude roads, that the first settlers of a country are apt to make,
+before there are time and means to investigate and finish to
+advantage. Although much more difficult and dangerous than its
+successor, as a highway, this relic of the infant condition of the
+country was by far the most retired and beautiful; and pedestrians
+continued to use it, as a common foot-path to the Vision. The seasons
+had narrowed its surface, and the second growth had nearly covered it
+with their branches, shading it like an arbour; and Eve expressed her
+delight with its wildness and boldness, mingled, as both were, with
+so pleasant a seclusion, as they descended along a path as safe and
+convenient as a French _allee_. Glimpses were constantly obtained of
+the lake and the village, while they proceeded; and altogether, they
+who were strangers to the scenery, were loud in its praises.
+
+"Most persons, who see this valley for the first time," observed
+Aristabulus, "find something to say in its favour; for my part, I
+consider it as rather curious myself."
+
+"Curious!" exclaimed Paul; "that gentleman is, at least, singular in
+the choice of his expressions."
+
+"You have met him before to-day," said Eve, laughing, for Eve was now
+in a humour to laugh at trifles. "This we know, since he had prepared
+us to meet a poet, where we only find an old friend."
+
+"Only, Miss Effingham!--Do you estimate poets so high, and old
+friends so low?"
+
+"This extraordinary person, Mr. Aristabulus Bragg, really deranges
+all one's notions and opinions in such a manner, as to destroy even
+the usual signification of words, I believe. He seems so much in, and
+yet so much out of his place; is both so _ruse_, and so unpractised;
+so unfit for what he is, and so ready at every thing, that I scarcely
+know how to apply terms in any matter with which he has the smallest
+connection. I fear he has persecuted you since your arrival in
+Templeton?"
+
+"Not at all; I am so much acquainted with men of his cast, that I
+have acquired a tact in managing them. Perceiving that he was
+disposed to suspect me of a disposition to 'poetize the lake,' to use
+his own term, I took care to drop a couple of lines, roughly written
+off, like a hasty and imperfect effusion, where I felt sure he would
+find them, and have been living for a whole week on the fame
+thereof."
+
+"You do indulge in such tastes, then?" said Eve smiling a little
+saucily.
+
+"I am as innocent of such an ambition, as of wishing to marry the
+heiress of the British throne, which, I believe, just now, is the
+goal of all the Icaruses of our own time. I am merely a rank
+plagiarist--for the rhyme, on the fame of which I have rioted for a
+glorious week, was two lines of Pope's, an author so effectually
+forgotten in these palmy days of literature, in which all knowledge
+seems so condensed into the productions of the last few years, that a
+man might almost pass off an entire classic for his own, without the
+fear of detection. It was merely the first couplet of the Essay on
+Man, which, fortunately, having an allusion to the 'pride of Kings,'
+would pass for original, as well as excellent, in nineteen villages
+in twenty in America, in these piping times of ultra-republicanism.
+No doubt Mr. Bragg thought a eulogy on the 'people' was to come next,
+to be succeeded by a glorious picture of Templeton and its environs."
+
+"I do not know that I ought to admit these hits at liberty from a
+foreigner," said Eve, pretending to look graver than she felt; for
+never before, in her life, had our heroine so strong a consciousness
+of happiness, as she had experienced that very morning.
+
+"Foreigner, Miss Effingham!--And why a foreigner?"
+
+"Nay, you know your own pretended cosmopolitism; and ought not the
+cousin of Captain Ducie to be an Englishman?"
+
+"I shall not answer for the _ought_, the simple fact being a
+sufficient reply to the question. The cousin of Captain Ducie is
+_not_ an Englishman; nor, as I see you suspect, has he ever served a
+day in the British navy, or in any other navy than that of his native
+land."
+
+"This is indeed taking us by surprise, and that most agreeably,"
+returned Eve, looking up at him with undisguised pleasure, while a
+bright glow crimsoned her face. "We could not but feel an interest in
+one who had so effectually served us; and both my father and Mr. John
+Effingham----"
+
+"Cousin Jack--" interrupted the smiling Paul.
+
+"Cousin Jack, then, if you dislike the formality I used; both my
+father and cousin Jack examined the American navy registers for your
+name, without success, as I understood, and the inference that
+followed was fair enough, I believe you will admit."
+
+"Had they looked at a register of a few years' date, they would have
+met with better luck. I have quitted the service, and am a sailor
+only in recollections. For the last few years, like yourselves, I
+have been a traveller by land as well as by water."
+
+Eve said no more, though every syllable that the young man uttered
+was received by attentive ears, and retained with a scrupulous
+fidelity of memory. They walked some distance in silence, until they
+reached the grounds of a house that was beautifully placed on the
+side of the mountain, near a lovely wood of pines. Crossing these
+grounds, until they reached a terrace in front of the dwelling, the
+village of Templeton lay directly in their front, perhaps a hundred
+feet beneath them, and yet so near, as to render the minutest object
+distinct. Here they all stopped to take a more distinct view of a
+place that had so much interest with most of the party.
+
+"I hope you are sufficiently acquainted with the localities to act as
+cicerone," said Mr. Effingham to Paul. "In a visit of a week to this
+village, you have scarcely overlooked the Wigwam."
+
+"Perhaps I ought to hesitate, or rather ought to blush to own it,"
+answered the young man, discharging the latter obligation by
+colouring to his temples; "but curiosity has proved so much stronger
+than manners, that I have been induced to trespass so far on the
+politeness of this gentleman, as to gain an admission to your
+dwelling, in and about which more of my time has been passed than has
+probably proved agreeable to its inmates."
+
+"I hope the gentleman will not speak of it," said Aristabulus. "In
+this country, we live pretty much in common, and with me it is a
+rule, when a gentleman drops in, whether stranger or neighbour, to
+show him the civility to ask him to take off his hat."
+
+"It appears to me," said Eve, willing to change the conversation,
+"that Templeton has an unusual number of steeples; for what purpose
+can so small a place possibly require so many buildings of that
+nature?"
+
+"All in behalf of orthodoxy, Miss Eve," returned Aristabulus, who
+conceived himself to be the proper person to answer such
+interrogatories. "There is a shade of opinion beneath every one of
+those steeples."
+
+"Do you mean, sir, that there are as many shades of faith in
+Templeton, as I now see buildings that have the appearance of being
+devoted to religious purposes?"
+
+"Double the number, Miss, and some to spare, in the bargain; for you
+see but five meeting-houses, and the county-buildings, and we reckon
+seven regular hostile denominations in the village, besides the
+diversities of sentiment on trifles. This edifice that you perceive
+here, in a line with the chimneys of the first house, is New St.
+Paul's, Mr. Grant's old church, as orthodox a house, in its way, as
+there is in the diocese, as you may see by the windows. This is a
+gaining concern, though there has been some falling off of late, in
+consequence of the clergyman's having caught a bad cold, which has
+made him a little hoarse; but I dare say he will get over it, and the
+church ought not to be abandoned on that account, serious as the
+matter undoubtedly is, for the moment. A few of us are determined to
+back up New St. Paul's in this crisis, and I make it a point to go
+there myself, quite half the time."
+
+"I am glad we have so much of your company," said Mr. Effingham "for
+that is our own church, and in it my daughter was baptized. But, do
+you divide your religious opinions in halves, Mr. Bragg?"
+
+"In as many parts, Mr. Effingham, as there are denominations in the
+neighbourhood, giving a decided preference to New St. Paul's,
+notwithstanding, under the peculiar circumstances, particularly to
+the windows. The dark, gloomy-looking building, Miss, off in the
+distance, yonder, is the Methodist affair, of which not much need be
+said; Methodism flourishing but little among us since the
+introduction of the New Lights, who have fairly managed to out-excite
+them, on every plan they can invent. I believe, however, they stick
+pretty much to the old doctrine, which, no doubt, is one great reason
+of their present apathetic state; for the people do love novelties."
+
+"Pray, sir, what building is this nearly in a line with New St.
+Paul's, and which resembles it a little, in colour and form?"
+
+"Windows excepted; it has two rows of regular square-topped windows,
+Miss, as you may observe. That is the First Presbyterian, or the old
+standard; a very good house, and a pretty good faith, too, as times
+go. I make it a point to attend there, at least once every fortnight;
+for change is agreeable to the nature of man. I will say, Miss, that
+my preference, so far as I have any, however, is for New St. Paul's,
+and I have experienced considerable regrets, that these Presbyterians
+have gained a material advantage over us, in a very essential point,
+lately."
+
+"I am sorry to hear this, Mr. Bragg; for, being an Episcopalian
+myself, and having great reliance on the antiquity and purity of my
+church, I should be sorry to find it put in the wrong by any other."
+
+"I fear we must give that point up, notwithstanding, for these
+Presbyterians have entirely outwitted the church people in that
+matter."
+
+"And what is the point in which we have been so signally worsted?"
+
+"Why, Miss, their new bell weighs quite a hundred more than that of
+New St. Paul's, and has altogether the best sound. I know very well
+that this advantage will not avail them any thing to boast of, in the
+last great account; but it makes a surprising difference in the state
+of probation. You see the yellowish looking building across the
+valley, with a heavy wall around it, and a belfry? That, in its
+regular character, is the county court-house, and gaol; but, in the
+way of religion, it is used pretty much miscellaneously."
+
+"Do you mean, really, sir, that divine service is ever actually
+performed in it, or that persons of all denominations are
+occasionally tried there?"
+
+"It would be truer to say that all denominations occasionally try the
+court-house," said Aristabulus, simpering; "for I believe it has been
+used in this way by every shade of religion short of the Jews. The
+Gothic tower in wood, is the building of the Universalists; and the
+Grecian edifice, that is not yet painted, the Baptists. The Quakers,
+I believe, worship chiefly at home, and the different shades of the
+Presbyterians meet, in different rooms, in private houses, about the
+place."
+
+"Are there then shades of difference in the denominations, as well as
+all these denominations?" asked Eve, in unfeigned surprise; "and
+this, too, in a population so small?"
+
+"This is a free county, Miss Eve, and freedom loves variety. 'Many
+men, many minds.'"
+
+"Quite true, sir," said Paul; "but here are many minds among few men.
+Nor is this all; agreeably to your own account, some of these men do
+not exactly know their own minds. But, can you explain to us what
+essential points are involved in all these shades of opinion?"
+
+"It would require a life, sir, to understand the half of them. Some
+say that excitement is religion, and others, that it is contentment.
+One set cries up practice, and another cries out against it. This man
+maintains that he will be saved if he does good, and that man affirms
+that if he only does good, he will be damned; a little evil is
+necessary to salvation, with one shade of opinion, while another
+thinks a man is never so near conversion as when he is deepest in
+sin."
+
+"Subdivision is the order of the day," added John Effingham; "every
+county is to be subdivided that there may be more county towns, and
+county offices; every religion decimated, that there may be a greater
+variety and a better quality of saints."
+
+Aristabulus nodded his head, and he would have winked, could he have
+presumed to take such a liberty with a man he held as much in
+habitual awe, as John Effingham.
+
+"_Monsieur_," inquired Mademoiselle Viefville, "is there no _eglise_,
+no _veritable eglise_, in Templeton?"
+
+"Oh, yes, Madame, several," returned Aristabulus, who would as soon
+think of admitting that he did not understand the meaning of
+_veritable eglise_, as one of the sects he had been describing would
+think of admitting that it was not infallible in its interpretation
+of Christianity--"several; but they are not be seen from this
+particular spot."
+
+"How much more picturesque would it be, and even christian-like in
+appearance, at least," said Paul, could these good people consent to
+unite in worshipping God!--and how much does it bring into strong
+relief, the feebleness and ignorance of man, when you see him
+splitting hairs about doctrines, under which he has been told, in
+terms as plain as language can make it, that he is simply required to
+believe in the goodness and power of a Being whose nature and
+agencies exceed his comprehension."
+
+"All very true," cried John Effingham, "but what would become of
+liberty of conscience in such a case? Most men, now-a-days,
+understand by faith, a firm reliance on their own opinions!"
+
+"In that case, too," put in Aristabulus, "we should want this
+handsome display of churches to adorn our village. There is good
+comes of it; for any man would be more likely to invest in a place
+that has five churches, than in a place with but one. As it is,
+Templeton has as beautiful a set of churches as any village I know."
+
+"Say, rather, sir, a set of castors; for a stronger resemblance to
+vinegar-cruets and mustard-pots, than is borne by these architectural
+prodigies, eye never beheld."
+
+"It is, nevertheless, a beautiful thing, to see the high pointed roof
+of the house of God, crowning an assemblage of houses, as one finds
+it in other countries," said Eve, "instead of a pile of tavern, as is
+too much the case in this dear home of ours."
+
+When this remark was uttered, they descended the step that led from
+the terrace, and proceeded towards the village. On reaching the gate
+of the Wigwam, the whole party stood confronted with that offspring
+of John Effingham's taste; for so great had been his improvements on
+the original production of Hiram Doolittle, that externally, at
+least, that distinguished architect could no longer have recognized
+the fruits of his own talents.
+
+"This is carrying out to the full, John, the conceits of the
+composite order," observed Mr. Effingham, drily.
+
+"I shall be sorry, Ned, if you dislike your house, as it is amended
+and corrected."
+
+"Dear cousin Jack," cried Eve, "it is an odd jumble of the Grecian
+and Gothic. One would like to know your authorities for such a
+liberty."
+
+"What do you think of the _facade_ of the cathedral of Milan, Miss,"
+laying emphasis on the last words, in imitation of the manner of Mr.
+Bragg. "Is it such a novelty to see the two styles blended; or is
+architecture so pure in America, that you think I have committed the
+unpardonable sin."
+
+"Nay, nothing that is out of rule ought to strike one, in a country
+where imitation governs in all things immaterial, and originality
+unsettles all things sacred and dear."
+
+"By way of punishment for that bold speech, I wish I had left the old
+rookery in the state I found it, that its beauties might have greeted
+your eyes, instead of this uncouth pile, which seems so much to
+offend them. Mademoiselle Viefville, permit me to ask how you like
+that house?"
+
+"_Mais, c'est un petit chateau_"
+
+"_Un chateau, Effinghamise,_" said Eve, laughing.
+
+"_Effinghamise si vous voulez, ma chere; pourtant c'est un chateau_."
+
+"The general opinion in this part of the country is," said
+Aristabulus, "that Mr. John Effingham has altered the building on the
+plan of some edifice of Europe, though I forget the name of the
+particular temple; it is not, however, the Parthenon, nor the temple
+of Minerva."
+
+"I hope, at least," said Mr. Effingham, leading the way up a little
+lawn, "it will not turn out to be the Temple of the Winds."
+
+Chapter XI.
+
+  "Nay, I'll come; if I lose a scruple of this sport, let me be oiled
+  to death with melancholy."--SHAKSPEARE.
+
+The progress of society in America, has been distinguished by several
+peculiarities that do not so properly belong to the more regular and
+methodical advances of civilization in other parts of the world. On
+the one hand, the arts of life, like Minerva, who was struck out of
+the intellectual being of her father at a blow, have started full-
+grown into existence, as the legitimate inheritance of the colonists,
+while, on the other, every thing tends towards settling down into a
+medium, as regards quality, a consequence of the community-character
+of the institutions. Every thing she had seen that day, had struck
+Eve as partaking of this mixed nature, in which, while nothing was
+vulgar, little even approached to that high standard, that her
+European education had taught her to esteem perfect. In the Wigwam,
+however, as her father's cousin had seen fit to name the family
+dwelling, there was more of keeping, and a closer attention to the
+many little things she had been accustomed to consider essential to
+comfort and elegance, and she was better satisfied with her future
+home, than with most she had seen since her return to America.
+
+As we have described the interior of this house, in another work,
+little remains to be said on the subject, at present; for, while John
+Effingham had completely altered its external appearance, its
+internal was not much changed. It is true, the cloud-coloured
+covering had disappeared, as had that stoop also, the columns of
+which were so nobly upheld by their super-structure; the former
+having given place to a less obtrusive roof, that was regularly
+embattled, and the latter having been swallowed up by a small
+entrance tower, that the new architect had contrived to attach to the
+building with quite as much advantage to it, in the way of comfort,
+as in the way of appearance. In truth, the Wigwam had none of the
+more familiar features of a modern American dwelling of its class.
+There was not a column about it, whether Grecian, Roman, or Egyptian;
+no Venetian blinds; no verandah or piazza; no outside paint, nor gay
+blending of colours. On the contrary, it was a plain old structure,
+built with great solidity, and of excellent materials, and in that
+style of respectable dignity and propriety, that was perhaps a little
+more peculiar to our fathers than it is peculiar to their successors,
+our worthy selves. In addition to the entrance tower, or porch, on
+its northern front, John Effingham had also placed a prettily devised
+conceit on the southern, by means of which the abrupt transition from
+an inner room to the open air was adroitly avoided. He had, moreover,
+removed the "firstly" of the edifice, and supplied its place with a
+more suitable addition that contained some of the offices, while it
+did not disfigure the building, a rare circumstance in an
+architectural after-thought.
+
+Internally, the Wigwam had gradually been undergoing improvements,
+ever since that period, which, in the way of the arts, if not in the
+way of chronology, might be termed the dark ages of Otsego. The great
+hall had long before lost its characteristic decoration of the
+severed arm of Wolf, a Gothic paper that was better adapted to the
+really respectable architecture of the room being its substitute; and
+even the urn that was thought to contain the ashes of Queen Dido,
+like the pitcher that goes often to the well, had been broken in a
+war of extermination that had been carried on against the cobwebs by
+a particularly notable housekeeper. Old Homer, too, had gone the way
+of all baked clay. Shakspeare, himself, had dissolved into dust,
+"leaving not a wreck behind;" and of Washington and Franklin, even,
+indigenous as they were, there remained no vestiges. Instead of these
+venerable memorials of the past, John Effingham, who retained a
+pleasing recollection of their beauties as they had presented
+themselves to his boyish eyes, had bought a few substitutes in a New-
+York shop, and _a_ Shakspeare, and _a_ Milton, and _a_ Caesar, and _a_
+Dryden, and _a_ Locke, as the writers of heroic so beautifully
+express it, were now seated in tranquil dignity on the old medallions
+that had held their illustrious predecessors. Although time had, as
+yet, done little for this new collection in the way of colour, dust
+and neglect were already throwing around them the tint of antiquity.
+
+"The lady," to use the language of Mr. Bragg, who did the cooking of
+the Wigwam, having every thing in readiness, our party took their
+seats at the breakfast table, which was spread in the great hall, as
+soon as each had paid a little attention to the _toilette_. As the
+service was neither very scientific, nor sufficiently peculiar,
+either in the way of elegance or of its opposite quality, to be
+worthy of notice, we shall pass it over in silence.
+
+"One will not quite so much miss European architecture in this
+house," said Eve, as she took her seat at table, glancing an eye at
+the spacious and lofty room, in which they were assembled; "here is
+at least size and its comforts, if not elegance."
+
+"Had you lost all recollection of this building, my child?" inquired
+her father, kindly; "I was in hopes you would feel some of the
+happiness of returning home, when you again found yourself beneath
+its roof!"
+
+"I should greatly dislike to have all the antics I have been playing
+in my own dressing-room exposed," returned Eve, rewarding the
+parental solicitude of her father by a look of love, "though Grace,
+between her laughing and her tears, has threatened me with such a
+disgrace. Ann Sidley has also been weeping, and, as even Annette,
+always courteous and considerate, has shed a few tears in the way of
+sympathy, you ought not to imagine that I have been altogether so
+stoical as not to betray some feeling, dear father. But the paroxysm
+is past, and I am beginning to philosophize. I hope, cousin Jack, you
+have not forgotten that the drawing-room is a lady's empire!"
+
+"I have respected your rights, Miss Effingham, though, with a wish to
+prevent any violence to your tastes, I have caused sundry
+antediluvian paintings and engravings to be consigned to the--"
+
+"Garret?" inquired Eve, so quickly as to interrupt the speaker.
+
+"Fire," coolly returned her cousin. "The garret is now much too good
+for them; that part of the house being converted into sleeping-rooms
+for the maids. Mademoiselle Annette would go into hysterics, were she
+to see the works of art, that satisfied the past generation of
+masters in this country, in too close familiarity with her Louvre-
+ized eyes."
+
+"_Point du tout, monsieur_," said Mademoiselle Viefville, innocently;
+"_Annette a du gout dans son metier sans doute_, but she is too well
+bred to expect _impossibilites._ No doubt she would have conducted
+herself with decorum."
+
+Every body laughed, for much light-heartedness prevailed at that
+board, and the conversation continued.
+
+"I shall be satisfied if Annette escape convulsions," Eve added, "a
+refined taste being her weakness; and, to be frank, what I recollect
+of the works you mention, is not of the most flattering nature."
+
+"And yet," observed Sir George, "nothing has surprised me more than
+the respectable state of the arts of engraving and painting in this
+country. It was unlooked for, and the pleasure has probably been in
+proportion to the surprise."
+
+"In that you are very right, Sir George Templemore," John Effingham
+answered; "but the improvement is of very recent date. He who
+remembers an American town half a century ago, will see a very
+different thing in an American town of to-day; and this is equally
+true of the arts you mention, with the essential difference that the
+latter are taking a right direction under a proper instruction, while
+the former are taking a wrong direction, under the influence of
+money, that has no instruction. Had I left much of the old furniture,
+or any of the old pictures in the Wigwam, we should have had the
+bland features of Miss Effingham in frowns, instead of bewitching
+smiles, at this very moment."
+
+"And yet I have seen fine old furniture in this country, cousin
+Jack."
+
+"Very true; though not in this part of it. The means of conveyance
+were wanting half a century since, and few people risk finery of any
+sort on corduroys. This very house had some respectable old things,
+that were brought here by dint of money, and they still remain; but
+the eighteenth century in general, may be set down as a very dark
+antiquity in all this region."
+
+When the repast was over, Mr. Effingham led his guests and daughter
+through the principal apartments, sometimes commending, and sometimes
+laughing, at the conceits of his kinsman. The library was a good
+sized room; good sized at least for a country in which domestic
+architecture, as well as public architecture, is still in the
+chrysalis state. Its walls were hung with an exceedingly pretty
+gothic paper, in green, but over each window was a chasm in the upper
+border; and as this border supplied the arches, the unity of the
+entire design was broken in no less than four places, that being the
+precise number of the windows. The defect soon attracted the eye of
+Eve, and she was not slow in demanding an explanation.
+
+"The deficiency is owing to an American accident," returned her
+cousin; "one of those calamities of which you are fated to experience
+many, as the mistress of an American household. No more of the border
+was to be bought in the country, and this is a land of shops and not
+of _fabricants_. At Paris, Mademoiselle, one would send to the paper-
+maker for a supply; but, alas! he that has not enough of a thing with
+us, is as badly off as if he had none. We are consumers, and not
+producers of works of art. It is a long way to send to France for ten
+or fifteen feet of paper hangings, and yet this must be done, or my
+beautiful gothic arches will remain forever without their key-
+stones!"
+
+"One sees the inconvenience of this," observed Sir George--"we feel
+it, even in England, in all that relates to imported things."
+
+"And we, in nearly all things, but food."
+
+"And does not this show that America can never become a manufacturing
+country?" asked the baronet, with the interest an intelligent
+Englishman ever feels in that all-absorbing question. "If you cannot
+manufacture an article as simple as that of paper-hangings, would it
+not be well to turn your attention, altogether, to agriculture?"
+
+As the feeling of this interrogatory was much more apparent than its
+logic, smiles passed from one to the other, though John Effingham,
+who really had a regard for Sir George, was content to make an
+evasive reply, a singular proof of amity, in a man of his caustic
+temperament.
+
+The survey of the house, on the whole, proved satisfactory to its
+future mistress, who complained, however, that it was furnished too
+much like a town residence.
+
+"For," she added, "you will remember, cousin Jack, that our visits
+here will be something like a _villeggiatura_."
+
+"Yes, yes, my fair lady; it will not be long before your Parisian and
+Roman tastes will be ready to pronounce the whole country a
+_villeggiatura!_"
+
+"This is the penalty, Eve, one pays for being a Hajji," observed
+Grace, who had been closely watching the expression of the others'
+countenances; for, agreeably to her view of things, the Wigwam wanted
+nothing to render it a perfect abode. "The things that _we_ enjoy,
+_you_ despise."
+
+"That is an argument, my dear coz, that would apply equally well, as
+a reason for preferring brown sugar to white."
+
+"In coffee, certainly, Miss Eve," put in the attentive Aristabulus,
+who having acquired this taste, in virtue of an economical mother,
+really fancied it a pure one. "Every body, in these regions, prefers
+the brown in coffee."
+
+"_Oh, mon pere et ma mere, comme je vous en veux,_" said Eve, without
+attending to the nice distinctions of Mr. Bragg, which savoured a
+little too much of the neophyte in cookery, to find favour in the
+present company, "_comme je vous en veux_ for having neglected so
+many beautiful sites, to place this building in the very spot it
+occupies."
+
+"In that respect, my child, we may rather be grateful at finding so
+comfortable a house, at all. Compared with the civilization that then
+surrounded it, this dwelling was a palace at the time of its
+erection; bearing some such relation to the humbler structures around
+it, as the _chateau_ bears to the cottage. Remember that brick had
+never before been piled on brick, in the walls of a house, in all
+this region, when the Wigwam was constructed. It is the Temple of
+Neptune of Otsego, if not of all the surrounding counties."
+
+Eve pressed to her lips the hand she was holding in both her own, and
+they all passed out of the library into another room. As they came in
+front of the hall windows, a party of apprentice-boys were seen
+coolly making their arrangements to amuse themselves with a game of
+ball, on the lawn directly in front of the house.
+
+"Surely, Mr. Bragg," said the owner of the Wigwam, with more
+displeasure in his voice than was usual for one of his regulated
+mind, "you do not countenance this liberty?"
+
+"Liberty, sir!--I am an advocate for liberty wherever I can find it.
+Do you refer to the young men on the lawn, Mr. Effingham?"
+
+"Certainly to them, sir; and permit me to say, I think they might
+have chosen a more suitable spot for their sports. They are mistaking
+_liberties_ for liberty I fear."
+
+"Why, sir, I believe they have _always_ played ball in that precise
+locality."
+
+"_Always_!--I can assure you this is a great mistake. What private
+family, placed as we are in the centre of a village, would allow of
+an invasion of its privacy in this rude manner? Well may the house be
+termed a Wigwam, if this whooping is to be tolerated before its
+door."
+
+"You forget, Ned," said John Effingham, with a sneer, "that an
+American _always_ means just eighteen months. _Antiquity_ is reached
+in five lustres, and the dark ages at the end of a human life. I dare
+say these amiable young gentlemen, who enliven their sports with so
+many agreeable oaths, would think you very unreasonable and
+encroaching to presume to tell them they are unwelcome."
+
+"To own the truth, Mr. John, it _would_ be downright unpopular."
+
+"As I cannot permit the ears of the ladies to be offended with these
+rude brawls, and shall never consent to have grounds that are so
+limited, and which so properly belong to the very privacy of my
+dwelling, invaded in this coarse manner, I beg, Mr. Bragg, that you
+will, at once, desire these young men to pursue their sports
+somewhere else."
+
+Aristabulus received this commission with a very ill grace; for,
+while his native sagacity told him that Mr. Effingham was right, he
+too well knew the loose habits that had been rapidly increasing in
+the country during the last ten years, not to foresee that the order
+would do violence to all the apprentices' preconceived notions of
+their immunities; for, as he had truly stated, things move at so
+quick a pace in America, and popular feeling is so arbitrary, that a
+custom of a twelve months' existence is deemed sacred, until the
+public, itself, sees fit to alter it. He was reluctantly quitting the
+party, on his unpleasant duty, when Mr. Effingham turned to a
+servant, who belonged to the place, and bade him go to the village
+barber, and desire him to come to the Wigwam to cut his hair; Pierre,
+who usually performed that office for him, being busied in unpacking
+trunks.
+
+"Never mind, Tom," said Aristabulus obligingly, as he took up his
+hat; "I am going into the street, and will give the message to Mr.
+Lather."
+
+"I cannot think, sir, of employing you on such a duty," hastily
+interposed Mr. Effingham, who felt a gentleman's reluctance to impose
+an unsuitable office on any of his dependants--"Tom, I am sure, will
+do me the favour."
+
+"Do not name it, my dear sir; nothing makes me happier than to do
+these little errands, and, another time, you can do as much for me."
+
+Aristabulus now went his way more cheerfully, for he determined to go
+first to the barber, hoping that some expedient might suggest itself,
+by means of which he could coax the apprentices from the lawn, and
+thus escape the injury to his popularity, that he so much dreaded. It
+is true, these apprentices were not voters, but then some of them
+speedily would be, and all of them, moreover, had _tongues_, an
+instrument Mr. Bragg held in quite as much awe as some men dread
+salt-petre. In passing the ball-players, he called out in a wheedling
+tone to their ringleader, a notorious street brawler--
+
+"A fine time for sport, Dickey; don't you think there would be more
+room in the broad street than on this crowded lawn, where you lose
+your ball so often in the shrubbery?"
+
+"This place will do, on a pinch," bawled Dickey--"though it might be
+better. If it warn't for that plagued house, we couldn't ask for a
+better ball-ground."
+
+"I don't see," put in another, "what folks built a house just in that
+spot for; it has spoilt the very best play-ground in the village."
+
+"Some people have their notions as well as others," returned
+Aristabulus; "but, gentlemen, if I were in your place, I would try
+the street; I feel satisfied you would find it much the most
+agreeable and convenient."
+
+The apprentices thought differently, however, or they were indisposed
+to the change; and so they recommenced their yells, their oaths, and
+their game. In the mean while, the party in the house continued their
+examination of John Effingham's improvements; and when this was
+completed, they separated, each to his or her own room.
+
+Aristabulus soon reappeared on the lawn; and, approaching the ball-
+players, he began to execute his commission, as he conceived, in good
+earnest. Instead of simply saying, however, that it was disagreeable
+to the owner of the property to have such an invasion on his privacy,
+and thus putting a stop to the intrusion for the future as well as at
+the present moment, he believed some address necessary to attain the
+desired end.
+
+"Well, Dickey," he said, "there is no accounting for tastes; but, in
+my opinion, the street would be a much better place to play ball in
+than this lawn. I wonder gentlemen of your observation should be
+satisfied with so cramped a play-ground!"
+
+"I tell you, Squire Bragg, this will do," roared Dickey; "we are in a
+hurry, and no way particular; the bosses will be after us in half an
+hour. Heave away, Sam."
+
+"There are so many fences hereabouts," continued Aristabulus, with an
+air of indifference; "it's true the village trustees say there _shall
+be no ball-playing in the street_, but I conclude you don't much mind
+what _they_ think or threaten."
+
+"Let them sue for that, if they like," bawled a particularly amiable
+blackguard, called Peter, who struck his ball as he spoke, quite into
+the principal street of the village. "Who's a trustee, that he should
+tell gentlemen where they are to play ball!"
+
+"Sure enough," said Aristabulus, "and, now, by following up that
+blow, you can bring matters to an issue. I think the law very
+oppressive, and you can never have so good an opportunity to bring
+things to a crisis. Besides, it is very aristocratic to play ball
+among roses and dahlias."
+
+The bait took; for what apprentice--American apprentice, in
+particular--can resist an opportunity of showing how much he
+considers himself superior to the law? Then it had never struck any
+of the party before, that it was vulgar and aristocratic to pursue
+the sport among roses, and one or two of them actually complained
+that they had pricked their fingers, in searching for the ball.
+
+"I know Mr. Effingham will be very sorry to have you go," continued
+Aristabulus, following up his advantage; "but gentlemen cannot always
+forego their pleasures for other folks."
+
+"Who's Mr. Effingham, I would like to know?" cried Joe Wart. "If he
+wants people to play ball on his premises, let him cut down his
+roses. Come, gentlemen, I conform to Squire Bragg, and invite you all
+to follow me into the street."
+
+As the lawn was now evacuated, _en masse_, Aristabulus proceeded with
+alacrity to the house, and went into the library, where Mr. Effingham
+was patiently waiting his return.
+
+"I am happy to inform you, sir," commenced the ambassador, "that the
+ball-players have adjourned; and as for Mr. Lather, he declines your
+proposition."
+
+"Declines my proposition!"
+
+"Yes, sir; he dislikes to come; for he thinks it will be altogether a
+poor operation. His notion is, that if it be worth his while to come
+up to the Wigwam to cut your hair, it may be worth your while to go
+down to the shop, to have it cut. Considering the matter in all its
+bearings, therefore, he concludes he would rather not engage in the
+transaction at all."
+
+"I regret, sir, to have consented to your taking so disagreeable a
+commission, and regret it the more, now I find that the barber is
+disposed to be troublesome."
+
+"Not at all, sir. Mr. Lather is a good man, in his way, and
+particularly neighbourly. By the way, Mr. Effingham, he asked me to
+propose to let him take down your garden fence, in order that he may
+haul some manure on his potato patch, which wants it dreadfully, he
+says."
+
+"Certainly, sir. I cannot possibly object to his hauling his manure,
+even through this house, should he wish it. He is so very valuable a
+citizen, and one who knows his own business so well, that I am only
+surprised at the moderation of his request."
+
+Here Mr. Effingham rose, rang the bell for Pierre, and went to his
+own room, doubting, in his own mind, from all that he had seen,
+whether this was really the Templeton he had known in his youth, and
+whether he was in his own house or not.
+
+As for Aristabulus, who saw nothing out of rule, or contrary to his
+own notions of propriety, in what had passed, he hurried off to tell
+the barber, who was so ignorant of the first duty of his trade, that
+he was at liberty to pull down Mr. Effingham's fence, in order to
+manure his own potato patch.
+
+Lest the reader should suppose we are drawing caricatures, instead of
+representing an actual condition of society, it may be necessary to
+explain that Mr. Bragg was a standing candidate for popular favour;
+that, like Mr. Dodge, he considered every thing that presented itself
+in the name of the public, as sacred and paramount, and that so
+general and positive was his deference for majorities, that it was
+the bias of his mind to think half-a-dozen always in the right, as
+opposed to one, although that one, agreeably to the great decision of
+the real majority of the entire community, had not only the law on
+his side, but all the abstract merits of the disputed question. In
+short, to such a pass of freedom had Mr. Bragg, in common with a
+large class of his countrymen, carried his notions, that he had
+really begun to imagine liberty was all means and no end.
+
+Chapter XII.
+
+  "In sooth, thou wast in very gracious fooling last night, when thou
+  spokest of Pigrogromotus, of the Vapians passing the equinoctial of
+  Queubus; 't was very good i' faith."--SIR ANDREW AGUE-CHEEK.
+
+The progress of society, it has just been said, in what is termed a
+"new country," is a little anomalous. At the commencement of a
+settlement, there is much of that sort of kind feeling and mutual
+interest, which men are apt to manifest towards each other, when they
+are embarked in an enterprise of common hazards. The distance that is
+unavoidably inseparable from education, habits and manners, is
+lessened by mutual wants and mutual efforts; and the gentleman, even
+while he may maintain his character and station, maintains them with
+that species of good-fellowship and familiarity, that marks the
+intercourse between the officer and the soldier, in an arduous
+campaign. Men, and even women, break bread together, and otherwise
+commingle, that, in different circumstances, would be strangers; the
+hardy adventures and rough living of the forest, apparently lowering
+the pretensions of the man of cultivation and mere mental resources,
+to something very near the level of those of the man of physical
+energy, and manual skill. In this rude intercourse, the parties meet,
+as it might be, on a sort of neutral ground, one yielding some of his
+superiority, and the other laying claims to an outward show of
+equality, that he secretly knows, however, is the result of the
+peculiar circumstances in which he is placed. In short, the state of
+society is favourable to the claims of mere animal force, and
+unfavourable to those of the higher qualities.
+
+This period may be termed, perhaps, the happiest of the first century
+of a settlement. The great cares of life are so engrossing and
+serious, that small vexations are overlooked, and the petty
+grievances that would make us seriously uncomfortable in a more
+regular state of society, are taken as matters of course, or laughed
+at as the regular and expected incidents of the day. Good-will
+abounds; neighbour comes cheerfully to the aid of neighbour; and life
+has much of the reckless gaiety, careless association, and buoyant
+merriment of childhood. It is found that they who have passed through
+this probation, usually look back to it with regret, and are fond of
+dwelling on the rude scenes and ridiculous events that distinguish
+the history of a new settlement, as the hunter is known to pine for
+the forest.
+
+To this period of fun, toil, neighbourly feeling and adventure,
+succeeds another, in which society begins to marshal itself, and the
+ordinary passions have sway. Now it is, that we see the struggles for
+place, the heart-burnings and jealousies of contending families, and
+the influence of mere money. Circumstances have probably established
+the local superiority of a few beyond all question, and the
+conditioese serves as a goal for the rest to aim at. The learned
+professions, the ministry included, or what, by courtesy, are so
+called, take precedence, as a matter of course, next to wealth,
+however, when wealth is at all supported by appearances. Then
+commence those gradations of social station, that set institutions at
+defiance, and which as necessarily follow civilization, as tastes and
+habits are a consequence of indulgence.
+
+This is, perhaps, the least inviting condition of society that
+belongs to any country that can claim to be free and removed from
+barbarism. The tastes are too uncultivated to exercise any essential
+influence; and when they do exist, it is usually with the pretension
+and effort that so commonly accompany infant knowledge. The struggle
+is only so much the more severe, in consequence of the late _pele
+mele_, while men lay claim to a consideration that would seem beyond
+their reach, in an older and more regulated community. It is during
+this period that manners suffer the most, since they want the nature
+and feeling of the first condition, while they are exposed to the
+rudest assaults of the coarse-minded and vulgar; for, as men usually
+defer to a superiority that is long established, there being a charm
+about antiquity that is sometimes able to repress the passions, in
+older communities the marshalling of time quietly regulates what is
+here the subject of strife.
+
+What has just been said, depends on a general and natural principle,
+perhaps; but the state of society we are describing has some features
+peculiar to itself. The civilization of America, even in its older
+districts, which supply the emigrants to the newer regions, is
+unequal; one state possessing a higher level than another. Coming as
+it does, from different parts of this vast country, the population of
+a new settlement, while it is singularly homogenous for the
+circumstances, necessarily brings with it its local peculiarities. If
+to these elements be added a sprinkling of Europeans of various
+nations and conditions, the effects of the commingling, and the
+temporary social struggles that follow, will occasion no surprise.
+
+The third and last condition of society in a "new country," is that
+in which the influence of the particular causes enumerated ceases,
+and men and things come within the control of more general and
+regular laws. The effect, of course, is to leave the community
+possession of a civilization that conforms to that of the whole
+region, be it higher or be it lower, and with the division into
+castes that are more or less rigidly maintained, according to
+circumstances.
+
+The periods, as the astronomers call the time taken in a celestial
+revolution, of the two first of these epochs in the history of a
+settlement, depend very much on its advancement in wealth and in
+numbers. In some places, the pastoral age, or that of good
+fellowship, continues for a whole life, to the obvious retrogression
+of the people, in most of the higher qualities, but to their manifest
+advantage, however, in the pleasures of the time being; while, in
+others, it passes away rapidly, like the buoyant animal joys, that
+live their time, between fourteen and twenty.
+
+The second period is usually of longer duration, the migratory habits
+of the American people keeping society more unsettled than might
+otherwise prove to be the case. It may be said never to cease
+entirely until the great majority of the living generation are
+natives of the region, knowing no other means of comparison than
+those under which they have passed their days. Even when this is the
+case, there is commonly so large an infusion of the birds of passage,
+men who are adventurers in quest of advancement, and who live without
+the charities of a neighbourhood, as they may be said almost to live
+without a home, that there is to be found, for a long time, a middle
+state of society, during which it may well be questioned whether a
+community belongs to the second or to the third of the periods named.
+
+Templeton was properly in this equivocal condition, for while the
+third generation of the old settlers were in active life, so many
+passers-by came and went, that the influence of the latter nearly
+neutralized that of time and the natural order of things. Its
+population was pretty equally divided between the descendants of the
+earlier inhabitants, and those who flitted like swallows and other
+migratory birds. All of those who had originally entered the region
+in the pride of manhood, and had been active in converting the
+wilderness into the abodes of civilized men, if they had not been
+literally gathered to their fathers, in a physical sense had been
+laid, the first of their several races, beneath those sods that were
+to cover the heads of so many of their descendants. A few still
+remained among those who entered the wilderness in young manhood, but
+the events of the first period we have designated, and which we have
+imperfectly recorded in another work, were already passing into
+tradition. Among these original settlers some portion of the feeling
+that had distinguished their earliest communion with their neighbours
+yet continued, and one of their greatest delights was to talk of the
+hardships and privations of their younger days, as the veteran loves
+to discourse of his marches, battles, scars, and sieges. It would be
+too much to say that these persons viewed the more ephemeral part of
+the population with distrust, for their familiarity with changes
+accustomed them to new faces; but they had a secret inclination for
+each other, preferred those who could enter the most sincerely into
+their own feelings, and naturally loved that communion best, where
+they found the most sympathy. To this fragment of the community
+belonged nearly all there was to be found of that sort of sentiment
+which is connected with locality; adventure, with them, supplying the
+place of time; while the natives of the spot, wanting in the
+recollections that had so many charms for their fathers, were not yet
+brought sufficiently within the influence of traditionary interest,
+to feel that hallowed sentiment in its proper force. As opposed in
+feeling to these relics of the olden time, were the birds of passage
+so often named, a numerous and restless class, that, of themselves,
+are almost sufficient to destroy whatever there is of poetry, or of
+local attachment, in any region where they resort.
+
+In Templeton and its adjacent district, however, the two hostile
+influences might be said to be nearly equal, the descendants of the
+fathers of the country beginning to make a manly stand against the
+looser sentiment, or the want of sentiment, that so singularly
+distinguishes the migratory bands. The first did begin to consider
+the temple in which their fathers had worshipped more hallowed than
+strange altars; the sods that covered their fathers' heads more
+sacred than the clods that were upturned by the plough; and the
+places of their childhood and childish sports dearer than the highway
+trodden by a nameless multitude.
+
+Such, then, were the elements of the society into which we have now
+ushered the reader, and with which it will be our duty to make him
+better acquainted, as we proceed in the regular narration of the
+incidents of our tale.
+
+The return of the Effinghams, after so long an absence, naturally
+produced a sensation in so small a place, and visiters began to
+appear in the Wigwam as soon as propriety would allow. Many false
+rumours prevailed, quite as a matter of course; and Eve, it was
+reported, was on the point of being married to no less than three of
+the inmates of her father's house, within the first ten days, viz:
+Sir George Templemore, Mr. Powis, and Mr. Bragg; the latter story
+taking its rise in some precocious hopes that had escaped the
+gentleman himself, in the "excitement" of helping to empty a bottle
+of bad Breton wine, that was dignified with the name of champagne.
+But these tales revived and died so often, in a state of society in
+which matrimony is so general a topic with the young of the gentler
+sex, that they brought with them their own refutation.
+
+The third day, in particular, after the arrival of our party, was a
+reception day at the Wigwam; the gentlemen and ladies making it a
+point to be at home and disengaged, after twelve o'clock, in order to
+do honour to their guests. One of the first who made his appearance
+was a Mr. Howel, a bachelor of about the same age as Mr. Effingham,
+and a man of easy fortune and quiet habits. Nature had done more
+towards making Mr. Howel a gentleman, than either cultivation or
+association; for he had passed his entire life, with very immaterial
+exceptions, in the valley of Templeton, where, without being what
+could be called a student, or a scholar, he had dreamed away his
+existence in an indolent communication with the current literature of
+the day. He was fond of reading, and being indisposed to contention,
+or activity of any sort, his mind had admitted the impressions of
+what he perused, as the stone receives a new form by the constant
+fall of drops of water. Unfortunately for Mr. Howel, he understood no
+language but his mother tongue; and, as all his reading was
+necessarily confined to English books, he had gradually, and unknown
+to himself, in his moral nature at least, got to be a mere reflection
+of those opinions, prejudices, and principles, if such a word can
+properly be used for such a state of the mind, that it had suited the
+interests or passions of England to promulgate by means of the press.
+A perfect _bonne foi_ prevailed in all his notions; and though a very
+modest man by nature, so very certain was he that his authority was
+always right, that he was a little apt to be dogmatical on such
+points as he thought his authors appeared to think settled. Between
+John Effingham and Mr. Howel, there were constant amicable skirmishes
+in the way of discussion; for, while the latter was so dependent,
+limited in knowledge by unavoidable circumstances, and disposed to an
+innocent credulity, the first was original in his views, accustomed
+to see and think for himself, and, moreover, a little apt to estimate
+his own advantages at their full value.
+
+"Here comes our good neighbour, and my old school-fellow, Tom Howel."
+said Mr. Effingham, looking out at a window, and perceiving the
+person mentioned crossing the little lawn in front of the house, by
+following a winding foot-path--"as kind-hearted a man, Sir George
+Templemore, as exists; one who is really American, for he has
+scarcely quitted the county half-a-dozen times in his life, and one
+of the honestest fellows of my acquaintance."
+
+"Ay," put in John Effingham, "as real an American as any man can be,
+who uses English spectacles for all he looks at, English opinions for
+all he says, English prejudices for all he condemns, and an English
+palate for all he tastes. American, quotha! The man is no more
+American than the Times' newspaper, or Charing Cross! He actually
+made a journey to New-York last war, to satisfy himself with his own
+eyes that a Yankee frigate had really brought an Englishman into
+port."
+
+"His English predilections will be no fault in my eyes," said the
+baronet, smiling--"and I dare say we shall be excellent friends."
+
+"I am sure Mr. Howel is a very agreeable man," added Grace--"of all
+in your Templeton _coterie_, he is my greatest favourite."
+
+"Oh! I foresee a tender intimacy between Templemore and Howel,"
+rejoined John Effingham; "and sundry wordy wars between the latter
+and Miss Effingham."
+
+"In this you do me injustice, cousin Jack. I remember Mr. Howel well,
+and kindly; for he was ever wont to indulge my childish whims, when a
+girl."
+
+"The man is a second Burchell, and, I dare say never came to the
+Wigwam when you were a child, without having his pockets stuffed with
+cakes, or _bonbons_."
+
+The meeting was cordial, Mr. Howel greeting the gentlemen like a warm
+friend, and expressing great delight at the personal improvements
+that had been made in Eve, between the ages of eight and twenty. John
+Effingham was no more backward than the others, for he, too, liked
+their simple-minded, kind-hearted, but credulous neighbour.
+
+"You are welcome back--you are welcome back," added Mr. Howel,
+blowing his nose, in order to conceal the tears that were gathering
+in his eyes. "I did think of going to New-York to meet you, but the
+distance at my time of life is very serious. Age, gentlemen, seems to
+be a stranger to you."
+
+"And yet we, who are both a few months older than yourself, Howel,"
+returned Mr. Effingham, kindly, "have managed to overcome the
+distance you have just mentioned, in order to come and see _you!_"
+
+"Ay, you are great travellers, gentlemen, very great travellers, and
+are accustomed to motion.--Been quite as far as Jerusalem, I hear!"
+
+"Into its very gates, my good friend; and I wish, with all my heart,
+we had had you in our company. Such a journey might cure you of the
+home-malady."
+
+"I am a fixture, and never expect to look upon the ocean, now. I did,
+at one period of my life, fancy such an event might happen, but I
+have finally abandoned all hope on that subject. Well, Miss Eve, of
+all the countries in which you have dwelt, to which do you give the
+preference?"
+
+"I think Italy is the general favourite," Eve answered, with a
+friendly smile; "although there are some agreeable things peculiar to
+almost every country."
+
+"Italy!--Well, that astonishes me a good deal! I never knew there was
+any thing particularly interesting about Italy! I should have
+expected _you_ to say, England."
+
+"England is a fine country, too, certainly; but it wants many things
+that Italy enjoys."
+
+"Well, now, what?" said Mr. Howel, shifting his legs from one knee to
+the other, in order to be more convenient to listen, or, if
+necessary, to object. "What _can_ Italy possess, that England does
+not enjoy in a still greater degree?"
+
+"Its recollections, for one thing, and all that interest which time
+and great events throw around a region."
+
+"And is England wanting in recollections and great events? Are there
+not the Conqueror? or, if you will, King Alfred? and Queen Elizabeth,
+and Shakspeare--think of Shakspeare, young lady--and Sir Walter
+Scott, and the Gun-Powder Plot; and Cromwell, Oliver Cromwell, my
+dear Miss Eve; and Westminster Abbey, and London Bridge, and George
+IV., the descendant of a line of real kings,--what, in the name of
+Heaven, can Italy possess, to equal the interest one feels in such
+things as these?'
+
+"They are very interesting no doubt;" said Eve, endeavouring not to
+smile--"but Italy has its relics of former ages too; you forget the
+Caesars."
+
+"Very good sort of persons for barbarous times, I dare say, but what
+can they be to the English monarchs? I would rather look upon a _bona
+fide_ English king, than see all the Caesars that ever lived. I never
+can think any man a real king but the king of England!"
+
+"Not King Solomon!" cried John Effingham.
+
+"Oh! he was a Bible king, and one never thinks of them. Italy! well,
+this I did not expect from your father's daughter! Your great-great-
+great-grandfather must have been an Englishman born, Mr, Effingham?"
+
+"I have reason to think he was, sir."
+
+"And Milton, and Dryden, and Newton, and Locke! These are prodigious
+names, and worth all the Caesars put together. And Pope, too; what
+have they got in Italy to compare to Pope?"
+
+"They have at least _the_ Pope," said Eve, laughing.
+
+"And, then, there are the Boar's Head in East-Cheap; and the Tower;
+and Queen Anne, and all the wits of her reign; and--and--and Titus
+Oates; and Bosworth field; and Smithfield, where the martyrs were
+burned, and a thousand more spots and persons of intense interest in
+Old England!"
+
+"Quite true," said John Effingham, with an air of sympathy--"but,
+Howel, you have forgotten Peeping Tom of Coventry, and the climate!"
+
+"And Holyrood-House; and York-Minster; and St Paul's;" continued the
+worthy Mr. Howel, too much bent on a catalogue of excellencies, that
+to him were sacred, to heed the interruption, "and, above all,
+Windsor Castle. What is there in the world to equal Windsor Castle as
+a royal residence?"
+
+Want of breath now gave Eve an opportunity to reply, and she seized
+it with an eagerness that she was the first to laugh at herself,
+afterwards.
+
+"Caserta is no mean house, Mr. Howel; and, in my poor judgment, there
+is more real magnificence in its great stair-case, than in all
+Windsor Castle united, if you except the chapel."
+
+"But, St. Paul's!"
+
+"Why, St. Peter's may be set down, quite fairly, I think, for its
+_pendant_ at least."
+
+"True, the Catholics _do_ say so;" returned Mr. Howel, with the
+deliberation one uses when he greatly distrusts his own concession;
+"but I have always considered it one of their frauds. I don't think
+there _can_ be any thing finer than St. Paul's. Then there are the
+noble ruins of England! _They_, you must admit, are unrivalled."
+
+"The Temple of Neptune, at Paestum, is commonly thought an interesting
+ruin, Mr. Howel."
+
+"Yes, yes, for a _temple_, I dare say; though I do not remember to
+have ever heard of it before. But no temple can ever compare to a
+ruined _abbey_ /"
+
+"Taste is an arbitrary thing, Tom Howel, as you and I know when as
+boys we quarrelled about the beauty of our ponies," said Mr.
+Effingham, willing to put an end to a discussion that he thought a
+little premature, after so long an absence. "Here are two young
+friends who shared the hazards of our late passage with us, and to
+whom, in a great degree, we owe our present happy security, and I am
+anxious to make you acquainted with them. This is our countryman, Mr.
+Powis, and this is an English friend, who, I am certain, will be
+happy to know so warm an admirer of his own country--Sir George
+Templemore."
+
+Mr. Howel had never before seen a titled Englishman, and he was taken
+so much by surprise that he made his salutations rather awkwardly. As
+both the young men, however, met him with the respectful ease that
+denotes familiarity with the world, he soon recovered his self-
+possession.
+
+"I hope you have brought back with you a sound American heart, Miss
+Eve," resumed the guest, as soon as this little interruption had
+ceased. "We have had sundry rumours of French Marquisses, and German
+Barons; but I have, all along, trusted too much to your patriotism to
+believe you would marry a foreigner."
+
+"I hope you except Englishmen," cried Sir George, gaily: "we are
+almost the same people."
+
+"I am proud to hear you say so, sir. Nothing flatters me more than to
+be thought English; and I certainly should not have accused Miss
+Effingham of a want of love of country, had----"
+
+"She married half-a-dozen Englishmen," interrupted John Effingham,
+who saw that the old theme was in danger of being revived. "But,
+Howel, you have paid me no compliments on the changes in the house. I
+hope they are to your taste."
+
+"A little too French, Mr. John."
+
+"French!--There is not a French feature in the whole animal. What has
+put such a notion into your head?"
+
+"It is the common opinion, and I confess I should like the building
+better were it less continental."
+
+"Why, my old friend, it is a nondescript--original--Effingham upon
+Doolittle, if you will; and, as for models, it is rather more
+_English_ than any thing else."
+
+"Well, Mr. John, I am glad to hear this, for I do confess to a
+disposition rather to like the house. I am dying to know, Miss Eve,
+if you saw all our distinguished contemporaries when in
+Europe?--_That_ to me, would be one of the greatest delights of
+travelling!"
+
+"To say that we saw them _all_, might be too much; though we
+certainly did meet with many."
+
+"Scott, of course."
+
+"Sir Walter we had the pleasure of meeting, a few times, in London."
+
+"And Southey, and Coleridge, and Wordsworth, and Moore, and Bulwer,
+and D'Israeli, and Rogers, and Campbell, and the grave of Byron, and
+Horace Smith, and Miss Landon, and Barry Cornwall, and--"
+
+"_Cum multis aliis_" put in John Effingham, again, by way of
+arresting the torrent of names. "Eve saw many of these, and, as Tubal
+told Shylock, 'we often came where we did hear' of the rest. But you
+say nothing, friend Tom, of Goethe, and Tieck, and Schlegel, and La
+Martine, Chateaubriant, Hugo, Delavigne, Mickiewicz, Nota, Manzoni,
+Niccolini, &c. &c. &c. &c. &c. &c."
+
+Honest, well-meaning Mr. Howel, listened to the catalogue that the
+other ran volubly over, in silent wonder; for, with the exception of
+one or two of these distinguished men, he had never even heard of
+them; and, in the simplicity of his heart, unconsciously to himself,
+he had got to believe that there was no great personage still living,
+of whom he did not know something.
+
+"Ah, here comes young Wenham, by way of preserving the equilibrium,"
+resumed John Effingham, looking out of a window--"I rather think you
+must have forgotten him, Ned, though you remember his father, beyond
+question."
+
+Mr. Effingham and his cousin went out into the hall to receive the
+new guest, with whom the latter had become acquainted while
+superintending the repairs of the Wigwam.
+
+Mr. Wenham was the son of a successful lawyer in the county, and,
+being an only child, he had also succeeded to an easy independence.
+His age, however, brought him rather into the generation to which Eve
+belonged, than into that of the father; and, if Mr. Howel was a
+reflection, or rather a continuation, of all the provincial notions
+that America entertained of England forty years ago, Mr. Wenham might
+almost be said to belong to the opposite school, and to be as ultra-
+American, as his neighbour was ultra-British.--If there is _lajeune
+France_, there is also _la jeune Amerique_, although the votaries of
+the latter march with less hardy steps than the votaries of the
+first. Mr. Wenham fancied himself a paragon of national independence,
+and was constantly talking of American excellencies, though the
+ancient impressions still lingered in his moral system, as men look
+askance for the ghosts which frightened their childhood on crossing a
+church-yard in the dark. John Effingham knew the _penchant_ of the
+young man, and when he said that he came happily to preserve the
+equilibrium, he alluded to this striking difference in the characters
+of their two friends.
+
+The introductions and salutations over, we shall resume the
+conversation that succeeded in the drawing-room.
+
+"You must be much gratified, Miss Effingham," observed Mr. Wenham,
+who, like a true American, being a young man himself, supposed it _de
+rigueur_ to address a young lady in preference to any other
+present,--"with the great progress made by _our_ country since you
+went abroad."
+
+Eve simply answered that her extreme youth, when she left home, had
+prevented her from retaining any precise notions on such subjects.
+
+"I dare say it is all very true," she added, "but one, like myself,
+who remembers only older countries, is, I think, a little more apt to
+be struck with the deficiencies, than with what may, in truth, be
+improvements, though they still fall short of excellence."
+
+Mr. Wenham looked vexed, or indignant would be a better word, but he
+succeeded in preserving his coolness--a thing that is not always easy
+to one of provincial habits and provincial education, when he finds
+his own _beau ideal_ lightly estimated by others.
+
+"Miss Effingham must discover a thousand imperfections." said Mr.
+Howel, "coming, as she does, directly from England. That music,
+now,"--alluding to the sounds of a flute that were heard through the
+open windows, coming from the adjacent village--"must be rude enough
+to her ear, after the music of London."
+
+"The _street_ music of London is certainly among the best, if not the
+very best, in Europe," returned Eve, with a glance of the eye at the
+baronet, that caused him to smile, "and I think this fairly belongs
+to the class, being so freely given to the neighbourhood."
+
+"Have you read the articles signed Minerva, in the Hebdomad, Miss
+Effingham," inquired Mr. Wenham, who was determined to try the young
+lady on a point of sentiment, having succeeded so ill in his first
+attempt to interest her--"they are generally thought to be a great
+acquisition to American literature."
+
+"Well, Wenham, you are a fortunate man," interposed Mr. Howel, "if
+you can find any literature in America, to add to, or to substract
+from. Beyond almanacs, reports of cases badly got up, and newspaper
+verses, I know nothing that deserves such a name."
+
+"We may not print on as fine paper, Mr. Howel, or do up the books in
+as handsome binding as other people," said Mr. Wenham, bridling and
+looking grave, "but so far as sentiments are concerned, or sound
+sense, American literature need turn its back on no literature of the
+day."
+
+"By the way, Mr. Effingham, you were in Russia; did you happen to see
+the Emperor?"
+
+"I had that pleasure, Mr. Howel."
+
+"And is he really the monster we have been taught to believe him?".
+
+"Monster!" exclaimed the upright Mr. Effingham, fairly recoiling a
+step in surprise. "In what sense a monster, my worthy friend? surely
+not in a physical?"
+
+"I do not know that. I have somehow got the notion he is any thing
+but handsome. A mean, butchering, bloody-minded looking little chap,
+I'll engage."
+
+"You are libelling one of the finest-looking men of the age."
+
+"I think I would submit it to a jury. I cannot believe, after what I
+have read of him in the English publications, that he is so very
+handsome."
+
+"But, my good neighbour, these English publications must be wrong;
+prejudiced perhaps, or even malignant."
+
+"Oh! I am not the man to be imposed on in that way. Besides, what
+motive could an English writer have for belying an Emperor of
+Russia?"
+
+"Sure enough, what motive!" exclaimed John Effingham.--"You have your
+answer, Ned!"
+
+"But you will remember, Mr. Howel," Eve interposed, "that we have
+_seen_ the Emperor Nicholas."
+
+"I dare say, Miss Eve, that your gentle nature was disposed to judge
+him as kindly as possible; and, then, I think most Americans, ever
+since the treaty of Ghent, have been disposed to view all Russians
+too favourably. No, no; I am satisfied with the account of the
+English; they live much nearer to St. Petersburg than we do, and they
+are more accustomed, too, to give accounts of such matters."
+
+"But living nearer, Tom Howel," cried Mr. Effingham, with unusual
+animation, "in such a case, is of no avail, unless one lives near
+enough to see with his own eyes."
+
+"Well--well--my good friend, we will talk of this another time. I
+know your disposition to look at every body with lenient eyes. I will
+now wish you all a good morning, and hope soon to see you again. Miss
+Eve, I have one word to say, if you dare trust yourself with a youth
+of fifty, for a minute, in the library."
+
+Eve rose cheerfully, and led the way to the room her father's visiter
+had named. When within it, Mr. Howel shut the door carefully, and
+then with a sort of eager delight, he exclaimed--
+
+"For heaven's sake, my dear young lady, tell me who are these two
+strange gentlemen in the other room."
+
+"Precisely the persons my father mentioned, Mr. Howel; Mr. Paul
+Powis, and Sir George Templemore."
+
+"Englishmen, of course!"
+
+"Sir George Templemore is, of course, as you say, but we may boast of
+Mr. Powis as a countryman."
+
+"Sir George Templemore!--What a superb-looking young fellow!"
+
+"Why, yes," returned Eve, laughing; "he, at least, you will admit is
+a handsome man."
+
+"He is wonderful!--The other, Mr.--a--a--a--I forget what you called
+him--he is pretty well too; but this Sir George is a princely youth."
+
+"I rather think a majority of observers would give the preference to
+the appearance of Mr. Powis," said Eve, struggling to be steady, but
+permitting a blush to heighten her colour, in despite of the effort.
+
+"What could have induced him to come up among these mountains--an
+English baronet!" resumed Mr. Howel, without thinking of Eve's
+confusion. "Is he a real lord?"
+
+"Only a little one, Mr. Howel. You heard what my father said of our
+having been fellow-travellers."
+
+"But what _does_ he think of us. I am dying to know what such a man
+_really_ thinks of us?"
+
+"It is not always easy to discover what such men _really_ think;
+although I am inclined to believe that he is disposed to think rather
+favourably of some of us."
+
+"Ay, of you, and your father, and Mr. John. You have travelled, and
+are more than half European; but what _can_ he think of those who
+have never left America?"
+
+"Even of some of those," returned Eve, smiling, "I suspect he thinks
+partially."
+
+"Well, I am glad of that. Do you happen to know his opinion of the
+Emperor Nicholas?"
+
+"Indeed. I do not remember to have heard him mention the Emperor's
+name; nor do I think he has ever seen him."
+
+"That is extraordinary! Such a man should have seen every thing, and
+know every thing; but I'll engage, at the bottom, he does know all
+about him. If you happen to have any old English newspapers, as
+wrappers, or by any other accident, let me beg them of you. I care
+not how old they are. An English journal fifty years old, is more
+interesting than one of ours wet from the press."
+
+Eve promised to send him a package, when they shook hands and parted.
+As she was crossing the hall, to rejoin the party, John Effingham
+stopped her.
+
+"Has Howel made proposals?" the gentleman inquired, in an affected
+whisper.
+
+"None, cousin Jack, beyond an offer to read the old English
+newspapers I can send him."
+
+"Yes, yes, Tom Howel will swallow all the nonsense that is _timbre a
+Londres_."
+
+"I confess a good deal of surprise at finding a respectable and
+intelligent man so weak-minded as to give credit to such authorities,
+or to form his serious opinions on information derived from such
+sources."
+
+"You may be surprised, Eve, at hearing so frank avowals of the
+weakness; but, as for the weakness itself, you are now in a country
+for which England does all the thinking, except on subjects that
+touch the current interests of the day."
+
+"Nay, I will not believe this! If it were true, how came we
+independent of her--where did we get spirit to war against her."
+
+"The man who has attained his majority is independent of his father's
+legal control, without being independent of the lessons he was taught
+when a child. The soldier sometimes mutinies, and after the contest
+is over, he is usually the most submissive man of the regiment."
+
+"All this to me is very astonishing! I confess that a great deal has
+struck me unpleasantly in this way, since our return; especially in
+ordinary society; but I never could have supposed it had reached to
+the pass in which I see it existing in our good neighbour Howel."
+
+"You have witnessed one of the effects, in a matter of no great
+moment to ourselves; but, as time and years afford the means of
+observation and comparison, you will perceive the effects in matters
+of the last moment, in a national point of view. It is in human
+nature to undervalue the things with which we are familiar, and to
+form false estimates of those which are remote, either by time, or by
+distance. But, go into the drawing-room, and, in young Wenham, you
+will find one who fancies himself a votary of a new school, although
+his prejudices and mental dependence are scarcely less obvious than
+those of poor Tom Howel."
+
+The arrival of more company, among whom were several ladies,
+compelled Eve to defer an examination of Mr. Wenham's peculiarities
+to another opportunity. She found many of her own sex, whom she had
+left children, grown into womanhood, and not a few of them at a
+period of life when they should be cultivating their physical and
+moral powers, already oppressed with the cares and feebleness that
+weigh so heavily on the young American wife.
+
+Chapter XIII.
+
+  "Nay we must longer kneel; I am a suitor."
+
+  QUEEN KATHERINE.
+
+The Effinghams were soon regularly domesticated, and the usual
+civilities had been exchanged. Many of their old friends resumed
+their ancient intercourse, and some new acquaintances were made. The
+few first visits were, as usual, rather labored and formal; but
+things soon took their natural course, and, as the ease of country
+life was the aim of the family, the temporary little bustle was
+quickly forgotten.
+
+The dressing-room of Eve overlooked the lake, and, about a week after
+her arrival, she was seated in it enjoying that peculiarly lady-like
+luxury, which is to be found in the process of having another gently
+disposing of the hair. Annette wielded the comb, as usual, while Ann
+Sidley, who was unconsciously jealous that any one should be employed
+about her darling, even in this manner, though so long accustomed to
+it, busied herself in preparing the different articles of attire that
+she fancied her young mistress might be disposed to wear that
+morning. Grace was also in the room, having escaped from the hands of
+her own maid, in order to look into one of those books which
+professed to give an account of the extraction and families of the
+higher classes of Great Britain, a copy of which Eve happened to
+possess, among a large collection of books, _Allmanachs de Gotha_,
+Court Guides, and other similar works that she had found it
+convenient to possess as a traveller.
+
+"Ah! here it is," said Grace, in the eagerness of one who is suddenly
+successful after a long and vexatious search.
+
+"Here is what, coz?"
+
+Grace coloured, and she could have bitten her tongue for its
+indiscretion, but, too ingenuous to deceive, she reluctantly told the
+truth.
+
+"I was merely looking for the account of Sir George Templemore's
+family; it is awkward to be domesticated with one, of whose family we
+are utterly ignorant."
+
+"Have you found the name?"
+
+"Yes; I see he has two sisters, both of whom are married, and a
+brother who is in the Guards. But--"
+
+"But what, dear?"
+
+"His title is not so _very_ old."
+
+"The title of no Baronet _can_ be very old, the order having been
+instituted in the reign of James I."
+
+"I did not know that. His ancestor was created a baronet in 1701, I
+see. Now, Eve--"
+
+"Now, what, Grace?"
+
+"We are both--" Grace would not confine the remark to herself--"we
+are both of older families than this! You have even a much higher
+English extraction; and I think I can claim for the Van Cortlandts
+more antiquity than one that dates from 1701!"
+
+"No one doubts it, Grace; but what do you wish me to understand by
+this? Are we to insist on preceding Sir George, in going through a
+door?"
+
+Grace blushed to the eyes, and yet she laughed, involuntarily.
+
+"What nonsense! No one thinks of such things in America."
+
+"Except at Washington, where, I am told, 'Senators' ladies' do give
+themselves airs. But you are quite right, Grace; women have no rank
+in America, beyond their general social rank, as ladies or no ladies,
+and we will not be the first to set an example of breaking the rule.
+I am afraid our blood will pass for nothing, and that we must give
+place to the baronet, unless, indeed, he recognizes the rights of the
+sex."
+
+"You know I mean nothing so silly. Sir George Templemore does not
+seem to think of rank at all; even Mr. Powis treats him, in all
+respects, as an equal, and Sir George seems to admit it to be right."
+
+Eve's maid, at the moment, was twisting her hair, with the intention
+to put it up; but the sudden manner in which her young mistress
+turned to look at Grace, caused Annette to relinquish her grasp, and
+the shoulders of the beautiful and blooming girl were instantly
+covered with the luxuriant tresses.
+
+"And why should _not_ Mr. Powis treat Sir George Templemore as one
+every way his equal, Grace?" she asked, with an impetuosity unusual
+in one so trained in the forms of the world.
+
+"Why, Eve, one is a baronet, and the other is but a simple
+gentleman."
+
+Eve Effingham sat silent for quite a minute. Her little foot moved,
+and she had been carefully taught, too, that a lady-like manner,
+required that even this beautiful portion of the female frame should
+be quiet and unobtrusive. But America did not contain two of the same
+sex, years, and social condition, less alike in their opinions, or it
+might be said their prejudices, than the two cousins. Grace Van
+Cortlandt, of the best blood of her native land, had unconsciouslv
+imbibed in childhood, the notions connected with hereditary rank,
+through the traditions of colonial manners, by means of novels, by
+hearing the vulgar reproached or condemned for their obtrusion and
+ignorance, and too often justly reproached and condemned, and by the
+aid of her imagination, which contributed to throw a gloss and
+brilliancy over a state of things that singularly gains by distance.
+On the other hand, with Eve, every thing connected with such subjects
+was a matter of fact. She had been thrown early into the highest
+associations of Europe; she had not only seen royalty on its days of
+gala and representation, a mere raree-show that is addressed to the
+senses, or purely an observance of forms that may possibly have their
+meaning, but which can scarcely be said to have their reasons, but
+she had lived long and intimately among the high-born and great, and
+this, too, in so many different countries, as to have destroyed the
+influence of the particular nation that has transmitted so many of
+its notions to America as heir-looms. By close observation, she knew
+that arbitrary and political distinctions made but little difference
+between men of themselves; and so far from having become the dupe of
+the glitter of life, by living so long within its immediate
+influence, she had learned to discriminate between the false and the
+real, and to perceive that which was truly respectable and useful,
+and to know it from that which was merely arbitrary and selfish. Eve
+actually fancied that the position of an American gentleman might
+readily become, nay that it _ought_ to be the highest of all human
+stations, short of that of sovereigns. Such a man had no social
+superior, with the exception of those who actually ruled, in her
+eyes, and this fact she conceived, rendered him more than noble, as
+nobility is usually graduated. She had been accustomed to see her
+father and John Effingham moving in the best circles of Europe,
+respected for their information and independence, undistinguished by
+their manners, admired for their personal appearance, manly,
+courteous, and of noble bearing and principles, if not set apart from
+the rest of mankind by an arbitrary rule connected with rank. Rich,
+and possessing all the habits that properly mark refinement, of
+gentle extraction, of liberal attainments, walking abroad in the
+dignity of manhood, and with none between them and the Deity, Eve had
+learned to regard the gentlemen of her race as the equals in station
+of any of their European associates, and as the superiors of most, in
+every thing that is essential to true distinction. With her, even
+titular princes and dukes had no estimation, merely as princes and
+dukes; and, as her quick mind glanced over the long catalogue of
+artificial social gradations and she found Grace actually attaching
+an importance to the equivocal and purely conventional condition of
+an English baronet, a strong sense of the ludicrous connected itself
+with the idea.
+
+"A simple gentleman, Grace!" she repeated slowly after her cousin;
+"and is not a simple gentleman, a simple _American_ gentleman, the
+equal of any gentleman on earth--of a poor baronet, in particular?"
+
+"Poor baronet, Eve!"
+
+"Yes, dear, _poor_ baronet; I know fully the extent and meaning of
+what I say. It is true, we do not know as much of Mr. Powis' family,"
+and here Eve's colour heightened, though she made a mighty effort to
+be steady and unmoved, "as we might; but we know he is an _American_;
+that, at least, is something; and we see he is a gentleman; and what
+American gentleman, a real American gentleman, _can_ be the inferior
+of an English baronet? Would your uncle, think you; would cousin
+Jack; proud, lofty-minded cousin Jack, think you, Grace, consent to
+receive so paltry a distinction as a baronetcy, were our institutions
+to be so far altered as to admit of such social classifications?"
+
+"Why, what would they be, Eve, if not baronets?"
+
+"Earls, Counts, Dukes, nay Princes! These are the designations of the
+higher classes of Europe, and such titles, or those that are
+equivalent, would belong to the higher classes here."
+
+"I fancy that Sir George Templemore would not be persuaded to admit
+all this!"
+
+"If you had seen Miss Eve, surrounded and admired by princes, as I
+have seen her, Miss Grace," said Ann Sidley, "you would not think any
+simple Sir George half good enough for her."
+
+"Our good Nanny means, _a_ Sir George," interrupted Eve, laughing,
+"and not _the_ Sir George in question. But, seriously, dearest coz,
+it depends more on ourselves, and less on others, in what light they
+are to regard us, than is commonly supposed. Do you not suppose there
+are families in America who, if disposed to raise any objections
+beyond those that are purely personal, would object to baronets, and
+the wearers of red ribands, as unfit matches for their daughters, on
+the ground of rank? What an absurdity would it be, for _a_ Sir
+George, or _the_ Sir George either, to object to a daughter of a
+President of the United States for instance, on account of station;
+and yet I'll answer for it, _you_ would think it no personal honour,
+if Mr. Jackson had a son, that he should, propose to my dear father
+for you. Let us respect ourselves properly, take care to be truly
+ladies and gentlemen, and so far from titular rank's being necessary
+to us, before a hundred lustres are past, we shall bring all such
+distinctions into discredit, by showing that they are not necessary
+to any one important interest, or to true happiness and
+respectability any where."
+
+"And do you not believe, Eve, that Sir George Templemore thinks of
+the difference in station between us?"
+
+"I cannot answer for that," said Eve, calmly. "The man is naturally
+modest; and, it is possible, when he sees that we belong to the
+highest social condition of a great country, he may regret that such
+has not been his own good fortune in his native land; especially,
+Grace, since he has known _you_."
+
+Grace blushed, looked pleased, delighted even, and yet surprised. It
+is unnecessary to explain the causes of the three first expressions
+of her emotions; but the last may require a short examination.
+Nothing but time and a change of circumstances, can ever raise a
+province or a provincial town to the independent state of feeling
+that so strikingly distinguishes a metropolitan country, or a
+capital. It would be as rational to expect that the inhabitants of
+the nursery should disregard the opinions of the drawing-room, as to
+believe that the provincial should do all his own thinking. Political
+dependency, moreover, is much more easily thrown aside than mental
+dependency. It is not surprising, therefore, that Grace Van
+Cortlandt, with her narrow associations, general notions of life,
+origin, and provincial habits, should be the very opposite of Eve, in
+all that relates to independence of thought, on subjects like those
+that they were now discussing. Had Grace been a native of New
+England, even, she would have been less influenced by the mere social
+rank of the baronet than was actually the case; for, while the
+population of that part of the Union feel more of the general
+subserviency to Great Britain than the population of any other
+portion of the republic, they probably feel less of it, in this
+particular form, from the circumstance that their colonial habits
+were less connected with the aristocratical usages of the mother
+country. Grace was allied by blood, too, with the higher classes of
+England, as, indeed, was the fact with most of the old families among
+the New York gentry; and the traditions of her race came in aid of
+the traditions of her colony, to continue the profound deference she
+felt for an English title. Eve might have been equally subjected to
+the same feelings, had she not been removed into another sphere at so
+early a period of life, where she imbibed the notions already
+mentioned--notions that were quite as effectually rooted in her moral
+system, as those of Grace herself could be in her own.
+
+"This is a strange way of viewing the rank of a baronet, Eve!" Grace
+exclaimed, as soon as she had a little recovered from the confusion
+caused by the personal allusion. "I greatly question if you can
+induce Sir George Templemore to see his own position with your eyes."
+
+"No, my dear; I think he will be much more likely to regard, not only
+that, but most other things, with the eyes of another person. We will
+now talk of more agreeable things, however; for I confess, when I do
+dwell on titles, I have a taste for the more princely appellations;
+and that a simple _chevalier_ can scarce excite a feeling that such
+is the theme."
+
+"Nay, Eve," interrupted Grace, with spirit, "an _English_ baronet
+_is_ noble. Sir George Templemore assured me that, as lately as last
+evening. The heralds, I believe, have quite recently established that
+fact to their own satisfaction."
+
+"I am glad of it, dear," returned Eve, with difficulty refraining
+from gaping, "as it will be of great importance to them, in their own
+eyes. At all events, I concede that Sir George Templemore, knight, or
+baronet, big baron or little baron, is a noble fellow; and what more
+can any reasonable person desire. Do you know, sweet coz, that the
+Wigwam will be full to overflowing next week?--that it will be
+necessary to light our council-fire, and to smoke the pipe of many
+welcomes?"
+
+"I have understood Mr. Powis, that his kinsman, Captain Ducie, will
+arrive on Monday."
+
+"And Mrs. Hawker will come on Tuesday, Mr. and Mrs. Bloomfield on
+Wednesday, and honest, brave straight-forward, literati-hating
+Captain Truck, on Thursday, at the latest. We shall be a large
+country-circle, and I hear the gentlemen talking of the boats and
+other amusements. But I believe my father has a consultation in the
+library, at which he wishes us to be present; we will join him, if
+you please."
+
+As Eve's toilette was now completed, the two ladies rose, and
+descended together to join the party below. Mr. Effingham was
+standing at a table that was covered with maps, while two or three
+respectable-looking men, master-mechanics, were at his side. The
+manners of these men were quiet, civil, and respectful, having a
+mixture of manly simplicity, with a proper deference for the years
+and station of the master of the house; though all but one, wore
+their hats. The one who formed the exception, had become refined by a
+long intercourse with this particular family; and his acquired taste
+had taught him that, respect for himself, as well as for decency,
+rendered it necessary to observe the long-established rules of
+decorum, in his intercourse with others. His companions, though
+without a particle of coarseness, or any rudeness of intention, were
+less decorous, simply from a loose habit, that is insensibly taking
+the place of the ancient laws of propriety in such matters, and which
+habit, it is to be feared, has a part of its origin in false and
+impracticable political notions, that have been stimulated by the
+arts of demagogues. Still, not one of the three hardworking, really
+civil, and even humane men, who now stood covered in the library of
+Mr. Effingham, was probably conscious of the impropriety of which he
+was guilty, or was doing more than insensibly yielding to a vicious
+and vulgar practice.
+
+"I am glad you have come, my love," said Mr. Effingham, as his
+daughter entered the room, "for I find I need support in maintaining
+my own opinions here. John is obstinately silent; and, as for all
+these other gentlemen, I fear they have decidedly taken sides against
+me."
+
+"You can usually count on my support, dearest father, feeble as it
+may be. But what is the disputed point to-day?"
+
+"There is a proposition to alter the interior of the church, and our
+neighbour Gouge has brought the plans, on which, as he says, he has
+lately altered several churches in the county. The idea is, to remove
+the pews entirely, converting them into what are called 'slips,' to
+lower the pulpit, and to raise the floor, amphitheatre fashion."
+
+"Can there be a sufficient reason for this change?" demanded Eve,
+with surprise. "Slips! The word has a vulgar sound even, and savours
+of a useless innovation. I doubt its orthodoxy."
+
+"It is very popular, Miss Eve," answered Aristabulus, advancing from
+a window, where he had been whispering assent. "This fashion takes
+universally and is getting to prevail in all denominations."
+
+Eve turned involuntarily, and to her surprise she perceived that the
+editor of the Active Inquirer was added to their party. The
+salutations, on the part of the young lady, were distant and stately,
+while Mr. Dodge, who had not been able to resist public opinion, and
+had actually parted with his moustachios, simpered, and wished to
+have it understood by the spectators, that he was on familiar terms
+with all the family.
+
+"It may be popular, Mr. Bragg," returned Eve, as soon as she rose
+from her profound curtsey to Mr. Dodge; "but it can scarcely be said
+to be seemly. This is, indeed, changing the order of things, by
+elevating the sinner, and depressing the saint."
+
+"You forget, Miss Eve, that under the old plan, the people could not
+see; they were kept unnaturally down, if one can so express it, while
+nobody had a good look-out but the parson and the singers in the
+front row of the gallery. This was unjust."
+
+"I do not conceive, sir, that a good look-out, as you term it, is at
+all essential to devotion, or that one cannot as well listen to
+instruction when beneath the teacher, as when above him."
+
+"Pardon me, Miss;" Eve recoiled, as she always did, when Mr. Bragg
+used this vulgar and contemptuous mode of address; "we put no body up
+or down; all we aim it is a just equality--to place all, as near as
+possible, on a level."
+
+Eve gazed about her in wonder; and then she hesitated a moment, as if
+distrusting her ears.
+
+"Equality! Equality with what? Surely not with the ordained ministers
+of the church, in the performance of their sacred duties! Surely not
+with the Deity!"
+
+"We do not look at it exactly in this light, ma'am. The people build
+the church, _that_ you will allow, Miss Effingham; even _you_ will
+allow _this_, Mr. Effingham."
+
+Both the parties appealed to, bowed a simple assent to so plain a
+proposition, but neither spoke.
+
+"Well, the people building the church very naturally ask themselves
+for what purpose it was built?"
+
+"For the worship of God," returned Eve with a steady solemnity of
+manner that a little abashed even the ordinarily indomitable and
+self-composed Aristabulus.
+
+"Yes, Miss; for the worship of God and the accommodation of the
+public."
+
+"Certainly," added Mr. Dodge; "for the public accommodation and for
+public worship;" laying due emphasis on the adjectives.
+
+"Father, you, at least, will never consent to this?"
+
+"Not readily, my love. I confess it shocks all my notions of
+propriety to see the sinner, even when he professes to be the most
+humble and penitent, thrust himself up ostentatiously, as if filled
+only with his own self-love and self-importance."
+
+"You will allow, Mr. Effingham," rejoined Aristabulus, "that churches
+are built to accommodate the public, as Mr. Dodge has so well
+remarked."
+
+"No, sir; they are built for the worship of God, as my daughter has
+so well remarked."
+
+"Yes, sir; that, too, I grant you"
+
+"As secondary to the main object--the public convenience, Mr. Bragg
+unquestionably means;" put in John Effingham, speaking for the first
+time that morning on the subject.
+
+Eve turned quickly, and looked towards her kinsman. He was standing
+near the table, with folded arms, and his fine face expressing all
+the sarcasm and contempt that a countenance so singularly calm and
+gentleman-like, could betray.
+
+"Cousin Jack," she said earnestly, "this ought not to be."
+
+"Cousin Eve, nevertheless this will be."
+
+"Surely not--surely not! Men can never so far forget appearances as
+to convert the temple of God into a theatre, in which the convenience
+of the spectators is the one great object to be kept in view!"
+
+"_You_ have travelled, sir," said John Effingham, indicating by his
+eye that he addressed Mr. Dodge, in particular, "and must have
+entered places of worship in other parts of the world. Did not the
+simple beauty of the manner in which all classes, the great and the
+humble, the rich and the poor, kneel in a common humility before the
+altar, strike you agreeably, on such occasions; in Catholic
+countries, in particular?"
+
+"Bless me! no, Mr. John Effingham. I was disgusted at the meanness of
+their rites, and really shocked at the abject manner in which the
+people knelt on the cold damp stones, as if they were no better than
+beggars."
+
+"And were they not beggars?" asked Eve, with almost a severity of
+tone: "ought they not so to consider themselves, when petitioning for
+mercy of the one great and omnipotent God?"
+
+"Why, Miss Effingham, the people _will_ rule; and it is useless to
+pretend to tell them that they shall not have the highest seats in
+the church as well as in the state. Really, I can see no ground why a
+parson should be raised above his parishioners. The new-order
+churches consult the public convenience, and place every body on a
+level, as it might be. Now, in old times, a family was buried in its
+pew; it could neither see nor be seen; and I can remember the time
+when I could just get a look of our clergyman's wig, for he was an
+old-school man; and as for his fellow-creatures, one might as well be
+praying in his own closet. I must say I am a supporter of liberty, if
+it be only in pews."
+
+"I am sorry, Mr. Dodge," answered Eve, mildly, "you did not extend
+your travels into the countries of the Mussulmans, where most
+Christian sects might get some useful notions concerning the part of
+worship, at least, that is connected with appearances. There you
+would have seen no seats, but sinners bowing down in a mass, on the
+cold stones, and all thoughts of cushioned pews and drawing-room
+conveniences unknown. We Protestants have improved on our Catholic
+forefathers in this respect; and the innovation of which you now
+speak, in my eyes is an irreverent, almost a sinful, invasion of the
+proprieties of the temple."
+
+"Ah, Miss Eve, this comes from substituting forms for the substance
+of things," exclaimed the editor. "For my part, I can say, I was
+truly shocked with the extravagancies I witnessed, in the way of
+worship, in most of the countries I visited. Would you think it, Mr.
+Bragg, rational beings, real _bona fide_ living men and women,
+kneeling on the stone pavement, like so many camels in the Desert,"
+Mr. Dodge loved to draw his images from the different parts of the
+world he had seen, "ready to receive the burthens of their masters;
+not a pew, not a cushion, not a single comfort that is suitable to a
+free and intelligent being, but every thing conducted in the most
+abject manner, as if accountable human souls were no better than so
+many mutes in a Turkish palace."
+
+"You ought to mention this in the Active Inquirer," said Aristabulus.
+
+"All in good time, sir; I have many things in reserve, among which I
+propose to give a few remarks, I dare say they will be very worthless
+ones, on the impropriety of a rational being's ever kneeling. To my
+notion, gentlemen and ladies, God never intended an American to
+kneel."
+
+The respectable mechanics who stood around the table did not
+absolutely assent to this proposition, for one of them actually
+remarked that "he saw no great harm in a man's kneeling to the
+Deity;" but they evidently inclined to the opinion that the new-
+school of pews was far better than the old.
+
+"It always appears to me, Miss Effingham," said one, "that I hear and
+understand the sermon better in one of the low pews, than in one of
+the old high-backed things, that look so much like pounds."
+
+"But can you withdraw into yourself better, sir? Can you more truly
+devote all your thoughts, with a suitable singleness of heart, to the
+worship of God?"
+
+"You mean in the prayers, now, I rather conclude?"
+
+"Certainly, sir, I mean in the prayers and the thanksgivings."
+
+"Why, we leave them pretty much to the parson; though I will own it
+is not quite as easy leaning on the edge of one of the new-school
+pews as on one of the old. They are better for sitting, but not so
+good for standing. But then the sitting posture at prayers is quite
+coming into favour among our people, Miss Effingham, as well as among
+yours. The sermon is the main chance, after all."
+
+"Yes," observed Mr. Gouge, "give me good, strong preaching, any day,
+in preference to good praying. A man may get along with second-rate
+prayers, but he stands in need of first-rate preaching."
+
+"These gentlemen consider religion a little like a cordial on a cold
+day," observed John Effingham, "which is to be taken in sufficient
+doses to make the blood circulate. They are not the men to be
+_pounded_ in pews, like lost sheep, not they?"
+
+"Mr. John will always have his say;" one remarked: and then Mr.
+Effingham dismissed the party, by telling them he would think of the
+matter.
+
+When the mechanics were gone, the subject was discussed at some
+length between those that remained--all the Effinghams agreeing that
+they would oppose the innovation, as irreverent in appearance,
+unsuited to the retirement and self-abasement that best comported
+with prayer, and opposed to the delicacy of their own habits; while
+Messrs. Bragg and Dodge contended to the last that such changes were
+loudly called for by the popular sentiment--- that it was unsuited to
+the dignity of a man to be 'pounded,' even in a church--and
+virtually, that a good, 'stirring' sermon, as they called it, was of
+far more account, in public worship, than all the prayers and praises
+that could issue from the heart or throat.
+
+Chapter XIV.
+
+  "We'll follow Cade--we'll follow Cade."
+
+  MOB.
+
+"The views of this Mr. Bragg, and of our old fellow-traveller, Mr.
+Dodge, appear to be peculiar on the subject of religious forms,"
+observed Sir George Templemore, as he descended the little lawn
+before the Wigwam, in company with the three ladies, Paul Powis, and
+John Effingham, on their way to the lake. "I should think it would be
+difficult to find another Christian, who objects to kneeling at
+prayer."
+
+"Therein you are mistaken, Templemore," answered Paul; "for this
+country, to say nothing of one sect which holds it in utter
+abomination, is filled with them. Our pious ancestors, like
+neophytes, ran into extremes, on the subject of forms, as well as in
+other matters. When you go to Philadelphia, Miss Effingham, you will
+see an instance of a most ludicrous nature--ludicrous, if there were
+not something painfully revolting mingled with it--of the manner in
+which men can strain at a gnat and swallow a camel; and which, I am
+sorry to say, is immediately connected with our own church."
+
+It was music to Eve's ears, to hear Paul Powis speak of his pious
+ancestors, as being American, and to find him so thoroughly
+identifying himself with her own native land; for, while condemning
+so many of its practices, and so much alive to its absurdities and
+contradictions, our heroine had seen too much of other countries, not
+to take an honest pride in the real excellencies of her own. There
+was, also, a soothing pleasure in hearing him openly own that he
+belonged to the same church as herself.
+
+"And what is there ridiculous in Philadelphia, in particular, and in
+connection with our own church?" she asked. "I am not so easily
+disposed to find fault where the venerable church is concerned."
+
+"You know that the Protestants, in their horror of idolatry,
+discontinued, in a great degree, the use of the cross, as an outward
+religious symbol; and that there was probably a time when there was
+not a single cross to be seen in the whole of a country that was
+settled by those who made a profession of love for Christ, and a
+dependence on his expiation, the great business of their lives?"
+
+"Certainly. We all know our predecessors were a little over-rigid and
+scrupulous on all the points connected with outward appearances."
+
+"They certainly contrived to render the religious rites as little
+pleasing to the senses as possible, by aiming at a sublimation that
+peculiarly favours spiritual pride and a pious conceit. I do not know
+whether travelling has had the same effect on you, as it has produced
+on me; but I find all my inherited antipathies to the mere visible
+representation of the cross, superseded by a sort of solemn affection
+for it, as a symbol, when it is plain, and unaccompanied by any of
+those bloody and minute accessories that are so often seen around it
+in Catholic countries. The German Protestants, who usually ornament
+the altar with a cross, first cured me of the disrelish I imbibed, on
+this subject, in childhood."
+
+"We, also, I think, cousin John, were agreeably struck with the same
+usage in Germany. From feeling a species of nervousness at the sight
+of a cross, I came to love to see it; and I think you must have
+undergone a similar change; for I have discovered no less than three
+among the ornaments of the great window of the entrance tower, at the
+Wigwam."
+
+"You might have discovered one, also, in every door of the building,
+whether great or small, young lady. Our pious ancestors, as Powis
+calls them, much of whose piety, by the way, was any thing but
+meliorated with spiritual humility or Christian charity, were such
+ignoramuses as to set up crosses in every door they built, even while
+they veiled their eyes in holy horror whenever the sacred symbol was
+seen in a church."
+
+"Every door!" exclaimed the Protestants of the party.
+
+"Yes, literally every door, I might almost say certainly every
+panelled door that was constructed twenty years since. I first
+discovered the secret of our blunder, when visiting a castle in
+France, that dated back from the time of the crusade. It was a
+_chateau_ of the Montmorencies, that had passed into the hands of the
+Conde family by marriage; and the courtly old domestic, who showed me
+the curiosities, pointed out to me the stone _croix_ in the windows,
+which has caused the latter to be called _croisees_, as a pious usage
+of the crusaders. Turning to a door, I saw the same crosses in the
+wooden stiles; and if you cast an eye on the first humble door that
+you may pass in this village, you will detect the same symbol staring
+you boldly in the face, in the very heart of a population that would
+almost expire at the thoughts of placing such a sign of the beast on
+their very thresholds."
+
+The whole party expressed their surprise; but the first door they
+passed corroborated this account, and proved the accuracy of John
+Effingham's statements. Catholic zeal and ingenuity could not have
+wrought more accurate symbols of this peculiar sign of the sect; and
+yet, here they stood, staring every passenger in the face, as if
+mocking the ignorant and exaggerated pretension which would lay undue
+stress on the minor points of a religion, the essence of which was
+faith and humility.
+
+"And the Philadelphia church?" said Eve, quickly, so soon as her
+curiosity was satisfied on the subject of the door; "I am now more
+impatient than ever, to learn what silly blunder we have also
+committed there."
+
+"Impious would almost be a better term," Paul answered. "The only
+church spire that existed for half a century, in that town, was
+surmounted by a _mitre_, while the _cross_ was studiously rejected!"
+
+A silence followed; for there is often more true argument in simply
+presenting the facts of a case, than in all the rhetoric and logic
+that could be urged, by way of auxiliaries. Every one saw the
+egregious folly, not to say presumption, of the mistake; and at the
+moment, every one wondered how a common-sense community could have
+committed so indecent a blunder. We are mistaken. There was an
+exception to the general feeling in the person of Sir George
+Templemore. To his church-and-state notions, and anti-catholic
+prejudices, which were quite as much political as religious, there
+was every thing that was proper, and nothing that was wrong, in
+rejecting a cross for a mitre.
+
+"The church, no doubt, was Episcopal, Powis," he remarked, "and it
+was not Roman. What better symbol than the mitre could be chosen?"
+
+"Now I reflect, it is not so very strange," said Grace, eagerly, "for
+you will remember, Mr. Effingham, that Protestants attach the idea of
+idolatry to the cross, as it is used by Catholics."
+
+"And of bishops, peers in parliament, church and state, to a mitre."
+
+"Yes, but the church in question I have seen; and it was erected
+before the war of the revolution. It was an English rather than an
+American church."
+
+"It was, indeed, an English church, rather than an American; and
+Templemore is very right to defend it, mitre and all."
+
+"I dare say, a bishop officiated at its altar?"
+
+"I dare say--nay, I know, he did; and, I will add, he would rather
+that the mitre were two hundred feet in the air, than down on his own
+simple, white-haired, apostolical-looking head. But enough of
+divinity for the morning; yonder is Tom with the boat, let us to our
+oars."
+
+The party were now on the little wharf that served as a village-
+landing, and the boatman mentioned lay off, in waiting for the
+arrival of his fare. Instead of using him, however, the man was
+dismissed; the gentlemen preferring to handle the oars themselves.
+Aquatic excursions were of constant occurrence in the warm months, on
+that beautifully limpid sheet of water, and it was the practice to
+dispense with the regular boatmen, whenever good oarsmen were to be
+found among the company.
+
+As soon as the light buoyant skiff was brought to the side of the
+wharf, the whole party embarked; and Paul and the baronet taking the
+oars, they soon urged the boat from the shore.
+
+"The world is getting to be too confined for the adventurous spirit
+of the age," said Sir George, as he and his companion pulled
+leisurely along, taking the direction of the eastern shore, beneath
+the forest-clad cliffs of which the ladies had expressed a wish to be
+rowed; "here are Powis and myself actually rowing together on a
+mountain lake of America, after having boated as companions on the
+coast of Africa, and on the margin of the Great Desert. Polynesia,
+and Terra Australis, may yet see us in company, as hardy cruisers."
+
+"The spirit of the age is, indeed, working wonders in the way you
+mean," said John Effingham. "Countries of which our fathers merely
+read, are getting to be as familiar as our own homes to their sons;
+and, with you, one can hardly foresee to what a pass of adventure the
+generation or two that will follow us may not reach."
+
+"_Vraiment, c'est fort extraordinaire de se trouver sur un lac
+Americain_," exclaimed Mademoiselle Viefville.
+
+"More extraordinary than to find one's self on a Swiss lake, think
+you, my dear Mademoiselle Viefville?"
+
+"_Non, non, mais tout aussi extraordinaire pour une Parisienne._"
+
+"I am now about to introduce you, Mr. John Effingham and Miss Van
+Cortlandt excepted," Eve continued, "to the wonders and curiosities
+of this lake and region. There, near the small house that is erected
+over a spring of delicious water, stood the hut of Natty Bumppo, once
+known throughout all these mountains as a renowned hunter; a man who
+had the simplicity of a woodsman, the heroism of a savage, the faith
+of a Christian, and the feelings of a poet. A better than he, after
+his fashion, seldom lived."
+
+"We have all heard of him," said the baronet, looking round
+curiously; "and must all feel an interest in what concerns so brave
+and just a man. I would I could see his counterpart."
+
+"Alas!" said John Effingham, "the days of the 'Leather-stockings'
+have passed away. He preceded me in life, and I see few remains of
+his character in a region where speculation is more rife than
+moralizing, and emigrants are plentier than hunters. Natty probably
+chose that spot for his hut on account of the vicinity of the spring:
+is it not so. Miss Effingham?"
+
+"He did; and yonder little fountain that you see gushing from the
+thicket, and which comes glancing like diamonds into the lake, is
+called the 'Fairy Spring,' by some flight of poetry that, like so
+many of our feelings, must have been imported; for I see no
+connection between the name and the character of the country, fairies
+having never been known, even by tradition, in Otsego."
+
+The boat now came under a shore where the trees fringed the very
+water, frequently overhanging the element that mirrored their
+fantastic forms. At this point, a light skiff was moving leisurely
+along in their own direction, but a short distance in advance. On a
+hint from John Effingham, a few vigorous strokes of the oars brought
+the two boats near each other.
+
+"This is the flag-ship," half whispered John Effingham, as they came
+near the other skiff, "containing no less a man than the 'commodore.'
+Formerly, the chief of the lake was an admiral, but that was in times
+when, living nearer to the monarchy, we retained some of the European
+terms; now, no man rises higher than a commodore in America, whether
+it be on the ocean or on the Otsego, whatever may be his merits or
+his services. A charming day, commodore; I rejoice to see you still
+afloat, in your glory."
+
+The commodore, a tail, thin, athletic man of seventy, with a white
+head, and movements that were quick as those of a boy, had not
+glanced aside at the approaching boat, until he was thus saluted in
+the well-known voice of John Effingham. He then turned his head,
+however, and scanning the whole party through his spectacles, he
+smiled good-naturedly made a flourish with one hand, while he
+continued paddling with the other, for he stood erect and straight in
+the stern of his skiff, and answered heartily--
+
+"A fine morning, Mr. John, and the right time of the moon for
+boating. This is not a real scientific day for the fish, perhaps; but
+I have just come out to see that all the points and bays are in their
+right places."
+
+"How is it, commodore, that the water near the village is less limpid
+than common, and that even up here, we see so many specks floating on
+its surface?"
+
+"What a question for Mr. John Effingham to ask on his native water!
+So much for travelling in far countries, where a man forgets quite as
+much as he learns, I fear." Here the commodore turned entirely round,
+and raising an open hand in an oratorical manner, he added,--"You
+must know, ladies and gentlemen, that the lake is in blow."
+
+"In blow, commodore! I did not know that the lake bore its blossoms."
+
+"It does, sir, nevertheless. Ay, Mr. John, and its fruits, too; but
+the last must be dug for, like potatoes. There have been no
+miraculous draughts of the fishes, of late years, in the Otsego,
+ladies and gentlemen; but it needs the scientific touch, and the
+knowledge of baits, to get a fin of any of your true game above the
+water, now-a-days. Well, I have had the head of the sogdollager
+thrice in the open air, in my time; though I am told the admiral
+actually got hold of him once with his hand."
+
+"The sogdollager," said Eve, much amused with the singularities of
+the man, whom she perfectly remembered to have been commander of the
+lake, even in her own infancy; "we must be indebted to you for an
+explanation of that term, as well as for the meaning of your allusion
+to the head and the open air."
+
+"A sogdollager, young lady, is the perfection of a thing. I know Mr.
+Grant used to say there was no such word in the dictionary; but then
+there are many words that ought to be in the dictionaries that have
+been forgotten by the printers. In the way of salmon trout, the
+sogdollager is their commodore. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I should
+not like to tell you all I know about the patriarch of this lake, for
+you would scarcely believe me; but if he would not weigh a hundred
+when cleaned, there is not an ox in the county that will weigh a
+pound when slaughtered."
+
+"You say you had his head above water?" said John Effingham.
+
+"Thrice, Mr. John. The first time was thirty years ago; and I confess
+I lost him, on that occasion, by want of science; for the art is not
+learned in a day, and I had then followed the business but ten years.
+The second time was five years later: and I had then been fishing
+expressly for the old gentleman, about a month. For near a minute, it
+was a matter of dispute between us, whether he should come out of the
+lake or I go into it; but I actually got his gills in plain sight.
+That was a glorious haul! Washington did not feel better the night
+Cornwallis surrendered, than I felt on that great occasion!"
+
+"One never knows the feelings of another, it seems. I should have
+thought disappointment at the loss would have been the prevailing
+sentiment on that great occasion, as you so justly term it."
+
+"So it would have been, Mr. John, with an unscientific fisherman; but
+we experienced hands know better. Glory is to be measured by quality,
+and not by quantity, ladies and gentlemen; and I look on it as a
+greater feather in a man's cap, to see the sogdollager's head above
+water, for half a minute, than to bring home a skiff filled with
+pickerel. The last time I got a look at the old gentleman, I did not
+try to get him into the boat, but we sat and conversed for near two
+minutes; he in the water, and I in the skiff."
+
+"Conversed!" exclaimed Eve, "and with a fish, too! What could the
+animal have to say!"
+
+"Why, young lady, a fish can talk as well as one of ourselves; the
+only difficulty is to understand what he says. I have heard the old
+settlers affirm, that the Leather-stocking used to talk for hours at
+a time, with the animals of the forest."
+
+"You knew the Leather-stocking, commodore?"
+
+"No, young lady, I am sorry to say I never had the pleasure of
+looking on him even. He _was_ a great man! They may talk of their
+Jeffersons and Jacksons, but I set down Washington and Natty Bumppo
+as the two only really great men of my time."
+
+"What do you think of Bonaparte, commodore?" inquired Paul.
+
+"Well, sir, Bonaparte had some strong points about him, I do really
+believe. But he could have been nothing to the Leather-stocking, in
+the woods! It's no great matter, young gentleman, to be a great man
+among your inhabitants of cities--what I call umbrella people. Why,
+Natty was almost as great with the spear as with the rifle; though I
+never heard that he got a sight of the sogdollager."
+
+"We shall meet again this summer, commodore," said John Effingham;
+"the ladies wish to hear the echoes, and we must leave you."
+
+"All very natural, Mr. John," returned the commodore, laughing, and
+again flourishing his hand in his own peculiar manner. "The women all
+love to hear the echoes, for they are not satisfied with what they
+have once said, but they like to hear it over again. I never knew a
+lady come on the Otsego, but one of the first things she did was to
+get paddled to the Speaking Rocks, to have a chat with herself. They
+come out in such numbers, sometimes, and then all talk at once, in a
+way quite to confuse the echo. I suppose you have heard, young lady,
+the opinion people have now got concerning these voices."
+
+"I cannot say I have ever heard more than that they are some of the
+most perfect echoes known;" answered Eve, turning her body, so as to
+face the old man, as the skiff of the party passed that of the
+veteran fisherman.
+
+"Some people maintain that there is no echo at all, and that the
+sounds we hear come from the spirit of the Leather-stocking, which
+keeps about its old haunts, and repeats every thing we say, in
+mockery of our invasion of the woods. I do not say this notion is
+true, or that it is my own; but we all know that Natty _did_ dislike
+to see a new settler arrive in the mountains, and that he loved a
+tree as a muskrat loves water. They show a pine up here on the side
+of the Vision, which he notched at every new-comer, until reaching
+seventeen, his honest old heart could go no farther, and he gave the
+matter up in despair."
+
+"This is so poetical, commodore, it is a pity it cannot be true. I
+like this explanation of the 'Speaking Rocks,' much better than that
+implied by the name of 'Fairy Spring.'"
+
+"You are quite right, young lady," called out the fisherman, as the
+boats separated still farther; "there never was any fairy known in
+Otsego; but the time has been when we could boast of a Natty Bumppo."
+
+Here the commodore flourished his hand again, and Eve nodded her
+adieus. The skiff of the party continued to pull slowly along the
+fringed shore, occasionally sheering more into the lake, to avoid
+some overhanging and nearly horizontal tree, and then returning so
+closely to the land, as barely to clear the pebbles of the narrow
+strand with the oar.
+
+Eve thought she had never beheld a more wild or beautifully
+variegated foliage, than that which the whole leafy mountainside
+presented. More than half of the forest of tall, solemn pines, that
+had veiled the earth when the country was first settled, had already
+disappeared; but, agreeably to one of the mysterious laws by which
+nature is governed, a rich second growth, that included nearly every
+variety of American wood, had shot up in their places. The rich
+Rembrandt-like hemlocks, in particular, were perfectly beautiful,
+contrasting admirably with the livelier tints of the various
+deciduous trees. Here and there, some flowering shrub rendered the
+picture gay, while masses of the rich chestnut, in blossom, lay in
+clouds of natural glory among the dark tops of the pines.
+
+The gentlemen pulled the light skiff fully a mile under this
+overhanging foliage, occasionally frightening some migratory bird
+from a branch, or a water-fowl from the narrow strand. At length,
+John Effingham desired them to cease rowing, and managing the skiff
+for a minute or two with the paddle which he had used in steering, he
+desired the whole party to look up, announcing to them that they were
+beneath the 'Silent Pine.'
+
+A common exclamation of pleasure succeeded the upward glance; for it
+is seldom that a tree is seen to more advantage than that which
+immediately attracted every eye. The pine stood on the bank, with its
+roots embedded in the earth, a few feet higher than the level of the
+lake, but in such a situation as to bring the distance above the
+water into the apparent height of the tree. Like all of its kind that
+grows in the dense forests of America, its increase, for a thousand
+years, had been upward; and it now stood in solitary glory, a
+memorial of what the mountains which were yet so rich in vegetation
+had really been in their days of nature and pride. For near a hundred
+feet above the eye, the even round trunk was branchless, and then
+commenced the dark-green masses of foliage, which clung around the
+stem like smoke ascending in wreaths. The tall column-like tree had
+inclined to wards the light when struggling among its fellows, and it
+now so far overhung the lake, that its summit may have been some ten
+or fifteen feet without the base. A gentle, graceful curve added to
+the effect of this variation from the perpendicular, and infused
+enough of the fearful into the grand, to render the picture sublime.
+Although there was not a breath of wind on the lake, the currents
+were strong enough above the forest to move this lofty object, and it
+was just possible to detect a slight, graceful yielding of the very
+uppermost boughs to the passing air.
+
+"This pine is ill-named," cried Sir George Templemore, "for it is the
+most eloquent tree eye of mine has ever looked on!"
+
+"It is, indeed, eloquent," answered Eve; "one hears it speak even now
+of the fierce storms that have whistled round its tops--of the
+seasons that have passed since it extricated that verdant cap from
+the throng of sisters that grew beneath it, and of all that has
+passed on the Otsego, when this limpid lake lay, like a gem embedded
+in the forest. When the Conqueror first landed in England, this tree
+stood on the spot where it now stands! Here, then, is at last, an
+American antiquity!"
+
+"A true and regulated taste, Miss Effingham," said Paul, "has pointed
+out to you one of the real charms of the country. Were we to think
+less of the artificial, and more of our natural excellencies, we
+should render ourselves less liable to criticism."
+
+Eve was never inattentive when Paul spoke; and her colour heightened,
+as he paid this compliment to her taste, but still her soft blue eye
+was riveted on the pine.
+
+"Silent it may be, in one respect, but it is, indeed, all eloquence
+in another," she resumed, with a fervour that was not lessened by
+Paul's remark. "That crest of verdure, which resembles a plume of
+feathers, speaks of a thousand things to the imagination."
+
+"I have never known a person of any poetry, who came under this
+tree," said John Effingham, "that did not fall into this very train
+of thought. I once brought a man celebrated for his genius here, and,
+after gazing for a minute or two at the high, green tuft that tops
+the tree, he exclaimed, 'that mass of green waved there in the fierce
+light when Columbus first ventured into the unknown sea.' It is,
+indeed, eloquent; for it tells the same glowing tale to all who
+approach it--a tale fraught with feeling and recollections."
+
+"And yet its silence is, after all, its eloquence," added Paul; "and
+the name is not so misplaced as one might at first think."
+
+"It probably obtained its name from some fancied contrast to the
+garrulous rocks that lie up yonder, half concealed by the forest. If
+you will ply the oars, gentlemen, we will now hold a little communion
+with the spirit of the Leather-stocking."
+
+The young men complied; and in about five minutes, the skiff was off
+in the lake, at the distance of fifty rods from the shore, where the
+whole mountainside came at one glance into the view. Here they lay on
+their oars, and John Effingham called out to the rocks a "good
+morning," in a clear distinct voice. The mocking sounds were thrown
+back again, with a closeness of resemblance that actually startled
+the novice. Then followed other calls and other repetitions of the
+echoes, which did not lose the minutest intonation of the voice.
+
+"This actually surpasses the celebrated echoes of the Rhine," cried
+the delighted Eve; "for, though those do give the strains of the
+bugle so clearly, I do not think they answer to the voice with so
+much fidelity."
+
+"You are very right, Eve," replied her kinsman, "for I can recall no
+place where so perfect and accurate an echo is to be heard as at
+these speaking rocks. By increasing our distance to half a mile, and
+using a bugle, as I well know, from actual experiment, we should get
+back entire passages of an air. The interval between the sound and
+the echo, too, would be distinct, and would give time for an
+undivided attention. Whatever may be said of the 'pine,' these rocks
+are most aptly named; and if the spirit of Leather-stocking has any
+concern with the matter, he is a mocking spirit."
+
+John Effingham now looked at his watch, and then he explained to the
+party a pleasure he had in store for them. On a sort of small, public
+promenade, that lay at the point where the river flowed out of the
+lake, stood a rude shell of a building that was called the "gun-
+house." Here, a speaking picture of the entire security of the
+country, from foes within as well as from foes without, were kept two
+or three pieces of field artillery, with doors so open that any one
+might enter the building, and even use the guns at will, although
+they properly belonged to the organized corps of the state.
+
+One of these guns had been sent a short distance down the valley; and
+John Effingham informed his companions that they might look
+momentarily for its reports to arouse the echoes of the mountains. He
+was still speaking when the gun was fired, its muzzle being turned
+eastward. The sound first reached the side of the Vision, abreast of
+the village, whence the reverberations reissued, and rolled along the
+range, from cave to cave, and cliff to cliff, and wood to wood, until
+they were lost, like distant thunder, two or three leagues to the
+northward. The experiment was thrice repeated, and always with the
+same magnificent effect, the western hills actually echoing the
+echoes of the eastern mountains, like the dying strains of some
+falling music.
+
+"Such a locality would be a treasure in the vicinity of a melo-
+dramatic theatre," said Paul, laughing, "for certainly, no artificial
+thunder I have ever heard has equalled this. This sheet of water
+might even receive a gondola."
+
+"And yet, I fear one accustomed to the boundless horizon of the
+ocean, might in time weary of it," answered John Effingham,
+significantly.
+
+Paul made no answer; and the party rowed away in silence.
+
+"Yonder is the spot where we have so long been accustomed to resort
+for Pic-Nics," said Eve, pointing out a lovely place, that was
+beautifully shaded by old oaks, and on which stood a rude house that
+was much dilapidated, and indeed injured, by the hands of man. John
+Effingham smiled, as his cousin showed the place to her companions,
+promising them an early and a nearer view of its beauties.
+
+"By the way, Miss Effingham," he said, "I suppose you flatter
+yourself with being the heiress of that desirable retreat?"
+
+"It is very natural that, at some day, though I trust a very distant
+one, I should succeed to that which belongs to my dear father."
+
+"Both natural and legal, my fair cousin; but you are yet to learn
+that there is a power that threatens to rise up and dispute your
+claim."
+
+"What power--human power, at least--can dispute the lawful claim of
+an owner to his property? That Point has been ours ever since
+civilized man has dwelt among these hills; who will presume to rob us
+of it?"
+
+"You will be much surprised to discover that there is such a power,
+and that there is actually a disposition to exercise it. The public--
+the all-powerful omnipotent, overruling, law-making, law-breaking
+public--has a passing caprice to possess itself of your beloved
+Point; and Ned Effingham must show unusual energy, or it will get
+it?"
+
+"Are you serious, cousin Jack?"
+
+"As serious as the magnitude of the subject can render a responsible
+being, as Mr. Dodge would say."
+
+Eve said no more, but she looked vexed, and remained almost silent
+until they landed, when she hastened to seek her father, with a view
+to communicate what she had heard. Mr. Effingham listened to his
+daughter, as he always did, with tender interest; and when she had
+done, he kissed her glowing cheek, bidding her not to believe that
+which she seemed so seriously to dread, possible.
+
+"But, cousin John would not trifle with me on such a subject,
+father," Eve continued; "he knows how much I prize all those little
+heir-looms that are connected with the affections."
+
+"We can inquire further into the affair, my child, if it be your
+desire; ring for Pierre, if you please."
+
+Pierre answered, and a message was sent to Mr. Bragg, requiring his
+presence in the library.
+
+Aristabulus appeared, by no means in the best humour, for he disliked
+having been omitted in the late excursion on the lake, fancying that
+he had a community-right to share in all his neighbour's amusements,
+though he had sufficient self-command to conceal his feelings.
+
+"I wish to know, sir," Mr. Effingham commenced, without introduction,
+"whether there can be any mistake concerning the ownership of the
+Fishing Point on the west side of the lake."
+
+"Certainly not, sir; it belongs to the public."
+
+Mr. Effingham's cheek glowed, and he looked astonished: but he
+remained calm.
+
+"The public! Do you gravely affirm, Mr. Bragg, that the public
+pretends to claim that Point?"
+
+"Claim, Mr. Effingham! as long as I have resided in this county, I
+have never heard its right disputed."
+
+"Your residence in this county, sir, is not of very ancient date, and
+nothing is easier than that _you_ may be mistaken. I confess some
+curiosity to know in what manner the public has acquired its title to
+the spot. You are a lawyer, Mr. Bragg, and may give an intelligible
+account of it."
+
+"Why, sir, your father gave it to them in his lifetime. Every body,
+in all this region, will tell you as much as this."
+
+"Do you suppose, Mr. Bragg, there is any body in all this region who
+will swear to the fact? Proof, you well know, is very requisite even
+to obtain justice."
+
+"I much question, sir, if there be any body in all this region that
+will not swear to the fact. It is the common tradition of the whole
+country; and, to be frank with you, sir, there is a little
+displeasure, because Mr. John Effingham has talked of giving private
+entertainments on the Point."
+
+"This, then, only shows how idly and inconsiderately the traditions
+of the country take their rise. But, as I wish to understand all the
+points of the case, do me the favour to walk into the village, and
+inquire of those whom you think the best informed in the matter, what
+they know of the Point, in order that I may regulate my course
+accordingly. Be particular, if you please, on the subject of title,
+as one would not wish to move in the dark."
+
+Aristabulus quitted the house immediately, and Eve, perceiving that
+things were in the right train, left her father alone to meditate on
+what had just passed. Mr. Effingham walked up and down his library
+for some time, much disturbed, for the spot in question was
+identified with all his early feelings and recollections; and if
+there were a foot of land on earth, to which he was more attached
+than to all others, next to his immediate residence, it was this.
+Still, he could not conceal from himself, in despite of his
+opposition to John Effingham's sarcasms, that his native country had
+undergone many changes since he last resided in it, and that some of
+these changes were quite sensibly for the worse. The spirit of
+misrule was abroad, and the lawless and unprincipled held bold
+language, when it suited their purpose to intimidate. As he ran over
+in his mind, however, the facts of the case, and the nature of his
+right, he smiled to think that any one should contest it, and sat
+down to his writing, almost forgetting that there had been any
+question at all on the unpleasant subject.
+
+Aristabulus was absent for several hours, nor did he return until Mr.
+Effingham was dressed for dinner, and alone in the library, again,
+having absolutely lost all recollection of the commission he had
+given his agent.
+
+"It is as I told you, sir--the public insists that it owns the Point;
+and I feel it my duty to say, Mr. Effingham, that the public is
+determined to maintain its claim."
+
+"Then, Mr. Bragg, it is proper I should tell the public that it is
+_not_ the owner of the Point, but that _I_ am its owner, and that I
+am determined to maintain _my_ claim."
+
+"It is hard to kick against the pricks, Mr. Effingham."
+
+"It is so, sir, as the public will discover, if it persevere in
+invading a private right."
+
+"Why, sir, some of those with whom I have conversed have gone so far
+as to desire me to tell you--I trust my motive will not be
+mistaken----"
+
+"If you have any communication to make, Mr. Bragg, do it without
+reserve. It is proper I should know the truth exactly."
+
+"Well, then, sir, I am the bearer of something like a defiance; the
+people wish you to know that they hold your right cheaply, and that
+they laugh at it. Not to mince matters, they defy you."
+
+"I thank you for this frankness, Mr. Bragg, and increases my respect
+for your character. Affairs are now at such a pass, that it is
+necessary to act. If you will amuse yourself with a book for a
+moment, I shall have further occasion for your kindness."
+
+Aristabulus did not read, for he was too much filled with wonder at
+seeing a man so coolly set about contending with that awful public
+which he himself as habitually deferred to, as any Asiatic slave
+defers to his monarch. Indeed, nothing but his being sustained by
+that omnipotent power, as he viewed the power of the public to be,
+had emboldened him to speak so openly to his employer, for
+Aristabulus felt a secret confidence that, right or wrong, it was
+always safe in America to make the most fearless professions in
+favour of the great body of the community. In the mean time, Mr.
+Effingham wrote a simple advertisement, against trespassing on the
+property in question, and handed it to the other, with a request that
+he would have it inserted in the number of the village paper that was
+to appear next morning. Mr. Bragg took the advertisement, and went to
+execute the duty without comment.
+
+The evening arrived before Mr. Effingham was again alone, when, being
+by himself in the library once more, Mr. Bragg entered, full of his
+subject. He was followed by John Effingham, who had gained an inkling
+of what had passed.
+
+"I regret to say, Mr. Effingham," Aristabulus commenced, "that your
+advertisement has created one of the greatest excitements it has ever
+been my ill-fortune to witness in Templeton."
+
+"All of which ought to be very encouraging to us, Mr.. Bragg, as men
+under excitement are usually wrong."
+
+"Very true, sir, as regards individual excitement, but this is a
+public excitement."
+
+"I am not at all aware that the fact, in the least alters the case.
+If one excited man is apt to do silly things, half a dozen backers
+will be very likely to increase his folly."
+
+Aristabulus listened with wonder, for excitement was one of the means
+for effecting public objects, so much practised by men of his habits,
+that it had never crossed his mind any single individual could be
+indifferent to its effect. To own the truth, he had anticipated so
+much unpopularity, from his unavoidable connexion with the affair, as
+to have contributed himself in producing the excitement, with the
+hope of "choking Mr. Effingham off," as he had elegantly expressed it
+to one of his intimates, in the vernacular of the country.
+
+"A public excitement is a powerful engine, Mr. Effingham!" he
+exclaimed, in a sort of politico pious horror.
+
+"I am fully aware, sir, that it may be even a fearfully powerful
+engine. Excited men, acting in masses, compose what are called mobs,
+and have committed a thousand excesses."
+
+"Your advertisement is, to the last degree, disrelished; to be very
+sincere, it is awfully unpopular!"
+
+"I suppose it is always what you term an unpopular act, so far as the
+individuals opposed are concerned, to resist aggression."
+
+"But they call your advertisement aggression, sir."
+
+"In that simple fact exist all the merits of the question. If I own
+this property, the public, or that portion of it which is connected
+with this affair, are aggressors; and so much more in the wrong that
+they are many against one; if _they_ own the property, I am not only
+wrong, but very indiscreet."
+
+The calmness with which Mr. Effingham spoke had an effect on
+Aristabulus, and, for a moment, he was staggered. It was only for a
+moment, however, as the pains and penalties of unpopularity presented
+themselves afresh to an imagination that had been so long accustomed
+to study the popular caprice, that it had got to deem the public
+favour the one great good of life.
+
+"But _they_ say, _they_ own the Point, Mr. Effingham."
+
+"And _I_ say, they do _not_ own the Point, Mr. Bragg; never _did_ own
+it; and, with my consent, never _shall_ own it."
+
+"This is purely a matter of fact," observed John Effingham, "and I
+confess I am curious to know how or whence this potent public derives
+its title. You are lawyer enough, Mr. Bragg, to know that the public
+can hold property only by use, or by especial statute. Now, under
+which title does this claim present itself."
+
+"First, by use, sir, and then by especial gift."
+
+"The use, you are aware, must be adverse, or as opposed to the title
+of the other claimants. Now, I am a living witness that my late uncle
+_permitted_ the public to use this Point, and that the public
+accepted the conditions. Its use, therefore, has not been adverse,
+or, at least, not for a time sufficient to make title. Every hour
+that my cousin has _permitted_ the public to enjoy his property, adds
+to his right, as well as to the obligation conferred on that public,
+and increases the duty of the latter to cease intruding, whenever he
+desires it. If there is an especial gift, as I understand you to say,
+from my late uncle, there must also be a law to enable the public to
+hold, or a trustee; which is the fact?"
+
+"I admit, Mr. John Effingham, that I have seen neither deed nor law,
+and I doubt if the latter exist. Still the public _must_ have some
+claim, for it is impossible that every body should be mistaken."
+
+"Nothing is easier, nor any thing more common, than for whole
+communities to be mistaken, and more particularly when they commence
+with excitement."
+
+While his cousin was speaking, Mr. Effingham went to a secretary, and
+taking out a large bundle of papers, he laid it down on the table,
+unfolding several parchment deeds, to which massive seals, bearing
+the arms of the late colony, as well as those of England, were
+pendent.
+
+"Here are my titles, sir," he said, addressing Aristabulus pointedly;
+"if the public has a better, let it be produced, and I shall at once
+submit to its claim."
+
+"No one doubts that the King, through his authorized agent, the
+Governor of the colony of New-York, granted this estate to your
+predecessor, Mr. Effingham; or that it descended legally to your
+immediate parent; but all contend that your parent gave this spot to
+the public, as a spot of public resort."
+
+"I am glad that the question is narrowed down within limits that are
+so easily examined. What evidence is there of this intention, on the
+part of my late father?"
+
+"Common report; I have talked with twenty people in the village, and
+they all agree that the 'Point' has been used by the public, as
+public property, from time immemorial."
+
+"Will you be so good, Mr. Bragg, as to name some of those who affirm
+this."
+
+Mr. Bragg complied, naming quite the number of persons he had
+mentioned, with a readiness that proved he thought he was advancing
+testimony of weight.
+
+"Of all the names you have mentioned," returned Mr. Effingham, "I
+never heard but three, and these are the names of mere boys. The
+first dozen are certainly the names of persons who can know no more
+of this village than they have gleaned in the last few years; and
+several of them, I understand, have dwelt among us but a few weeks;
+nay, days."
+
+"Have I not told you, Ned," interrupted John Effingham, "that, an
+American 'always' means eighteen months, and that 'time immemorial'
+is only since the last general crisis in the money market!"
+
+"The persons I have mentioned compose a part of the population, sir,"
+added Mr. Bragg, "and, one and all, they are ready to swear that your
+father, by some means or other, they are not very particular as to
+minutiae, gave them the right to use this property."
+
+"They are mistaken, and I should be sorry that any one among them
+should swear to such a falsehood. But here are my titles--let them
+show better, or, if they can, any, indeed."
+
+"Perhaps your father abandoned the place to the public; this might
+make a good claim."
+
+"That he did not, I am a living proof to the contrary; he left it to
+his heirs at his death, and I myself exercised full right of
+ownership over it, until I went abroad. I did not travel with it in
+my pocket, sir, it is true; but I left it to the protection of the
+laws, which, I trust, are as available to the rich as to the poor,
+although this is a free country."
+
+"Well, sir, I suppose a jury must determine the point, as you seem
+firm; though I warn you, Mr. Effingham, as one who knows his country,
+that a verdict, in the face of a popular feeling, is rather a
+hopeless matter. If they prove that your late father intended to
+abandon or give this property to the public, your case will be lost."
+
+Mr. Effingham looked among the papers a moment, and selecting one, he
+handed it to Mr. Bragg, first pointing out to his notice a particular
+paragraph.
+
+"This, sir, is my late father's will," Mr. Effingham said mildly;
+"and, in that particular clause, you will find that he makes a
+special devise of this very 'Point,' leaving it to his heirs, in such
+terms as to put any intention to give it to the public quite out of
+the question. This, at least, is the latest evidence I, his only son,
+executor, and heir possess of his final wishes; if that wondering and
+time-immemorial public of which you speak, has a better, I wait with
+patience that it may be produced."
+
+The composed manner of Mr. Effingham had deceived Aristabulus, who
+did not anticipate any proof so completely annihilating to the
+pretensions of the public, as that he now held in his hand. It was a
+simple, brief devise, disposing of the piece of property in question,
+and left it without dispute, that Mr. Effingham had succeeded to all
+the rights of his father, with no reservation or condition of any
+sort.
+
+"This is very extraordinary!" exclaimed Mr. Bragg, when he had read
+the clause seven times, each perusal contributing to leave the case
+still clearer in favour of his employer, the individual, and still
+stronger against the hoped-for future employers, the people. "The
+public ought to know of this bequest of the late Mr. Effingham."
+
+"I think it ought, sir, before it pretended to deprive his child of
+his property; or, rather, it ought to be certain, at least, that
+there was no such devise."
+
+"You will excuse me, Mr. Effingham, but I think it is incumbent on a
+private citizen, in a case of this sort, when the public has taken up
+a wrong notion, as I now admit is clearly the fact as regards the
+Point, to enlighten it, and to inform it that it does not own the
+spot."
+
+"This has been done already, Mr. Bragg, in the advertisement you had
+the goodness to carry to the printers, although I deny that there
+exists any such obligation."
+
+"But, sir, they object to the mode you have chosen to set them
+right."
+
+"The mode is usual, I believe in the case of trespasses."
+
+"They expect something different, sir, in an affair in which the
+public is--is--is--all--"
+
+"Wrong," put in John Effingham, pointedly. "I have heard something of
+this out of doors, Ned, and blame you for your moderation. Is it true
+that you had told several of your neighbours that you have no wish to
+prevent them from using the Point, but that your sole object is
+merely to settle the question of right, and to prevent intrusions on
+your family when it is enjoying its own place of retirement?"
+
+"Certainly, John, my only wish is to preserve the property for those
+to whom it is especially devised, to allow those who have the best,
+nay, the only right to it, its undisturbed possession, occasionally,
+and to prevent any more of that injury to the trees that has been
+committed by some of those rude men, who always fancy themselves so
+completely all the public, as to be masters, in their own particular
+persons, whenever the public has any claim. I can have no wish to
+deprive my neighbours of the innocent pleasure of visiting the Point,
+though I am fully determined they shall not deprive me of my
+property."
+
+"You are far more indulgent than I should be, or perhaps, than you
+will be yourself, when you read this."
+
+As John Effingham spoke, he handed his kinsman a small handbill,
+which purported to call a meeting for that night, of the inhabitants
+of Templeton, to resist his arrogant claim to the disputed property.
+This handbill had the usual marks of a feeble and vulgar malignancy
+about it, affecting to call Mr. Effingham, "_one_ Mr. Effingham," and
+it was anonymous.
+
+"This is scarcely worth our attention, John," said Mr. Effingham,
+mildly. "Meetings of this sort cannot decide a legal title, and no
+man who respects himself will be the tool of so pitiful an attempt to
+frighten a citizen from maintaining his rights."
+
+"I agree with you, as respects the meeting, which has been conceived
+in ignorance and low malice, and will probably end, as all such
+efforts end, in ridicule. But----"
+
+"Excuse me, Mr. John," interrupted Aristabulus, "there is an awful
+excitement! Some have even spoken of Lynching!"
+
+"Then," said Mr. Effingham, "it does, indeed, require that we should
+be more firm. Do _you_, sir, know of any person who has dared to use
+such a menace?"
+
+Aristabulus quailed before the stern eye of Mr. Effingham, and he
+regretted having communicated so much, though he had communicated
+nothing but the truth. He stammered out an obscure and half-
+intelligible explanation, and proposed to attend the meeting in
+person, in order that he might be in the way of understanding the
+subject, without falling into the danger of mistake. To this Mr.
+Effingham assented, as he felt too indignant at this outrage on all
+his rights, whether as a citizen or a man, to wish to pursue the
+subject with his agent that night. Aristabulus departed, and John
+Effingham remained closeted with his kinsman until the family
+retired. During this long interview, the former communicated many
+things to the latter, in relation to this very affair, of which the
+owner of the property, until then, had been profoundly ignorant.
+
+Chapter XV.
+
+  "There shall be, in England, seven half-penny loaves sold for a
+  penny, the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops; and I will make
+  it felony to drink small beer: all the realm shall be in common,
+  and, in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to grass."--JACK CADE.
+
+Though the affair of the Point continued to agitate the village of
+Templeton next day, and for many days, it was little remembered in
+the Wigwam. Confident of his right, Mr. Effingham, though naturally
+indignant at the abuse of his long liberality, through which alone
+the public had been permitted to frequent the place, and this too,
+quite often, to his own discomfort and disappointment, had dismissed
+the subject temporarily from his mind, and was already engaged in his
+ordinary pursuits. Not so, however, with Mr. Bragg. Agreeably to
+promise, he had attended the meeting; and now he seemed to regulate
+all his movements by a sort of mysterious self-importance, as if the
+repository of some secret of unusual consequence. No one regarded his
+manner, however; for Aristabulus, and his secrets, and opinions, were
+all of too little value, in the eyes of most of the party, to attract
+peculiar attention. He found a sympathetic listener in Mr. Dodge,
+happily; that person having been invited, through the courtesy of Mr.
+Effingham, to pass the day with those in whose company, though very
+unwillingly on the editor's part certainly, he had gone through so
+many dangerous trials. These two then, soon became intimate, and to
+have seen their shrugs, significant whisperings, and frequent
+conferences in corners, one who did not know them, might have fancied
+their shoulders burthened with the weight of the state.
+
+But all this pantomime, which was intended to awaken curiosity, was
+lost on the company in general. The ladies, attended by Paul and the
+Baronet, proceeded into the forest on foot, for a morning's walk,
+while the two Messrs. Effinghams continued to read the daily
+journals, that were received from town each morning, with a most
+provoking indifference. Neither Aristabulus, nor Mr. Dodge, could
+resist any longer; and, after exhausting their ingenuity, in the vain
+effort to induce one of the two gentlemen to question them in
+relation to the meeting of the previous night, the desire to be doing
+fairly overcame their affected mysteriousness, and a formal request
+was made to Mr. Effingham to give them an audience in the library. As
+the latter, who suspected the nature of the interview, requested his
+kinsman to make one in it, the four were soon alone, in the apartment
+so often named.
+
+Even now, that his own request for the interview was granted,
+Aristabulus hesitated about proceeding until a mild intimation from
+Mr. Effingham that he was ready to hear his communication, told the
+agent that it was too late to change his determination.
+
+"I attended the meeting last night, Mr. Effingham," Aristabulus
+commenced, "agreeably to our arrangement, and I feel the utmost
+regret at being compelled to lay the result before a gentleman for
+whom I entertain so profound a respect."
+
+"There was then a meeting?" said Mr. Effingham, inclining his body
+slightly, by way of acknowledgment for the other's compliment.
+
+"There was, sir; and I think, Mr. Dodge, we may say an overflowing
+one."
+
+"The public was fairly represented," returned the editor, "as many as
+fifty or sixty having been present."
+
+"The public has a perfect right to meet, and to consult on its claims
+to anything it may conceive itself entitled to enjoy," observed Mr.
+Effingham; "I can have no possible objection to such a course, though
+I think it would have consulted its own dignity more, had it insisted
+on being convoked by more respectable persons than those who, I
+understand, were foremost in this affair, and in terms better suited
+to its own sense of propriety."
+
+Aristabulus glanced at Mr. Dodge, and Mr. Dodge glanced back at Mr.
+Bragg, for neither of these political mushrooms could conceive of the
+dignity and fair-mindedness with which a gentleman could view an
+affair of this nature.
+
+"They passed a set of resolutions, Mr. Effingham;" Aristabulus
+resumed, with the gravity with which he ever spoke of things of this
+nature. "A set of resolutions, sir!"
+
+"That was to be expected," returned his employer, smiling; "the
+Americans are a set-of-resolutions-passing people. Three cannot get
+together, without naming a chairman and secretary, and a resolution
+is as much a consequence of such an 'organization,'--I believe that
+is the approved word,--as an egg is the accompaniment of the cackling
+of a hen."
+
+"But, sir, you do not yet know the nature of those resolutions!"
+
+"Very true, Mr. Bragg; that is a piece of knowledge I am to have the
+pleasure of obtaining from you."
+
+Again Aristabulus glanced at Steadfast, and Steadfast threw back the
+look of surprise, for, to both it was matter of real astonishment
+that any man should be so indifferent to the resolutions of a meeting
+that had been regularly organized, with a chairman and secretary at
+its head, and which so unequivocally professed to be the public.
+
+"I am reluctant to discharge this duty, Mr. Effingham, but as you
+insist on its performance it must be done. In the first place, they
+resolved that your father meant to give them the Point."
+
+"A decision that must clearly settle the matter, and which will
+destroy all my father's own resolutions on the same subject. Did they
+stop at the Point, Mr. Bragg or did they resolve that my father also
+gave them his wife and children?"
+
+"No, sir, nothing was said concerning the latter."
+
+"I cannot properly express my gratitude for the forbearance, as they
+had just as good a right to pass this resolution, as to pass the
+other."
+
+"The public's is an awful power, Mr. Effingham!"
+
+"Indeed it is, sir, but fortunately, that of the republic is still
+more awful, and I shall look to the latter for support, in this
+'crisis'--that is the word, too, is it not, Mr. John Effingham?"
+
+"If you mean a change of administration, the upsetting of a stage, or
+the death of a cart-horse; they are all equally crisises, in the
+American vocabulary."
+
+"Well, Mr. Bragg, having resolved that it knew my late father's
+intentions better than he knew them himself, as is apparent from the
+mistake he made in his will, what next did the public dispose of, in
+the plenitude of its power?"
+
+"It resolved, sir, that it was your duty to carry out the intentions
+of your father."
+
+"In that, then, we are perfectly of a mind; as the public will most
+probably discover, before we get through with this matter. This is
+one of the most pious resolutions I ever knew the public to pass. Did
+it proceed any farther?"
+
+Mr. Bragg, notwithstanding the long-encouraged truckling to the sets
+of men, whom he was accustomed to dignify with the name of the
+public, had a profound deference or the principles, character, and
+station of Mr. Effingham, that no sophistry, or self-encouragement in
+the practices of social confusion, could overcome; and he paused
+before he communicated the next resolution to his employers. But
+perceiving that both the latter and his cousin were quietly waiting
+to hear it, he was fain to overcome his scruples.
+
+"They have openly libelled you, by passing resolutions declaring you
+to be odious."
+
+"That, indeed, is a strong measure, and, in the interest of good
+manners and of good morals, it may call for a rebuke. No one can care
+less than myself, Mr. Bragg, for the opinions of those who have
+sufficiently demonstrated that their opinions are of no value, by the
+heedless manner in which they have permitted themselves to fall into
+this error; but it is proceeding too far, when a few members of the
+community presume to take these liberties with a private individual,
+and that, moreover, in a case affecting a pretended claim of their
+own; and I desire you to tell those concerned, that if they dare to
+publish their resolution declaring me to be odious, I will teach them
+what they now do not appear to know, that we live in a country of
+laws. I shall not prosecute them, but I shall indict them for the
+offence, and I hope this is plainly expressed."
+
+Aristabulus stood aghast! To indict the public was a step he had
+never heard of before, and he began to perceive that the question
+actually had two sides. Still, his awe of public meetings, and his
+habitual regard for popularity, induced him not to give up the
+matter, without another struggle.
+
+"They have already ordered their proceedings to be published, Mr.
+Effingham!" he said, as if such an order were not to be
+countermanded.
+
+"I fancy, sir, that when it comes to the issue, and the penalties of
+a prosecution present themselves, their readers will begin to
+recollect their individuality, and to think less of their public
+character. They who hunt in droves, like wolves, are seldom very
+valiant when singled out from their pack. The end will show."
+
+"I heartily wish this unpleasant affair might be amicably settled,"
+added Aristabulus.
+
+"One might, indeed, fancy so," observed John Effingham, "since no one
+likes to be persecuted."
+
+"But, Mr. John, the public thinks _itself_ persecuted, in this
+affair."
+
+"The term, as applied to a body that not only makes, but which
+executes, the law, is so palpably absurd, that I am surprised any man
+can presume to use it. But, Mr. Bragg, you have seen documents that
+cannot err, and know that the public has not the smallest right to
+this bit of land."
+
+"All very true, sir; but you will please to remember, that the people
+do not know what I now know."
+
+"And you will please to remember, sir, that when people choose to act
+affirmatively, in so high-handed a manner as this, they are _bound_
+to know what they are about. Ignorance in such a matter, is like the
+drunkard's plea of intoxication; it merely makes the offence worse."
+
+"Do you not think, Mr. John, that Mr. Effingham might have acquainted
+these citizens with the real state of the case? Are the people so
+very wrong that they have fallen into a mistake?"
+
+"Since you ask this question plainly, Mr. Bragg, it shall be answered
+with equal sincerity. Mr. Effingham is a man of mature years; the
+known child, executor, and heir of one who, it is admitted all round,
+was the master of the controverted property. Knowing his own
+business, this Mr. Effingham, in sight of the grave of his fathers,
+beneath the paternal roof, has the intolerable impudence--"
+
+"Arrogance is the word, Jack," said Mr. Effingham, smiling.
+
+"Aye, the intolerable arrogance to suppose that his own is his own;
+and this he dares to affirm, without having had the politeness to
+send his title-deeds, and private papers, round to those who have
+been so short a time in the place, that they might well know every
+thing that has occurred in it for the last half century. Oh thou
+naughty, arrogant fellow, Ned!"
+
+"Mr. John, you appear to forget that the public has more claims to be
+treated with attention, than a single individual. If it has fallen
+into error, it ought to be undeceived."
+
+"No doubt, sir; and I advise Mr. Effingham to send you, his agent, to
+every man, woman and child in the county, with the Patent of the
+King, all the mesne conveyances and wills, in your pocket, in order
+that you may read them at length to each individual, with a view that
+every man, woman and child, may be satisfied that he or she is not
+the owner of Edward Effingham's lands!"
+
+"Nay, sir, a shorter process might be adopted."
+
+"It might, indeed, sir, and such a process has been adopted by my
+cousin, in giving the usual notice, in the newspaper, against
+trespassing. But, Mr. Bragg, you must know that I took great pains,
+three years since, when repairing this house, to correct the mistake
+on this very point, into which I found that your immaculate public
+had fallen, through its disposition to know more of other people's
+affairs, than those concerned knew of themselves."
+
+Aristabulus said no more, but gave the matter up in despair. On
+quitting the house, he proceeded forthwith, to inform those most
+interested of the determination of Mr. Effingham, not to be trampled
+on by any pretended meeting of the public. Common sense, not to say
+common honesty, began to resume its sway, and prudence put in its
+plea, by way of applying the corrective. Both he and Mr. Dodge,
+however, agreed that there was an unheard-of temerity in thus
+resisting the people, and this too without a commensurate object, as
+the pecuniary value of the disputed point was of no material
+consequence to either party.
+
+The reader is not, by any means, to suppose that Aristabulus Bragg
+and Steadfast Dodge belonged to the same variety of the human
+species, in consequence of their unity of sentiment in this affair,
+and certain other general points of resemblance in their manner and
+modes of thinking. As a matter of necessity each partook of those
+features of caste, condition, origin, and association that
+characterize their particular set; but when it came to the nicer
+distinctions that mark true individuality, it would not have been
+easy to find two men more essentially different in character. The
+first was bold, morally and physically, aspiring, self-possessed,
+shrewd, singularly adapted to succeed in his schemes where he knew
+the parties, intelligent, after his tastes, and apt. Had it been his
+fortune to be thrown earlier into a better sphere, the same natural
+qualities that rendered him so expert in his present situation, would
+have conduced to his improvement, and most probably would have formed
+a gentleman, a scholar, and one who could have contributed largely to
+the welfare and tastes of his fellow-creatures. That such was not his
+fate, was more his misfortune than his fault, for his plastic
+character had readily taken the impression of those things that from
+propinquity alone, pressed hardest on it. On the other hand Steadfast
+was a hypocrite by nature, cowardly, envious, and malignant; and
+circumstances had only lent their aid to the natural tendencies of
+his disposition. That two men so differently constituted at their
+births, should meet, as it might be in a common centre, in so many of
+their habits and opinions, was merely the result of accident and
+education.
+
+Among the other points of resemblance between these two persons, was
+that fault of confounding the cause with the effects of the peculiar
+institutions under which they had been educated and lived. Because
+the law gave to the public, that authority which, under other
+systems, is entrusted either to one, or to the few they believed the
+public was invested with far more power than a right understanding of
+their own principles would have shown. In a word, both these persons
+made a mistake which is getting to be too common in America, that of
+supposing the institutions of the country were all means and no end.
+Under this erroneous impression they saw only the machinery of the
+government, becoming entirely forgetful that the power which was
+given to the people collectively, was only so given to secure to them
+as perfect a liberty as possible, in their characters of individuals.
+Neither had risen sufficiently above vulgar notions, to understand
+that public opinion, in order to be omnipotent, or even formidable
+beyond the inflictions of the moment, must be right; and that, if a
+solitary man renders himself contemptible by taking up false notions
+inconsiderately and unjustly, bodies of men, falling into the same
+error, incur the same penalties, with the additional stigma of having
+acted as cowards.
+
+There was also another common mistake into which Messrs. Bragg and
+Dodge had permitted themselves to fall, through the want of a proper
+distinction between principles. Resisting the popular will, on the
+part of an individual, they considered arrogance and aristocracy,
+_per se_, without at all entering into the question of the right, or
+the wrong. The people, rightly enough in the general signification of
+the term, they deemed to be sovereign; and they belonged to a
+numerous class, who view disobedience to the sovereign in a
+democracy, although it be in his illegal caprices, very much as the
+subject of a despot views disobedience to his prince.
+
+It is scarcely necessary to say, that Mr. Effingham and his cousin
+viewed these matters differently. Clear headed, just-minded, and
+liberal in all his practices, the former, in particular, was greatly
+pained by the recent occurrence; and he paced his library in silence,
+for several minutes after Mr. Bragg and his companion had withdrawn,
+really too much grieved to speak.
+
+"This is, altogether, a most extraordinary procedure, John," he at
+length observed, "and, it strikes me, that it is but an indifferent
+reward for the liberality with which I have permitted others to use
+my property, these thirty years; often, very often, as you well know,
+to my own discomfort, and to that of my friends."
+
+"I have told you, Ned, that you were not to expect the America on
+your return, that you left behind you on your departure for Europe. I
+insist that no country has so much altered for the worse, in so short
+a time."
+
+"That unequalled pecuniary prosperity should sensibly impair the
+manners of what is termed the world, By introducing suddenly lame
+bodies of uninstructed and untrained men and women into society, is a
+natural consequence of obvious causes; that it should corrupt morals,
+even, we have a right to expect, for we are taught to believe it the
+most corrupting influence under which men can live; but, I confess, I
+did not expect to see the day, when a body of strangers, birds of
+passage, creatures of an hour, should assume a right to call on the
+old and long-established inhabitants of a country, to prove their
+claims to their possessions, and this, too, in an unusual and
+unheard-of manner, under the penalty of being violently deprived of
+them!"
+
+"Long established!" repeated John Effingham, laughing; "what do you
+term long established? Have you not been absent a dozen years, and do
+not these people reduce everything to the level of their own habits.
+I suppose, now, you fancy you can go to Rome or Jerusalem, or
+Constantinople, and remain four or five lustres, and then come coolly
+back to Templeton. and, on taking possession of this house again,
+call yourself an old resident."
+
+"I certainly do suppose I have that right. How many English,
+Russians, and Germans, did we meet in Italy, the residents of years,
+who still retained all their natural and local right and feelings!"
+
+"Ay, that is in countries where society is permanent, and men get
+accustomed to look on the same objects, hear the same names, and see
+the same faces for their entire lives. I have had the curiosity to
+inquire, and have ascertained that none of the old, permanent
+families have been active in this affair of the Point, but that all
+the clamour has been made by those you call the birds of passage. But
+what of that? These people fancy everything reduced to the legal six
+months required to vote; and that rotation in persons is as necessary
+to republicanism as rotation in office."
+
+"Is is not extraordinary that persons who can know so little on the
+subject, should be thus indiscreet and positive?"
+
+"It is not extraordinary in America. Look about you, Ned, and you
+will see adventurers uppermost everywhere; in the government, in your
+towns, in your villages, in the country, even. We are a nation of
+changes. Much of this, I admit, is the fair consequence of legitimate
+causes, as an immense region, in forest, cannot be peopled on any
+other conditions. But this necessity has infected the entire national
+character, and men get to be impatient of any sameness, even though
+it be useful. Everything goes to confirm this feeling, instead of
+opposing it. The constant recurrences of the elections accustom men
+to changes in their public functionaries; the great increase in the
+population brings new faces; and the sudden accumulations of property
+place new men in conspicuous stations. The architecture of the
+country is barely becoming sufficiently respectable to render it
+desirable to preserve the buildings, without which we shall have no
+monuments to revere. In short, everything contributes to produce such
+a state of things, painful as it may be to all of any feeling, and
+little to oppose it."
+
+"You colour highly, Jack; and no picture loses in tints, in being
+retouched by you."
+
+"Look into the first paper that offers, and you will see the _young
+men_ of the country hardily invited to meet by themselves, to consult
+concerning public affairs, as if they were impatient of the counsels
+and experience of their fathers. No country can prosper, where the
+ordinary mode of transacting the business connected with the root of
+the government, commences with this impiety."
+
+"This is a disagreeable feature in the national character, certainly;
+but we must remember the arts employed by the designing to practise
+on the inexperienced."
+
+"Had I a son, who presumed to denounce the wisdom and experience of
+his father, in this disrespectful mariner, I would disinherit the
+rascal!"
+
+"Ah, Jack, bachelor's children are notoriously well educated, and
+well mannered. We will hope, however, that time will bring its
+changes also, and that one of them will be a greater constancy in
+persons, things, and the affections."
+
+"Time _will_ bring its changes, Ned; but all of them that are
+connected with individual rights, as opposed to popular caprice, or
+popular interests, are likely to be in the wrong direction."
+
+"The tendency is certainly to substitute popularity for the right,
+but we must take the good with the bad; Even you, Jack, would not
+exchange this popular oppression for any other system under which you
+have lived."
+
+"I don't know that--I don't know that. Of all tyranny, a vulgar
+tyranny is to me the most odious."
+
+"You used to admire the English system, but I think observation has
+lessened your particular admiration in that quarter;" said Mr.
+Effingham, smiling in a way that his cousin perfectly understood.
+
+"Harkee, Ned; we all take up false notions in youth, and this was one
+of mine; but, of the two, I should prefer the cold, dogged domination
+of English law, with its fruits, the heartlessness of a
+sophistication without parallel, to being trampled on by every arrant
+blackguard that may happen to traverse this valley, in his wanderings
+after dollars. There is one thing you yourself must admit; the public
+is a little too apt to neglect the duties it ought to discharge, and
+to assume duties it has no right to fulfil."
+
+This remark ended the discourse.
+
+Chapter XVI.
+
+  Her breast was a brave palace, a broad street, Where all heroic,
+  ample thoughts did meet, Where nature such a tenement had ta'en,
+  That other souls, to hers, dwelt in 'a lane.
+
+  JOHN NORTON.
+
+The village of Templeton, it has been already intimated, was a
+miniature town. Although it contained within the circle of its
+houses, half-a-dozen residences with grounds, and which were
+dignified with names, as has been also said, it did not cover a
+surface of more than a mile square; that disposition to
+concentration, which is as peculiar to an American town, as the
+disposition to diffusion is peculiar to the country population, and
+which seems almost to prescribe that a private dwelling shall have
+but three windows in front, and a _facade_ of twenty-five feet,
+having presided at the birth of this spot, as well as at the birth of
+so many of its predecessors and contemporaries. In one of its more
+retired streets (for Templeton had its publicity and retirement, the
+latter after a very village fashion, however,) dwelt a widow--
+bewitched of small worldly means, five children, and of great
+capacity for circulating intelligence. Mrs. Abbott, for so was this
+demi-relict called, was just on the verge of what is termed the "good
+society" of the village, the most uneasy of all positions for an
+ambitious and _ci-devant_ pretty woman to be placed in. She had not
+yet abandoned the hope of obtaining a divorce and its _suites_; was
+singularly, nay, rabidly devout, if we may coin the adverb; in her
+own eyes she was perfection, in those of her neighbours slightly
+objectionable; and she was altogether a droll, and by no means an
+unusual compound of piety, censoriousness, charity, proscription,
+gossip, kindness, meddling, ill-nature, and decency.
+
+The establishment of Mrs. Abbott, like her house, was necessarily
+very small, and she kept no servant but a girl she called her help, a
+very suitable appellation, by the way, as they did most of the work
+of the _menage_ in common. This girl, in addition to cooking and
+washing, was the confidant of all her employer's wandering notions of
+mankind in general, and of her neighbours in particular; as often,
+helping her mistress in circulating her comments on the latter, as in
+anything else.
+
+Mrs. Abbott knew nothing of the Effinghams, except by a hearsay that
+got its intelligence from her own school, being herself a late
+arrival in the place. She had selected Templeton as a residence on
+account of its cheapness, and, having neglected to comply with the
+forms of the world, by hesitating about making the customary visit to
+the Wigwam, she began to resent, in her spirit at least, Eve's
+delicate forbearance from obtruding herself, where, agreeably to all
+usage, she had a perfect right to suppose she was not desired. It was
+in this spirit, then, that she sat, conversing with Jenny, as the
+maid of all work was called, the morning after the conversation
+related in the last chapter, in her snug little parlour, sometimes
+plying her needle, and oftener thrusting her head out of a window
+which commanded a view of the principal street of the place, in order
+to see what her neighbours might be about.
+
+"This is a most extraordinary course Mr. Effingham has taken
+concerning the Point," said Mrs. Abbott, "and I _do_ hope the people
+will bring him to his senses. Why, Jenny, the public has used that
+place ever since I can remember, and I have now lived in Templeton
+quite fifteen months.--What _can_ induce Mr. Howel to go so often to
+that barber's shop, which stands directly opposite the parlour
+windows of Mrs. Bennett--one would think the man was all beard."
+
+"I suppose Mr. Howel gets shaved sometimes," said the logical Jenny.
+
+"Not he; or if he does, no decent man would think of posting himself
+before a lady's window to do such a thing.--Orlando Furioso," calling
+to her eldest son, a boy of eleven, "run over to Mr. Jones's store,
+and listen to what the people are talking about, and bring me back
+the news, as soon as any thing worth hearing drops from any body; and
+stop as you come back, my son, and borrow neighbour Brown's gridiron.
+Jenny, it is most time to think of putting over the potatoes."
+
+"Ma'--" cried Orlando Furioso, from the front door, Mrs. Abbott being
+very rigid in requiring that all her children should call her 'ma','
+being so much behind the age as actually not to know that 'mother'
+had got to be much the genteeler term of the two; "Ma'," roared
+Orlando Furioso, "suppose there is no news at Mr. Jones's store?"
+
+"Then go to the nearest tavern; something must be stirring this fine
+morning, and I'm dying to know what it can possibly be. Mind you
+bring something besides the gridiron back with you. Hurry, or never
+come home again as long as you live! As I was saying, Jenny, the
+right of the public, which is our right, for we are a part of the
+public, to this Point, is as clear as day, and I am only astonished
+at the impudence of Mr. Effingham in pretending to deny it. I dare
+say his French daughter has put him up to it. They say she is
+monstrous arrogant!"
+
+"Is Eve Effingham, French," said Jenny, studiously avoiding any of
+the usual terms of civility and propriety, by way of showing her
+breeding--"well, I had always thought her nothing but Templeton
+born!"
+
+"What signifies where a person was born? where they _live_, is the
+essential thing; and Eve Effingham has lived so long in France, that
+she speaks nothing but broken English; and Miss Debby told me last
+week, that in drawing up a subscription paper for a new cushion to
+the reading-desk of her people, she actually spelt 'charity'
+'carrotty.'"
+
+"Is that French, Miss Abbott?"
+
+"I rather think it is, Jenny; the French are very niggardly, and give
+their poor carrots to live on, and so they have adopted the word, I
+suppose. You, Byansy-Alzumy-Ann, (Bianca-Alzuma-Ann!)"
+
+"Marm!"
+
+"Byansy-Alzumy-Ann! who taught you to call me marm! Is this the way
+you have learned your catechism? Say, ma', this instant."
+
+"Ma'."
+
+"Take your bonnet, my child, and run down to Mrs. Wheaton's, and ask
+her if any thing new has turned up about the Point, this morning;
+and, do you hear, Byansy-Alzumy-Ann Abbott--how the child starts
+away, as if she were sent on a matter of life and death!"
+
+"Why, ma', I want to hear the news, too."
+
+"Very likely, my dear, but, by stopping to get your errand, you may
+learn more than by being in such a hurry. Stop in at Mrs. Green's,
+and ask how the people liked the lecture of the strange parson, last
+evening--and ask her if she can lend me a watering-pot, Now, run, and
+be back as soon as possible. Never loiter when you carry news,
+child."
+
+"No one has a right to stop the man, I believe, Miss Abbott," put in
+Jenny, very appositely.
+
+"That, indeed, have they not, or else we could not calculate the
+consequences. You may remember, Jenny, the pious, even, had to give
+up that point, public convenience being; too strong for them. Roger-
+Demetrius-Benjamin!"--calling to a second boy, two years younger than
+his brother--"your eyes are better than mine--who are all those
+people collected together in the street. Is not Mr. Howel among
+them?"
+
+"I do not know, ma'!" answered Roger-Demetrius-Benjamin, gaping.
+
+"Then run, this minute, and see, and don't stop to look for your hat.
+As you come back, step into the tailor's shop and ask if your new
+jacket is most done, and what the news is? I rather think, Jenny, we
+shall find out something worth hearing, in the course of the day. By
+the way, they do say that Grace Van Cortlandt, Eve Effingham's
+cousin, is under concern."
+
+"Well, she is the last person I should think would be troubled about
+any thing, for every body says she is so desperate rich she might eat
+off of silver, if she liked; and she is sure of being married, some
+time or other."
+
+"That ought to lighten her concern, you think. Oh! it does my heart
+good when I see any of those flaunty people right well exercised!
+Nothing would make me happier than to see Eve Effingham groaning
+fairly in the spirit! That would teach her to take away the people's
+Points."
+
+"But, Miss Abbott, then she would become almost as good a woman as
+you are yourself,"
+
+"I am a miserable, graceless, awfully wicked sinner! Twenty times a
+day do I doubt whether I am actually converted or not. Sin has got
+such a hold of my very heart-strings, that I sometimes think they
+will crack before it lets go. Rinaldo-Rinaldini-Timothy, my child, do
+you toddle across the way, and give my compliments to Mrs. Hulbert,
+and inquire if it be true that young Dickson, the lawyer, is really
+engaged to Aspasia Tubbs or not? and borrow a skimmer, or a tin pot,
+or any thing you can carry, for we may want something of the sort in
+the course of the day. I do believe, Jenny, that a worse creature
+than myself is hardly to be found in Templeton."
+
+"Why, Miss Abbott," returned Jenny, who had heard too much of this
+self-abasement to be much alarmed at it, "this is giving almost as
+bad an account of yourself, as I heard somebody, that I won't name,
+give of you last week."
+
+"And who is your somebody, I should like to know? I dare say, one no
+better than a formalist, who thinks that reading prayers out of a
+book, kneeling, bowing, and changing gowns, is religion! Thank
+Heaven, I'm pretty indifferent to the opinions of such people.
+Harkee, Jenny; if I thought I was no better than some persons I could
+name, I'd give the point of salvation up, in despair!"
+
+"Miss Abbott," roared a rugged, dirty-faced, bare-footed boy, who
+entered without knocking, and stood in the middle of the room, with
+his hat on, with a suddenness that denoted great readiness in
+entering other people's possessions; "Miss Abbott, ma' wants to know
+if you are likely to go from home this week?"
+
+"Why, what in nature can she want to know that for, Ordeal Bumgrum?"
+Mrs. Abbott pronounced this singular name, however, "Ordeel."
+
+"Oh! she _warnts_ to know."
+
+"So do I _warnt_ to know; and know I will. Run home this instant, and
+ask your mother why she has sent you here with this message. Jenny, I
+am much exercised to find out the reason Mrs. Bumgrum should have
+sent Ordeal over with such a question."
+
+"I did hear that Miss Bumgrum intended to make a journey herself, and
+she may want your company."
+
+"Here comes Ordeal back, and we shall soon be out of the clouds. What
+a boy that is for errands. He is worth all my sons put together. You
+never see him losing time by going round by the streets, but away he
+goes over the garden fences like a cat, or he will whip through a
+house, if standing in his way, as if he were its owner, should the
+door happen to be open. Well, Ordeal?"
+
+But Ordeal was out of breath, and although Jenny shook him, as if to
+shake the news out of him, and Mrs. Abbott actually shook her fist,
+in her impatience to be enlightened, nothing could induce the child
+to speak, until he had recovered his wind.
+
+"I believe he does it on purpose," said the provoked maid.
+
+"It's just like him!" cried the mistress; "the very best news-carrier
+in the village is actually spoilt because he is thick-winded."
+
+"I wish folks wouldn't make their fences so high," Ordeal exclaimed,
+the instant he found breath. "I can't see of what use it is to make a
+fence people can't climb!"
+
+"What does your mother say?" cried Jenny repeating her shake, _con
+amore_.
+
+"Ma, wants to know, Miss Abbott, if you don't intend to use it
+yourself, if you will lend her your name for a few days, to go to
+Utica with? She says folks don't treat her half as well when she is
+called Bumgrum, as when she has another name, and she thinks she'd
+like to try yours, this time."
+
+"Is that all!--You needn't have been so hurried about such a trifle,
+Ordeal. Give my compliments to your mother, and tell her she is quite
+welcome to my name, and I hope it will be serviceable to her."
+
+"She says she is willing to pay for the use of it, if you will tell
+her what the damage will be."
+
+"Oh! it's not worth while to speak of such a trifle I dare say she
+will bring it back quite as good as when she took it away. I am no
+such unneighbourly or aristocratical person as to wish to keep my
+name all to myself. Tell your mother she is welcome to mine, and to
+keep it as long as she likes, and not to say any thing about pay; I
+may want to borrow hers, or something else, one of these days,
+though, to say the truth, my neighbours _are_ apt to complain of me
+as unfriendly and proud for not borrowing as much as a good neighbour
+ought."
+
+Ordeal departed, leaving Mrs. Abbot in some such condition as that of
+the man who had no shadow. A rap at the door interrupted the further
+discussion of the old subject, and Mr. Steadfast Dodge appeared in
+answer to the permission to enter. Mr. Dodge and Mrs. Abbott were
+congenial spirits, in the way of news, he living by it, and she
+living on it.
+
+"You are very welcome, Mr. Dodge," the mistress of the house
+commenced; "I hear you passed the day, yesterday, up at the
+Effinghamses."
+
+"Why, yes, Mrs. Abbott, the Effinghams insisted on it, and I could
+not well get over the sacrifice, after having been their shipmate so
+long. Besides it is a little relief to talk French, when one has been
+so long in the daily practice of it."
+
+"I hear there is company at the house?"
+
+"Two of our fellow-travellers, merely. An English baronet, and a
+young man of whom less is known than one could wish. He is a
+mysterious person, and I hate mystery, Mrs. Abbott."
+
+"In that, then, Mr. Dodge, you and I are alike. I think every thing
+should be known. Indeed, that is not a free country in which there
+are any secrets. I keep nothing from my neighbours, and, to own the
+truth, I do not like my neighbours to keep any thing from me."
+
+"Then you'll hardly like the Effinghams, for I never yet met with a
+more close-mouthed family. Although I was so long in the ship with
+Miss Eve, I never heard her once speak of her want of appetite; of
+sea-sickness, or of any thing relating to her ailings even: no? can
+you imagine how close she is on the subject of the beaux; I do not
+think I ever heard her use the word, or so much as allude to any walk
+or ride she ever took with a single man. I set her down, Mrs. Abbott,
+as unqualifiedly artful!"
+
+"That you may with certainty, sir, for there is no more sure sign
+that a young woman is all the while thinking of the beaux, than her
+never mentioning them."
+
+"That I believe to be human nature; no ingenuous person ever thinks
+much of the particular subject of conversation. What is your opinion,
+Mrs. Abbott, of the contemplated match at the Wigwam?"
+
+"Match!" exclaimed Mrs. Abbott.--"What, already! It is the most
+indecent thing I ever heard of! Why, Mr. Dodge, the family has not
+been home a fortnight, and to think so soon of getting married! It is
+quite as bad as a widower's marrying within the month."
+
+Mrs. Abbott made a distinction, habitually, between the cases of
+widowers and widows, as the first, she maintained, might get married
+whenever they pleased, and the latter only when they got offers; and
+she felt just that sort of horror of a man's thinking of marrying too
+soon after the death of his wife, as might be expected in one who
+actually thought of a second husband before the first was dead.
+
+"Why, yes," returned Steadfast, "it is a little premature, perhaps,
+though they have been long acquainted. Still, as you say, it would be
+more decent to wait and see what may turn up in a country, that, to
+them, may be said to be a foreign land."
+
+"But, who are the parties, Mr. Dodge."
+
+"Miss Eve Effingham, and Mr. John Effingham"
+
+"Mr. John Effingham!" exclaimed the lady, who had lent her name to a
+neighbour, aghast, for this was knocking one of her own day-dreams in
+the head, "well this is too much! But he shall not marry her, sir;
+the law will prevent it, and we live in a country of laws. A man
+cannot marry his own niece."
+
+"It is excessively improper, and ought to be put a stop to. And yet
+these Effinghams do very much as they please."
+
+"I am very sorry to hear that; they are extremely disagreeable," said
+Mrs. Abbott, with a look of eager inquiry, as if afraid the answer
+might be in the negative.
+
+"As much so as possible; they have hardly a way that you would like,
+my dear ma'am; and are as close-mouthed as if they were afraid of
+committing themselves."
+
+"Desperate bad news-carriers, I am told, Mr. Dodge. There is Dorindy
+(Dorinda) Mudge, who was employed there by Eve and Grace one day; she
+tells me she tried all she could to get them to talk, by speaking of
+the most common things; things that one of my children knew all
+about; such as the affairs of the neighbourhood, and how people are
+getting on; and, though they would listen a little, and that is
+something, I admit, not a syllable could she get in the way of
+answer, or remark. She tells me that, several times, she had a mind
+to quit, for it is monstrous unpleasant to associate with your
+tongue-tied folks."
+
+"I dare say Miss Effingham could throw out a hint now and then,
+concerning the voyage and her late fellow-travellers," said
+Steadfast, casting an uneasy glance at his companion.
+
+"Not she. Dorindy maintains that it is impossible to get a sentiment
+out of her concerning a single fellow-creature. When she talked of
+the late unpleasant affair of poor neighbour Bronson's family--a
+melancholy transaction that, Mr. Dodge, and I shouldn't wonder if it
+went to nigh break Mrs. Bronson's heart--but when Dorindy mentioned
+this, which is bad enough to stir the sensibility of a frog, neither
+of my young ladies replied, or put a single question. In this respect
+Grace is as bad as Eve, and Eve is as bad as Grace, they say. Instead
+of so much as seeming to wish to know any more, what does my Miss Eve
+do, but turn to some daubs of paintings, and point out to her cousin
+what she was pleased to term peculiarities in Swiss usages. Then the
+two hussies would talk of nature, 'our beautiful nature' Dorindy says
+Eve had the impudence to call it, and, as if human nature and its
+failings and backsliding wore not a fitter subject for a young
+woman's discourse, than a silly conversation about lakes, and rocks,
+and trees, and as if she _owned_ the nature about Templeton. It is my
+opinion, Mr. Dodge, that downright ignorance is at the bottom of it
+all, for Dorindy says that they actually know no more of the
+intricacies of the neighbourhood than if they lived in Japan."
+
+"All pride, Mrs. Abbott; rank pride. They feel themselves too great
+to enter into the minutiae of common folks' concerns. I often tried
+Miss Effingham coming from England; and things touching private
+interests, that I know she did and must understand, she always
+disdainfully refused to enter into. Oh! she is, a real Tartar, in her
+way; and what she does not wish to do, you never can make her do!"
+
+"Have you heard that Grace is under concern?"
+
+"Not a breath of it; under whose preaching was she sitting, Mrs.
+Abbott?"
+
+"That is more than I can tell you; not under the church parson's,
+I'll engage; no one ever heard of a real, active, regenerating, soul-
+reviving, spirit-groaning and fruit-yielding conversion under _his_
+ministry."
+
+"No, there is very little unction in that persuasion generally. How
+cold and apathetic they are, in these soul-stirring times! Not a
+sinner has been writhing on _their_ floor, I'll engage, nor a wretch
+transferred into a saint, in the twinkling of an eye, by _that_
+parson. Well, _we_ have every reason to be grateful, Mrs. Abbott."
+
+"That we have, for most glorious have been our privileges! To be sure
+that is a sinful pride that can puff up a wretched, sinful being like
+Eve Effingham to such a pass of conceit, as to induce her to think
+she is raised above thinking of, and taking an interest in the
+affairs of her neighbours. Now, for my part, conversion has so far
+opened _my_ heart, that I do actually feel as if I wanted to know all
+about the meanest creature in Templeton."
+
+"That's the true spirit, Mrs. Abbott; stick to that, and your
+redemption is secure. I only edit a newspaper, by way of showing an
+interest in mankind."
+
+"I hope, Mr. Dodge, the press does not mean to let this matter of the
+Point sleep; the press is the true guardian of the public rights, and
+I can tell you the whole community looks to it for support, in this
+crisis."
+
+"We shall not fail to do our duty," said Mr. Dodge, looking over his
+shoulder, and speaking lower. "What! shall one insignificant
+individual, who has not a single right above that of the meanest
+citizen in the county, oppress this great and powerful community!
+What if Mr. Effingham does own this point of land--"
+
+"But he does _not_ own it," interrupted Mrs. Abbott. "Ever since I
+have known Templeton, the public has owned it. The public, moreover,
+says it owns it, and what the public says, in this happy country, is
+law."
+
+"But, allowing that the public does not own--"
+
+"It _does_ own it, Mr. Dodge," the nameless repeated, positively.
+
+"Well, ma'am, own or no own, this is not a country in which the press
+ought to be silent, when a solitary individual undertakes to trample
+on the public. Leave that matter to us, Mrs. Abbott; it is in good
+hands, and shall be well taken care of."
+
+"I'm piously glad of it!"
+
+"I mention this to you, as to a friend," continued Mr. Dodge,
+cautiously drawing from his pocket a manuscript, which he prepared to
+read to his companion who sat with a devouring curiosity, ready to
+listen.
+
+The manuscript of Mr. Dodge contained a professed account of the
+affair of the Point. It was written obscurely, and was not without
+its contradictions, but the imagination of Mrs. Abbott supplied all
+the vacuums, and reconciled all the contradictions. The article was
+so liberal of its professions of contempt for Mr. Effingham, that
+every rational man was compelled to wonder, why a quality, that is
+usually so passive, should, in this particular instance, be aroused
+to so sudden and violent activity. In the way of facts, not one was
+faithfully stated; and there were several deliberate, unmitigated
+falsehoods, which went essentially to colour the whole account.
+
+"I think this will answer the purpose," said Steadfast, "and we have
+taken means to see that it shall be well circulated."
+
+"This will do them good," cried Mrs. Abbott; almost breathless with
+delight. "I hope folks will believe it."
+
+"No fear of that. If it were a party thing, now, one half would
+believe it, as a matter of course, and the other half would not
+believe it, as a matter of course; but, in a private matter, lord
+bless you, ma'am, people are always ready to believe any thing that
+will give them something to talk about."
+
+Here the _tete a tete_ was interrupted by the return of Mrs. Abbott's
+different messengers, all of whom, unlike the dove sent forth from
+the ark, brought back something in the way of hopes. The Point was a
+general theme, and, though the several accounts flatly contradicted
+each other, Mrs. Abbott, in the general benevolence of her pious
+heart, found the means to extract corroboration of her wishes from
+each.
+
+Mr. Dodge was as good as his word, and the account appeared. The
+press throughout the country seized with avidity on any thing that
+helped to fill its columns. No one appeared disposed to inquire into
+the truth of the account, or after the character of the original
+authority. It was in print, and that struck the great majority of the
+editors and their readers, as a sufficient sanction. Few, indeed,
+were they, who lived so much under a proper self-control, as to
+hesitate; and this rank injustice was done a private citizen, as much
+without moral restraint, as without remorse, by those, who, to take
+their own accounts of the matter, were the regular and habitual
+champions of human rights!
+
+John Effingham pointed out this extraordinary scene of reckless
+wrong, to his wondering cousin, with the cool sarcasm, with which he
+was apt to assail the weaknesses and crimes of the country. His
+firmness, united to that of his cousin, however, put a stop to the
+publication of the resolutions of Aristabulus's meeting, and when a
+sufficient time had elapsed to prove that these prurient denouncers
+of their fellow-citizens had taken wit in their anger, he procured
+them, and had them published himself, as the most effectual means of
+exposing the real character of the senseless mob, that had thus
+disgraced liberty, by assuming its professions and its usages.
+
+To an observer of men, the end of this affair presented several
+strong points for comment. As soon as the truth became generally
+known, in reference to the real ownership, and the public came to
+ascertain that instead of hitherto possessing a right, it had, in
+fact been merely enjoying a favour, those who had commit ted
+themselves by their arrogant assumptions of facts, and their indecent
+outrages, fell back on their self-love, and began to find excuses for
+their conduct in that of the other party. Mr. Effingham was loudly
+condemned for not having done the very thing, he, in truth, had done,
+viz: telling the public it did not own his property; and when this
+was shown to be an absurdity, the complaint followed that what he had
+done, had been done in precisely such a mode, although it was the
+mode constantly used by every one else. From these vague and
+indefinite accusations, those most implicated in the wrong, began to
+deny all their own original assertions, by insisting that they had
+known all along, that Mr. Effingham owned the property, but that they
+did not choose he, or any other man, should presume to tell them what
+they knew already. In short, the end of this affair exhibited human
+nature in its usual aspects of prevarication, untruth, contradiction,
+and inconsistency, notwithstanding the high profession of liberty
+made by those implicated; and they who had been the most guilty of
+wrong, were loudest in their complaints, as if they alone had
+suffered.
+
+"This is not exhibiting the country to us, certainly, after so long
+an absence, in its best appearance," said Mr. Effingham, "I must
+admit, John; but error belongs to all regions, and to all classes of
+institutions."
+
+"Ay, Ned, make the best of it, as usual; but, if you do not come
+round to my way of thinking, before you are a twelvemonth older, I
+shall renounce prophesying. I wish we could get at the bottom of Miss
+Effingham's thoughts, on this occasion."
+
+"Miss Effingham has been grieved, disappointed, nay, shocked," said
+Eve, "but, still she will not despair of the republic. None of our
+respectable neighbours, in the first place, have shared in this
+transaction, and that is something; though I confess I feel some
+surprise that any considerable portion of a community, that respects
+itself, should quietly allow an ignorant fragment of its own numbers,
+to misrepresent it so grossly, in an affair that so nearly touches
+its own character for common sense and justice."
+
+"You have yet to learn, Miss Effingham, that men can get to be so
+saturated with liberty, that they become insensible to the nicer
+feelings. The grossest enormities are constantly committed in this
+good republic of ours, under the pretence of being done by the
+public, and for the public. The public have got to bow to that
+bugbear, quite as submissively as Gesler would have wished the Swiss
+to bow to his own cap, as to the cap of Rodolph's substitute. Men
+will have idols, and the Americans have merely set up themselves."
+
+"And you, cousin Jack, you would be wretched were you doomed to live
+under a system less free. I fear you have the affectation of
+sometimes saying that which you do not exactly feel."
+
+Chapter XVII.
+
+  "Come, these are no times to think of dreams--
+  We'll talk of dreams hereafter."
+
+  SHAKSPEARE.
+
+The day succeeding that in which the conversation just mentioned
+occurred, was one of great expectation and delight in the Wigwam.
+Mrs. Hawker and the Bloomfields were expected, and the morning passed
+away rapidly, under the gay buoyancy of the feelings that usually
+accompany such anticipations in a country-house. The travellers were
+to leave town the previous evening, and, though the distance was near
+two hundred and thirty miles, they were engaged to arrive by the
+usual dinner hour. In speed, the Americans, so long as they follow
+the great routes, are unsurpassed; and even Sir George Templemore,
+coming, as he did, from a country of MacAdamized roads and excellent
+posting, expressed his surprise, when given to understand that a
+journey of this length, near a hundred miles of which were by land,
+moreover, was to be performed in twenty-four hours, the stops
+included.
+
+"One particularly likes this rapid travelling," he remarked, "when it
+is to bring us such friends as Mrs. Hawker."
+
+"And Mrs. Bloomfield," added Eve, quickly. "I rest the credit of the
+American females on Mrs. Bloomfield."
+
+"More so, than on Mrs. Hawker, Miss Effingham."
+
+"Not in all that is amiable, respectable, feminine, and lady-like;
+but certainly more so, in the way of mind. I know, Sir George
+Templemore, as a European, what your opinion is of our sex in this
+country."
+
+"Good heaven, my dear Miss Effingham!--My opinion of your sex, in
+America! It is impossible for any one to entertain a higher opinion
+of your country-women--as I hope to show--as, I trust, my respect and
+admiration have always proved--nay, Powis, you, as an American, will
+exonerate me from this want of taste--judgment--feeling--"
+
+Paul laughed, but told the embarrassed and really distressed baronet,
+that he should leave him in the very excellent hands into which he
+had fallen.
+
+"You see that bird, that is sailing so prettily above the roofs of
+the village," said Eve, pointing with her parasol in the direction
+she meant; for the three were walking together on the little lawn, in
+waiting for the appearance of the expected guests; "and I dare say
+you are ornithologist enough to tell its vulgar name."
+
+"You are in the humour to be severe this morning--the bird is but a
+common swallow."
+
+"One of which will not make a summer, as every one knows. Our
+cosmopolitism is already forgotten, and with it, I fear, our
+frankness."
+
+"Since Powis has hoisted his national colours, I do not feel as free
+on such subjects as formerly," returned Sir George, smiling. "When I
+thought I had a secret ally in him, I was not afraid to concede a
+little in such things, but his avowal of his country has put me on my
+guard. In no case, however, shall I admit my insensibility to the
+qualities of your countrywomen. Powis, as a native, may take that
+liberty; but, as for myself, I shall insist they are, at least, the
+equals of any females I know."
+
+"In _naivete_, prettiness, delicacy of appearance, simplicity, and
+sincerity--"
+
+"In sincerity, think you, dear Miss Effingham?"
+
+"In sincerity, above all things, dear Sir George Templemore.
+Sincerity--nay, frankness is the last quality I should think of
+denying them."
+
+"But to return to Mrs. Bloomfield--she is clever, exceedingly clever,
+I allow; in what is her cleverness to be distinguished from that of
+one of her sex, on the other side of the ocean?"
+
+"In nothing, perhaps, did there exist no differences in national
+characteristics. Naples and New-York are in the same latitude, and
+yet, I think you will agree with me, that there is little resemblance
+in their populations."
+
+"I confess I do not understand the allusion--are you quicker witted,
+Powis?"
+
+"I will not say that," answered Paul; "but I think I do comprehend
+Miss Effingham's meaning. You have travelled enough to know, that, as
+a rule, there is more aptitude in a southern, than in a northern
+people. They receive impressions more readily, and are quicker in all
+their perceptions."
+
+"I believe this to be true; but, then, you will allow that they are
+less constant, and have less perseverance?"
+
+"In that we are agreed, Sir George Templemore," resumed Eve, "though
+we might differ as to the cause. The inconstancy of which you speak,
+is more connected with moral than physical causes, perhaps, and we,
+of this region, might claim an exemption from some of them. But, Mrs.
+Bloomfield is to be distinguished from her European rivals, by a
+frame so singularly feminine as to appear fragile, a delicacy of
+exterior, that, were it not for that illumined face of hers, might
+indicate a general feebleness, a sensitiveness and quickness of
+intellect that amount almost to inspiration; and yet all is balanced
+by a practical common sense, that renders her as safe a counsellor as
+she is a warm friend. This latter quality causes you sometimes to
+doubt her genius, it is so very homely and available. Now it is in
+this, that I think the American woman, when she does rise above
+mediocrity, is particularly to be distinguished from the European.
+The latter, as a genius, is almost always in the clouds, whereas,
+Mrs. Bloomfield, in her highest flights, is either all heart, or all
+good sense. The nation is practical, and the practical qualities get
+to be imparted even to its highest order of talents."
+
+"The English women are thought to be less excitable, and not so much
+under the influence of sentimentalism, as some of their continental
+neighbours."
+
+"And very justly--but----"
+
+"But, what, Miss Effingham--there is, in all this, a slight return to
+the cosmopolitism, that reminds me of our days of peril and
+adventure. Do not conceal a thought, if you wish to preserve that
+character."
+
+"Well, to be sincere, I shall say that your women live under a system
+too sophisticated and factitious to give fair play to common sense,
+at all times. What, for instance, can be the habitual notions of one,
+who, professing the doctrines of Christianity, is accustomed to find
+money placed so very much in the ascendant, as to see it daily
+exacted in payment for the very first of the sacred offices of the
+church? It would be as rational to contend that a mirror which had
+been cracked into radii, by a bullet, like those we have so often
+seen in Paris, would reflect faithfully, as to suppose a mind
+familiarized to such abuses would be sensitive on practical and
+common sense things."
+
+"But, my dear Miss Effingham, this is all habit."
+
+"I know it is all habit, Sir George Templemore, and a very bad habit
+it is. Even your devoutest clergymen get so accustomed to it, as not
+to see the capital mistake they make. I do not say it is absolutely
+sinful, where there is no compulsion; but, I hope you agree with me,
+Mr. Powis, when I say I think a clergyman ought to be so sensitive on
+such a subject, as to refuse even the little offerings for baptisms,
+that it is the practice of the wealthy of this country to make."
+
+"I agree with you entirely, for it would denote a more just
+perception of the nature of the office they are performing; and they
+who wish to give can always make occasions."
+
+"A hint might be taken from Franklin, who is said to have desired his
+father to ask a blessing on the pork-barrel, by way of condensation,"
+put in John Effingham, who joined them as he spoke, and who had heard
+a part of the conversation. "In this instance an average might be
+struck in the marriage fee, that should embrace all future baptisms.
+But here comes neighbour Howel to favour us with his opinion. Do you
+like the usages of the English church, as respects baptisms, Howel?"
+
+"Excellent, the best in the world, John Effingham."
+
+"Mr. Howel is so true an Englishman," said Eve, shaking hands
+cordially with their well-meaning neighbour, "that he would give a
+certificate in favour of polygamy, if it had a British origin."
+
+"And is not this a more natural sentiment for an American than that
+which distrusts so much, merely because it comes from the little
+island?" asked Sir George, reproachfully.
+
+"That is a question I shall leave Mr. Howel himself to answer."
+
+"Why, Sir George," observed the gentleman alluded to, "I do not
+attribute my respect for your country, in the least, to origin. I
+endeavour to keep myself free from all sorts of prejudices. My
+admiration of England arises from conviction, and I watch all her
+movements with the utmost jealousy, in order to see if I cannot find
+her tripping, though I feel bound to say I have never yet detected
+her in a single error. What a very different picture, France--I hope
+your governess is not within hearing, Miss Eve; it is not her fault;
+she was born a French woman, and we would not wish to hurt her
+feelings--but what a different picture France presents! I have
+watched her narrowly too, these forty years, I may say, and I have
+never yet found her right; and this, you must allow, is a great deal
+to be said by one who is thoroughly impartial."
+
+"This is a terrible picture, indeed, Howel, to come from an
+unprejudiced man," said John Effingham; "and I make no doubt Sir
+George Templemore will have a better opinion of himself for ever
+after--he for a valiant lion, and you for a true prince. But yonder
+is the 'exclusive extra,' which contains our party."
+
+The elevated bit of lawn on which they were walking commanded a view
+of the road that led into the village, and the travelling, vehicle
+engaged by Mrs. Hawker and her friends, was now seen moving along it
+at a rapid pace. Eve expressed her satisfaction, and then all resumed
+their walk, as some minutes must still elapse previously to the
+arrival.
+
+"Exclusive extra!" repeated Sir George; "that is a peculiar phrase,
+and one that denotes any thing but democracy."
+
+"In any other part of the world a thing would be sufficiently marked,
+by being 'extra,' but here it requires the addition of 'exclusive,'
+in order to give it the 'tower stamp,'" said John Effingham, with a
+curl of his handsome lip. "Any thing may be as exclusive as it
+please, provided it bear the public impress. A stagecoach being
+intended for every body, why, the more exclusive it is, the better.
+The next thing we shall hear of will be exclusive steamboats,
+exclusive railroads, and both for the uses of the exclusive people."
+
+Sir George now seriously asked an explanation of the meaning of the
+term, when Mr. Howel informed him that an 'extra' in America meant a
+supernumerary coach, to carry any excess of the ordinary number of
+passengers; whereas an 'exclusive extra' meant a coach expressly
+engaged by a particular individual.
+
+"The latter, then, is American posting," observed Sir George.
+
+"You have got the best idea of it that can be given," said Paul. "It
+is virtually posting with a coachman, instead of postillions, few
+persons in this country, where so much of the greater distances is
+done by steam, using their own travelling carriages. The American
+'exclusive extra' is not only posting, but, in many of the older
+parts of the country, it is posting of a very good quality."
+
+"I dare say, now, this is all wrong, if we only knew it," said the
+simple-minded Mr. Howel. "There is nothing exclusive in England, ha,
+Sir George?"
+
+Every body laughed except the person who put this question, but the
+rattling of wheels and the tramping of horses on the village bridge,
+announced the near approach of the travellers. By the time the party
+had reached the great door in front of the house, the carriage was
+already in the grounds, and at the next moment, Eve was in the arms
+of Mrs. Bloomfield. It was apparent, at a glance, that more than the
+expected number of guests was in the vehicle; and as its contents
+were slowly discharged, the spectators stood around it, with
+curiosity, to observe who would appear.
+
+The first person that descended, after the exit of Mrs. Bloomfield,
+was Captain Truck, who, however, instead of saluting his friends,
+turned assiduously to the door he had just passed through, to assist
+Mrs. Hawker to alight. Not until this office had been done, did he
+even look for Eve; for, so profound was the worthy captain's
+admiration and respect for this venerable lady, that she actually had
+got to supplant our heroine, in some measure, in his heart. Mr.
+Bloomfield appeared next, and an exclamation of surprise and pleasure
+proceeded from both Paul and the baronet, as they caught a glimpse of
+the face of the last of the travellers that got out.
+
+"Ducie!" cried Sir George. "This is even better than we expected."
+
+"Ducie!" added Paul, "you are several days before the expected time,
+and in excellent company."
+
+The explanation, however, was very simple Captain Ducie had found the
+facilities for rapid motion much greater than he had expected, and he
+reached Fort Plain, in the eastward cars, as the remainder of the
+party arrived in the westward. Captain Truck-who had met Mrs.
+Hawker's party in the river boat, had been intrusted with the duty of
+making the arrangements, and recognizing Captain Ducie, to their
+mutual surprise, while engaged in this employment, and ascertaining
+his destination, the latter was very cordially received into the
+"exclusive extra."
+
+Mr. Effingham welcomed all his guests with the hospitality and
+kindness for which he was distinguished. We are no great admirers of
+the pretension to peculiar national virtues, having ascertained, to
+our own satisfaction, by tolerably extensive observation, that the
+moral difference between men is of no great amount; but we are almost
+tempted to say, on this occasion, that Mr. Effingham received his
+guests with American hospitality; for if there be one quality that
+this people can claim to possess in a higher degree than that of most
+other Christian nations, it is that of a simple, sincere, confiding
+hospitality. For Mrs. Hawker, in common with all who knew her, the
+owner of the Wigwam entertained a profound respect; and though his
+less active mind did not take as much pleasure as that of his
+daughter, in the almost intuitive intelligence of Mrs. Bloomfield, he
+also felt for this lady a very friendly regard. It gave him pleasure
+to see Eve surrounded by persons of her own sex, of so high a tone of
+thought and breeding; a tone of thought and breeding, moreover, that
+was as far removed as possible from anything strained or artificial:
+and his welcomes were cordial in proportion. Mr. Bloomfield was a
+quiet, sensible, gentleman-like man, whom his wife fervently loved,
+without making any parade of her attachment and he was also one who
+had the good sense to make himself agreeable wherever he went.
+Captain Ducie, who, Englishman-like, had required some urging to be
+induced to present himself before the precise hour named in his own
+letter, and who had seriously contemplated passing several days in a
+tavern, previously to showing himself at the Wigwam, was agreeably
+disappointed at a reception, that would have been just as frank and
+warm, had he come without any notice at all: for the Effinghams knew
+that the usages which sophistication and a crowded population perhaps
+render necessary in older countries, were not needed in their own;
+and then the circumstance that their quondam pursuer was so near a
+kinsman of Paul Powis', did not fail to act essentially in his
+favour.
+
+"We can offer but little, in these retired mountains, to interest a
+traveller and a man of the world, Captain Ducie," said Mr. Effingham,
+when he went to pay his compliments more particularly, after the
+whole party was in the house; "but there is a common interest in our
+past adventures to talk about, after all other topics fail. When, we
+met on the ocean, and you deprived us so unexpectedly of our friend
+Powis, we did not know that you had the better claim of affinity to
+his company."
+
+Captain Ducie coloured slightly, but he made his answer with a proper
+degree of courtesy and gratitude.
+
+"It is very true," he added, "Powis and myself are relatives, and I
+shall place all my claims to your hospitality to his account; for I
+feel that I have been the unwilling cause of too much suffering to
+your party to bring with me any very pleasant recollections,
+notwithstanding your kindness in including me as a friend in the
+adventures of which you speak."
+
+"Dangers that are happily past, seldom bring very unpleasant
+recollections, more especially when they were connected with scenes
+of excitement, I understand, sir, that the unhappy young man, who was
+the principal cause of all that passed, anticipated the sentence of
+the law, by destroying himself."
+
+"He was his own executioner, and the victim of a silly weakness that,
+I should think, your state of society was yet too young and simple to
+encourage. The idle vanity of making an appearance, a vanity, by the
+way, that seldom besets gentlemen, or the class to which it may be
+thought more properly to belong, ruins hundreds of young men in
+England, and this poor creature was of the number. I never was more
+rejoiced than when he quitted my ship, for the sight of so much
+weakness sickened one of human nature. Miserable as his fate proved
+to be, and pitiable as his condition really was while in my charge,
+his case has the alleviating circumstance with me, of having made me
+acquainted with those whom it might not otherwise have been my good
+fortune to meet!"
+
+This civil speech was properly acknowledged, and Mr. Effingham
+addressed himself to Captain Truck, to whom, in the hurry of the
+moment, he had not yet said half that his feelings dictated.
+
+"I am rejoiced to see you under my roof, my worthy friend," taking
+the rough hand of the old seaman between his own whiter and more
+delicate fingers, and shaking it with cordiality, "for this _is_
+being under my roof, while those town residences have less the air of
+domestication and familiarity. You will spend many of your holidays
+here, I trust; and when we get a few years older, we will begin to
+prattle about the marvels we have seen in company."
+
+The eye of Captain Truck glistened, and, as he return ed the shake by
+another of twice the energy, and the gentle pressure of Mr. Effingham
+by a squeeze like that of a vice, he said in his honest off-hand
+manner--
+
+"The happiest hour I ever knew was that in which I discharged the
+pilot, the first time out, as a ship-master; the next great event of
+my life, in the way of happiness, was the moment I found myself on
+the deck of the Montauk, after we had given those greasy Arabs a him
+that their room was better than their company; and I really think
+this very instant must be set down as the third. I never knew, my
+dear sir, how much I truly loved you and your daughter, until both
+were out of sight."
+
+"That is so kind and gallant a speech, that it ought not to be lost
+on the person most concerned. Eve, my love, our worthy friend has
+just made a declaration which will be a novelty to you, who have not
+been much in the way of listening to speeches of this nature."
+
+Mr. Effingham then acquainted his daughter with what Captain Truck
+had just said.
+
+"This is certainly the first declaration of the sort I ever heard,
+and with the simplicity of an unpractised young woman, I here avow
+that the attachment is reciprocal," said the smiling Eve. "If there
+is an indiscretion in this hasty acknowledgement, it must be ascribed
+to surprise, and to the suddenness with which I have learned my
+power, for your _parvenues_ are not always perfectly regulated."
+
+"I hope Mamselle V.A.V. is well," returned the Captain, cordially
+shaking the hand the young lady had given him, "and that she enjoys
+herself to her liking in this outlandish country?"
+
+"Mademoiselle Viefville will return you her thanks in person, at
+dinner; and I believe she does not yet regret _la belle France_
+unreasonably; as I regret it myself, in many particulars, it would be
+unjust not to permit a native of the country some liberty in that
+way."
+
+"I perceive a strange face in the room--one of the family, my dear
+young lady?"
+
+"Not a relative, but a very old friend.--Shall I have the pleasure of
+introducing you, Captain?"
+
+"I hardly dared to ask it, for I know you must have been overworked
+in this way, lately, but I confess I _should_ like an introduction; I
+have neither introduced, nor been introduced since I left New-York,
+with the exception of the case of Captain Ducie, whom I made properly
+acquainted with Mrs. Hawker and her party as you may suppose. They
+know each other regularly now, and you are saved the trouble of going
+through the ceremony yourself."
+
+"And how is it with you and the Bloomfields? Did Mrs. Hawker name you
+to them properly?"
+
+"That is the most extraordinary thing of the sort I ever knew! Not a
+word was said in the way of introduction, and yet I slid into an
+acquaintance with Mrs. Bloomfield so easily, that I could not tell
+how it was done, if my life depended on it. But this very old friend
+of yours, my dear young lady----"
+
+"Captain Truck, Mr. Howel; Mr. Howel, Captain Truck;" said Eve,
+imitating the most approved manner of the introductory spirit of the
+day with admirable self-possession and gravity. "I am fortunate in
+having it in my power to make two persons whom I so much esteem
+acquainted."
+
+"Captain Truck is the gentleman who commands the Montauk?" said Mr.
+Howel, glancing at Eve, as much as to say, "am I right?"
+
+"The very same, and the brave seaman to whom we are all indebted for
+the happiness of standing here at this moment."
+
+"You are to be envied, Captain Truck; of all the men in your calling,
+you are exactly the one I should most wish to supplant. I understand
+you actually go to England twice every year!"
+
+"Three times, sir, when the winds permit. I have even seen the old
+island four times, between January and January."
+
+"What a pleasure! It must be the very acme of navigation to sail
+between America and England!"
+
+"It is not unpleasant, sir, from April to November, but the long
+nights, thick weather, and heavy winds knock off a good deal of the
+satisfaction for the rest of the year."
+
+"But I speak of the country; of old England itself; not of the
+passages."
+
+"Well, England has what I call a pretty fair coast. It is high, and
+great attention is paid to the lights; but of what account is either
+coast or lights, if the weather is so thick, you cannot see the end
+of your flying-jib-boom!"
+
+"Mr. Howel alludes more particularly to the country, inland," said
+Eve; "to the towns, the civilization and the other proofs of
+cultivation and refinement. To the government, especially."
+
+"In my judgment, sir, the government is much too particular about
+tobacco, and some other trifling things I could name. Then it
+restricts pennants to King's ships, whereas, to my notion, my dear
+young lady, a New-York packet is as worthy of wearing a pennant as
+any vessel that floats. I mean, of course, ships of the regular
+European lines, and not the Southern traders."
+
+"But these are merely spots on the sun, my good sir," returned Mr.
+Howel; "putting a few such trifles out of the question, I think you
+will allow that England is the most delightful country in the world?"
+
+"To be frank with you, Mr. Howel, there is a good deal of hang-dog
+weather, along in October, November and December. I have known March
+any thing but agreeable, and then April is just like a young girl
+with one of your melancholy novels, now smiling, and now blubbering."
+
+"But the morals of the country, my dear sir; the moral features of
+England must be a source of never-dying delight to a true
+philanthropist," resumed Mr. Howel, as Eve, who perceived that the
+discourse was likely to be long, went to join the ladies. "An
+Englishman has most reason to be proud of the moral excellencies of
+his country!"
+
+"Why, to be frank with you, Mr. Howel, there are some of the moral
+features of London, that are any thing but very beautiful. If you
+could pass twenty-four hours in the neighbourhood of St. Catharine's,
+would see sights that would throw Templeton into fits. The English
+are a handsome people, I allow; but their morality is none of the
+best-featured."
+
+"Let us be seated, sir; I am afraid we are not exactly agreed on our
+terms, and, in order that we may continue this subject, I beg you
+will let me take a seat next you, at table."
+
+To this Captain Truck very cheerfully assented, and then the two took
+chairs, continuing the discourse very much in the blind and ambiguous
+manner in which it had been commenced; the one party insisting on
+seeing every thing through the medium of an imagination that had got
+to be diseased on such subjects, or with a species of monomania;
+while the other seemed obstinately determined to consider the entire
+country as things had been presented to his limited and peculiar
+experience, in the vicinity of the docks.
+
+"We have had a very unexpected, and a very agreeable attendant in
+Captain Truck," said Mrs Hawker, when Eve had placed herself by her
+side, and respectfully taken one of her hands. "I really think if I
+were to suffer shipwreck, or to run the hazard of captivity, I should
+choose to have both occur in his good company."
+
+"Mrs. Hawker makes so many conquests," observed Mrs. Bloomfield,
+"that we are to think nothing of her success with this mer-man; but
+what will you say, Miss Effingham, when you learn that I am also in
+favour, in the same high quarter. I shall think the better of
+masters, and boatswains, and Trinculos and Stephanos, as long as I
+live, for this specimen of their craft."
+
+"Not Trinculos and Stephanos, dear Mrs. Bloom field; for, _a l'
+exception pres de_ Saturday-nights, and sweethearts and wives, a more
+exemplary person in the way of libations does not exist than our
+excellent Captain Truck. He is much too religious and moral for so
+vulgar an excess as drinking."
+
+"Religious!" exclaimed Mrs, Bloomfield, in sur prise. "This is a
+merit to which I did not know he possessed the smallest claims. One
+might imagine a little superstition, and some short-lived repentances
+in gales of wind; but scarcely any thing as much like a trade wind,
+as religion!"
+
+"Then you do not know him; for a more sincerely devout man, though I
+acknowledge it is after a fashion that is perhaps peculiar to the
+ocean, is not often met with. At any rate, you found him attentive to
+our sex?"
+
+"The pink of politeness, and, not to embellish, there is a manly
+deference about him, that is singularly agreeable to our frail
+vanity. This comes of his packet-training, I suppose, and we may
+thank you for some portion of his merit, His tongue never tires in
+your praises, and did I not feel persuaded that your mind is made up
+never to be the wife of any republican American, I should fear this
+visit exceedingly. Notwithstanding the remark I made concerning my
+being in favour, the affair lies between Mrs. Hawker and yourself. I
+know it is not your habit to trifle even on that very popular subject
+with young ladies, matrimony; but this case forms so complete an
+exception to the vulgar passion, that I trust you will overlook the
+indiscretion. Our _golden_ captain, for _copper_ he is not, protests
+that Mrs. Hawker is the most delightful old lady he ever knew, and
+that Miss Eve Effingham is the most delightful young lady he ever
+knew. Here, then, each may see the ground she occupies, and play her
+cards accordingly. I hope to be forgiven for touching on a subject so
+delicate."
+
+"In the first place," said Eve, smiling, "I should wish to hear Mrs.
+Hawker's reply."
+
+"I have no more to say, than to express my perfect gratitude,"
+answered that lady, "to announce a determination not to change my
+condition, on account of extreme youth, and a disposition to abandon
+the field to my younger, if not fairer, rival."
+
+"Well, then," resumed Eve, anxious to change the subject, for she saw
+that Paul was approaching their group, "I believe it will be wisest
+in me to suspend a decision, circumstances leaving so much at my
+disposal. Time must show what that decision will be."
+
+"Nay," said Mrs. Bloomfield, who saw no feeling involved in the
+trifling, "this is unjustifiable coquetry, and I feel bound to
+ascertain how the land lies. You will remember I am the Captain's
+confidant, and you know the fearful responsibility of a friend in an
+affair of this sort; that of a friend in the duello being
+insignificant in comparison. That I may have testimony at need, Mr.
+Powis shall be made acquainted with the leading facts. Captain Truck
+is a devout admirer of this young lady, sir, and I am endeavouring to
+discover whether he ought to hang himself on her father's lawn, this
+evening, as soon as the moon rises, or live another week. In order to
+do this, I shall pursue the categorical and inquisitorial method--and
+so defend yourself Miss Effingham. Do you object to the country of
+your admirer?"
+
+Eve, though inwardly vexed at the turn this pleasantry had taken,
+maintained a perfectly composed manner, for she knew that Mrs.
+Bloomfield had too much feminine propriety to say any thing improper,
+or any thing that might seriously embarrass her.
+
+"It would, indeed, be extraordinary, should I object to a country
+which is not only my own, but which has so long been that of my
+ancestors," she answered steadily. "On this score, my knight has
+nothing to fear."
+
+"I rejoice to hear this," returned Mrs. Bloomfield, glancing her
+eyes, unconsciously to herself, however, towards Sir George
+Templemore, "and, Mr. Powis, you, who I believe are a European, will
+learn humility in the avowal. Do you object to your swain that he is
+a seaman?"
+
+Eve blushed, notwithstanding a strong effort to appear composed, and,
+for the first time since their acquaintance, she felt provoked with
+Mrs. Bloomfield. She hesitated before she answered in the negative,
+and this too in a way to give more meaning to her reply, although
+nothing could be farther from her intentions.
+
+"The happy man _may_ then be an American and a seaman! Here is great
+encouragement. Do you object to sixty?"
+
+"In any other man I should certainly consider it a blemish, as my own
+dear father is but fifty."
+
+Mrs. Bloomfield was struck with the tremor in the voice, and with the
+air of embarrassment, in one who usually was so easy and collected;
+and with feminine sensitiveness she adroitly abandoned the subject,
+though she often recurred to this stifled emotion in the course of
+the day, and from that moment she became a silent observer of Eve's
+deportment with all her father's guests.
+
+"This is hope enough for one day," she said, rising; "the profession
+and the flag must counterbalance the years as best they may, and the
+Truck lives another revolution of the sun! Mrs. Hawker, we shall be
+late at dinner, I see by that clock, unless we retire soon."
+
+Both the ladies now went to their rooms; Eve, who was already dressed
+for dinner, remaining in the drawing-room. Paul still stood before
+her, and, like herself, he seemed embarrassed.
+
+"There are men who would be delighted to hear even the little that
+has fallen from your lips in this trifling," he said, as soon as Mrs.
+Bloomfield was out of hearing. "To be an American and a seaman, then,
+are not serious defects in your eyes?"
+
+"Am I to be made responsible for Mrs. Bloomfield's caprices and
+pleasantries?"
+
+"By no means; but I do think you hold yourself responsible for Miss
+Effingham's truth and sincerity I can conceive of your silence, when
+questioned too far, but scarcely of any direct declaration, that
+shall not possess both these high qualities."
+
+Eve looked up gratefully, for she saw that profound respect for her
+character dictated the remark; but rising, she observed--
+
+"This is making a little _badinage_ about our honest, lion-hearted,
+old captain, a very serious affair. And now, to show you that I am
+conscious of, and thankful for, your own compliment, I shall place
+you on the footing of a friend to both the parties, and request you
+will take Captain Truck into your especial care, while he remains
+here. My father and cousin are both sincerely his friends, but their
+habits are not so much those of their guests, as yours will probably
+be; and to you, then, I commit him, with a request that he may miss
+his ship and the ocean as little as possible."
+
+"I would I knew how to take this charge, Miss Effingham!--To be a
+seaman is not always a recommendation with the polished, intelligent,
+and refined."
+
+"But when one is polished, intelligent, and refined, to be a seaman
+is to add one other particular and useful branch of knowledge to
+those which are more familiar. I feel certain Captain Truck will be
+in good hands, and now I will go and do my devoirs to my own especial
+charges, the ladies."
+
+Eve bowed as she passed the young man, and she left the room with as
+much haste as at all became her. Paul stood motionless quite a minute
+after she had vanished, nor did he awaken from his reverie, until
+aroused by an appeal from Captain Truck, to sustain him, in some of
+his matter-of-fact opinions concerning England, against the visionary
+and bookish notions of Mr. Howel.
+
+"Who is this Mr. Powis?" asked Mrs. Bloomfield of Eve, when the
+latter appeared in her dressing-room, with an unusual impatience of
+manner.
+
+"You know, my dear Mrs. Bloomfield, that he was our fellow-passenger
+in the Montauk, and that he was of infinite service to us, in
+escaping from the Arabs."
+
+"All this I know, certainly; but he is a European, is he not?"
+
+Eve scarcely ever felt more embarrassed than in answering this simple
+question.
+
+"I believe not; at least, I think not; we thought so when we met him
+in Europe, and even until quite lately; but he has avowed himself a
+countryman of our own, since his arrival at Templeton."
+
+"Has he been here long?"
+
+"We found him in the village on reaching home. He was from Canada,
+and has been in waiting for his cousin, Captain Ducie, who came with
+you."
+
+"His cousin!--He has English cousins, then! Mr. Ducie kept this to
+himself, with true English reserve. Captain Truck whispered something
+of the latter's having taken out one of his passengers, _the_ Mr.
+Powis. the hero of the rocks, but I did not know of his having found
+his way back to our--to his country. Is he as agreeable as Sir George
+Templemore?"
+
+"Nay, Mrs. Bloomfield, I must leave you to judge of that for
+yourself. I think them both agreeable men; but there is so much
+caprice in a woman's tastes, that I decline thinking for others."
+
+"He is a seaman, I believe," observed Mrs. Bloomfield, with an
+abstracted manner--"he _must_ have been, to have manoeuvred and
+managed as I have been told he did. Powis--Powis--that is not one of
+our names, neither--I should think he must be from the south."
+
+Here Eve's habitual truth and dignity of mind did her good service,
+and prevented any further betrayal of embarrassment.
+
+"We do not know his family," she steadily answered. "That he is a
+gentleman, we see; but of his origin and connections he never
+speaks."
+
+"His profession would have given him the notions of a gentleman, for
+he was in the navy I have heard, although I had thought it the
+British navy. I do not know of any Powises in Philadelphia, or
+Baltimore, or Richmond, or Charleston; he must surely be from the
+interior."
+
+Eve could scarcely condemn her friend for a curiosity that had not a
+little tormented herself, though she would gladly change the
+discourse.
+
+"Mr. Powis would be much gratified, did he know what a subject of
+interest he has suddenly become with Mrs. Bloomfield," she said,
+smiling.
+
+"I confess it all; to be very sincere, I think him the most
+distinguished young man, in air, appearance, and expression of
+countenance, I ever saw. When this is coupled with what I have heard
+of his gallantry and coolness, my dear, I should not be woman to feel
+no interest in him. I would give the world to know of what State he
+is a native, if native, in truth, he be."
+
+"For that we have his own word. He was born in this country, and was
+educated in our own marine."
+
+"And yet from the little that fell from him, in our first short
+conversation, he struck me as being educated above his profession."
+
+"Mr. Powis has seen much as a traveller; when we met him in Europe,
+it was in a circle particularly qualified to improve both his mind
+and his manners."
+
+"Europe! Your acquaintance did not then commence, like that with Sir
+George Templemore, in the packet?"
+
+"Our acquaintance with neither, commenced in the packet. My father
+had often seen both these gentlemen, during our residences in
+different parts of Europe."
+
+"And your father's daughter?"
+
+"My father's daughter, too," said Eve, laughing. "With Mr. Powis, in
+particular, we were acquainted under circumstances that left a vivid
+recollection of his manliness and professional skill. He was of
+almost as much service to us on one of the Swiss lakes, as he has
+subsequently been on the ocean."
+
+All this was news to Mrs. Bloomfield, and she looked as if she
+thought the intelligence interesting. At this moment the dinner-bell
+rang, and all the ladies descended to the drawing-room. The gentlemen
+were already assembled, and as Mr. Effingham led Mrs. Hawker to the
+table, Mrs. Bloomfield gaily took Eve by the arm, protesting that she
+felt herself privileged, the first day, to take a seat near the young
+mistress of the Wigwam.
+
+"Mr. Powis and Sir George Templemore will not quarrel about the
+honour," she said, in a low voice, as they proceeded towards the
+table.
+
+"Indeed you are in error, Mrs. Bloomfield; Sir George Templemore is
+much better pleased with being at liberty to sit next my cousin
+Grace."
+
+"Can this be so!" returned the other, looking intently at her young
+friend.
+
+"Indeed it is so, and I am very glad to be able to affirm it. How far
+Miss Van Cortlandt is pleased that it is so, time must show: but the
+baronet betrays every day, and all day, how much he is pleased with
+her."
+
+"He is then a man of less taste, and judgment, and intelligence, than
+I had thought him."
+
+"Nay, dearest Mrs. Bloomfield, this is not necessarily true; or, if
+true, need it be so openly said?"
+
+"_Se non e vero, e ben trovato_."
+
+Chapter XVIII.
+
+  "Thine for a space are they--
+  Yet shalt thou yield thy treasures up at last;
+  Thy gates shall yet give way,
+  Thy bolts shall fall, inexorable Past."
+
+  BRYANT
+
+Captain Ducie had retired for the night, and was sitting reading,
+when a low tap at the door roused him from a brown study. He gave the
+necessary permission, and the door opened.
+
+"I hope, Ducie, you have not forgotten the secretary I left among
+your effects," said Paul entering the room, "and concerning which I
+wrote you when you were still at Quebec."
+
+Captain Ducie pointed to the case, which was standing among his other
+luggage, on the floor of the room.
+
+"Thank you for this care," said Paul, taking the secretary under his
+arm, and retiring towards the door; "it contains papers of much
+importance to myself, and some that I have reason to think are of
+importance to others."
+
+"Stop, Powis--a word before, you quit me. Is Templemore _de trop_?"
+
+"Not at all; I have a sincere regard for Templemore, and should be
+sorry to see him leave us."
+
+"And yet I think it singular a man of his habits should be
+rusticating among these hills, when I know that he is expected to
+look at the Canadas, with a view to report their actual condition at
+home."
+
+"Is Sir George really entrusted with a commission of that sort?"
+inquired Paul, with interest.
+
+"Not with any positive commission, perhaps, for none was necessary.
+Templemore is a rich fellow, and has no need of appointments; but, it
+is hoped and understood, that he will look at the provinces, and
+report their condition to the government, I dare say he will not be
+impeached for his negligence, though it may occasion surprise."
+
+"Good night, Ducie; Templemore prefers a wigwam to your walled
+Quebec, and _natives_ to colonists, that's all."
+
+In a minute, Paul was at the door of John Effingham's room, where he
+again tapped, and was again told to enter.
+
+"Ducie has not forgotten my request, and here is the secretary that
+contains poor Mr. Monday's paper," he remarked, as he laid his load
+on a toilet-table, speaking in a way to show that the visit was
+expected. "We have, indeed, neglected this duty too long, and it is
+to be hoped no injustice, or wrong to any, will be the consequence."
+
+"Is that the package?" demanded John Effingham, extending a hand to
+receive a bundle of papers that Paul had taken from the secretary.
+"We will break the seals this moment, and ascertain what ought to be
+done, before we sleep."
+
+"These are papers of my own, and very precious are they," returned
+the young man, regarding them a moment, with interest, before he laid
+them on the toilet. "Here are the papers of Mr. Monday."
+
+John Effingham received the package from his young friend, placed the
+lights conveniently on the table, put on his spectacles, and invited
+Paul to be seated. The gentlemen were placed opposite each other, the
+duty of breaking the seals, and first casting an eye at the contents
+of the different documents, devolving, as a matter of course, on the
+senior of the two, who, in truth, had alone been entrusted with it.
+
+"Here is something signed by poor Monday himself, in the way of a
+general, certificate," observed John Effingham, who first read the
+paper, and then handed it to Paul. It was, in form, an unsealed
+letter; and it was addressed "to all whom it may concern." The
+certificate itself was in the following words:
+
+"I, John Monday, do declare and certify, that all the accompanying
+letters and documents are genuine and authentic. Jane Dowse, to whom
+and from whom, are so many letters, was my late mother, she having
+intermarried with Peter Dowse, the man so often named, and who led
+her into acts for which I know she has since been deeply repentant.
+In committing these papers to me, my poor mother left me the sole
+judge of the course I was to take, and I have put them in this form
+in order that they may yet do good, should I be called suddenly away.
+All depends on discovering who the person called Bright actually is,
+for he was never known to my mother, by any other name. She knows him
+to have been an Englishman, however, and thinks he was, or had been,
+an upper servant in a gentleman's family. JOHN MONDAY."
+
+This paper was dated several years back, a sign that the disposition
+to do right had existed some time in Mr. Monday; and all the letters
+and other papers had been carefully preserved. The latter also
+appeared to be regularly numbered, a precaution that much aided the
+investigations of the two gentlemen. The original letters spoke for
+themselves, and the copies had been made in a clear, strong,
+mercantile hand, and with the method of one accustomed to business.
+In short, so far as the contents of the different papers would allow,
+nothing was wanting to render the whole distinct and intelligible.
+
+John Effingham read the paper No. 1, with deliberation, though not
+aloud; and when he had done, he handed it to his young friend, coolly
+remarking--
+
+"That is the production of a deliberate villain."
+
+Paul glanced his eye over the document, which was an original letter
+signed, 'David Bright,' and addressed to 'Mrs. Jane Dowse,' It was
+written with exceeding art, made many professions of friendship,
+spoke of the writer's knowledge of the woman's friends in England,
+and of her first husband in particular, and freely professed the
+writer's desire to serve her, while it also contained several
+ambiguous allusions to certain means of doing so, which should be
+revealed whenever the person to whom the letter was addressed should
+discover a willingness to embark in the undertaking. This letter was
+dated Philadelphia, was addressed to one in New-York, and it was old.
+
+"This is, indeed, a rare specimen of villany," said Paul, as he laid
+down the paper, "and has been written in some such spirit as that
+employed by the devil when he tempted our common mother. I think I
+never read a better specimen of low, wily, cunning."
+
+"And, judging by all that we already know, it would seem to have
+succeeded. In this letter you will find the gentleman a little more
+explicit; and but a little; though he is evidently encouraged by the
+interest and curiosity betrayed by the woman in this copy of the
+answer to his first epistle."
+
+Paul read the letter just named, and then he laid it down to wait for
+the next, which was still in the hands of his companion.
+
+"This is likely to prove a history of unlawful love, and of its
+miserable consequences," said John Effingham in his cool manner, as
+he handed the answers to letter No. 1, and letter No. 2, to Paul.
+"The world is full of such unfortunate adventures, and I should think
+the parties English, by a hint or two you will find in this very
+honest and conscientious communication. Strongly artificial, social
+and political distinctions render expedients of this nature more
+frequent, perhaps, in Great Britain, than in any other country. Youth
+is the season of the passions, and many a man in the thoughtlessness
+of that period lays the foundation of bitter regret in after life."
+
+As John Effingham raised his eyes, in the act of extending his hand
+towards his companion, he perceived that the fresh ruddy hue of his
+embrowned cheek deepened, until the colour diffused itself over the
+whole of his fine brow. At first an unpleasant suspicion flashed on
+John Effingham, and he admitted it with regret, for Eve and her
+future happiness had got to be closely associated, in his mind, with
+the character and conduct of the young man; but when Paul took the
+papers, steadily, and by an effort seemed to subdue all unpleasant
+feelings, the calm dignity with which he read them completely effaced
+the disagreeable distrust. It was then John Effingham remembered that
+he had once believed Paul himself might be the fruits of the
+heartless indiscretion he condemned. Commiseration and sympathy
+instantly took the place of the first impression, and he was so much
+absorbed with these feelings that he had not taken up the letter
+which was to follow, when Paul laid down the paper he had last been
+required to read.
+
+"This does, indeed, sir, seem to foretell one of those painful
+histories of unbridled passion, with the still more painful
+consequences," said the young man with the steadiness of one who was
+unconscious of having a personal connexion with any events of a
+nature so unpleasant. "Let us examine farther."
+
+John Effingham felt emboldened by these encouraging signs of
+unconcern, and he read the succeeding letters aloud, so that they
+learned their contents simultaneously. The next six or eight
+communications betrayed nothing distinctly, beyond the fact that the
+child which formed the subject of the whole correspondence, was to be
+received by Peter Dowse and his wife, and to be retained as their own
+offspring, for the consideration of a considerable sum, with an
+additional engagement to pay an annuity. It appeared by these letters
+also, that the child, which was hypocritically alluded to under the
+name of the 'pet,' had been actually transferred to the keeping of
+Jane Dowse, and that several years passed, after this arrangement,
+before the correspondence terminated. Most of the later letters
+referred to the payment of the annuity, although they all contained
+cold inquiries after the 'pet,' and answers so vague and general, as
+sufficiently to prove that the term was singularly misapplied. In the
+whole, there were some thirty or forty letters, each of which had
+been punctually answered, and their dates covered a space of near
+twelve years. The perusal of all these papers consumed more than an
+hour, and when John Effingham laid his spectacles on the table, the
+village clock had struck the hour of midnight.
+
+"As yet," he observed, "we have learned little more than the fact,
+that a child was made to take a false character, without possessing
+any other clue to the circumstances than is given in the names of the
+parties, all of whom are evidently obscure, and one of the most
+material of whom, we are plainly told, must have borne a fictitious
+name. Even poor Monday, in possession of so much collateral testimony
+that we want, could not have known what was the precise injustice
+done, if any, or, certainly, with the intentions he manifests, he
+would not have left that important particular in the dark."
+
+"This is likely to prove a complicated affair," returned Paul, "and
+it is not very clear that we can be of any immediate service. As you
+are probably fatigued, we may without impropriety defer the further
+examination to another time."
+
+To this John Effingham assented, and Paul, during the short
+conversation that followed, brought the secretary from the toilet to
+the table, along with the bundle of important papers that belonged to
+himself, to which he had alluded, and busied himself in replacing the
+whole in the drawer from which they had been taken.
+
+"All the formalities about the seals, that we observed when poor
+Monday gave us the packet, would seem to be unnecessary," he
+remarked, while thus occupied, "and it will probably be sufficient if
+I leave the secretary in your room, and keep the keys myself."
+
+"One never knows," returned John Effingham, with the greater caution
+of experience and age. "We have not read all the papers, and there
+are wax and lights before you; each has his watch and seal, and it
+will be the work of a minute only, to replace every thing as we left
+the package, originally. When this is done, you may leave the
+secretary, or remove it, at your own pleasure."
+
+"I will leave it; for, though it contains so much that I prize, and
+which is really of great importance to myself, it contains nothing
+for which I shall have immediate occasion."
+
+"In that case, it were better that I place the package in which we
+have a common interest in an _armoire_, or in my secretary, and that
+you keep your precious effects more immediately under your own eye."
+
+"It is immaterial, unless the case will inconvenience you, for I do
+not know that I am not happier when it is out of my sight, so long as
+I feel certain of its security, than when it is constantly before my
+eyes."
+
+Paul said this with a forced smile, and there was a sadness in his
+countenance that excited the sympathy of his companion. The latter,
+however, merely bowed his assent, and the papers were replaced, and
+the secretary was locked and deposited in an _armoire_, in silence.
+Paul was then about to wish the other good night, when John Effingham
+seized his hand, and by a gentle effort induced him to resume his
+seat. An embarrassing, but short pause succeeded, when the latter
+spoke.
+
+"We have suffered enough in company, and have seen each other in
+situations of sufficient trial to be friends," he said. "I should
+feel mortified, did I believe you could think me influenced by an
+improper curiosity, in wishing to share more of your confidence than
+you are perhaps willing to bestow; I trust you will attribute to its
+right motive the liberty I am now taking. Age makes some difference
+between us, and the sincere and strong interest I feel in your
+welfare, ought to give me a small claim not to be treated as a total
+stranger. So jealous and watchful has this interest been, I might
+with great truth call it affection, that I have discovered you are
+not situated exactly as other men in your condition of life are
+situated, and feel persuaded that the sympathy, perhaps the advice,
+of one so many years older than yourself, might be useful. You have
+already said so much to me, on the subject of your personal
+situation, that I almost feel a right to ask for more."
+
+John Effingham uttered this in his mildest and most winning manner;
+and few men could carry with them, on such an occasion, more of
+persuasion in their voices and looks. Paul's features worked, and it
+was evident to his companion that he was moved, while, at the same
+time, he was not displeased.
+
+"I am grateful, deeply grateful, sir, for this interest in my
+happiness," Paul answered, "and if I knew the particular points on
+which you feel any curiosity, there is nothing that I can desire to
+conceal. Have the further kindness to question me, Mr. Effingham,
+that I need not touch on things you do not care to hear."
+
+"All that really concerns your welfare, would have interest with me.
+You have been the agent of rescuing not only myself, but those whom I
+most love, from a fate worse than death; and, a childless bachelor
+myself, I have more than once thought of attempting to supply the
+places of those natural friends that I fear you have lost. Your
+parents--"
+
+"Are both dead. I never knew either," said Paul, who spoke huskily,
+"and will most cheerfully accept your generous offer, if you will
+allow me to attach to it a single condition."
+
+"Beggars must not be choosers," returned John Effingham, "and if you
+will allow me to feel this interest in you, and occasionally to share
+in the confidence of a father; I shall not insist on any unreasonable
+terms. What is your condition?"
+
+"That the word money may be struck out of our vocabulary, and that
+you leave your will unaltered. Were the world to be examined, you
+could not find a worthier or a lovelier heiress, than the one you
+have already selected, and whom Providence itself has given you.
+Compared with yourself, I am not rich, but I have a gentleman's
+income, and as I shall probably never marry, it will suffice for all
+my wants."
+
+John Effingham was more pleased than he cared to express with this
+frankness, and with the secret sympathy that had existed between
+them; but he smiled at the injunction; for, with Eve's knowledge, and
+her father's entire approbation, he had actually made a codicil to
+his will, in which their young protector was left one half of his
+large fortune.
+
+"The will may remain untouched, if you desire it," he answered,
+evasively, "and that condition is disposed of. I am glad to learn so
+directly from yourself, what your manner of living and the reports of
+others had prepared me to hear, that you are independent. This fact,
+alone, will place us solely on our mutual esteem, and render the
+friendship that I hope is now brought within a covenant, if not now
+first established, more equal and frank. You have seen much of the
+world, Powis, for your years and profession?"
+
+"It is usual to think that men of my profession see much of the
+world, as a consequence of their pursuits; though I agree with you,
+sir, that this is seeing the world only in a very limited circle. It
+is now several years since circumstances, I might almost say the
+imperative order of one whom I was bound to obey, induced me to
+resign, and since that time I have done little else but travel. Owing
+to certain adventitious causes, I have enjoyed an access to European
+society that few of our countrymen possess, and I hope the advantage
+has not been entirely thrown away. It was as a traveller on the
+continent of Europe, that I had the pleasure of first meeting with
+Mr. and Miss Effingham. I was much abroad, even as a child, and owe
+some little skill in foreign languages to that circumstance."
+
+"So my cousin has informed me. You have set the question of country
+at rest, by declaring that you are an American, and yet I find you
+have English relatives. Captain Ducie, I believe, is a kinsman?"
+
+"He is; we are sister's children, though our friendship has not
+always been such as the connexion would infer. When Ducie and myself
+met at sea, there was an awkwardness, if not a coolness, in the
+interview, that, coupled with my sudden return to England, I fear did
+not make the most favourable impression, on those who witnessed what
+passed."
+
+"We had confidence in your principles," said John Effingham, with a
+frank simplicity, "and, though the first surmises were not pleasant,
+perhaps, a little reflection told us that there was no just ground
+for suspicion."
+
+"Ducie is a fine, manly fellow, and has a seaman's generosity and
+sincerity. I had last parted from him on the field, where we met as
+enemies; and the circumstance rendered the unexpected meeting
+awkward. Our wounds no longer smarted, it is true; but, perhaps, we
+both felt shame and sorrow that they had ever been inflicted."
+
+"It should be a very serious quarrel that could arm sister's children
+against each other," said John Effingham, gravely.
+
+"I admit as much. But, at that time, Captain Ducie was not disposed
+to admit the consanguinity, and the offence grew out of an
+intemperate resentment of some imputations on my birth; between two
+military men, the issue could scarcely be avoided. Ducie challenged,
+and I was not then in the humour to balk him. A couple of flesh-
+wounds happily terminated the affair. But an interval of three years
+had enabled my enemy to discover that he had not done me justice;
+that I had been causelessly provoked to the quarrel, and that we
+ought to be firm friends. The generous desire to make suitable
+expiation, urged him to seize the first occasion of coming to America
+that offered; and when ordered to chase the Montauk, by a telegraphic
+communication from London, he was hourly expecting to sail for our
+seas, where he wished to come, expressly that we might meet. You will
+judge, therefore, how happy he was to find me unexpectedly in the
+vessel that contained his principal object of pursuit, thus killing,
+as it might be, two birds with one stone."
+
+"And did he carry you away with him, with any such murderous
+intention?" demanded John Effingham, smiling.
+
+"By no means; nothing could be more amicable than Ducie and myself
+got to be, when we had been a few hours together in his cabin. As
+often happens, when there have been violent antipathies and
+unreasonable prejudices, a nearer view of each other's character and
+motives removed every obstacle; and long before we reached England,
+two warmer friends could not be found, or a more frank intercourse
+between relatives could not be desired. You are aware, sir, that our
+English cousins do not often view their cis-atlantic relatives with
+the most lenient eyes."
+
+"This is but too true," said John Effingham proudly, though his lip
+quivered as he spoke, "and it is, in a great measure, the fault of
+that miserable mental bondage which has left this country, after
+sixty years of nominal independence, so much at the mercy of a
+hostile opinion. It is necessary that we respect ourselves in order
+that others respect us."
+
+"I agree with you, sir, entirely. In my case, however, previous
+injustice disposed my relatives to receive me better, perhaps, than
+might otherwise have been the case. I had little to ask in the way of
+fortune, and feeling no disposition to raise a question that might
+disturb the peerage of the Ducies, I became a favourite."
+
+"A peerage!--Both your parents, then, were English?"
+
+"Neither, I believe; but the connection between the two countries was
+so close, that it can occasion no surprise a right of this nature
+should have passed into the colonies. My mother's mother became the
+heiress of one of those ancient baronies, that pass to the heirs-
+general, and, in consequence of the deaths of two brothers, these
+rights, which however were never actually possessed by any of the
+previous generation, centered in my mother and my aunt. The former
+being dead, as was contended, without issue--"
+
+"You forget yourself!"
+
+"Lawful issue," added Paul, reddening to the temples, "I should have
+added--Mrs. Ducie, who was married to the younger son of an English
+nobleman, claimed and obtained the rank. My pretension would have
+left the peerage in abeyance, and I probably owe some little of the
+opposition I found, to that circumstance. But, after Ducie's generous
+conduct, I could not hesitate about joining in the application to the
+crown that, by its decision, the abeyance might be determined in
+favour of the person who was in possession; and Lady Dunluce is now
+quietly confirmed in her claim."
+
+"There are many young men in this country, who would cling to the
+hopes of a British peerage with greater tenacity!"
+
+"It is probable there are; but my self-denial is not of a very high
+order, for; it could scarcely be expected the English ministers would
+consent to give the rank to a foreigner who did not hesitate about
+avowing his principles and national feelings. I shall not say I did
+hot covet this peerage, for it would be supererogatory; but I am born
+an American, and will die an American; and an American who swaggers
+about such a claim, is like the daw among the peacocks. The less that
+is said about it, the better."
+
+"You are fortunate to have escaped the journals, which, most
+probably, would have _begraced_ you, by elevating you at once to the
+rank of a duke."
+
+"Instead of which, I had no other station than that of a dog in the
+manger. If it makes my aunt happy to be called Lady Dunluce, I am
+sure she is welcome to the privilege; and when Ducie succeeds her, as
+will one day be the case, an excellent fellow will be a peer of
+England. _Voila tout_! You are the only countryman, sir, to whom I
+have ever spoken of the circumstance, and with you I trust it will
+remain a secret"
+
+"What! am I precluded from mentioning the facts in my own family? I
+am not the only sincere, the only warm friend, you have in this
+house, Powis."
+
+"In that respect, I leave you to act your pleasure, my dear sir. If
+Mr. Effingham feel sufficient interest in my fortunes, to wish to
+hear what I have told you, let there be no silly mysteries,--or--or
+Mademoiselle Viefville--"
+
+"Or Nanny Sidley, or Annette," interrupted John Effingham, with a
+kind smile. "Well, trust to me for that; but, before we separate for
+the night, I wish to ascertain beyond question one other fact,
+although the circumstances you have stated scarce leave a doubt of
+the reply."
+
+"I understand you, sir, and did not intend to leave you in any
+uncertainty on that important particular. If there can be a feeling,
+more painful than all others, with a man of any pride, it is to
+distrust the purity of his mother. Mine was beyond reproach, thank
+God, and so it was most clearly established, or I could certainly
+have had no legal claim to the peerage."
+
+"Or your fortune--" added John Effingham, drawing a long breath, like
+one suddenly relieved from an unpleasant suspicion.
+
+"My fortune comes from neither parent, but from one of those generous
+dispositions, or caprices, if you will, that sometimes induce men to
+adopt those who are alien to their blood. My guardian adopted me,
+took me abroad with him, placed me, quite young, in the navy, and
+dying, he finally left me all he possessed As he was a bachelor, with
+no near relative, and had been the artisan of his own fortune, I
+could have no hesitation about accepting the gift he so liberally
+bequeathed. It was coupled with the condition that I should retire
+from the service, travel for five years, return home, and marry.
+There is no silly-forfeiture exacted in either case, but such is the
+general course solemnly advised by a man who showed himself my true
+friend for so many years."
+
+"I envy him the opportunity he enjoyed of serving you. I hope he
+would have approved of your national pride, for I believe we must put
+that at the bottom of your disinterestedness, in the affair of the
+peerage."
+
+"He would, indeed, although he never knew anything of the claim which
+arose out of the death of the two lords who preceded my aunt, and who
+were the brothers of my grandmother. My guardian was in all respects
+a man, and, in nothing more, than in a manly national pride. While
+abroad a decoration was offered him, and he declined it with the
+character and dignity of one who felt that distinctions which his
+country repudiated, every gentleman belonging to that country ought
+to reject; and yet he did it with a respectful gratitude for the
+compliment, that was due to the government from which the offer
+came."
+
+"I almost envy that man," said John Effingham, with warmth. "To have
+appreciated you, Powis, was a mark of a high judgment; but it seems
+he properly appreciated himself, his country, and human nature."
+
+"And yet he was little appreciated in his turn. That man passed years
+in one of our largest towns, of no more apparent account among its
+population than any one of its commoner spirits, and of not half as
+much as one of its bustling brokers, or jobbers."
+
+"In that there is nothing surprising. The class of the chosen few is
+too small every where, to be very numerous at any given point, in a
+scattered population like that of America. The broker will as
+naturally appreciate the broker, as the dog appreciates the dog, or
+the wolf the wolf. Least of all is the manliness you have named,
+likely to be valued among a people who have been put into men's
+clothes before they are out of leading-strings. I am older than you,
+my dear Paul," it was the first time John Effingham ever used so
+familiar an appellation, and the young man thought it sounded
+kindly--"I am older than you, my dear Paul, and will venture to tell
+you an important fact that may hereafter lessen some of your own
+mortifications. In most nations there is a high standard to which man
+at least affects to look; and acts are extolled and seemingly
+appreciated, for their naked merits. Little of this exists in
+America, where no man is much praised for himself, but for the
+purposes of party, or to feed national vanity. In the country in
+which, of all others, political opinion ought to be the freest, it is
+the most persecuted, and the community-character of the nation
+induces every man to think he has a right of property in all its
+fame. England exhibits a great deal of this weakness and injustice,
+which, it is to be feared, is a vicious fruit of liberty; for it is
+certain that the sacred nature of opinion is most appreciated in
+those countries in which it has the least efficiency. We are
+constantly deriding those governments which fetter opinion, and yet I
+know of no nation in which the expression of opinion is so certain to
+attract persecution and hostility as our own, though it may be, and
+is, in one sense, free."
+
+"This arises from its potency. Men quarrel about opinion here,
+because opinion rules. It is but one mode of struggling for power.
+But to return to my guardian; he was a man to think and act for
+himself, and as far from the magazine and newspaper existence that
+most Americans, in a moral sense, pass, as any man could be."
+
+"It is indeed a newspaper and magazine existence," said John
+Effingham, smiling at Paul's terms, "to know life only through such
+mediums! It is as bad as the condition of those English who form
+their notions of society from novels written by men and women who
+have no access to it, and from the records of the court journal. I
+thank you sincerely, Mr. Powis for this confidence, which has not
+been idly solicited on my part, and which shall not be abused. At no
+distant day we will break the seals again, and renew our
+investigations into this affair of the unfortunate Monday, which is
+not yet, certainly, very promising in the way of revelations."
+
+The gentlemen shook hands cordially, and Paul, lighted by his
+companion, withdrew. When the young man was at the door of his own
+room, he turned, and saw John Effingham following him with his eye.
+The latter then renewed the good night, with one of those winning
+smiles that rendered his face so brilliantly handsome, and each
+retired.
+
+Chapter XIX.
+
+  "Item, a capon, 2_s_. 2_d_. Item, sauce, 4_d_. Item, sack, two
+   gallons, 5_s_. 8_d_. Item, bread, a half-penny."
+
+  SHAKSPEARE.
+
+The next day John Effingham made no allusion to the conversation of
+the previous night, though the squeeze of the hand he gave Paul, when
+they met, was an assurance that nothing was forgotten. As he had a
+secret pleasure in obeying any injunction of Eve's, the young man
+himself sought Captain Truck, even before they had breakfasted, and,
+as he had made an acquaintance with 'the commodore,' on the lake,
+previously to the arrival of the Effinghams, that worthy was
+summoned, and regularly introduced to the honest ship-master. The
+meeting between these two distinguished men was grave, ceremonious
+and dignified, each probably feeling that he was temporarily the
+guardian of a particular portion of an element that was equally dear
+to both. After a few minutes passed, as it might be, in the
+preliminary points of etiquette, a better feeling and more confidence
+was established, and it was soon settled that they should fish in
+company, the rest of the day; Paul promising to row the ladies out on
+the lake, and to join them in the course of the afternoon.
+
+As the party quitted the breakfast-table, Eve took an occasion to
+thank the young man for his attention to their common friend, who, it
+was reported, had taken his morning's repast at an early hour, and
+was already on the lake, the day by this time having advanced within
+two hours of noon.
+
+"I have dared even to exceed your instructions, Miss Effingham," said
+Paul, "for I have promised the Captain to endeavour to persuade you,
+and as many of the ladies as possible, to trust yourselves to my
+seamanship, and to submit to be rowed out to the spot where we shall
+find him and his friend the commodore riding at anchor."
+
+"An engagement that my influence shall be used to see fulfilled. Mrs.
+Bloomfield has already expressed a desire to go on the Otsego-Water,
+and I make no doubt I shall find other companions. Once more let me
+thank you for this little attention, for I too well know your tastes,
+not to understand that you might find a more agreeable ward."
+
+"Upon my word, I feel a sincere regard for our old Captain, and could
+often wish for no better companion. Were he, however, as disagreeable
+as I find him, in truth, pleasant and frank, your wishes would
+conceal all his faults."
+
+"You have learned, Mr. Powis, that small attentions are as much
+remembered as important services, and after having saved our lives,
+wish to prove that you can discharge _les petits devoirs socials_, as
+well as perform great deeds. I trust you will persuade Sir George
+Templemore to be of our party, and at four we shall be ready to
+accompany you; until then I am contracted to a gossip with Mrs.
+Bloomfield in her dressing-room."
+
+We shall now leave the party on the land, and follow those who have
+already taken boat, or the fishermen. The beginning of the
+intercourse between the salt-water navigator and his fresh-water
+companion was again a little constrained and critical. Their
+professional terms agreed as ill as possible, for when the Captain
+used the expression 'ship the oars,' the commodore understood just
+the reverse of what it had been intended to express; and, once, when
+he told his companion to 'give way,' the latter took the hint so
+literally as actually to cease rowing. All these professional
+niceties induced the worthy ship-master to undervalue his companion,
+who, in the main, was very skilful in his particular pursuit, though
+it was a skill that he exerted after the fashions of his own lake,
+and not after the fashions of the ocean. Owing to several contre-tems
+of this nature, by the time they reached the fishing-ground the
+Captain began to entertain a feeling for the commodore, that ill
+comported with the deference due to his titular rank.
+
+"I have come out with you, commodore," said Captain Truck, when they
+had got to their station, and laying a peculiar emphasis on the
+appellation he used, "in order to _enjoy_ myself, and you will confer
+an especial favour on me by not using such phrases as 'cable-rope,'
+'casting anchor,' and 'titivating.' As for the two first, no seaman
+ever uses them; and I never heard suchna word on board a ship, as the
+last, D----e, sir, if I believe it is to be found in the dictionary,
+even."
+
+"You amaze me, sir! 'Casting anchor,' and 'cable-rope' are both Bible
+phrases, and they must be right."
+
+"That follows by no means, commodore, as I have some reason to know;
+for my father having been a parson, and I being a seaman, we may be
+said to have the whole subject, as it were, in the family. St. Paul--
+you have heard of such a man as St. Paul, commodore?--"
+
+"I know him almost by heart, Captain Truck; but St. Peter and St.
+Andrew were the men, most after my heart. Ours is an ancient calling,
+sir, and in those two instances you see to what a fisherman can rise.
+I do not remember to have ever heard of a sea-captain who was
+converted into a saint."
+
+"Ay, ay, there is always too much to do on board ship to have time to
+be much more than a beginner in religion. There was my mate, v'y'ge
+before last, Tom Leach, who is now master of a ship of his own, had
+he been brought up to it properly, he would have made as
+conscientious a parson as did his grandfather before him. Such a man
+would have been a seaman, as well as a parson. I have little to say
+against St. Peter or St. Andrew, but, in my judgment, they were none
+the better saints for having been fishermen; and, if the truth were
+known, I dare say they were at the bottom of introducing such
+lubberly phrases into the Bible, as 'casting-anchor,' and 'cable-
+rope."
+
+"Pray, sir," asked the commodore, with dignity, "what are _you_ in
+the practice of saying, when you speak of such matters; for, to be
+frank with you, _we_ always use these terms on these lakes."
+
+"Ay, ay, there is a fresh-water smell about them. We say 'anchor,' or
+'let go the anchor,' or 'dropped the anchor,' or some such reasonable
+expression, and not 'cast anchor,' as if a bit of iron, weighing two
+or three tons, is to be jerked about like a stone big enough to kill
+a bird with. As for the 'cable-rope,' as you call it, we say the
+'cable,' or 'the chain,' or 'the ground tackle,' according to reason
+and circumstances. You never hear a real 'salt' flourishing his
+'cable-ropes,' and his 'casting-anchors,' which are altogether too
+sentimental and particular for his manner of speaking. As for
+'ropes,' I suppose you have not got to be a commodore, and need being
+told how many there are in a ship."
+
+"I do not pretend to have counted them, but I have seen a ship, sir,
+and one under full sail, too, and I know there were as many ropes
+about her as there are pines on the Vision."
+
+"Are there more than seven of these trees on your mountain? for that
+is just the number of ropes in a merchant-man; though a man-of-war's-
+man counts one or two more."
+
+"You astonish me, sir! But seven ropes in a ship?--I should have said
+there are seven hundred!"
+
+"I dare say, I dare say; that is just the way in which a landsman
+pretends to criticise a vessel. As for the ropes, I will now give you
+their names, and then you can lay athwart hawse of these canoe
+gentry, by the hour, and teach them rigging and modesty, both at the
+same time. In the first place," continued the captain, jerking at his
+line, and then beginning to count on his fingers--"There is the 'man-
+rope;' then come the 'bucket-rope,' the 'tiller-rope,' the 'bolt-
+rope,' the 'foot-rope,' the 'top-rope,' and the 'limber-rope.' I have
+followed the seas, now, more than half a century, and never yet heard
+of a 'cable-rope,' from any one who could hand, reef, and steer."
+
+"Well, sir, every man to his trade," said the commodore, who just
+then pulled in a fine pickerel, which was the third he had taken,
+while his companion rejoiced in no more than a few fruitless bites.
+"You are more expert in ropes than in lines, it would seem. I shall
+not deny your experience and knowledge; but in the way of fishing,
+you will at least allow that the sea is no great school. I dare say,
+now, if you were to hook the 'sogdollager,' we should have you
+jumping into the lake to get rid of him. Quite probably, sir, you
+never before heard of that celebrated fish?"
+
+Notwithstanding the many excellent qualities of Captain Truck, he had
+a weakness that is rather peculiar to a class of men, who, having
+seen so much of this earth, are unwilling to admit they have not seen
+it all. The little brush in which he was now engaged with the
+commodore, he conceived due to his own dignity, and his motive was
+duly to impress his companion with his superiority, which being
+fairly admitted, he would have been ready enough to acknowledge that
+the other understood pike-fishing much better than himself. But it
+was quite too early in the discussion to make any such avowal, and
+the supercilious remark of the commodore's putting him on his mettle,
+he was ready to affirm that he had eaten 'sogdollagers' for
+breakfast, a month at a time, had it been necessary.
+
+"Pooh! pooh! man," returned the captain, with an air of cool
+indifference, "you do not surely fancy that you have any thing in a
+lake like this, that is not to be found in the ocean! If you were to
+see a whale's flukes thrashing your puddle, every cruiser among you
+would run for a port; and as for 'sogdollagers,' we think little of
+them in salt-water; the flying-fish, or even the dry dolphin, being
+much the best eating."
+
+"Sir," said the commodore, with some heat, and a great deal of
+emphasis, "there is but _one_ 'sogdollager' in the world, and he is
+in this lake. No man has ever seen him, but my predecessor, the
+'Admiral,' and myself."
+
+"Bah!" ejaculated the captain, "they are as plenty as soft clams, in
+the Mediterranean, and the Egyptians use them as a pan-fish. In the
+East, they catch them to bait with, for hallibut, and other middling
+sized creatures, that are particular about their diet. It is a good
+fish, I own, as is seen in this very circumstance."
+
+"Sir," repeated the commodore, flourishing his hand, and waxing warm
+with earnestness, "there is but one 'sogdollager' in the universe,
+and that is in Lake Otsego. A 'sogdollager' is a salmon trout, and
+not a species; a sort of father to all the salmon trout in this part
+of the world; a scaly patriarch."
+
+"I make no doubt _your_ 'sogdollager' is scaly enough; but what is
+the use in wasting words about such a trifle? A whale is the only
+fish fit to occupy a gentleman's thoughts. As long as I have been at
+sea, I have never witnessed the taking of more than three whales."
+
+This allusion happily preserved the peace; for, if there were any
+thing in the world for which the commodore entertained a profound,
+but obscure reverence, it was for a whale. He even thought better of
+a man for having actually seen one, gambolling in the freedom of the
+ocean; and his mind became suddenly oppressed by the glory of a
+mariner, who had passed his life among such gigantic animals. Shoving
+back his cap, the old man gazed steadily at the captain a minute, and
+all his displeasure about the 'sogdollagers' vanished, though, in his
+inmost mind, he set down all that the other had told him on that
+particular subject, as so many parts of a regular 'fish story.'
+
+"Captain Truck," he said, with solemnity, "I acknowledge myself to be
+but an ignorant and inexperienced man, one who has passed his life on
+this lake, which, broad and beautiful as it is, must seem a pond in
+the eyes of a seaman like yourself, who have passed your days on the
+Atlantic----"
+
+"Atlantic!" interrupted the captain contemptuously, "I should have
+but a poor opinion of myself, had I seen nothing but the Atlantic!
+Indeed, I never can believe I am at sea at all, on the Atlantic, the
+passages between New-York and Portsmouth being little more than so
+much canalling along a tow-path. If you wish to say any thing about
+oceans, talk of the Pacific, or of the Great South Sea, where a man
+may run a month with a fair wind, and hardly go from island to
+island. Indeed, that is an ocean in which there is a manufactory of
+islands, for they turn them off in lots to supply the market, and of
+a size to suit customers."
+
+"A manufactory of islands!" repeated the commodore, who began to
+entertain an awe of his companion, that he never expected to feel for
+any human being on Lake Otsego; "are you certain, sir, there is no
+mistake in this?"
+
+"None in the least; not only islands, but whole Archipelagos are made
+annually, by the sea insects in that quarter of the world; but, then,
+you are not to form your notions of an insect in such an ocean, by
+the insects you see in such a bit of water as this."
+
+"As big as our pickerel, or salmon trout, I dare say?" returned the
+commodore, in the simplicity of his heart, for by this time his local
+and exclusive conceit was thoroughly humbled, and he was almost ready
+to believe any thing.
+
+"I say nothing of their size, for it is to their numbers and industry
+that I principally allude now. A solitary shark, I dare say, would
+set your whole Lake in commotion?"
+
+"I think we might manage a shark, sir. I once saw one of those
+animals, and I do really believe the sogdollager would outweigh him.
+I do think we might manage a shark, sir."
+
+"Ay, you mean an in-shore, high-latitude fellow. But what would you
+say to a shark as long as one of those pines on the mountain?"
+
+"Such a monster would take in a man, whole?"
+
+"A man! He would take in a platoon, Indian file I dare say one of
+those pines, now, may be thirty or forty feet high!"
+
+A gleam of intelligence and of exultation shot across the weather-
+beaten face of the old fisherman, for he detected a weak spot in the
+other's knowledge. The worthy Captain, with that species of
+exclusiveness which accompanies excellence in any one thing, was
+quite ignorant of most matters that pertain to the land. That there
+should be a tree, so far inland, that was larger than his main-yard,
+he did not think probable, although that yard itself was made of part
+of a tree; and, in the laudable intention of duly impressing his
+companion with the superiority of a real seaman over a mere fresh-
+water navigator, he had inadvertently laid bare a weak spot in his
+estimate of heights and distances, that the Commodore seized upon,
+with some such avidity as the pike seizes the hook. This accidental
+mistake alone saved the latter from an abject submission, for the
+cool superiority of the Captain had so far deprived him of his
+conceit, that he was almost ready to acknowledge himself no better
+than a dog, when he caught a glimpse of light through this opening.
+
+"There is not a pine, that can be called of age, on all the mountain,
+which is not more than a hundred feet high, and many are nearer two,"
+he cried in exultation, flourishing his hand. "The sea may have its
+big monsters, Captain, but our hills have their big trees. Did you
+ever see a shark of half that length?"
+
+Now, Captain Truck was a man of truth, although so much given to
+occasional humorous violations of its laws, and, withal, a little
+disposed to dwell upon the marvels of the great deep, in the spirit
+of exaggeration, and he could not, in conscience, affirm any thing so
+extravagant as this. He was accordingly obliged to admit his mistake,
+and from this moment, the conversation was carried on with a greater
+regard to equality. They talked, as they fished, of politics,
+religion, philosophy, human nature, the useful arts, abolition, and
+most other subjects that would be likely to interest a couple of
+Americans who had nothing to do but to twitch, from time to time, at
+two lines dangling in the water. Although few people possess less of
+the art of conversation than our own countrymen, no other nation
+takes as wide a range in its discussions. He is but a very
+indifferent American that does not know, or thinks he knows, a little
+of every thing, and neither of our worthies was in the least backward
+in supporting the claims of the national character in this respect.
+This general discussion completely restored amity between the
+parties; for, to confess the truth, our old friend the Captain was a
+little rebuked about the affair of the tree. The only peculiarity
+worthy of notice, that occurred in the course of their various
+digressions, was the fact, that the commodore insensibly began to
+style his companion "General;" the courtesy of the country in his
+eyes, appearing to require that a man who has seen so much more than
+himself, should, at least, enjoy a title equal to his own in rank,
+and that of Admiral being proscribed by the sensitiveness of
+republican principles. After fishing a few hours, the old laker
+pulled the skiff up to the Point so often mentioned, where he Lighted
+a fire on the grass, and prepared a dinner. When every thing was
+ready, the two seated themselves, and began to enjoy the fruits of
+their labours in a way that will be understood by all sportsmen.
+
+"I have never thought of asking you, general," said the commodore, as
+he began to masticate a perch, "whether you are an aristocrat or a
+democrat. We have had the government pretty much upside-down, too,
+this morning, but this question has escaped me."
+
+"As we are here by ourselves under these venerable oaks, and talking
+like two old messmates," returned the general, "I shall just own the
+truth, and make no bones of it. I have been captain of my own ship so
+long, that I have a most thorough contempt for all equality. It is a
+vice that I deprecate, and, whatever may be the laws of this country,
+I am of opinion, that equality is no where borne out by the Law of
+Nations; which, after all, commodore, is the only true law for a
+gentleman to live under."
+
+"That is the law of the strongest, if I understand the matter,
+general."
+
+"Only reduced to rules. The Law of Nations, to own the truth to you,
+is full of categories, and this will give an enterprising man an
+opportunity to make use of his knowledge. Would you believe,
+commodore, that there are countries, in which they lay taxes on
+tobacco?"
+
+"Taxes on tobacco! Sir, I never heard of such an act of oppression
+under the forms of law! What has tobacco done, that any one should
+think of taxing it?"
+
+"I believe, commodore, that its greatest offence is being so general
+a favourite. Taxation, I have found, differs from most other things,
+generally attacking that which men most prize."
+
+"This is quite new to me, general; a tax on tobacco. The law-makers
+in those countries cannot chew. I drink to your good health, sir, and
+to many happy returns of such banquets as this."
+
+Here the commodore raised a large silver punch-bowl, which Pierre had
+furnished, to his lips, and fastening his eyes on the boughs of a
+knarled oak, he looked like a man who was taking an observation, for
+near a minute. All this time, the captain regarded him with a
+sympathetic pleasure, and when the bowl was free, he imitated the
+example, levelling his own eye at a cloud, that seemed floating at an
+angle of forty-five degrees above him, expressly for that purpose.
+
+"There is a lazy cloud!" exclaimed the general, as he let go his hold
+to catch breath; "I have been watching it some time, and it has not
+moved an inch."
+
+"Tobacco!" repeated the commodore, drawing a long breath, as if he
+was just recovering the play of his lungs, "I should as soon think of
+laying a tax on punch. The country that pursues such a policy must,
+sooner or later, meet with a downfall. I never knew good come of
+persecution."
+
+"I find you are a sensible man, commodore, and regret I did not make
+your acquaintance earlier in life. Have you yet made up your mind on
+the subject of religious faith?"
+
+"Why, my dear general, not to be nibbling like a sucker with a sore
+mouth, with a person of your liberality, I shall give you a plain
+history of my adventures, in the way of experiences, that you may
+judge for yourself. I was born an Episcopalian, if one can say so,
+but was converted to Presbyterianism at twenty. I stuck to this
+denomination about five years, when I thought I would try the
+Baptists, having got to be fond of the water, by this time. At
+thirty-two I fished a while with the Methodists; since which
+conversion, I have chosen to worship God pretty much by myself, out
+here on the lake."
+
+"Do you consider it any harm, to hook a fish of a Sunday?"
+
+"No more than it is to eat a fish of a Sunday. I go altogether by
+faith, in my religion, general, for they talked so much to me of the
+uselessness of works, that I've got to be very unparticular as to
+what I do. Your people who have been converted four or five times,
+are like so many pickerel, which strike at every hook."
+
+"This is very much my case. Now, on the river--of course you know
+where the river is?"
+
+"Certain," said the commodore; "it is at the foot of the lake."
+
+"My dear commodore, when we say 'the river,' we always mean the
+Connecticut; and I am surprised a man of your sagacity should require
+to be told this. There are people on the river who contend that a
+ship should heave-to of a Sunday. They did talk of getting up an
+Anti-Sunday-Sailing-Society, but the ship-masters were too many for
+them, since they threatened to start a society to put down the
+growing of inyens, (the captain would sometimes use this
+pronunciation) except of week-days. Well, I started in life, on the
+platform tack, in the way of religion, and I believe I shall stand on
+the same course till orders come to 'cast anchor,' as you call it.
+With you, I hold out for faith, as the one thing needful. Pray, my
+good friend, what are your real sentiments concerning 'Old Hickory.'
+
+"Tough, sir;--Tough as a day in February on this lake. All fins, and
+gills, and bones."
+
+"That is the justest character I have yet heard of the old gentleman;
+and then it says so much in a few words; no category about it. I hope
+the punch is to your liking?"
+
+On this hint the old fisherman raised the bowl a second time to his
+lips, and renewed the agreeable duty of letting its contents flow
+down his throat, in a pleasant stream. This time, he took aim at a
+gull that was sailing over his head, only relinquishing the draught
+as the bird settled into the water. The 'general' was more
+particular; for selecting a stationary object, in the top of an oak,
+that grew on the mountain near him, he studied it with an admirable
+abstruseness of attention, until the last drop was drained. As soon
+as this startling fact was mentioned, however, both the _convives_
+set about repairing the accident, by squeezing lemons, sweetening
+water, and mixing liquors, _secundem artem._ At the same time, each
+lighted a cigar, and the conversation, for some time, was carried on
+between their teeth.
+
+"We have been so frank with each other to-day, my excellent
+commodore," said Captain Truck, "that did I know your true sentiments
+concerning Temperance Societies, I should look on your inmost soul as
+a part of myself. By these free communications men get really to know
+each other."
+
+"If liquor is not made to be drunk, for what is it made? Any one may
+see that this lake was made for skiffs and fishing; it has a length,
+breadth, and depth suited to such purposes. Now, here is liquor
+distilled, bottled, and corked, and I ask if all does not show that
+it was made to be drunk. I dare say your temperance men are
+ingenious, but let them answer that if they can."
+
+"I wish, from my heart, my dear sir, we had known each other fifty
+years since. That would have brought you acquainted with salt-water,
+and left nothing to be desired in your character. We think alike, I
+believe, in every thing but on the virtues of fresh-water. If these
+temperance people had their way, we should all be turned into so many
+Turks, who never taste wine, and yet marry a dozen wives."
+
+"One of the great merits of fresh-water, general, is what I call its
+mixable quality."
+
+"There would be an end to Saturday nights, too, which are the
+seamen's tea-parties."
+
+"I question if many of them fish in the rain, from sunrise to
+sunset."
+
+"Or, stand their watches in wet pee-jackets, from sunset to sunrise.
+Splicing the main brace at such times, is the very quintessence of
+human enjoyments."
+
+"If liquors were not made to be drunk," put in the commodore,
+logically, "I would again ask for what are they made? Let the
+temperance men get over that difficulty if they can."
+
+"Commodore, I wish you twenty more good hearty years of fishing in
+this lake, which grows, each instant, more beautiful in my eyes, as I
+confess does the whole earth; and to show you that I say no more than
+I think, I will clench it with a draught."
+
+Captain Truck now brought his right eye to bear on the new moon,
+which happened to be at a convenient height, closed the left one, and
+continued in that attitude until the commodore began seriously to
+think he was to get nothing besides, the lemon-seeds for his share.
+This apprehension, however, could only arise from ignorance of his
+companion's character, than whom a juster man, according to the
+notions of ship-masters, did not live; and had one measured the punch
+that was left in the bowl when this draught was ended, he would have
+found that precisely one half of it was still untouched, to a
+thimblefull. The commodore now had his turn; and before he got
+through, the bottom of the vessel was as much uppermost as the butt
+of a club bed firelock. When the honest fisherman took breath after
+this exploit, and lowered his cup from the vault of heaven to the
+surface of the earth, he caught a view of a boat crossing the lake,
+coming from the Silent Pine, to that Point on which they were
+enjoying so many agreeable hallucinations on the subject of
+temperance.
+
+"Yonder is the party from the Wigwam," he said, "and they will be
+just in time to become converts to our opinions, if they have any
+doubts on the subjects we have discussed. Shall we give up the ground
+to them, by taking to the skiff, or do you feel disposed to face the
+women?"
+
+"Under ordinary circumstances, commodore, I should prefer your
+society to all the petticoats in the State, but there are two ladies
+in that party, either of whom I would marry, any day, at a minute's
+warning."
+
+"Sir," said the commodore with a tone of warning, "we, who have lived
+bachelors so long, and are wedded to the water, ought never to speak
+lightly on so grave a subject."
+
+"Nor do I. Two women, one of whom is twenty, and the other seventy--
+and hang me if I know which I prefer."
+
+"You would soonest be rid of the last, my dear general, and my advice
+is to take her."
+
+"Old as she is, sir, a king would have to plead hard to get her
+consent. We will make them some punch, that they may see we were
+mindful of them in their absence."
+
+To work these worthies now went in earnest, in order to anticipate
+the arrival of the party, and as the different compounds were in the
+course of mingling, the conversation did not flag. By this time both
+the salt-water and the fresh-water sailor were in that condition when
+men are apt to think aloud, and the commodore had lost all his awe of
+his companion.
+
+"My dear sir," said the former, "I am a thousand times sorry you came
+from that river, for, to tell you my mind without any concealment, my
+only objection to you is that you are not of the middle states. I
+admit the good qualities of the Yankees, in a general way, and yet
+they are the very worst neighbours that a man can have."
+
+"This is a new character of them, commodore, as they generally pass
+for the best, in their own eyes. I should like to hear you explain
+your meaning."
+
+"I call him a bad neighbour who never remains long enough in a place
+to love any thing but himself. Now, sir, I have a feeling for every
+pebble on the shore of this lake, a sympathy with every wave,"--here
+the commodore began to twirl his hand about, with the fingers
+standing apart, like so many spikes in a _che-vaux-de-frise_--"and
+each hour, as I row across it, I find I like it better; and yet, sir,
+would you believe me, I often go away of a morning to pass the day on
+the water, and, on returning home at night, find half the houses
+filled with new faces."
+
+"What becomes of the old ones?" demanded Captain Truck; for this, it
+struck him, was getting the better of him with his own weapons. "Do
+you mean that the people come and go like the tides?"
+
+"Exactly so, sir; just as it used to be with the herrings in the
+Otsego, before the. Susquehannah was dammed, and is still, with the
+swallows."
+
+"Well, well, my good friend, take consolation. You'll meet all the
+faces you ever saw here, one day in heaven."
+
+"Never; not a man of them will stay there, if there be such a thing
+as moving. Depend on it, sir," added the commodore, in the simplicity
+of his heart, "heaven is no place for a Yankee, if he can get farther
+west, by hook or by crook. They are all too uneasy for any steady
+occupation. You, who are a navigator, must know something concerning
+the stars; is there such a thing as another world, that lies west of
+this?"
+
+"That can hardly be, commodore, since the points of the compass only
+refer to objects on this earth. You know, I suppose, that a man
+starting from this spot, and travelling due west, would arrive, in
+time, at this very point, coming in from the east; so that what is
+west to us, in the heavens, on this side of the world, is east to
+those on the other."
+
+"This I confess I did not know, general. I have understood that what
+is good in one man's eyes, will be bad in another's; but never before
+have I heard that what is west to one man, lies east to another. I am
+afraid, general, that there is a little of the sogdollager bait in
+this?"
+
+"Not enough, sir, to catch the merest fresh-water gudgeon that swims.
+No, no; there is neither east nor west off the earth, nor any up and
+down; and so we Yankees must try and content ourselves with heaven.
+Now, commodore, hand me the bowl, and we will get it ready down to
+the shore, and offer the ladies our homage. And so you have become a
+laker in your religion, my dear commodore," continued the general,
+between his teeth, while he smoked and squeezed a lemon at the same
+time, "and do your worshipping on the water?"
+
+"Altogether of late, and more especially since my dream."
+
+"Dream! My dear sir, I should think you altogether too innocent a man
+to dream."
+
+"The best of us have our failings, general. I do sometimes dream, I
+own, as well as the greatest sinner of them all."
+
+"And of what did you dream--the sogdollager?"
+
+"I dreamt of death."
+
+"Of slipping the cable!" cried the general, looking up suddenly.
+"Well, what was the drift?"
+
+"Why, sir, having no wings, I went down below, and soon found myself
+in the presence of the old gentleman himself."
+
+"That was pleasant--had he a tail? I have always been curious to know
+whether he really has a tail or not."
+
+"I saw none, sir, but then we stood face to face, like gentlemen, and
+I cannot describe what I did not see."
+
+"Was he glad to see you, commodore?"
+
+"Why, sir; he was civilly spoken, but his occupation prevented many
+compliments."
+
+"Occupation!"
+
+"Certainly, sir; he was cutting out shoes, for his imps to travel
+about in, in order to stir up mischief."
+
+"And did he set you to work?--This is a sort of State-Prison affair,
+after all!"
+
+"No sir, he was too much of a gentleman to set me at making shoes as
+soon as I arrived. He first inquired what part of the country I was
+from, and when I told him, he was curious to know what most of the
+people were about in our neighbourhood."
+
+"You told him, of course, commodore?"
+
+"Certainly, sir, I told him their chief occupation was quarrelling
+about religion; making saints of them selves, and sinners of their
+neighbours. 'Hollo!' says the Devil, calling out to one of his imps,
+'boy, run and catch my horse--I must be off, and have a finger in
+that pie. What denominations have you in that quarter, commodore? So
+I told him, general, that we had Baptists, and Quakers, and
+Universalists, and Episcopalians, and Presbyterians, old-lights, new-
+lights, and blue-lights; and Methodists----. 'Stop,' said the Devil,
+'that's enough; you imp, be nimble with that horse.--Let me see,
+commodore, what, part of the country did you say you came from?' I
+told him the name more distinctly this time----"
+
+"The very spot?"
+
+"Town and county."
+
+"And what did the Devil say to that?"
+
+"He called out to the imp, again--'Hollo, you boy, never mind that
+horse; _these_ people will all be here before I can get there.'"
+
+Here the commodore and the general began to laugh, until the arches
+of the forest rang with their merriment. Three times they stopped,
+and as often did they return to their glee, until, the punch being
+ready, each took a fresh draught, in order to ascertain if it were
+fit to be offered to the ladies.
+
+Chapter XX.
+
+  "O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?"
+
+  ROMEO AND JULIET.
+
+The usual effect of punch is to cause people to see double; but, on
+this occasion, the mistake was the other way, for two boats had
+touched the strand, instead of the one announced by the commodore,
+and they brought with them the whole party from the Wigwam, Steadfast
+and Aristabalus included. A domestic or two had also been brought to
+prepare the customary repast.
+
+Captain Truck was as good as his word, as respects the punch, and the
+beverage was offered to each of the ladies in form, as soon as her
+feet had touched the green sward which covers that beautiful spot.
+Mrs. Hawker declined drinking, in a way to delight the gallant
+seaman; for so completely had she got the better of all his habits
+and prejudices, that every thing she did seemed right and gracious in
+his eyes.
+
+The party soon separated into groups, or pairs, some being seated on
+the margin of the limpid water, enjoying the light cool airs, by
+which it was fanned, others lay off in the boats fishing, while the
+remainder plunged into the woods, that, in their native wildness,
+bounded the little spot of verdure, which, canopied by old oaks,
+formed the arena so lately in controversy. In this manner, an hour or
+two soon slipped away, when a summons was given for all to assemble
+around the viands.
+
+The repast was laid on the grass, notwithstanding Aristabulus more
+than hinted that the public, his beloved public, usually saw fit to
+introduce rude tables for that purpose. The Messrs. Effinghams,
+however, were not to be taught by a mere bird of passage, how a
+rustic fete so peculiarly their own, ought to be conducted, and the
+attendants were directed to spread the dishes on the turf. Around
+this spot, rustic seats were _improvises_, and the business of
+_restauration_ proceeded. Of all there assembled, the Parisian
+feelings of Mademoiselle Viefville were the most excited; for to her,
+the scene was one of pure delights, with the noble panorama of
+forest-clad mountains, the mirror-like lake, the overshadowing oaks,
+and the tangled brakes of the adjoining woods.
+
+"_Mais, vraiment ceci surpasse les Tuileries, meme dans leur propre
+genre_!" she exclaimed, with energy. "_On passer ait volontiers par
+les dangers du desert pour y parvenir_."
+
+Those who understood her, smiled at this characteristic remark, and
+most felt disposed to join in the enthusiasm. Still, the manner in
+which their companions expressed the happiness they felt, appeared
+tame and unsatisfactory to Mr. Bragg and Mr. Dodge, these two persons
+being accustomed to see the young of the two sexes indulge in broader
+exhibitions of merry-making than those in which it comported with the
+tastes and habits of the present party to indulge. In vain Mrs.
+Hawker, in her quiet dignified way, enjoyed the ready wit and
+masculine thoughts of Mrs. Bloom field, appearing to renew her youth;
+or, Eve, with her sweet simplicity, and highly cultivated mind and
+improved tastes, seemed like a highly-polished mirror, to throw back
+the flashes of thought and memory, that so constantly gleamed before
+both; it was all lost on these thoroughly matter-of-fact
+utilitarians. Mr. Effingham, all courtesy and mild refinement, was
+seldom happier; and John Effingham was never more pleasant, for he
+had laid aside the severity of his character, to appear, what he
+ought always to have been, a man in whom intelligence and quickness
+of thought could be made to seem secondary to the gentler qualities.
+The young men were not behind their companions, either, each, in his
+particular way, appearing to advantage, gay, regulated, and full of a
+humour that was rendered so much the more agreeable, by drawing its
+images from a knowledge of the world, that was tempered by
+observation and practice.
+
+Poor Grace, alone, was the only one of the whole party, always
+excepting Aristabulus and Steadfast, who, for those fleeting but gay
+hours, was not thoroughly happy. For the first time in her life, she
+felt her own deficiencies, that ready and available knowledge, so
+exquisitely feminine in its nature and exhibition, which escaped Mrs.
+Bloomfield and Eve, as it might be from its own excess; which the
+former possessed almost, intuitively, a gift of Heaven, and which the
+latter enjoyed, not only from the same source, but as a just
+consequence of her long and steady self-denial, application, and a
+proper appreciation of her duty to herself, was denied one who, in
+ill-judged compliance with the customs of a society that has no other
+apparent aim than the love of display, had precluded herself from
+enjoyments that none but the intellectual can feel. Still Grace was
+beautiful and attractive; and though she wondered where her cousin,
+in general so simple and unpretending, had acquired all those stores
+of thought, that, in the _abandon_ and freedom of such a fete,
+escaped her in rich profusion, embellished with ready allusions and a
+brilliant though chastened wit, her generous and affectionate heart
+could permit her to wonder without envying. She perceived, for the
+first time, on this occasion, that if Eve were indeed a Hajji, it was
+not a Hajji of a common school; and, while her modesty and self-
+abasement led her bitterly to regret the hours irretrievably wasted
+in the frivolous levities so common to those of her sex with whom she
+had been most accustomed to mingle, her sincere regret did not lessen
+her admiration for one she began tenderly to love.
+
+As for Messrs. Dodge and Bragg, they both determined, in their own
+minds, that this was much the most stupid entertainment they had ever
+seen on that spot, for it was entirely destitute of loud laughing,
+noisy merriment, coarse witticisms, and practical jokes. To them it
+appeared the height of arrogance, for any particular set of persons
+to presume to come to a spot, rendered sacred by the public suffrage
+in its favour, in order to indulge in these outlandish dog-in-the-
+mangerisms.
+
+Towards the close of this gay repast, and when the party were about
+to yield their places to the attendants, who were ready to re-ship
+the utensils, John Effingham observed--
+
+"I trust, Mrs. Hawker, you have been-duly warned of the catastrophe-
+character of this point, on which woman is said never to have been
+wooed in vain. Here are Captain Truck and myself, ready at any moment
+to use these carving knives, _faute des Bowies_, in order to show our
+desperate devotion; and I deem it no more than prudent in you, not to
+smile again this day, lest the cross-eyed readings of jealousy should
+impute a wrong motive."
+
+"Had the injunction been against laughing, sir, I might have
+resisted, but smiles are far too feeble to express one's approbation,
+on such a day as this; you may, therefore, trust to my discretion. Is
+it then true, however, that Hymen haunts these shades?"
+
+"A bachelor's history of the progress of love, may be, like the
+education of his children, distrusted; but so sayeth tradition; and I
+never put my foot in the place, without making fresh vows of
+constancy to myself. After this announcement of the danger, dare you
+accept an arm, for I perceive signs that life cannot be entirely
+wasted in these pleasures, great as they may prove."
+
+The whole party arose, and separating naturally, they strolled in
+groups or pairs again, along the pebbly strand, or beneath the trees,
+while the attendants made the preparations to depart. Accident, as
+much as design, left Sir George and Grace alone, for neither
+perceived the circumstance until they had both passed a little rise
+in the formation of the ground, and were beyond the view of their
+companions. The baronet was the first to perceive how much he had
+been favoured by fortune, and his feelings were touched by the air of
+gentle melancholy, that shaded the usually bright and brilliant
+countenance of the beautiful girl.
+
+"I should have thrice enjoyed this pleasant day," he said, with an
+interest in his manner, that caused the heart of Grace to beat
+quicker, "had I not seen that to you it has been less productive of
+satisfaction, than to most of those around you. I fear you may not be
+as well, as usual?"
+
+"In health, never better, though not in spirits, perhaps."
+
+"I could wish I had a right to inquire why you, who have so few
+causes in general to be out of spirits, should have chosen a moment
+so little in accordance with the common feeling."
+
+"I have chosen no moment; the moment has chosen me, I fear. Not until
+this day, Sir George Templemore, have I ever been truly sensible of
+my great inferiority to my cousin, Eve."
+
+"An inferiority that no one but yourself would observe or mention."
+
+"No, I am neither vain enough, nor ignorant enough, to be the dupe of
+this flattery," returned Grace, shaking her hands and head, while she
+forced a smile; for even the delusions those we love pour into our
+ears, are not without their charms. "When I first met my cousin,
+after her return, my own imperfections rendered me blind to her
+superiority; but she herself has gradually taught me to respect her
+mind, her womanly character, her tact, her delicacy, principles,
+breeding, every thing that can make a woman estimable, or worthy to
+be loved! Oh! how have I wasted in childish amusements, and frivolous
+vanities, the precious moments of that girlhood which can never be
+recalled, and left myself scarcely worthy to be an associate of Eve
+Effingham!"
+
+The first feelings of Grace had so far gotten the control, that she
+scarce knew what she said, or to whom she was speaking; she even
+wrung her hands, in the momentary bitterness of her regrets, and in a
+way to arouse all the sympathy of a lover.
+
+"No one but yourself would say this, Miss Van Cortlandt, and least of
+all your admirable cousin."
+
+"She is, indeed, my admirable cousin! But what are _we_, in
+comparison with such a woman. Simple and unaffected as a child, with
+the intelligence of a scholar; with all the graces of a woman, she
+has the learning and mind of a man. Mistress of so many
+languages----"
+
+"But you, too, speak several, my dear Miss Van Cortlandt."
+
+"Yes," said Grace, bitterly, "I _speak_ them, as the parrot repeats
+words that he does not understand. But Eve Effingham has used these
+languages as means, and she does not tell you merely what such a
+phrase or idiom signifies, but what the greatest writers have thought
+and written."
+
+"No one has a more profound respect for your cousin than myself, Miss
+Van Cortlandt, but justice to you requires that I should say her
+great superiority over yourself has escaped me."
+
+"This may be true, Sir George Templemore, and for a long time it
+escaped me too. I have only learned to prize her as she ought to be
+prized by an intimate acquaintance; hour by hour, as it might be. But
+even you must have observed how quick and intuitively my cousin and
+Mrs. Bloomfield have understood each other to-day; how much extensive
+reading, and, what polished tastes they have both shown, and all so
+truly feminine! Mrs. Bloomfield is a remarkable woman, but she loves
+these exhibitions, for she knows she excels in them. Not so with Eve
+Effingham, who, while she so thoroughly enjoys every thing
+intellectual, is content, always, to seem so simple. Now, it happens,
+that the conversation turned once to-day on a subject that my cousin,
+no later than yesterday, fully explained to me, at my own earnest
+request; and I observed that, while she joined so naturally with Mrs.
+Bloomfield in adding to our pleasure, she kept back half what she
+knew, lest she might seem to surpass her friend. No--no--no--there is
+not such another woman as Eve Effingham in this world!"
+
+"So keen a perception of excellence in others, denotes an equal
+excellence in yourself."
+
+"I know my own great inferiority now, and no kindness of yours, Sir
+George Templemore, can ever persuade me into a better opinion of
+myself. Eve has travelled, seen much in Europe that does not exist
+here, and, instead of passing her youth in girlish trifling, has
+treated the minutes as if they were all precious, as she well knew
+them to be."
+
+"If Europe, then, does indeed possess these advantages, why not
+yourself visit it, dearest Miss Van Cortlandt?"
+
+"I--I a Hajji!" cried Grace with childish pleasure, though her colour
+heightened, and, for a moment, Eve and her superiority was forgotten.
+
+Certainly Sir George Templemore did not come out on the lake that day
+with any expectation of offering his baronetcy, his fair estate, with
+his hand, to this artless, half-educated, provincial, but beautiful
+girl. For a long time he had been debating with himself the propriety
+of such a step, and it is probable that, at some later period, he
+would have sought an occasion, had not one now so opportunely
+offered, notwithstanding all his doubts and reasonings with himself.
+If the "woman who hesitates is lost," it is equally true that the man
+who pretends to set up his reason alone against beauty, is certain to
+find that sense is less powerful than the senses. Had Grace Van
+Cortlandt been more sophisticated, less natural, her beauty might
+have failed to make this conquest; but the baronet found a charm in
+her _naivete_, that was singularly winning to the feelings of a man
+of the world. Eve had first attracted him by the same quality; the
+early education of American females being less constrained and
+artificial than that of the English; but in Eve he found a mental
+training and acquisitions that left the quality less conspicuous,
+perhaps, than in her scarcely less beautiful cousin; though, had Eve
+met his admiration with any thing like sympathy, her power over him
+would not have been easily weakened. As it was, Grace had been
+gradually winding herself around his affections, and he now poured
+out his love, in a language that her unpractised and already
+favourably disposed feelings had no means of withstanding. A very few
+minutes were allowed to them, before the summons to the boat; but
+when this summons came, Grace rejoined the party, elevated in her own
+good opinion, as happy as a cloudless future could make her and
+without another thought of the immeasurable superiority of her
+cousin.
+
+By a singular coincidence, while the baronet and Grace were thus
+engaged on one part of the shore, Eve was the subject of a similar
+proffer of connecting herself for life, on another. She had left the
+circle, attended by Paul, her father, and Aristabulus; but no sooner
+had they reached the margin of the water, than the two former were
+called away by Captain Truck, to settle some controverted point
+between the latter and the commodore. By this unlooked-for desertion,
+Eve found herself alone with Mr. Bragg.
+
+"That was a funny and comprehensive remark Mr. John made about the
+'Point,' Miss Eve," Aristabulus commenced, as soon as he found
+himself in possession of the ground. "I should like to know if it be
+really true that no woman was ever unsuccessfully wooed beneath these
+oaks? If such be the case, we gentlemen ought to be cautious how we
+come here."
+
+Here Aristabulus simpered, and looked, if possible, more amiable than
+ever; though the quiet composure and womanly dignity of Eve, who
+respected herself too much, and too well knew what was due to her
+sex, even to enter into, or, so far as it depended on her will, to
+permit any of that common-place and vulgar trifling about love and
+matrimony, which formed a never-failing theme between the youthful of
+the two sexes, in Mr. Bragg's particular circle, sensibly curbed his
+ambitious hopes. Still he thought he had made too good an opening,
+not to pursue the subject.
+
+"Mr. John Effingham sometimes indulges in pleasantries," Eve
+answered, "that would lead one astray who might attempt to follow."
+
+"Love _is_ a jack-o'-lantern," rejoined Aristabulus sentimentally.
+"That I admit; and it is no wonder so many get swamped in following
+his lights. Have you ever felt the tender passion, Miss Eve?"
+
+Now, Aristabulus had heard this question put at the _soiree_ of Mrs.
+Houston, more than once, and he believed himself to be in the most
+polite road for a regular declaration. An ordinary woman, who felt
+herself offended by this question, would, most probably, have stepped
+back, and, raising her form to its utmost elevation, answered by an
+emphatic "sir!" Not so with Eve. She felt the distance between Mr.
+Bragg and herself to be so great, that by no probable means could he
+even offend her by any assumption of equality. This distance was the
+result of opinions, habits, and education, rather than of condition,
+however; for, though Eve Effingham could become the wife of a
+gentleman only, she was entirely superior to those prejudices of the
+world that depend on purely factitious causes. Instead of discovering
+surprise, indignation, or dramatic dignity, therefore, at this
+extraordinary question, she barely permitted a smile to curl her
+handsome mouth; and this so slightly, as to escape her companion's
+eye.
+
+"I believe we are to be favoured with as smooth water, in returning
+to the village, as we had in the morning, while coming to this
+place," she simply said. "You row sometimes, I think, Mr. Bragg?"
+
+"Ah! Miss Eve, such another opportunity may never occur again, for
+you foreign ladies are so difficult of access! Let me, then, seize
+this happy moment, here, beneath the hymeneal oaks, to offer you this
+faithful hand and this willing heart. Of fortune you will have enough
+for both, and I say nothing about the miserable dross. Reflect, Miss
+Eve, how happy we might be, protecting and soothing the old age of
+your father, and in going down the hill of life in company; or, as
+the song says, 'and hand in hand we'll go, and sleep the'gither at
+the foot, John Anderson, my Joe.'"
+
+"You draw very agreeable pictures, Mr Bragg, and with the touches of
+a master!"
+
+"However agreeable you find them, Miss Eve, they fall infinitely
+short of the truth. The tie of wedlock, besides being the most
+sacred, is also the dearest; and happy, indeed, are they who enter
+into the solemn engagement with such cheerful prospects as ourselves.
+Our ages are perfectly suitable, our disposition entirely consonant,
+our habits so similar as to obviate all unpleasant changes, and our
+fortunes precisely what they ought to be to render a marriage happy,
+with confidence on one side, and gratitude on the other. As to the
+day, Miss Eve, I could wish to leave you altogether the mistress of
+that, and shall not be urgent."
+
+Eve had often heard John Effingham comment on the cool impudence of a
+particular portion of the American population, with great amusement
+to herself; but never did she expect to be the subject of an attack
+like this in her own person. By way of rendering the scene perfect,
+Aristabulus had taken out his penknife, cut a twig from a bush, and
+he now rendered himself doubly interesting by commencing the
+favourite occupation of whittling. A cooler picture of passion could
+not well have been drawn.
+
+"You are bashfully silent, Miss Eve! I make all due allowances for
+natural timidity, and shall say no more at present--though, as
+silence universally 'gives consent--'" "If you please, sir,"
+interrupted Eve, with a slight motion of her parasol, that implied a
+check. "I presume our habits and opinions, notwithstanding you seem
+to think them so consonant with each other, are sufficiently
+different to cause you not to see the impropriety of one, who is
+situated like yourself, abusing the confidence of a parent, by making
+such a proposal to a daughter without her father's knowledge: and, on
+that point, I shall say nothing. But as you have done me the honour
+of making me a very unequivocal offer of your hand, I wish that the
+answer may be as distinct as the proposal. I decline the advantage
+and happiness of becoming your wife, sir----"
+
+"Time flies, Miss Eve!"
+
+"Time does fly, Mr. Bragg; and, if you remain much longer in the
+employment of Mr. Effingham, you may lose an opportunity of advancing
+your fortunes at the west, whither I understand it has long been your
+intention to emigrate----"
+
+"I will readily relinquish all my hopes at the west, for your sake."
+
+"No, sir, I cannot be a party to such a sacrifice. I will not say
+forget _me_, but forget your hopes here, and renew those you have so
+unreflectingly abandoned beyond the Mississippi. I shall not
+represent this conversation to Mr. Effingham in a manner to create
+any unnecessary prejudices against you; and while I thank you, as
+every woman should, for an offer that must infer some portion, at
+least, of your good opinion, you will permit me again to wish you all
+lawful success in your western enterprises."
+
+Eve gave Mr. Bragg no farther opportunity to renew his suit; for, she
+curtsied and left him, as she ceased speaking. Mr. Dodge, who had
+been a distant observer of the interview, now hastened to join his
+friend, curious to know the result, for it had been privately
+arranged between these modest youths, that each should try his
+fortune in turn, with the heiress, did she not accept the first
+proposal. To the chagrin of Steadfast, and probably to the reader's
+surprise, Aristabulus informed his friend that Eve's manner and
+language had been full of encouragement.
+
+"She thanked me for the offer, Mr. Dodge," he said, "and her wishes
+for my future prosperity at the west, were warm and repeated. Eve
+Effingham is, indeed, a charming creature!"
+
+"At the west! Perhaps she meant differently from what you imagine. I
+know her well; the girl is full of art."
+
+"Art, sir! She spoke as plainly as woman could speak, and I repeat
+that I feel considerably encouraged. It is something, to have had so
+plain a conversation with Eve Effingham."
+
+Mr. Dodge swallowed his discontent, and the whole party soon
+embarked, to return to the village; the commodore and general taking
+a boat by themselves, in order to bring their discussions on human
+affairs in general, to a suitable close.
+
+That night, Sir George Templemore, asked an interview with Mr.
+Effingham, when the latter was alone in his library.
+
+"I sincerely hope this request is not the forerunner of a departure,"
+said the host kindly, as the young man entered, "in which case I
+shall regard you as one unmindful of the hopes he has raised. You
+stand pledged by implication, if not in words, to pass another month
+with us."
+
+"So far from entertaining an intention so faithless, my dear sir, I
+am fearful that you may think I trespass too far on your
+hospitality."
+
+He then communicated his wish to be allowed to make Grace Van
+Cortlandt his wife. Mr. Effingham heard him with a smile, that showed
+he was not altogether unprepared for such a demand, and his eye
+glistened as he squeezed the other's hand.
+
+"Take her with all my heart, Sir George," he said, "but remember you
+are transferring a tender plant into a strange soil. There are not
+many of your countrymen to whom I would confide such a trust, for I
+know the risk they run who make ill-assorted unions--"
+
+"Ill-assorted unions, Mr. Effingham!"
+
+"Yours will not be one, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, I
+know; for in years, birth and fortune, you and my dear niece are as
+much, on an equality as can be desired: but it is too often an ill-
+assorted union for an American woman to become an English wife. So
+much depends on the man, that with one in whom I have less confidence
+than I have in you, I might justly hesitate. I shall take a
+guardian's privilege, though Grace be her own mistress, and give you
+one solemn piece of advice--always respect the country of the woman
+you have thought worthy to bear your name."
+
+"I hope always to respect every thing that is hers; but, why this
+particular caution?--Miss Van Cortlandt is almost English in her
+heart."
+
+"An affectionate wife will take her bias in such matters, generally
+from her husband. Your country will be her country, your God her God.
+Still, Sir George Templemore, a woman of spirit and sentiment can
+never wholly forget the land of her birth. You love us not in
+England, and one who settles there will often have occasion to hear
+gibes and sneers on the land from which she came--"
+
+"Good God, Mr. Effingham, you do not think I shall take my wife into
+society where--"
+
+"Bear with a proser's doubts, Templemore. You will do all that is
+well-intentioned and proper, I dare say, in the usual acceptation of
+the words; but I wish you to do more; that which is wise. Grace has
+now a sincere reverence and respect for England, feelings that in
+many particulars are sustained by the facts, and will be permanent;
+but, in some things, observation, as it usually happens with the
+young and sanguine, will expose the mistakes into which she has been
+led by enthusiasm and the imagination. As she knows other countries
+better, she will come to regard her own with more favourable and
+discriminating eyes, losing her sensitiveness on account of
+peculiarities she now esteems, and taking new views of things.
+Perhaps you will think me selfish, but I shall add, also, that if you
+wish to cure your wife of any homesickness, the surest mode will be
+to bring her back to her native land."
+
+"Nay, my dear sir," said Sir George, laughing, "this is very much
+like acknowledging its blemishes."
+
+"I am aware it has that appearance, and yet the fact is otherwise.
+The cure is as certain with the Englishman as with the American; and
+with the German as with either. It depends on a general law which
+causes us all to over-estimate by-gone pleasures and distant scenes,
+and to undervalue those of the present moment. You know I have always
+maintained there is no real philosopher short of fifty, nor any taste
+worth possessing that is a dozen years old."
+
+Here Mr. Effingham rang the bell, and desired Pierre to request Miss
+Van Cortlandt to join him in the library. Grace entered blushing and
+shy, but with a countenance beaming with inward peace. Her uncle
+regarded her a moment intently, and a tear glistened in his eye,
+again, as he tenderly kissed her burning cheek.
+
+"God bless you, love," he said--"'tis a fearful change for your sex,
+and yet you all enter into it radiant with hope, and noble in your
+confidence. Take her, Templemore," giving her hand to the baronet,
+"and deal kindly by her. You will not desert us entirely I trust I
+shall see you both once more in the Wigwam before I die."
+
+"Uncle--uncle--" burst from Grace, as, drowned in tears, she threw
+herself into Mr. Effingham's arms; "I am an ungrateful girl, thus to
+abandon all my natural friends. I have acted wrong----"
+
+"Wrong, dearest Miss Van Cortlandt!"
+
+"Selfishly, then, Sir George Templemore," the simple-hearted girl
+ingenuously added, scarcely knowing how much her words implied--
+"Perhaps this matter night be reconsidered."
+
+"I am afraid little would be gained by that, my love," returned the
+smiling uncle, wiping his eyes at the same instant. "The second
+thoughts of ladies usually confirm the first, in such matters. God
+bless you, Grace;--Templemore, may Heaven have you, too, in its holy
+keeping. Remember what I have said, and to-morrow we will converse
+further on the subject. Does Eve know of this, my niece?"
+
+The colour went and came rapidly in Grace's cheek, and she looked to
+the floor, abashed.
+
+"We ought then to send for her," resumed Mr. Effingham, again
+reaching towards the bell.
+
+"Uncle--" and Grace hurriedly interposed, in time to save the string
+from being pulled. "Could I keep such an important secret from my
+dearest cousin!"
+
+"I find that I am the last in the secret, as is generally the case
+with old fellows, and I believe I am even now _de trop_."
+
+Mr. Effingham kissed Grace again affectionately, and, although she
+strenuously endeavoured to detain him, he left the room.
+
+"We must follow," said Grace, hastily wiping her eyes, and rubbing
+the traces of tears from her cheeks--"Excuse me, Sir George
+Templemore; will you open----"
+
+He did, though it was not the door, but his arms. Grace seemed like
+one that was rendered giddy by standing on a precipice, but when she
+fell, the young baronet was at hand to receive her. Instead of
+quitting the library that instant, the bell had announced the
+appearance of the supper-tray, before she remembered that she had so
+earnestly intended to do so.
+
+Chapter XXI.
+
+  "This day, no man thinks He has business at his house."
+
+  KING HENRY VIII.
+
+The warm weather, which was always a little behind that of the lower
+counties, had now set in among the mountains, and the season had
+advanced into the first week in July. "Independence Day," as the
+fourth of that month is termed by the Americans, arrived; and the
+wits of Templeton were taxed, as usual, in order that the festival
+might be celebrated with the customary intellectual and moral treat.
+The morning commenced with a parade of the two or three uniformed
+companies of the vicinity, much gingerbread and spruce-beer were
+consumed in the streets, no light potations of whiskey were swallowed
+in the groceries, and a great variety of drinks, some of which bore
+very ambitious names, shared the same fate in the taverns.
+
+Mademoiselle Viefville had been told that this was the great American
+_fete_; the festival of the nation; and she appeared that morning in
+gay ribands, and with her bright, animated face, covered with smiles
+for the occasion. To her surprise, however, no one seemed to respond
+to her feelings; and as the party rose from the breakfast-table, she
+took an opportunity to ask an explanation of Eve, in a little
+'aside.'
+
+"_Est-ce que je me suis trompee, ma chere_?" demanded the lively
+Frenchwoman. "Is not this _la celebration de votre independance_?"
+
+"You are not mistaken, my dear Mademoiselle Viefville, and great
+preparations are made to do it honour. I understand there is to be a
+military parade, an oration, a dinner, and fire-works."
+
+"_Monsieur votre pere----?_"
+
+"_Monsieur mon pere_ is not much given to rejoicings, and he takes
+this annual joy, much as a valetudinarian takes his morning draught."
+
+"_Et Monsieur Jean Effingham----?_"
+
+"Is always a philosopher; you are to expect no antics from him."
+
+"_Mais ces jeunes gens, Monsieur Bragg, Monsieur Dodge, et Monsieur
+Powis, meme!_"
+
+"_Se rejouissent en Americains._ I presume you are aware that Mr.
+Powis has declared himself to be an American?"
+
+Mademoiselle Viefville looked towards the streets, along which divers
+tall, sombre-looking countrymen, with faces more lugubrious than
+those of the mutes of a funeral, were sauntering, with a desperate
+air of enjoyment; and she shrugged her shoulders, as she muttered to
+herself, "_que ces Americains sont droles!_"
+
+At a later hour, however, Eve surprised her father, and indeed most
+of the Americans of the party, by proposing that the ladies should
+walk out into the street, and witness the fete.
+
+"My child, this is a strange proposition to come from a young lady of
+twenty," said her father.
+
+"Why strange, dear sir?--We always mingled in the village fetes in
+Europe."
+
+"_Certainement_" cried the delighted Mademoiselle Viefville; "_c'est
+de rigueur, meme_"
+
+"And it is _de rigueur_, here, Mademoiselle, for young ladies to keep
+out of them," put in John Effingham. "I should be very sorry to see
+either of you three ladies in the streets of Templeton to-day."
+
+Why so, cousin Jack? Have we any thing to fear from the rudeness of
+our countrymen? I have always understood, on the contrary, that in no
+other part of the world is woman so uniformly treated with respect
+and kindness, as in this very republic of ours; and yet, by all these
+ominous faces, I perceive that it will not do for her to trust
+herself in the streets of a village on a _festa_"
+
+"You are not altogether wrong, in what you now say, Miss Effingham,
+nor are you wholly right. Woman, as a whole, is well treated in
+America; and yet it will not do for a _lady_ to mingle in scenes like
+these, as ladies may and do mingle with them in Europe."
+
+"I have heard this difference accounted for," said Paul Powis, "by
+the fact that women have no legal rank in this country. In those
+nations where the station of a lady is protected by legal ordinances,
+it is said she may descend with impunity; but, in this, where all are
+equal before the law, so many misunderstand the real merits of their
+position, that she is obliged to keep aloof from any collisions with
+those who might be disposed to mistake their own claims."
+
+"But I wish for no collisions, no associations, Mr. Powis, but simply
+to pass through the streets, with my cousin and Mademoiselle
+Viefville, to enjoy the sight of the rustic sports, as one would do
+in France, or Italy, or even in republican Switzerland, if you insist
+on a republican example."
+
+"Rustic sports!" repeated Aristabulus with a frightened look--"the
+people will not bear to hear their sports called rustic, Miss
+Effingham."
+
+"Surely, sir,"--Eve never spoke to Mr. Bragg, now, without using a
+repelling politeness--"surely, sir, the people of these mountains
+will hardly pretend that their sports are those of a capital."
+
+"I merely mean, ma'am, that the _term_ would be monstrously
+unpopular; nor do I see why the sports in a city"--Aristabulus was
+much too peculiar in his notions, to call any place that had a mayor
+and aldermen a town,--"should not be just as rustic as those of a
+village. The contrary supposition violates the principle of
+equality."
+
+"And do _you_ decide against us, dear sir?" Eve added looking at Mr.
+Effingham.
+
+"Without stopping to examine causes, my child. I shall say that I
+think you had better all remain at home."
+
+"_Voila, Mademoiselle Viefville, une fete Americaine!"_
+
+A shrug of the shoulders was the significant reply.
+
+"Nay, my daughter, you are not entirely excluded from the
+festivities; all gallantry has not quite deserted the land."
+
+"A young lady shall walk _alone_ with a young gentleman--shall ride
+alone with him--shall drive out alone with him--shall not move
+_without_ him, _dans le monde, mais_, she shall not walk in the
+crowd, to look at _une fete avec son pere!_" exclaimed Mademoiselle
+Viefville, in her imperfect English. "_Je desespere vraiment_, to
+understand some _habitudes Americaines!_"
+
+"Well, Mademoiselle, that you may not think us altogether barbarians,
+you shall, at least, have the benefit of the oration."
+
+"You may well call it _the_ oration, Ned; for, I believe one, or,
+certainly one skeleton, has served some thousand orators annually,
+any time these sixty years."
+
+"Of this skeleton, then, the ladies shall have the benefit. The
+procession is about to form, I hear; and by getting ready
+immediately, we shall be just in time to obtain good seats."
+
+Mademoiselle Viefville was delighted; for, after trying the theatres,
+the churches, sundry balls, the opera, and all the admirable gaieties
+of New-York, she had reluctantly come to the conclusion that America
+was a very good country _pour s'ennuyer_, and for very little else;
+but here was the promise of a novelty. The ladies completed their
+preparations, and, accordingly, attended by all the gentlemen, made
+their appearance in the assembly, at the appointed hour.
+
+The orator, who, as usual, was a lawyer, was already in possession of
+the pulpit, for one of the village churches had been selected as the
+scene of the ceremonies. He was a young man, who had recently been
+called to the bar, it being as much in rule for the legal tyro to
+take off the wire-edge of his wit in a Fourth of July oration, as it
+was formerly for a Mousquetaire to prove his spirit in a duel. The
+academy which, formerly, was a servant of all work to the public,
+being equally used for education, balls, preaching, town-meetings,
+and caucuses, had shared the fate of most American edifices in wood,
+having lived its hour and been burned; and the collection of people,
+whom we have formerly had occasion to describe, appeared to have also
+vanished from the earth, for nothing could be less alike in exterior,
+at least, than those who had assembled under the ministry of Mr.
+Grant, and their successors, who were now collected to listen to the
+wisdom of Mr. Writ. Such a thing as a coat of two generations was no
+longer to be seen; the latest fashion, or what was thought to be the
+latest fashion, being as rigidly respected by the young farmer, or
+the young mechanic, as by the more admitted bucks, the law student,
+and the village shop-boy. All the red cloaks had long since been laid
+aside to give place to imitation merino shawls, or, in cases of
+unusual moderation and sobriety, to mantles of silk. As Eve glanced
+her eye around her, she perceived Tuscan hats, bonnets of gay colours
+and flowers, and dresses of French chintzes, where fifty years ago
+would have been seen even men's woollen hats, and homely English
+calicoes. It is true that the change among the men was not quite as
+striking, for their attire admits of less variety; but the black
+stock had superseded the check handkerchief and the bandanna; gloves
+had taken the places of mittens; and the coarse and clownish shoe of
+"cow-hide" was supplanted by the calf-skin boot.
+
+"Where are your peasants, your rustics, your milk and dairy
+maids--_the people_, in short"--whispered Sir George Templemore to
+Mrs. Bloomfield, as they took their seats; "or is this occasion
+thought to be too intellectual for them, and the present assembly
+composed only of the _elite_?"
+
+"These _are_ the people, and a pretty fair sample, too, of their
+appearance and deportment. Most of these men are what you in England
+would call operatives, and the women are their wives, daughters, and
+sisters."
+
+The baronet said nothing at the moment, but he sat looking around him
+with a curious eye for some time, when he again addressed his
+companion.
+
+"I see the truth of what you say, as regards the men, for a critical
+eye can discover the proofs of their occupations; but, surely, you
+must be mistaken as respects your own sex; there is too much delicacy
+of form and feature for the class you mean."
+
+"Nevertheless, I have said naught but truth."
+
+"But look at the hands and the feet, dear Mrs. Bloomfield. Those are
+French gloves, too, or I am mistaken."
+
+"I will not positively affirm that the French gloves actually belong
+to the dairy-maids, though I have known even this prodigy; but, rely
+on it, you see here the proper female counterparts of the men, and
+singularly delicate and pretty females are they, for persons of their
+class. This is what you call democratic coarseness and vulgarity,
+Miss Effingham tells me, in England."
+
+Sir George smiled, but, as what it is the fashion of me country to
+call 'the exercises,' just then began, he made no other answer.
+
+These exercises commenced with instrumental music, certainly the
+weakest side of American civilization. That of the occasion of which
+we write, had three essential faults, all of which are sufficiently
+general to be termed characteristic, in a national point of view. In
+the first place, the instruments themselves were bad; in the next
+place, they were assorted without any regard to harmony; and, in the
+last place, their owners did not know how to use them. As in certain
+American _cities_--the word is well applied here--she is esteemed the
+greatest belle who can contrive to utter her nursery sentiments in
+the loudest voice, so in Templeton, was he considered the ablest
+musician who could give the greatest _eclat_ to a false note. In a
+word, clamour was the one thing needful, and as regards time, that
+great regulator of all harmonies, Paul Powis whispered to the captain
+that the air they had just been listening to, resembled what the
+sailors call a 'round robin;' or a particular mode of signing
+complaints practised by seamen, in which the nicest observer cannot
+tell which is the beginning, or which the end.
+
+It required all the Parisian breeding of Mademoiselle Viefville to
+preserve her gravity during this overture, though she kept her bright
+animated, French-looking eyes, roaming over the assembly, with an air
+of delight that, as Mr. Bragg would say, made her very popular. No
+one else in the party from the Wigwam, Captain Truck excepted, dared
+look up, but each kept his or her eyes riveted on the floor, as if in
+silent enjoyment of the harmonies. As for the honest old seaman,
+there was as much melody in the howling of a gale to his
+unsophisticated ears, as in any thing else, and he saw no difference
+between this feat of the Templeton band and the sighings of old
+Boreas; and, to say the truth, our nautical critic was not so much
+out of the way.
+
+Of the oration it is scarcely necessary to say much, for if human
+nature is the same in all ages, and under all circumstances, so is a
+fourth of July oration. There were the usual allusions to Greece and
+Rome, between the republics of which and that of this country there
+exists some such affinity as is to be found between a horse-chestnut
+and a chestnut-horse; or that, of mere words: and a long catalogue of
+national glories that might very well have sufficed for all the
+republics, both of antiquity and of our own time. But when the orator
+came to speak of the American character, and particularly of the
+intelligence of the nation, he was most felicitous, and made the
+largest investments in popularity. According to his account of the
+matter, no other people possessed a tithe of the knowledge, or a
+hundredth part of the honesty and virtue of the very community he was
+addressing; and after labouring for ten minutes to convince his
+hearers that they already knew every thing, he wasted several more in
+trying to persuade them to undertake further acquisitions of the same
+nature.
+
+"How much better all this might be made," said Paul Powis, as the
+party returned towards the Wigwam, when the 'exercises' were ended,
+"by substituting a little plain instruction on the real nature and
+obligations of the institutions, for so much unmeaning rhapsody.
+Nothing has struck me with more surprise and pain, than to find how
+far, or it might be better to say, how high, ignorance reaches on
+such subjects, and how few men, in a country where all depends on the
+institutions, have clear notions concerning their own condition."
+
+"Certainly this is not the opinion we usually entertain of
+ourselves," observed John Effingham. "And yet it ought to be. I am
+far from underrating the ordinary information of the country, which,
+as an average information, is superior to that of almost every other
+people; nor am I one of those who, according to the popular European
+notion, fancy the Americans less gifted than common in intellect;
+there can be but one truth in any thing, however, and it falls to the
+lot of very few, any where, to master it. The Americans, moreover,
+are a people of facts and practices, paying but little attention to
+principles, and giving themselves the very minimum of time for
+investigations that lie beyond the reach of the common mind; and it
+follows that they know little of that which does not present itself
+in their every-day transactions. As regards the practice of the
+institutions, it is regulated here, as elsewhere, by party, and party
+is never an honest or a disinterested expounder."
+
+"Are you, then, more than in the common dilemma," asked Sir George,
+"or worse off than your neighbours?"
+
+"We are worse off than our neighbours for the simple reason that it
+is the intention of the American system, which has been deliberately
+framed, and which is moreover the result of a bargain, to carry out
+its theory in practice; whereas, in countries where the institutions
+are the results of time and accidents, _improvement_ is only obtained
+by _innovations_. Party invariably assails and weakens power. When
+power is the possession of a few, the many gain by party; but when
+power is the legal right of the many, the few gain by party. Now, as
+party has no ally as strong as ignorance and prejudice, a right
+understanding of the principles of a government is of far more
+importance in a popular government, than in any other. In place of
+the eternal eulogies on facts, that one hears on all public occasions
+in this country, I would substitute some plain and clear expositions
+of principles; or, indeed, I might say, of facts as they are
+connected with principles."
+
+"_Mais, la musique, Monsieur_," interrupted Mademoiselle Viefville,
+in a way so droll as to raise a general smile, "_qu'en pensez-vous?_"
+
+"That it is music, my dear Mademoiselle, in neither fact nor
+principle."
+
+"It only proves that a people can be free, Mademoiselle," observed
+Mrs. Bloomfield, "and enjoy fourth of July orations, without having
+very correct notions of harmony or time. But do our rejoicings end
+here, Miss Effingham?"
+
+"Not at all--there is still something in reserve for the day, and all
+who honour it. I am told the evening, which promises to be
+sufficiently sombre, is to terminate with a fete that is peculiar to
+Templeton, and which is called 'The Fun of Fire.'"
+
+"It is an ominous name, and ought to be a brilliant ceremony."
+
+As this was uttered, the whole party entered the Wigwam.
+
+"The Fun of Fire" took place, as a matter of course, at a later hour.
+When night had set in, every body appeared in the main street of the
+village, a part of which, from its width and form, was particularly
+adapted to the sports of the evening. The females were mostly at the
+windows, or on such elevated stands as favoured their view, and the
+party from the Wigwam occupied a large balcony that topped the piazza
+of one of the principal inns of the place.
+
+The sports of the night commenced with rockets, of which a few, that
+did as much credit to the climate as to the state of the pyrotechnics
+of the village, were thrown up, as soon as the darkness had become
+sufficiently dense to lend them brilliancy. Then followed wheels,
+crackers and serpents, all of the most primitive kind, if, indeed,
+there be any thing primitive in such amusements. The "Fun of Fire"
+was to close the rejoicings, and it was certainly worth all the other
+sports of that day, united, the gingerbread and spruce beer included.
+
+A blazing ball cast from a shop-door, was the signal for the
+commencement of the Fun. It was merely a ball of rope-yarn, or of
+some other similar material, saturated with turpentine, and it burned
+with a bright, fierce flame until consumed. As the first of these
+fiery meteors sailed into the street, a common shout from the boys,
+apprentices, and young men, proclaimed that the fun was at hand. It
+was followed by several more, and in a few minutes the entire area
+was gleaming with glancing light. The whole of the amusement
+consisted in tossing the fire-balls with boldness, and in avoiding
+them with dexterity, something like competition soon entering into
+the business of the scene.
+
+The effect was singularly beautiful. Groups of dark objects became
+suddenly illuminated, and here a portion of the throng might be seen
+beneath a brightness like that produced by a bonfire, while all the
+back-ground of persons and faces were gliding about in a darkness
+that almost swallowed up a human figure. Suddenly all this would be
+changed; the brightness would pass away, and a ball alighting in a
+spot that had seemed abandoned to gloom, it would be found peopled
+with merry countenances, and active forms. The constant changes from
+brightness to deep darkness, with all the varying gleams of light and
+shadow, made the beauty of the scene, which soon extorted admiration
+from all in the balcony."
+
+"_Mais, c'est charmant_!" exclaimed Mademoiselle Vielville, who was
+enchanted at discovering something like gaiety and pleasure among the
+"_tristes Americains_," and who had never even suspected them of
+being capable of so much apparent enjoyment.
+
+"These are the prettiest village sports I have ever witnessed," said
+Eve, "though a little dangerous, one would think. There is something
+refreshing, as the magazine writers term it, to find one of these
+miniature towns of ours condescending to be gay and happy in a
+village fashion. If I were to bring my strongest objection to
+American country life, it would be its ambitious desire to ape the
+towns, converting the ease and _abandon_ of a village, into the
+formality and stiffness that render children in the clothes of grown
+people so absurdly ludicrous."
+
+"What!" exclaimed John Effingham; "do you fancy it possible to reduce
+a free-man so low, as to deprive him of his stilts! No, no, young
+lady; you are now in a country where if you have two rows of flounces
+on your frock, your maid will make it a point to have three, by way
+of maintaining the equilibrium. This is the noble ambition of
+liberty."
+
+"Annette's foible is a love of flounces, cousin Jack, and you have
+drawn that image from your eye, instead of your imagination. It is a
+French, as well as an American ambition, if ambition it be."
+
+"Let it be drawn whence it may, it is true. Have you not remarked,
+Sir George Templemore, that the Americans will not even bear the
+ascendency of a capital? Formerly, Philadelphia, then the largest
+town in the country, was the political capital; but it was too much
+for any one community to enjoy the united consideration that belongs
+to extent and politics; and so the honest public went to work to make
+a capital, that should have nothing else in its favour, but the naked
+fact that it was the seat of government, and I think it will be
+generally allowed, that they have succeeded to admiration. I fancy
+Mr. Dodge will admit that it would be quite intolerable, that country
+should not be town, and town country."
+
+"This is a land of equal rights, Mr. John Effingham, and I confess
+that I see no claims that New-York possesses, which does not equally
+belong to Templeton."
+
+"Do you hold, sir," inquired Captain Truck, "that a ship is a brig,
+and a brig a ship."
+
+"The case is different; Templeton _is_ a town, is it not, Mr. John
+Effingham?"
+
+"_A_ town, Mr. Dodge, but not town. The difference is essential."
+
+"I do not see it, sir. Now, New-York, to my notion is not a _town_,
+but a _city_."
+
+"Ah! This is the critical acumen of the editor! But you should be
+indulgent, Mr. Dodge, to us laymen, who pick up our phrases by merely
+wandering about the world; or in the nursery perhaps, while you, of
+the favoured few, by living in the condensation of a province, obtain
+a precision and accuracy to which we can lay no claim."
+
+The darkness prevented the editor of the Active Inquirer from
+detecting the general smile, and he remained in happy ignorance of
+the feeling that produced it. To say the truth, not the smallest of
+the besetting vices of Mr. Dodge had their foundation in a provincial
+education, and in provincial notions; the invariable tendency of both
+being to persuade their subject that he is always right, while all
+opposed to him in opinion are wrong. That well-known line of Pope, in
+which the poet asks, "what can we reason, but from what we know?"
+contains the principle of half our foibles and faults, and perhaps
+explains fully that proportion of those of Mr. Dodge, to say nothing
+of those of no small number of his countrymen. There are limits to
+the knowledge, and tastes, and habits of every man, and, as each is
+regulated by the opportunities of the individual, it follows of
+necessity, that no one can have a standard much above his own
+experience. That an isolated and remote people should be a provincial
+people, or, in other words, a people of narrow and peculiar practices
+and opinions, is as unavoidable as that study should make a scholar;
+though in the case of America, the great motive for surprise is to be
+found in the fact that causes so very obvious should produce so
+little effect. When compared with the bulk of other nations, the
+Americans, though so remote and insulated, are scarcely provincial,
+for it is only when the highest standard of this nation is compared
+with the highest standard of other nations, that we detect the great
+deficiency that actually exists. That a moral foundation so broad
+should uphold a moral superstructure so narrow, is owing to the
+circumstance that the popular sentiment rules, and as every thing is
+referred to a body of judges that, in the nature of things, must be
+of very limited and superficial attainments, it cannot be a matter of
+wonder to the reflecting, that the decision shares in the qualities
+of the tribunal. In America, the gross mistake has been made of
+supposing, that, because the mass rules in a political sense, it has
+a right to be listened to and obeyed in all other matters, a
+practical deduction that can only lead, under the most favourable
+exercise of power, to a very humble mediocrity. It is to be hoped,
+that time, and a greater concentration of taste, liberality, and
+knowledge than can well distinguish a young and scattered population,
+will repair this evil, and that our children will reap the harvest of
+the broad fields of intelligence that have been sowed by ourselves.
+In the mean time, the present generation must endure that which
+cannot easily be cured; and, among its other evils, it will have to
+submit to a great deal of very questionable information, not a few
+false principles, and an unpleasant degree of intolerant and narrow
+bigotry, that are propagated by such apostles of liberty and learning
+as Steadfast Dodge, Esquire.
+
+We have written in vain, if it now be necessary to point out a
+multitude of things in which that professed instructor and Mentor of
+the public, the editor of the Active Inquirer, had made a false
+estimate of himself, as well as of his fellow-creatures. That such a
+man should be ignorant, is to be expected, as he had never been
+instructed; that he was self-sufficient was owing to his ignorance,
+which oftener induces vanity than modesty; that he was intolerant and
+bigoted, follows as a legitimate effect of his provincial and
+contracted habits; that he was a hypocrite, came from his homage of
+the people; and that one thus constituted, should be permitted,
+periodically, to pour out his vapidity, folly, malice, envy, and
+ignorance, on his fellow-creatures, in the columns of a newspaper,
+was owing to a state of society in which the truth of the wholesome
+adage "that what is every man's business is nobody's business," is
+exemplified not only daily, but hourly, in a hundred other interests
+of equal magnitude, as well as to a capital mistake, that leads the
+community to fancy that whatever is done in their time, is done for
+their good.
+
+As the "Fun of Fire" had, by this time, exhibited most of its
+beauties, the party belonging to the Wigwam left the balcony, and,
+the evening proving mild, they walked into the grounds of the
+building, where they naturally broke into groups, conversing on the
+incidents of the day, or of such other matters as came uppermost.
+Occasionally, gleams of light were thrown across them from a fire-
+ball; or a rocket's starry train was still seen drawn in the air,
+resembling the wake of a ship at night, as it wades through the
+ocean.
+
+Chapter XXII.
+
+                              Gentle Octavia, Let your best love draw
+  to that point, which seeks But to preserve it.
+
+  ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.
+
+We shall not say it was an accident that brought Paul and Eve side by
+side, and a little separated from the others; for a secret sympathy
+had certainly exercised its influence over both, and probably
+contributed as much as any thing else towards bringing about the
+circumstance. Although the Wigwam stood in the centre of the village,
+its grounds covered several acres, and were intersected with winding
+walks, and ornamented with shrubbery, in the well-known English
+style, improvements also of John Effingham; for, while the climate
+and forests of America offer so many inducements to encourage
+landscape gardening, it is the branch of art that, of all the other
+ornamental arts, is perhaps the least known in this country. It is
+true, time had not yet brought the labours of the projector to
+perfection, in this instance; but enough had been done to afford very
+extensive, varied, and pleasing walks. The grounds were broken, and
+John Effingham had turned the irregularities to good account, by
+planting and leading paths among them, to the great amusement of the
+lookers-on, however, who, like true disciples of the Manhattanese
+economy, had already begun to calculate the cost of what they termed
+grading the lawns, it being with them as much a matter of course to
+bring pleasure grounds down to a mathematical surface, as to bring a
+rail-road route down to the proper level.
+
+Through these paths, and among the irregularities, groves, and
+shrubberies, just mentioned, the party began to stroll; one group
+taking a direction eastward, another south, and a third westward, in
+a way soon to break them up into five or six different divisions.
+These several portions of the company ere long got to move in
+opposite directions, by taking the various paths, and while they
+frequently met, they did not often re-unite. As has been already
+intimated, Eve and Paul were alone, for the first time in their
+lives, under circumstances that admitted of an uninterrupted
+confidential conversation. Instead of profiting immediately, however,
+by this unusual occurrence, as many of our readers may anticipate,
+the young man continued the discourse, in which the whole party had
+been engaged when they entered the gate that communicated with the
+street.
+
+"I know not whether you felt the same embarrassment as myself, to-
+day, Miss Effingham," he said, "when the orator was dilating on the
+glories of the republic, and on the high honours that accompany the
+American name. Certainly, though a pretty extensive traveller, I have
+never yet been able to discover that it is any advantage abroad to be
+one of the 'fourteen millions of freemen.'"
+
+"Are we to attribute the mystery that so long hung over your birth-
+place, to this fact," Eve asked, a little pointedly.
+
+"If I have made any seeming mystery, as to the place of my birth, it
+has been involuntary on my part, Miss Effingham, so far as you, at
+least, have been concerned. I may not have thought myself authorized
+to introduce my own history into our little discussions, but I am not
+conscious of aiming at any unusual concealments. At Vienna, and in
+Switzerland, we met as travellers; and now that you appear disposed
+to accuse me of concealment, I may retort, and say that, neither you
+nor your father ever expressly stated in my presence that you were
+Americans."
+
+"Was that necessary, Mr. Powis?"
+
+"Perhaps not; and I am wrong to draw a comparison between my own
+insignificance, and the eclat that attended you and your movements."
+
+"Nay," interrupted Eve, "do not misconceive me. My father felt an
+interest in you, quite naturally, after what had occurred on the lake
+of Lucerne, and I believe he was desirous of making you out a
+countryman,--a pleasure that he has at length received."
+
+"To own the truth, I was never quite certain, until my last visit to
+England, on which side of the Atlantic I was actually born, and to
+this uncertainty, perhaps, may be attributed some of that
+cosmopolitism to which I made so many high pretensions in our late
+passage."
+
+"Not know where you were born!" exclaimed Eve, with an involuntary
+haste, that she immediately repented.
+
+"This, no doubt, sounds odd to you, Miss Effingham, who have always
+been the pride and solace of a most affectionate father, but it has
+never been my good fortune to know either parent. My mother, who was
+the sister of Ducie's mother, died at my birth, and the loss of my
+father even preceded hers. I may be said to have been born an
+orphan."
+
+Eve, for the first time in her life, had taken his arm, and the young
+man felt the gentle pressure of her little hand, as she permitted
+this expression of sympathy to escape her, at a moment she found so
+intensely interesting to herself.
+
+"It was, indeed, a misfortune, Mr. Powis, and I fear you were put
+into the navy through the want of those who would feel a natural
+concern in your welfare."
+
+"The navy was my own choice; partly, I think, from a certain love of
+adventure, and quite as much, perhaps, with a wish to settle the
+question of my birth-place, practically at least, by enlisting in the
+service of the one that I first knew, and certainly best loved."
+
+"But of that birth-place, I understand there is now no doubt?" said
+Eve, with more interest than she was herself conscious of betraying.
+
+"None whatever; I am a native of Philadelphia; that point was
+conclusively settled in my late visit to my aunt, Lady Dunluce, who
+was present at my birth."
+
+"Is Lady Dunluce also an American?"
+
+"She is; never having quitted the country until after her marriage to
+Colonel Ducie. She was a younger sister of my mother's, and,
+notwithstanding some jealousies and a little coldness that I trust
+have now disappeared, I am of opinion she loved her; though one can
+hardly answer for the durability of the family ties in a country
+where the institutions and habits are as artificial as in England."
+
+"Do you think there is less family affection, then, in England than
+in America?"
+
+"I will not exactly say as much, though I am of opinion that neither
+country is remarkable in that way. In England, among the higher
+classes, it is impossible that the feelings should not be weakened by
+so many adverse interests. When a brother knows that nothing stands
+between himself and rank and wealth, but the claims of one who was
+born a twelvemonth earlier than himself, he gets to feel more like a
+rival than a kinsman, and the temptation to envy or dislike, or even
+hatred, sometimes becomes stronger than the duty to love."
+
+"And yet the English, themselves, say that the services rendered by
+the elder to the younger brother, and the gratitude of the younger to
+the elder, are so many additional ties."
+
+"It would be contrary to all the known laws of feeling, and all
+experience, if this were so. The younger applies to the elder for aid
+in preference to a stranger, because he thinks he has a claim; and
+what man who fancies he has a claim, is disposed to believe justice
+is fully done him; or who that is required to discharge a duty,
+imagines he has not done more than could be properly asked?"
+
+"I fear your opinion of men is none of the best, Mr. Powis!"
+
+"There may be exceptions, but such I believe to be the common fate of
+humanity. The moment a duty is created, a disposition to think it
+easily discharged follows; and of all sentiments, that of a continued
+and exacting gratitude is the most oppressive. I fear more brothers
+are aided, through family pride, than through natural affection."
+
+"What, then, loosens the tie among ourselves, where no law of
+primogeniture exists?"
+
+"That which loosens every thing. A love of change that has grown up
+with the migratory habits of the people; and which, perhaps, is, in
+some measure, fostered by the institutions. Here is Mr. Bragg to
+confirm what I say, and we may hear his sentiments on this subject."
+
+As Aristabulus, with whom walked Mr. Dodge, just at that moment came
+out of the shrubbery, and took the same direction with themselves,
+Powis put the question, as one addresses an acquaintance in a room.
+
+"Rotation in feelings, sir," returned Mr. Bragg, "is human nature, as
+rotation in office is natural justice. Some of our people are of
+opinion that it might be useful could the whole of society be made
+periodically to change places, in order that every one might know how
+his neighbour lives."
+
+"You are, then, an Agrarian, Mr. Bragg?"
+
+"As far from it as possible; nor do I believe you will find such an
+animal in this county. Where property is concerned, we are a people
+that never let go, as long as we can hold on, sir; but, beyond this
+we like lively changes. Now, Miss Effingham, every body thinks
+frequent changes of religious instructors in particular, necessary.
+There can be no vital piety without, keeping the flame alive with
+excitement."
+
+"I confess, sir, that my own reasoning would lead to a directly
+contrary conclusion, and that there can be no vital piety, as you
+term it, _with_ excitement."
+
+Mr. Bragg looked at Mr. Dodge, and Mr. Dodge looked at Mr. Bragg.
+Then each shrugged his shoulders, and the former continued the
+discourse.
+
+"That may be the case in France, Miss Effingham," he said, "but, in
+America, we look to excitement as the great purifier. We should as
+soon expect the air in the bottom of a well to be elastic, as that
+the moral atmosphere shall be clear and salutary, without the breezes
+of excitement. For my part, Mr. Dodge, I think no man should be a
+judge, in the same court, more than ten years at a time, and a priest
+gets to be rather common-place and flat after five. There are men
+that may hold out a little longer, I acknowledge; but to keep real,
+vital, soul-saving regeneration stirring, a change should take place
+as often as once in five years, in a parish; that is my opinion, at
+least."
+
+"But, sir," rejoined Eve, "as the laws of religion are immutable, the
+modes by which it is known universal, and the promises, mediation,
+and obligations are every where the same, I do not see what you
+propose to gain by so many changes."
+
+"Why, Miss Effingham, we change the dishes at table, and no family of
+my acquaintance, more than this of your honourable father's; and I am
+surprised to find you opposed to the system."
+
+"Our religion, sir," answered Eve, gravely, "is a duty, and rests on
+revelation and obedience; while our diet may, very innocently, be a
+matter of mere taste, even of caprice, if you will."
+
+"Well, I confess I see no great difference, the main object in this
+life being to stir people up, and to go ahead. I presume you know,
+Miss Eve, that many people think that we ought to change our own
+parson, if we expect a blessing on the congregation."
+
+"I should sooner expect a curse would follow an act of so much
+heartlessness, sir. Our clergyman has been with us since his entrance
+into the duties of his holy office; and it will be difficult to
+suppose that the Divine favour would follow the commission of so
+selfish and capricious a step, with a motive no better than the
+desire for novelty."
+
+"You quite mistake the object, Miss Eve, which is to stir the people
+up; a hopeless thing, I fear, so long as they always sit under the
+same preaching."
+
+"I have been taught to believe that piety is increased, Mr. Bragg, by
+the aid of the Holy Spirit's sustaining and supporting us in our good
+desires; and I cannot persuade myself that the Deity finds it
+necessary to save a soul, by the means of any of those human agencies
+by which men sack towns, turn an election, or incite a mob. I hear
+that extraordinary scenes are witnessed in this country, in some of
+the other sects; but I trust never to see the day, when the
+apostolic, reverend, and sober church, in which I have been nurtured,
+shall attempt to advance the workings of that Divine power, by a
+profane, human hurrah."
+
+All this was Greek to Messrs. Dodge and Bragg, who, in furthering
+their objects, were so accustomed to "stirring people up," that they
+had quite forgotten that the more a man was in "an excitement," the
+less he had to do with reason. The exaggerated religious sects, which
+first peopled America, have had a strong influence in transmitting to
+their posterity false notions on such subjects; for while the old
+world is accustomed to see Christianity used as an ally of
+government, and perverted from its one great end to be the instrument
+of ambition, cupidity, and selfishness, the new world has been fated
+to witness the reaction of such abuses, and to run into nearly as
+many errors in the opposite extreme. The two persons just mentioned,
+had been educated in the provincial school of religious notions, that
+is so much in favour, in a portion of this country; and they were
+striking examples of the truth of the adage, that "what is bred in
+the bone will be seen in the flesh," for their common character,
+common in this particular at least, was a queer mixture of the most
+narrow superstitions and prejudices, that existed under the garb of
+religious training, and of unjustifiable frauds, meannesses, and even
+vices. Mr. Bragg was a better man than Mr. Dodge, for he had more
+self-reliance, and was more manly; but, on the score of religion, he
+had the same contradictory excesses, and there was a common point, in
+the way of vulgar vice, towards which each tended, simply for the
+want of breeding and tastes, as infallibly as the needle points to
+the pole. Cards were often introduced in Mr. Effingham's drawing-
+room, and there was one apartment expressly devoted to a billiard-
+table; and many was the secret fling, and biting gibe, that these
+pious devotees passed between themselves, on the subject of so
+flagrant an instance of immorality, in a family of so high moral
+pretensions; the two worthies not unfrequently concluding their
+comments by repairing to some secret room in a tavern, where, after
+carefully locking the door, and drawing the curtains, they would
+order brandy, and pass a refreshing hour in endeavouring to relieve
+each other of the labour of carrying their odd sixpences, by means of
+little shoemaker's loo.
+
+On the present occasion, however, the earnestness of Eve produced a
+pacifying effect on their consciences, for, as our heroine never
+raised her sweet voice above the tones of a gentlewoman, its very
+mildness and softness gave force to her expressions. Had John
+Effingham uttered the sentiments to which they had just listened it
+is probable Mr. Bragg would have attempted an answer; but, under the
+circumstances, he preferred making his bow, and diverging into the
+first path that offered, followed by his companion. Eve and Paul
+continued their circuit of the grounds, as if no interruption had
+taken place.
+
+"This disposition to change is getting to be universal in the
+country," remarked the latter, as soon as Aristabulus and his friend
+had left them, "and I consider it one of the worst signs of the
+times; more especially since it has become so common to connect it
+with what it is the fashion to call excitement."
+
+"To return to the subject which these gentlemen interrupted," said
+Eve, "that of the family ties; I have always heard England quoted as
+one of the strongest instances of a nation in which this tie is
+slight, beyond its aristocratical influence; and I should be sorry to
+suppose that we are following in the footsteps of our good-mother, in
+this respect at least."
+
+"Has Mademoiselle Viefville never made any remark on this subject?"
+
+"Mademoiselle Viefville, though observant, is discreet. That she
+believes the standard of the affections as high in this as in her own
+country, I do not think; for, like most Europeans, she believes the
+Americans to be a passionless people, who are more bound up in the
+interests of gain, than in any other of the concerns of life."
+
+"She does not know us!" said Paul so earnestly as to cause Eve to
+start at the deep energy with which he spoke. "The passions lie as
+deep, and run in currents as strong here, as in any other part of the
+world, though, there not being as many factitious causes to dam them,
+they less seldom break through the bounds of propriety."
+
+For near a minute the two paced the walk in silence, and Eve began to
+wish that some one of the party would again join them, that a
+conversation which she felt was getting to be awkward, might be
+interrupted. But no one crossed their path again, and without
+rudeness, or affectation, she saw no means of effecting her object.
+Paul was too much occupied with his own feelings to observe his
+companion's embarrassment, and, after the short pause mentioned, he
+naturally pursued the subject, though in a less emphatic manner than
+before.
+
+"It was an old, and a favourite theory, with the Europeans," he said,
+with a sort of bitter irony, "that all the animals of this hemisphere
+have less gifted natures than those of the other; nor is it a theory
+of which they are yet entirely rid. The Indian was supposed to be
+passionless, because he had self-command; and what in the European
+would be thought exhibiting the feelings of a noble nature, in him
+has been represented as ferocity and revenge; Miss Effingham, you and
+I have seen Europe, have stood in the presence of its wisest, its
+noblest and its best; and what have they to boast beyond the
+immediate results of their factitious and laboured political systems,
+that is denied to the American--or rather would be denied to the
+American, had the latter the manliness and mental independence, to be
+equal to his fortunes?"
+
+"Which, you think he is not."
+
+"How can a people be even independent that imports its thoughts, as
+it does its wares,--that has not the spirit to invent even its own
+prejudices?"
+
+"Something should be allowed to habit, and to the influence of time.
+England, herself, probably has inherited some of her false notions,
+from the Saxons and Normans."
+
+"That is not only possible, but probable; but England, in thinking of
+Russia, France, Turkey, or Egypt, when induced to think wrong, yields
+to an English, and not to an American interest. Her errors are at
+least requited, in a degree, by serving her own ends, whereas ours
+are made, too often, to oppose our most obvious interests. We are
+never independent unless when stimulated by some strong and pressing
+moneyed concern, and not often then beyond the plainest of its
+effects.--Here is one, apparently, who does not belong to our party."
+
+Paul interrupted himself, in consequence of their meeting a stranger
+in the walk, who moved with the indecision of one uncertain whether
+to advance or to recede. Rockets frequently fell into the grounds,
+and there had been one or two inroads of boys, which had been
+tolerated on account of the occasion; but this intruder was a man in
+the decline of life, of the condition of a warm tradesman seemingly,
+and he clearly had no connection with sky-rockets, as his eyes were
+turned inquiringly on the persons of those who passed him, from time
+to time, none of whom had he stopped, however, until he now placed
+himself before Paul and Eve, in a way to denote a desire to speak.
+
+"The young people are making a merry night of it," he said, keeping a
+hand in each coat-pocket, while he unceremoniously occupied the
+centre of the narrow walk, as if determined to compel a parley.
+
+Although sufficiently acquainted with the unceremonious habits of the
+people of the country to feel no surprise at this intrusion, Paul was
+vexed at having his tete a tete with Eve so rudely broken; and he
+answered with more of the hauteur of the quarterdeck than he might
+otherwise have done, by saying coldly--
+
+"Perhaps, sir, it is your wish to see Mr. Effingham--or--" hesitating
+an instant, as he scanned the stranger's appearance--"some of his
+people. The first will soon pass this spot, and you will find most of
+the latter on the lawn, watching the rockets."
+
+The man regarded Paul a moment, and then he removed his hat
+respectfully.
+
+"Please, sir, can you inform me if a gentleman called Captain Truck--
+one that sails the packets between New-York and England, is staying
+at the Wigwam at present."
+
+Paul told him that the captain was walking with Mr. Effingham, and
+that the next pair that approached would be they. The stranger fell
+back, keeping his hat respectfully in his hand, and the two passed.
+
+"That man has been an English servant, but has been a little spoiled
+by the reaction of an excessive liberty to do as he pleases. The
+'please, sir,' and the attitude can hardly be mistaken, while the
+_nonchalance_ of his manner '_a nous aborder_' sufficiently betrays
+the second edition of his education."
+
+"I am curious to know what this person can want with our excellent
+captain--it can scarcely be one of the Montauk's crew!"
+
+"I will answer for it, that the fellow has not enough seamanship
+about him to whip a rope," said Paul, laughing; "for if there be two
+temporal pursuits that have less affinity than any two others, they
+are those of the pantry and the tar-bucket. I think it will be seen
+that this man has been an English servant, and he has probably been a
+passenger on board some ship commanded by our honest old friend."
+
+Eve and Paul now turned, and they met Mr. Effingham and the captain
+just as the two latter reached the spot where the stranger still
+stood.
+
+"This is Captain Truck, the gentleman for whom you inquired," said
+Paul.
+
+The stranger looked hard at the captain, and the captain looked hard
+at the stranger, the obscurity rendering a pretty close scrutiny
+necessary, to enable either to distinguish features. The examination
+seemed to be mutually unsatisfactory, for each retired a little, like
+a man who had not found a face that he knew.
+
+"There must be two Captain Trucks, then, in the trade," said the
+stranger; "this is not the gentleman I used to know."
+
+"I think you are as right in the latter part of your remark, friend,
+as you are wrong in the first," returned the captain. "Know you, I do
+not, and yet there are no more two Captain Trucks in the English
+trade, than there are two Miss Eve Effinghams, or two Mrs. Hawkers in
+the universe. I am John Truck, and no other man of that name ever
+sailed a ship between New York and England, in my day, at least."
+
+"Did you ever command the Dawn, sir?"
+
+"The Dawn! That I did; and the Regulus, and the Manhattan, and the
+Wilful Girl, and the Deborah-Angelina, and the Sukey and Katy, which,
+my dear young lady, I may say, was my first love. She was only a
+fore-and-after, carrying no standing topsail, even, and we named her
+after two of the river girls, who were flyers, in their way; at
+least, I thought so then; though a man by sailing a packet comes to
+alter his notions about men and things, or, for that matter, about
+women and things, too. I got into a category, in that schooner, that
+I never expect to see equalled; for I was driven ashore to windward
+in her, which is gibberish to you, my dear young lady, but which Mr.
+Powis will very well understand, though he may not be able to explain
+it."
+
+"I certainly know what you mean," said Paul, "though I confess I am
+in a category, as well as the schooner, so far as knowing how it
+could have happened."
+
+"The Sukey and Katy ran away with me, that's the upshot of it. Since
+that time I have never consented to command a vessel that was called
+after _two_ of our river young women, for I do believe that one of
+them is as much as a common mariner can manage. You see, Mr.
+Effingham, we were running along a weather-shore, as close in as we
+could get, to be in the eddy, when a squall struck her a-beam, and
+she luffed right on to the beach. No helping it. Helm hard up, peak
+down, head sheets to windward, and main sheet flying, but it was all
+too late; away she went plump ashore to windward. But for that
+accident, I think I might have married."
+
+"And what connexion could you find between matrimony and this
+accident, captain?" demanded the laughing Eve.
+
+"There was an admonition in it, my dear young lady, that I thought
+was not to be disregarded. I tried the Wilful Girl next, and she was
+thrown on her beam-ends with me; after which I renounced all female
+names, and took to the Egyptian."
+
+"The Egyptian!"
+
+"Certainly, Regulus, who was a great snake-killer, they tell me, in
+that part of the world. But I never saw my way quite clear as
+bachelor, until I got the Dawn. Did you know that ship, friend?"
+
+"I believe, sir, I made two passages in her while you commanded her."
+
+"Nothing more likely; we carried lots of your countrymen, though
+mostly forward of the gangways. I commanded the Dawn more than twenty
+years ago."
+
+"It is all of that time since I crossed with you, sir; you may
+remember that we fell in with a wreck, ten days after we sailed, and
+took off her crew and two passengers. Three or four of the latter had
+died with their sufferings, and several of the people."
+
+"All this seems but as yesterday! The wreck was a Charleston ship
+that had started a butt."
+
+"Yes, sir--yes, sir--that is just it--she had started, _but_ could
+not get in. That is just what they said at the time. I am David,
+sir--I should think you _cannot_ have forgotten David."
+
+The honest captain was very willing to gratify the other's harmless
+self-importance, though, to tell the truth, he retained no more
+personal knowledge of the David of the Dawn, than he had of David,
+King of the Jews.
+
+"Oh, David!" he cried, cordially--"are _you_ David? Well, I did not
+expect to see you again in this world, though I never doubted where
+we should be, hereafter I hope you are very well, David; what sort of
+weather have you made of it since we parted? If I recollect aright,
+you worked your passage;--never at sea before."
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir; I never was at sea before the _first_ time,
+it is true; but I did not belong to the crew. I was a passenger."
+
+"I remember, now, you were in the steerage," returned the captain,
+who saw daylight ahead.
+
+"Not at all, sir, but in the cabin."
+
+"Cabin!" echoed the captain, who perceived none of the requisites of
+a cabin-passenger in the other--"Oh! I understand, in the pantry?"
+
+"Exactly so, sir. You may remember my master--he had the left-hand
+state-room to himself, and I slept next to the scuttle-butt. You
+recollect master, sir?"
+
+"Out of doubt, and a very good fellow he was. I hope you live with
+him still?"
+
+"Lord bless you, sir, he is dead!"
+
+"Oh! I recollect hearing of it, at the time. Well, David. I hope if
+ever we cross again, we shall be ship-mates once more. We were
+beginners, then, but we have ships worth living in, now.--Good
+night."
+
+"Do you remember Dowse, sir, that we got from the wreck?" continued
+the other, unwilling to give up his gossip so soon. "He was a dark
+man, that had had the small-pox badly. I think, sir, you will
+recollect _him_, for he was a hard man in other particulars, besides
+his countenance."
+
+"Somewhat flinty about the soul; I remember the man well; and so,
+David, good night; you will come and see me, if you are ever in town.
+Good night, David."
+
+David was now compelled to leave the place, for Captain Truck, who
+perceived that the whole party was getting together again, in
+consequence of the halt, felt the propriety of dismissing his
+visiter, of whom, his master, and Dowse, he retained just as much
+recollection as one retains of a common stage-coach companion after
+twenty years. The appearance of Mr. Howel, who just at that moment
+approached them, aided the manoeuvre, and, in a few minutes the
+different groups were again in motion, though some slight changes had
+taken place in the distribution of the parties.
+
+Chapter XXIII.
+
+  "How silver sweet sound lovers' tongues at night, Like softest
+  music to attending ears!"
+
+  ROMEO AND JULIET.
+
+"A poor matter, this of the fire-works," said Mr. Howel, who, with an
+old bachelor's want of tact, had joined Eve and Paul in their walk.
+"The English would laugh at them famously, I dare say. Have you heard
+Sir George allude to them at all, Miss Eve?"
+
+"It would be great affectation for an Englishman to deride the fire-
+works of any _dry_ climate," said Eve laughing; "and I dare say, if
+Sir George Templemore has been silent on the subject, it is because
+he is conscious he knows little about it."
+
+"Well, that is odd! I should think England the very first country in
+the world for fire-works. I hear, Miss Eve, that, on the whole, the
+baronet is rather pleased with us; and I must say that he is getting
+to be very popular in Templeton."
+
+"Nothing is easier than for an Englishman to become popular in
+America," observed Paul, "especially if his condition in life be
+above that of the vulgar. He has only to declare himself pleased with
+America; or, to be sincerely hated, to declare himself displeased."
+
+"And in what does America differ from any other country, in this
+respect?" asked Eve, quickly.
+
+"Not much, certainly; love induces love, and dislike, dislike. There
+is nothing new in all this; but the people of other countries, having
+more confidence in themselves, do not so sensitively inquire what
+others think of them. I believe this contains the whole difference."
+
+"But Sir George does _rather_ like us?" inquired Mr. Howel, with
+interest.
+
+"He likes some of us particularly well," returned Eve. "Do you not
+know that my cousin Grace is to become Mrs.--I beg her pardon--Lady
+Templemore, very shortly?"
+
+"Good God!--Is that possible--Lady Templemore!--Lady Grace
+Templemore!"
+
+"Not Lady Grace Templemore, but Grace, Lady Templemore, and graceful
+Lady Templemore in the bargain."
+
+"And this honour, my dear Miss Eve, they tell me you refused!"
+
+"They tell you wrong then, sir," answered the young lady, a little
+startled with the suddenness and _brusquerie_ of the remark, and yet
+prompt to do justice to all concerned. "Sir George Templemore never
+did me the honour to propose _to_ me, or _for_ me, and consequently
+he _could_ not be refused."
+
+"It is very extraordinary!--I hear you were actually acquainted in
+Europe?"
+
+"We were, Mr. Howel, actually acquainted in Europe, but I knew
+hundreds of persons in Europe, who have never dreamed of asking me to
+marry them."
+
+"This is very strange--quite unlooked for--to marry Miss Van
+Cortlandt! Is Mr. John Effingham in the grounds?"
+
+Eve made no answer, but Paul hurriedly observed--"You will find him
+in the next walk, I think, by returning a short distance, and taking
+the first path to the left."
+
+Mr. Howel did as told, and was soon out of sight.
+
+"That is a most earnest believer in English superiority, and, one may
+say, by his strong desire to give you an English husband, Miss
+Effingham, in English merit."
+
+"It is the weak spot in the character of a very honest man. They tell
+me such instances were much more frequent in this country thirty
+years since, than they are to-day."
+
+"I can easily believe it, for I think I remember some characters of
+the sort, myself. I have heard those who are older than I am, draw a
+distinction like this between the state of feeling that prevailed
+forty years ago, and that which prevails to-day; they say that,
+formerly, England absolutely and despotically thought for America, in
+all but those cases in which the interests of the two nations
+conflicted; and I have even heard competent judges affirm, that so
+powerful was the influence of habit, and so successful the schemes of
+the political managers of the mother country, that even many of those
+who fought for the independence of America, actually doubted of the
+propriety of their acts, as Luther is known to have had fits of
+despondency concerning the justness of the reformation he was
+producing; while, latterly, the leaning towards England is less the
+result of a simple mental dependence,--though of that there still
+remains a disgraceful amount--than of calculation, and a desire in a
+certain class to defeat the dominion of the mass, and to establish
+that of a few in its stead."
+
+"It would, indeed, be a strange consummation of the history of this
+country, to find it becoming monarchical!"
+
+"There are a few monarchists no doubt springing up in the country,
+though almost entirely in a class that only knows the world through
+the imagination and by means of books; but the disposition, in our
+time, is to aristocracy, and not to monarchy. Most men that get to be
+rich, discover that they are no happier for their possessions;
+perhaps every man who has not been trained and prepared to use his
+means properly, is in this category, as our friend the captain would
+call it, and then they begin to long for some other untried
+advantages. The example of the rest of the world is before our own
+wealthy, and, _faute d'imagination_, they imitate because they cannot
+invent. Exclusive political power is also a great ally in the
+accumulation of money, and a portion have the sagacity to see it;
+though I suspect more pine for the vanities of the exclusive classes,
+than for the substance. Your sex, Miss Effingham, as a whole, is not
+above this latter weakness, as I think you must have observed in your
+intercourse with those you met abroad."
+
+"I met with some instances of weakness, in this way," said Eve, with
+reserve, and with the pride of a woman, "though not more, I think,
+than among the men; and seldom, in either case, among those whom we
+are accustomed to consider people of condition at home. The self-
+respect and the habits of the latter, generally preserved them from
+betraying this feebleness of character, if indeed they felt it."
+
+"The Americans abroad may be divided into two great classes; those
+who go for improvement in the sciences or the arts, and those who go
+for mere amusement. As a whole, the former have struck me as being
+singularly respectable, equally removed from an apish servility and a
+swaggering pretension of superiority; while, I fear, a majority of
+the latter have a disagreeable direction towards the vanities."
+
+"I will not affirm the contrary," said Eve, "for frivolity and
+pleasure are only too closely associated in ordinary minds. The
+number of those who prize the elegancies of life, for their intrinsic
+value, is every where small, I should think; and I question if Europe
+is much better off than ourselves, in this respect."
+
+"This may be true, and yet one can only regret that, in a case where
+so much depends on example, the tone of our people was not more
+assimilated to their facts. I do not know whether you were struck
+with the same peculiarity, but, whenever I felt in the mood to hear
+high monarchical and aristocratical doctrines blindly promulgated, I
+used to go to the nearest American Legation."
+
+"I have heard this fact commented on," Eve answered, "and even by
+foreigners, and I confess it has always struck me as singular. Why
+should the agent of a republic make a parade of his anti-republican
+sentiments?"
+
+"That there are exceptions, I will allow; but, after the experience
+of many years, I honestly think that such is the rule. I might
+distrust my own opinion, or my own knowledge; but others, with
+opportunities equal to my own, have come to the same conclusion. I
+have just received a letter from Europe, complaining that an American
+Envoy Extraordinary, who would as soon think of denouncing himself,
+as utter the same sentiments openly at home, has given an opinion
+against the utility of the vote by ballot; and this, too, under
+circumstances that might naturally be thought to produce a practical
+effect."
+
+"_Tant pis_. To me all this is inexplicable!"
+
+"It has its solution, Miss Effingham, like any other problem. In
+ordinary times, extraordinary men seldom become prominent, power
+passing into the hands of clever managers. Now, the very vanity, and
+the petty desires, that betray themselves in glittering uniforms,
+puerile affectations, and feeble imitations of other systems,
+probably induce more than half of those who fill the foreign missions
+to apply for them, and it is no more than we ought to expect that the
+real disposition should betray itself, when there was no longer any
+necessity for hypocrisy."
+
+"But I should think this necessity for hypocrisy would never cease!
+Can it be possible that a people, as much attached to their
+institutions as the great mass of the American nation is known to be,
+will tolerate such a base abandonment of all they cherish!"
+
+"How are they to know any thing about it? It is a startling fact,
+that there is a man at this instant, who has not a single claim to
+such a confidence, either in the way of mind, principles, manners, or
+attainments, filling a public trust abroad, who, on all occasions
+except those which he thinks will come directly before the American
+people, not only proclaims himself opposed to the great principles of
+the institutions but who, in a recent controversy with a foreign
+nation, actually took sides against his own country, informing that
+of the opposing nation, that the administration at home would not be
+supported by the legislative part of the government!"
+
+"And why is not this publicly exposed?"
+
+"_Cui bono_! The presses that have no direct interest in the matter,
+would treat the affair with indifference or levity, while a few would
+mystify the truth. It is quite impossible for any man in a private
+station to make the truth available in any country, in a matter of
+public interest; and those in public stations seldom or never attempt
+it, unless they see a direct party end to be obtained. This is the
+reason that we see so much infidelity to the principles of the
+institutions, among the public agents abroad, for they very well know
+that no one will be able to expose them. In addition to this motive,
+there is so strong a desire in that portion of the community which is
+considered the highest, to effect a radical change in these very
+institutions, that infidelity to them, in their eyes, would be a
+merit, rather than an offence."
+
+"Surely, surely, other nations are not treated in this cavalier
+manner!"
+
+"Certainly not. The foreign agent of a prince, who should whisper a
+syllable against his master, would be recalled with disgrace; but the
+servant of the people is differently situated, since there are so
+many to be persuaded of his guilt. I could always get along with all
+the attacks that the Europeans are so fond of making on the American
+system, but those which they quoted from the mouths of our own
+diplomatic agents."
+
+"Why do not our travellers expose this?"
+
+"Most of them see too little to know anything of it. They dine at a
+diplomatic table, see a star or two, fancy themselves obliged, and
+puff elegancies that have no existence, except in their own brains.
+Some think with the unfaithful, and see no harm in the infidelity.
+Others calculate the injury to themselves, and no small portion would
+fancy it a greater proof of patriotism to turn a sentence in favour
+of the comparative 'energies' and 'superior intelligence' of their
+own people, than to point out this or any other disgraceful fact, did
+they even possess the opportunities to discover it. Though no one
+thinks more highly of these qualities in the Americans, considered in
+connexion with practical things, than myself, no one probably gives
+them less credit for their ability to distinguish between appearances
+and reality, in matters of principle."
+
+"It is probable that were we nearer to the rest of the world, these
+abuses would not exist, for it is certain they are not so openly
+practised at home. I am glad, however, to find that, even while you
+felt some uncertainty concerning your own birth-place, you took so
+much interest in us, as to identify yourself in feeling, at least,
+with the nation."
+
+"There was one moment when I was really afraid that the truth would
+show I was actually born an Englishman--"
+
+"Afraid!" interrupted Eve; "that is a strong word to apply to so
+great and glorious a people."
+
+"We cannot always account for our prejudices, and perhaps this was
+one of mine; and, now that I know that to be an Englishman is not the
+greatest possible merit in your eyes, Miss Effingham, it is in no
+manner lessened."
+
+"In my eyes, Mr. Powis! I do not remember to have expressed any
+partiality for, or any prejudice against the English: so far as I can
+speak of my own feelings, I regard the English the same as any other
+foreign people."
+
+"In words you have not certainly; but acts speak louder than words."
+
+"You are disposed to be mysterious to-night. What act of mine has
+declared _pro_ or _con_ in this important affair."
+
+"You have at least done what, I fear, few of your countrywomen would
+have the moral courage and self-denial to do, and especially those
+who are accustomed to living abroad--refused to be the wife of an
+English baronet of a good estate and respectable family."
+
+"Mr. Powis," said Eve, gravely, "this is an injustice to Sir George
+Templemore, that my sense of right will not permit to go
+uncontradicted, as well as an injustice to my sex and me. As I told
+Mr. Howel, in your presence, that gentleman has never proposed for
+me, and of course cannot have been refused. Nor can I suppose that
+any American gentlewoman can deem so paltry a thing as a baronetcy,
+an inducement to forget her self-respect."
+
+"I fully appreciate your generous modesty, Miss Effingham; but you
+cannot expect that I, to whom Templemore's admiration gave so much
+uneasiness, not to say pain, am to understand you, as Mr. Howel has
+probably done, too broadly. Although Sir George may not have
+positively proposed, his readiness to do so, on the least
+encouragement, was too obvious to be overlooked by a near observer."
+
+Eve was ready to gasp for breath, so completely by surprise was she
+taken, by the calm, earnest, and yet respectful manner, in which Paul
+confessed his jealousy. There was a tremor in his voice, too, usually
+so clear and even, that touched her heart, for feeling responds to
+feeling, as the echo answers sound, when there exists a real sympathy
+between the sexes. She felt the necessity of saying something, and
+yet they had walked some distance, ere it was in her power to utter a
+syllable.
+
+"I fear my presumption has offended you, Miss Effingham," said Paul,
+speaking more like a corrected child, than the lion-hearted young man
+he had proved himself.
+
+There was deep homage in the emotion he betrayed, and Eve, although
+she could barely distinguish his features, was not slow in
+discovering this proof of the extent of her power over his feelings.
+
+"Do not call it presumption," she said; "for, one who has done so
+much for us all, can surely claim some right to take an interest in
+those he has so well served. As for Sir George Templemore, you have
+probably mistaken the feeling created by our common adventures for
+one of more importance. He is warmly and sincerely attached to my
+cousin, Grace Van Cortlandt."
+
+"That he is so now, I fully believe; but that a very different magnet
+first kept him from the Canadas, I am sure.--We treated each other
+generously, Miss Effingham, and had no concealments, during that long
+and anxious night, when all expected that the day would dawn on our
+captivity. Templemore is too manly and honest to deny his former
+desire to obtain you for a wife, and I think even he would admit that
+it depended entirely on yourself to be so, or not."
+
+"This is an act of self-humiliation that he is not called onto
+perform," Eve hurriedly replied; "such allusions, now, are worse than
+useless, and they might pain my cousin, were she to hear them."
+
+"I am mistaken in my friend's character, if he leave his betrothed in
+any doubt, on this subject. Five minutes of perfect frankness now,
+might obviate years of distrust, hereafter."
+
+And would you Mr. Powis, avow a former weakness of this sort, to the
+woman you had finally selected for your wife?"
+
+"I ought not to quote myself for authority, for or against such a
+course, since I have never loved but one, and her with a passion too
+single and too ardent ever to admit of competition. Miss Effingham,
+there would be something worse than affectation--it would be trifling
+with one who is sacred in my eyes, were I now to refrain from
+speaking explicitly, although what I am about to say is forced from
+me by circumstances, rather than voluntary, and is almost uttered
+without a definite object. Have I your permission to proceed?'
+
+"You can scarcely need a permission, being the master of your own
+secrets, Mr. Powis."
+
+Paul, like all men agitated by strong passion, was inconsistent, and
+far from just; and Eve felt the truth of this, even while her mind
+was ingeniously framing excuses for his weaknesses. Still, the
+impression that she was about to listen to a declaration that
+possibly ought never to be made, weighed upon her, and caused her to
+speak with more coldness than she actually felt. As she continued
+silent, however, the young man saw that it had become indispensably
+necessary to be explicit.
+
+"I shall not detain you, Miss Effingham, perhaps vex you," he said,
+"with the history of those early impressions, which have gradually
+grown upon me, until they have become interwoven with my very
+existence. We met, as you know, at Vienna, for the first time. An
+Austrian of rank, to whom I had become known through some fortunate
+circumstances, introduced me into the best society of that capital,
+in which I found you the admiration of all who knew you. My first
+feeling was that of exultation, at seeing a young countrywoman--you
+were then almost a child, Miss Effingham--the greatest attraction of
+a capital celebrated for the beauty and grace of its women----"
+
+"Your national partialities have made you an unjust judge towards
+others, Mr. Powis." Eve interrupted him by saying, though the
+earnestness and passion with which the young man uttered his
+feelings, made music to her ears: "what had a young, frightened,
+half-educated American girl to boast of, when put in competition with
+the finished women of Austria?"
+
+"Her surpassing beauty, her unconscious superiority, her attainments,
+her trembling simplicity and modesty and her meek purity of mind. All
+these did you possess, not only in my eyes, but in those of others;
+for these are subjects on which I dwelt too fondly to be mistaken."
+
+A rocket passed near them at the moment, and, while both were too
+much occupied by the discourse to heed the interruption, its
+transient light enabled Paul to see the flushed cheeks and tearful
+eyes of Eve, as the latter were turned on him, in a grateful
+pleasure, that his ardent praises extorted from her, in despite of
+all her struggles for self-command.
+
+"We will leave to others this comparison, Mr. Powis," she said, "and
+confine ourselves to less doubtful subjects."
+
+"If I am then to speak only of that which is beyond all question, I
+shall speak chiefly of my long cherished, devoted, unceasing love. I
+adored you at Vienna, Miss Effingham, though it was at a distance, as
+one might worship the sun; for, while your excellent father admitted
+me to his society, and I even think honoured me with some portion of
+his esteem, I had but little opportunity to ascertain the value of
+the jewel that was contained in so beautiful a casket; but when we
+met the following summer in Switzerland, I first began truly to love.
+Then I learned the justness of thought, the beautiful candour, the
+perfectly feminine delicacy of your mind; and, although I will not
+say that these qualities were not enhanced in the eyes of so young a
+man, by the extreme beauty of their possessor, I will say that, as
+weighed against each other, I could a thousand times prefer the
+former to the latter, unequalled as the latter almost is, even among
+your own beautiful sex."
+
+"This is presenting flattery in its most seductive form, Powis."
+
+"Perhaps my incoherent and abrupt manner of explaining myself
+deserves a rebuke; though nothing can be farther from my intentions
+than to seem to flatter or in any manner to exaggerate. I intend
+merely to give a faithful history of the state of my feelings, and of
+the progress of my love."
+
+Eve smiled faintly, but very sweetly, as Paul would have thought, had
+the obscurity permitted more than a dim view of her lovely
+countenance.
+
+"Ought I to listen to such praises, Mr. Powis," she asked; "praises
+which only contribute to a self-esteem that is too great already?"
+
+"No one but yourself would say this; but your question does, indeed,
+remind me of the indiscretion that I have fallen into, by losing that
+command of my feelings, in which I have so long exulted. No man
+should make a woman the confidant of his attachment, until he is
+fully prepared to accompany the declaration with an offer of his
+hand;--and such is not my condition."
+
+Eve made no dramatic start, assumed no look of affected surprise, or
+of wounded dignity; but she turned on her lover, her serene eyes,
+with an expression of concern so eloquent, and of a wonder so
+natural, that, could he have seen it, it would probably have
+overcome every difficulty on the spot, and produced the usual
+offer, notwithstanding the difficulty that he seemed to think
+insurmountable.
+
+"And yet," he continued, "I have now said so much, involuntarily as
+it has been, that I feel it not only due to you, but in some measure
+to myself, to add that the fondest wish of my heart, the end and aim
+of all my day-dreams, as well as of my most sober thoughts for the
+future, centre in the common wish to obtain you for a wife."
+
+The eye of Eve fell, and the expression of her countenance changed,
+while a slight but uncontrollable tremor ran through her frame. After
+a short pause, she summoned all her resolution, and in a voice, the
+firmness of which surprised even herself, she asked--
+
+"Powis, to what does all this tend?"
+
+"Well may you ask that question, Miss Effingham! You have every right
+to put it, and the answer, at least, shall add no further cause of
+self-reproach. Give me, I entreat you, but a minute to collect my
+thoughts, and I will endeavour to acquit myself of an imperious duty,
+in a manner more manly and coherent, than I fear has been observed
+for the last ten minutes."
+
+They walked a short distance in profound silence, Eve still under the
+influence of astonishment, in which an uncertain and indefinite dread
+of, she scarce knew what, began to mingle; and Paul, endeavouring to
+quiet the tumult that had been so suddenly aroused within him. The
+latter then spoke:
+
+"Circumstances have always deprived me of the happiness of
+experiencing the tenderness and sympathy of your sex, Miss Effingham,
+and have thrown me more exclusively among the colder and ruder
+spirits of my own. My mother died at the time of my birth, thus
+cutting me off, at once, from one of the dearest of earthly ties. I
+am not certain that I do not exaggerate the loss in consequence of
+the privations I have suffered; but, from the hour when I first
+learned to feel, I have had a yearning for the tender, patient,
+endearing, disinterested love of a mother. You, too, suffered a
+similar loss, at an early period, if I have been correctly
+informed----"
+
+A sob--a stifled, but painful sob, escaped Eve; and, inexpressibly
+shocked, Paul ceased dwelling on his own sources of sorrow, to attend
+to those he had so unintentionally disturbed.
+
+"I have been selfish, dearest Miss Effingham," he exclaimed--"have
+overtaxed your patience--have annoyed you with griefs and losses that
+have no interest for you, which can have no interest, with one happy
+and blessed as yourself."
+
+"No, no, no, Powis--you are unjust to both. I, too, lost my mother
+when a mere child, and never knew her love and tenderness. Proceed; I
+am calmer, and earnestly intreat you to forget my weakness, and to
+proceed."
+
+Paul did proceed, but this brief interruption in which they had
+mingled their sorrows for a common misfortune, struck a new chord of
+feeling, and removed a mountain of reserve and distance, that might
+otherwise have obstructed their growing confidence.
+
+"Cut off in this manner, from my nearest and dearest natural friend,"
+Paul continued, "I was thrown, an infant, into the care of hirelings;
+and, in this at least, my fortune was still more cruel than your own;
+for the excellent woman who has been so happy as to have had the
+charge of your infancy, had nearly the love of a natural mother,
+however she may have been wanting in the attainments of one of your
+own condition in life."
+
+"But we had both of us, our fathers, Mr. Powis. To me, my excellent,
+high principled, affectionate--nay tender father, has been every
+thing. Without him, I should have been truly miserable; and with him,
+notwithstanding these rebellious tears, tears that I must ascribe to
+the infection of your own grief, I have been truly blest."
+
+"Mr. Effingham deserves this from you, but I never knew my father,
+you will remember."
+
+"I am an unworthy confidant, to have forgotten this so soon. Poor
+Powis, you were, indeed, unhappy!"
+
+"He had parted from my mother before my birth and either died soon
+after, or has never deemed his child of sufficient worth to make him
+the subject of interest sufficient to excite a single inquiry into
+his fate."
+
+"Then he never knew that child!" burst from Eve, with a fervour and
+frankness, that set all reserves, whether of womanly training, or of
+natural timidity, at defiance.
+
+"Miss Effingham!--dearest Miss Effingham--Eve, my own Eve, what am I
+to infer from this generous warmth! Do not mislead me! I can bear my
+solitary misery, can brave the sufferings of an isolated existence;
+but I could not live under the disappointments of such a hope, a hope
+fairly quickened by a clear expression from your lips."
+
+"You teach me the importance of caution, Powis, and we will now
+return to your history, and to that confidence of which I shall not
+again prove a faithless repository. For the present at least, I beg
+that you will forget all else."
+
+"A command so kindly--so encouragingly given--do I offend, dearest
+Miss Effingham?" Eve, for the second time in her life, placed her own
+light arm and beautiful hand, through the arm of Paul, discovering a
+bewitching but modest reliance on his worth and truth, by the very
+manner in which she did this simple and every-day act, while she said
+more cheerfully--
+
+"You forget the substance of the command, at the very moment you
+would have me suppose you most disposed to obey it."
+
+"Well, then, Miss Effingham, you shall be more implicitly minded.
+_Why_ my father left my mother so soon after their union, I never
+knew. It would seem that they lived together but a few months, though
+I have the proud consolation of knowing that my mother was blameless.
+For years I suffered the misery of doubt on a point that is ever the
+most tender with man, a distrust of his own mother; but all this has
+been happily, blessedly, cleared up, during my late visit to England.
+It is true that Lady Dunluce was my mother's sister, and as such
+might have been lenient to her failings; but a letter from my father,
+that was written only a month before my mother's death, leaves no
+doubt not only of her blamelessness as a wife, but bears ample
+testimony to the sweetness of her disposition. This letter is a
+precious document for a son to possess, Miss Effingham!"
+
+Eve made no answer; but Paul fancied that he felt another gentle
+pressure of the hand, which, until then, had rested so lightly on his
+own arm, that he scarcely dared to move the latter, lest he might
+lose the precious consciousness of its presence.
+
+"I have other letters from my father to my mother," the young man
+continued, "but none that are so cheering to my heart as this. From
+their general tone, I cannot persuade myself that he ever truly loved
+her. It is a cruel thing, Miss Effingham, for a man to deceive a
+woman on a point like that!"
+
+"Cruel, indeed," said Eve, firmly. "Death itself were preferable to
+such a delusion."
+
+"I think my father deceived himself as well as my mother; for there
+is a strange incoherence and a want of distinctness in some of his
+letters, that caused feelings, keen as mine naturally were on such a
+subject, to distrust his affection from the first."
+
+"Was your mother rich?" Eve asked innocently; for, an heiress
+herself, her vigilance had early been directed to that great motive
+of deception and dishonesty.
+
+"Not in the least. She had little besides her high lineage, and her
+beauty. I have her picture, which sufficiently proves the latter;
+had, I ought rather to say, for it was her miniature, of which I was
+robbed by the Arabs, as you may remember, and I have not seen it
+since. In the way of money, my mother had barely the competency of a
+gentlewoman; nothing more."
+
+The pressure on Paul was more palpable, as spoke of the miniature;
+and he ventured to touch his companion's arm, in order to give it a
+surer hold of his own.
+
+"Mr. Powis was not mercenary, then, and it is a great deal," said
+Eve, speaking as if she were scarcely conscious that she spoke at
+all.
+
+"Mr. Powis!--He was every thing that was noble and disinterested. A
+more generous, or a less selfish man, never existed than Francis
+Powis."
+
+"I thought you never knew your father personally!" exclaimed Eve in
+surprise.
+
+"Nor did I. But, you are in an error, in supposing that my father's
+name was Powis, when it was Assheton."
+
+Paul then explained the manner in which he had been adopted while
+still a child, by a gentleman called Powis, whose name he had taken,
+on finding himself deserted by his own natural parent, and to whose
+fortune he had succeeded, on the death of his voluntary protector.
+
+"I bore the name of Assheton until Mr. Powis took me to France, when
+he advised me to assume his own, which I did the more readily, as he
+thought he had ascertained that my father was dead, and that he had
+bequeathed the whole of a very considerable estate to his nephews and
+nieces, making no allusion to me in his will, and seemingly anxious
+even to deny his marriage; at least, he passed among his
+acquaintances for a bachelor to his dying day."
+
+"There is something so unusual and inexplicable in all this, Mr.
+Powis, that it strikes me you have been to blame, in not inquiring
+more closely into the circumstances than, by your own account I
+should think had been done."
+
+"For a long time, for many bitter years, I was afraid to inquire,
+lest I should learn something injurious to a mother's name. Then
+there was the arduous and confined service of my profession, which
+kept me in distant seas: and the last journey and painful
+indisposition of my excellent benefactor, prevented even the wish to
+inquire after my own family. The offended pride of Mr. Powis, who was
+justly hurt at the cavalier manner in which my father's relatives met
+his advances, aided in alienating me from that portion of my
+relatives, and put a stop to all additional proffers of intercourse
+from me. They even affected to doubt the fact that my father had ever
+married."
+
+"But of that you had proof?" Eve earnestly asked.
+
+"Unanswerable. My aunt Dunluce was present at the ceremony, and I
+possess the certificate given to my mother by the clergyman who
+officiated. Is it not strange, Miss Effingham, that with all these
+circumstances in favour of my legitimacy, even Lady Dunluce and her
+family, until lately, had doubts of the fact."
+
+"That is indeed unaccountable, your aunt having witnessed the
+ceremony."
+
+"Very true; but some circumstances, a little aided perhaps by the
+strong desire of her husband, General Ducie, to obtain the revival of
+a barony that was in abeyance, and of which she would be the only
+heir, assuming that my rights were invalid, inclined her to believe
+that my father was already married, when he entered into the solemn
+contract with my mother. But from that curse too, I have been happily
+relieved."
+
+"Poor Powis!" said Eve, with a sympathy that her voice expressed more
+clearly even than her words; "you have, indeed, suffered cruelly, for
+one so young."
+
+"I have learned to bear it, dearest Miss Effingham, and have stood so
+long a solitary and isolated being, one in whom none have taken any
+interest--"
+
+"Nay, say not that--_we_, at least, have always felt an interest in
+you--have always esteemed you, and now have learned to--"
+
+"Learned to--?"
+
+"Love you," said Eve, with a steadiness that afterwards astonished
+herself; but she felt that a being so placed, was entitled to be
+treated with a frankness different from the reserve that it is usual
+for her sex to observe on similar occasions.
+
+"Love!" cried Paul, dropping her arm. "Miss Effingham!--Eve--but that
+_we_!"
+
+"I mean my dear father--cousin Jack--myself."
+
+"Such a feeling will not heal a wound like mine. A love that is
+shared with even such men as your excellent father, and your worthy
+cousin, will not make me happy. But, why should I, unowned, bearing a
+name to which I have no legal title, and virtually without relatives,
+aspire to one like you!"
+
+The windings of the path had brought them near a window of the house,
+whence a stream of strong light gleamed upon the sweet countenance of
+Eve, as raising her eyes to those of her companion, with a face
+bathed in tears, and flushed with natural feeling and modesty, the
+struggle between which even heightened her loveliness, she smiled an
+encouragement that it was impossible to misconstrue.
+
+"Can I believe my senses! Will _you_--_do_ you--_can_ you listen to
+the suit of one like me?" the young man exclaimed, as he hurried his
+companion past the window, lest some interruption might destroy his
+hopes.
+
+"Is there any sufficient reason why I should not, Powis?"
+
+"Nothing but my unfortunate situation in respect to my family, my
+comparative poverty, and my general unworthiness."
+
+"Your unfortunate situation in respect to your relatives would, if
+any thing, be a new and dearer tie with us; your comparative poverty
+is merely comparative, and can be of no account, where there is
+sufficient already; and as for your general unworthiness, I fear it
+will find more than an offset, in that of the girl you have so rashly
+chosen from the rest of the world."
+
+"Eve--dearest Eve--" said Paul, seizing both her hands, and stopping
+her at the entrance of some shrubbery, that densely shaded the path,
+and where the little light that fell from the stars enabled him still
+to trace her features--"you will not leave me in doubt on a subject
+of this nature--am I really so blessed?"
+
+"If accepting the faith and affection of a heart that is wholly
+yours, Powis, can mate you happy, your sorrows will be at an end--"
+
+"But your father?" said the young man, almost breathless in his
+eagerness to know all.
+
+"Is here to confirm what his daughter has just declared," said Mr.
+Effingham, coming out of the shrubbery beyond them, and laying a hand
+kindly on Paul's shoulder. "To find that you so well understand each
+other, Powis, removes from my mind one of the greatest anxieties I
+have ever experienced. My cousin John, as he was bound to do, has
+made me acquainted with all you have, told him of your past life, and
+there remains nothing further to be revealed. We have known you for
+years, and receive you into our family with as free a welcome as we
+could receive any precious boon from Providence."
+
+"Mr. Effingham!--dear sir," said Paul, almost gasping between
+surprise and rapture--"this is indeed beyond all my hopes--and this
+generous frankness too, in your lovely daughter--"
+
+Paul's hands had been transferred to those of the father, he knew not
+how; but releasing them hurriedly, he now turned in quest of Eve
+again, and found she had fled. In the short interval between the
+address of her father and the words of Paul, she had found means to
+disappear, leaving the gentlemen together. The young man would have
+followed, but the cooler head of Mr. Effingham perceiving that the
+occasion was favourable to a private conversation with his accepted
+son-in-law, and quite as unfavourable to one, or at least to a very
+rational one, between the lovers, he quietly took the young man's
+arm, and led him towards a more private walk. There half an hour of
+confidential discourse calmed the feelings of both, and rendered Paul
+Powis one of the happiest of human beings.
+
+Chapter XXIV.
+
+  "You shall do marvellous wisely, good Reynaldo, Before you visit
+  him, to make inquiry Of his behaviour."
+
+  HAMLET
+
+Ann Sidley was engaged among the dresses of Eve, as she loved to be,
+although Annette held her taste in too low estimation ever to permit
+her to apply a needle, or even to fit a robe to the beautiful form
+that was to wear it, when our heroine glided into the room and sunk
+upon a sofa. Eve was too much absorbed with her own feelings to
+observe the presence of her quiet unobtrusive old nurse, and too much
+accustomed to her care and sympathy to heed it, had it been seen. For
+a moment she remained, her face still suffused with blushes, her
+hands lying before her folded, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, and
+then the pent emotions found an outlet in a flood of tears.
+
+Poor Ann could not have felt more shocked, had she heard of any
+unexpected calamity, than she was at this sudden outbreaking of
+feeling in her child. She went to her, and bent over her with the
+solicitude of a mother, as she inquired into the causes of her
+apparent sorrow.
+
+"Tell me, Miss Eve, and it will relieve your mind," said the faithful
+woman; "your dear mother had such feelings sometimes, and I never
+dared to question her about them; but you are my own child, and
+nothing can grieve you without grieving me."
+
+The eyes of Eve were brilliant, her face continued to be suffused,
+and the smile which she gave through her tears was so bright, as to
+leave her poor attendant in deep perplexity as to the cause of a gush
+of feeling that was very unusual in one of the other's regulated
+mind.
+
+"It is not grief, dear Nanny,"--Eve at length murmured--"any thing
+but that! I am not unhappy. Oh! no; as far from unhappiness as
+possible."
+
+"God be praised it is so, ma'am! I was afraid that this affair of the
+English gentleman and Miss Grace might not prove agreeable to you,
+for he has not behaved as handsomely as he might, in that
+transaction."
+
+"And why not, my poor Nanny?--I have neither claim, nor the wish to
+possess a claim, on Sir George Templemore. His selection of my cousin
+has given me sincere satisfaction, rather than pain; were he a
+countryman of our own, I should say unalloyed satisfaction, for I
+firmly believe he will strive to make her happy."
+
+Nanny now looked at her young mistress, then at the floor; at her
+young mistress again, and afterwards at a rocket that was sailing
+athwart the sky. Her eyes, however, returned to those of Eve, and
+encouraged by the bright beam of happiness that was glowing in the
+countenance she so much loved, she ventured to say--
+
+"If Mr. Powis were a more presuming gentleman than he is, ma'am--"
+
+"You mean a less modest, Nanny," said Eve, perceiving that her nurse
+paused.
+
+"Yes, ma'am--one that thought more of himself, and less of other
+people, is what I wish to say."
+
+"And were this the case?"
+
+"I might think _he_ would find the heart to say what I know he
+feels."
+
+"And did he find the heart to say what you know he feels, what does
+Ann Sidley think should be my answer?"
+
+"Oh, ma'am, I know it would be just as it ought to be. I cannot
+repeat what ladies say on such occasions, but I know that it is what
+makes the hearts of the gentlemen leap for joy."
+
+There are occasions in which woman can hardly dispense with the
+sympathy of woman. Eve loved her father most tenderly, had more than
+the usual confidence in him, for she had never known a mother; but
+had the present conversation been with him, notwithstanding all her
+reliance on his affection, her nature would have shrunk from pouring
+out her feelings as freely as she might have done with her other
+parent, had not death deprived her of such a blessing. Between our
+heroine and Ann Sidley, on the other hand, there existed a confidence
+of a nature so peculiar, as to require a word of explanation before
+we exhibit its effects. In all that related to physical wants, Ann
+had been a mother, or even more than a mother to Eve, and this alone
+had induced great personal dependence in the one, and a sort of
+supervisory care in the other, that had brought her to fancy she was
+responsible for the bodily health and well-doing of her charge. But
+this was not all. Nanny had been the repository of Eve's childish
+griefs, the confidant of her girlish secrets; and though the years of
+the latter soon caused her to be placed under the management of those
+who were better qualified to store her mind, this communication never
+ceased; the high-toned and educated young woman reverting with
+unabated affection, and a reliance that nothing could shake, to the
+long-tried tenderness of the being who had watched over her infancy.
+The effect of such an intimacy was often amusing; the one party
+bringing to the conferences, a mind filled with the knowledge suited
+to her sex and station, habits that had been formed in the best
+circles of christendom, and tastes that had been acquired in schools
+of high reputation; and the other, little more than her single-
+hearted love, a fidelity that ennobled her nature, and a simplicity
+that betokened perfect purity of thought Nor was this extraordinary
+confidence without its advantages to Eve; for, thrown so early among
+the artificial and calculating, it served to keep her own
+ingenuousness of character active, and prevented that cold, selfish,
+and unattractive sophistication, that mere women of fashion are apt
+to fall into, from their isolated and factitious mode of existence.
+When Eve, therefore, put the questions to her nurse, that have
+already been mentioned, it was more with a real wish to know how the
+latter would view a choice on which her own mind was so fully made
+up, than any silly trifling on a subject that engrossed so much of
+her best affections.
+
+"But you have not told me, dear Nanny," she continued, "what _you_
+would have that answer be. Ought I, for instance, ever to quit my
+beloved father?"
+
+"What necessity would there be for that, ma'am? Mr. Powis has no home
+of his own; and, for that matter, scarcely any country----"
+
+"How can you know this, Nanny?" demanded Eve, with the jealous
+sensitiveness of a young love.
+
+"Why, Miss Eve, his man says this much, and he has lived with him
+long enough to know it, if he had a home. Now, I seldom sleep without
+looking back at the day, and often have my thoughts turned to Sir
+George Temple more and Mr. Powis; and when I have remembered that the
+first had a house and a home, and that the last had neither, it has
+always seemed to me that _he_ ought to be the one."
+
+"And then, in all this matter, you have thought of convenience, and
+what might be agreeable to others, rather than of me."
+
+"Miss Eve!"
+
+"Nay, dearest Nanny, forgive me; I know your last thought, in every
+thing, is for yourself. But surely, the mere circumstance that he had
+no home ought not to be a sufficient reason for selecting any man,
+for a husband. With most women it would be an objection."
+
+"I pretend to know very little of these feelings, Miss Eve. I have
+been wooed, I acknowledge; and once I do think I might have been
+tempted to marry, had it not been for a particular circumstance."
+
+"You! You marry, Ann Sidley!" exclaimed Eve, to whom the bare idea
+seemed as odd and unnatural, as that her own father should forget her
+mother, and take a second wife. "This is altogether new, and I should
+be glad to know what the lucky circumstance was, which prevented
+what, to me, might have proved so great a calamity."
+
+"Why, ma'am, I said to myself, what does a woman do, who marries? She
+vows to quit all else to go with her husband, and to love him before
+father and mother, and all other living beings on earth--is it not
+so, Miss Eve?"
+
+"I believe it is so, indeed, Nanny--nay, I am quite certain it is
+so," Eve answered, the colour deepening on her cheek, as she gave
+this opinion to her old nurse, with the inward consciousness that she
+had just experienced some of the happiest moments of her life,
+through the admission of a passion that thus overshadowed all the
+natural affections. "It is, truly? as you say."
+
+"Well, ma'am, I investigated my feelings, I believe they call it, and
+after a proper trial, I found that I loved you so much better than
+any one else, that I could not, in conscience, make the vows."
+
+"Dearest Nanny! my kind, good, faithful old nurse! let me hold you in
+my arms: and, I, selfish, thoughtless, heartless girl, would forget
+the circumstance that would be most likely to keep us together, for
+the remainder of our lives! Hist! there is a tap at the door It is
+Mrs. Bloomfield; I know her light step. Admit her, my kind Ann, and
+leave us together."
+
+The bright searching eye of Mrs. Bloomfield was riveted on her young
+friend, as she advanced into the room; and her smile, usually so gay
+and sometimes ironical, was now thoughtful and kind.
+
+"Well, Miss Effingham," she cried, in a manner that her looks
+contradicted, "am I to condole with you," or to congratulate?--For a
+more sudden, or miraculous change did I never before witness in a
+young lady, though whether it be for the better or the worse----These
+are ominous words, too--for 'better or worse, for richer or
+poorer'----"
+
+"You are in fine spirits this evening, my dear Mrs. Bloomfield, and
+appear to have entered into the gaieties of the Fun of Fire, with all
+your--"
+
+"Might, will be a homely, but an expressive word. Your Templeton Fun
+of Fire is fiery fun, for it has cost us something like a general
+conflagration. Mrs. Hawker has been near a downfall, like your great
+namesake, by a serpent's coming too near her dress; one barn, I hear,
+has actually been in a blaze, and Sir George Templemore's heart is in
+cinders. Mr. John Effingham has been telling me that he should not
+have been a bachelor, had there been two Mrs. Bloomfields in the
+world, and Mr. Powis looks like a rafter dugout of Herculaneum,
+nothing but coal."
+
+"And what occasions this pleasantry?" asked Eve, so composed in
+manner that her friend was momentarily deceived.
+
+Mrs. Bloomfield took a seat on the sofa, by the side of our heroine,
+and regarding her steadily for near a minute, she continued--
+
+"Hypocrisy and Eve Effingham can have little in common, and my ears
+must have deceived me."
+
+"Your ears, dear Mrs. Bloomfield!"
+
+"My ears, dear Miss Effingham. I very well know the character of an
+eaves-dropper, but if gentlemen will make passionate declarations in
+the walk of a garden, with nothing but a little shrubbery between his
+ardent declarations and the curiosity of those who may happen to be
+passing, they must expect to be overheard."
+
+Eve's colour had gradually increased as her friend proceeded; and
+when the other ceased speaking, as bright a bloom glowed on her
+countenance, as had shone there when she first entered the room.
+
+"May I ask the meaning of all this?" she said, with an effort to
+appear calm.
+
+"Certainly, my dear; and you shall also know the _feelings_ that
+prompt it, as well as the meaning," returned Mrs. Bloomfield, kindly
+taking Eve's hand in a way to show that she did not mean to trifle
+further on a subject that was of so much moment to her young friend.
+"Mr. John Effingham and myself were star-gazing at a point where two
+walks approach each other, just as you and Mr. Powis were passing in
+the adjoining path. Without absolutely stepping our ears, it was
+quite impossible not to hear a portion of your conversation. We both
+tried to behave honourably; for I coughed, and your kinsman actually
+hemmed, but we were unheeded."
+
+"Coughed and hemmed!" repeated Eve, in greater confusion than ever.
+"There must be some mistake, dear Mrs. Bloomfield, as I remember to
+have heard no such signals."
+
+"Quite likely, my love, for there was a time when I too had ears for
+only one voice; but you can have affidavits to the fact, _a la mode
+de New England_, if you require them. Do not mistake my motive,
+nevertheless, Miss Effingham, which is any thing but vulgar
+curiosity"--here Mrs. Bloomfield looked so kind and friendly, that
+Eve took both her hands and pressed them to her heart--"you are
+motherless; without even a single female connexion of a suitable age
+to consult with on such an occasion, and fathers after all are but
+men----"
+
+"Mine is as kind, and delicate, and tender, as any woman can be, Mrs.
+Bloomfield."
+
+"I believe it all, though he may not be quite as quick-sighted, in an
+affair of this nature.--Am I at liberty to speak to you as if I were
+an elder sister?"
+
+"Speak, Mrs. Bloomfield, as frankly as you please, but leave me the
+mistress of my answers."
+
+"It is, then, as I suspected," said Mrs. Bloomfield, in a sort of
+musing manner; "the men have been won over, and this young creature
+has absolutely been left without a protector in the most important
+moment of her life!"
+
+"Mrs. Bloomfield!--What does this mean?--What _can_ it mean?"
+
+"It means merely general principles, child; that your father and
+cousin have been parties concerned, instead of vigilant sentinels;
+and, with all their pretended care, that you have been left to grope
+your way in the darkness of female uncertainty, with one of the most
+pleasing young men in the country constantly before you, to help the
+obscurity."
+
+It is a dreadful moment, when we are taught to doubt the worth of
+those we love; and Eve became pale as death, as she listened to the
+words of her friend. Once before, on the occasion of Paul's return to
+England, she had felt a pang of that sort, though reflection, and a
+calm revision of all his acts and words since they first met in
+Germany, had enabled her to get the better of indecision, and when
+she first saw him on the mountain, nearly every unpleasant
+apprehension and distrust had been dissipated by an effort of pure
+reason. His own explanations had cleared up the unpleasant affair,
+and, from that moment, she had regarded him altogether with the eyes
+of a confiding partiality. The speech of Mrs. Bloomfield now sounded
+like words of doom to her, and, for an instant, her friend was
+frightened with the effects of her own imperfect communication. Until
+that moment Mrs. Bloomfield had formed no just idea of the extent to
+which the feelings of Eve were interested in Paul, for she had but an
+imperfect knowledge of their early association in Europe, and she
+sincerely repented having introduced the subject at all. It was too
+late to retreat, however, and, first folding Eve in her arms, and
+kissing her cold forehead, she hastened to repair a part, at least,
+of the mischief she had done.
+
+"My words have been too strong, I fear," she said, "but such is my
+general horror of the manner in which the young of our sex, in this
+country, are abandoned to the schemes of the designing and selfish of
+the other, that I am, perhaps, too sensitive when I see any one that
+I love thus exposed. You are known, my dear, to be one of the richest
+heiresses of the country; and, I blush to say that no accounts of
+European society that we have, make fortune-hunting a more regular
+occupation there, than it has got to be here."
+
+The paleness left Eve's face, and a look of slight displeasure
+succeeded.
+
+"Mr. Powis is no fortune-hunter, Mrs. Bloomfield," she said,
+steadily; "his whole conduct for three years has been opposed to such
+a character; and, then, though not absolutely rich, perhaps, he has a
+gentleman's income, and is removed from the necessity of being
+reduced to such an act of baseness."
+
+"I perceive my error, but it is now too late to retreat. I do not say
+that Mr. Powis is a fortune-hunter, but there are circumstances
+connected with his history, that you ought at least to know, and that
+immediately. I have chosen to speak to you, rather than to speak to
+your father, because I thought you might like a female confidant on
+such occasion, in preference even to your excellent natural
+protector. The idea of. Mrs. Hawker occurred to me, on account of her
+age; but I did not feel authorised to communicate to her a secret of
+which I had myself become so accidentally possessed,'
+
+"I appreciate your motive fully, dearest Mrs. Bloomfield," said Eve,
+smiling with all her native sweetness, and greatly relieved, for she
+now began to think that too keen a sensitiveness on the subject of
+Paul had unnecessarily alarmed her, "and beg there may be no reserves
+between us. If you know a reason why Mr. Powis should not be received
+as a suitor, I entreat you to mention it."
+
+"Is he Mr. Powis at all?"
+
+Again Eve smiled, to Mrs. Bloomfield's great, surprise, for, as the
+latter had put the question with sincere reluctance, she was
+astonished at the coolness with which it was received.
+
+"He is not Mr. Powis, legally perhaps, though he might be, but that
+he dislikes the publicity of an application to the legislature. His
+paternal name is Assheton."
+
+"You know his history, then!"
+
+"There has been no reserve on the part of Mr. Powis; least of all,
+any deception."
+
+Mrs. Bloomfield appeared perplexed, even distressed; and there was a
+brief space, during which her mind was undecided as to the course she
+ought to take. That she had committed an error by attempting a
+consultation, in a matter of the heart, with one of her own sex,
+after the affections were engaged, she discovered when it was too
+late; but she prized Eve's friendship too much, and had too just a
+sense of what was due to herself, to leave the affair where it was,
+or without clearing up her own unasked agency in it.
+
+"I rejoice to learn this," she said, as soon as her doubts had ended,
+"for frankness, while it is one of the safest, is one of the most
+beautiful traits in human character; but beautiful though it be, it
+is one that the other sex uses least to our own."
+
+"Is our own too ready to use it to the other?"
+
+"Perhaps not: it might be better for both parties, were there less
+deception practised during the period of courtship, generally: but as
+this is hopeless, and might, destroy some of the most pleasing
+illusions of life, we will not enter into a treatise on the frauds of
+Cupid, Now to my own confessions, which I make all the more
+willingly, because I know they are uttered to the ear of one of a
+forgiving temperament, and who is disposed to view even my follies
+favourably."
+
+The kind but painful smile of Eve, assured the speaker she was not
+mistaken, and she continued, after taking time to read the expression
+of the countenance of her young friend--
+
+"In common with all of New-York, that town of babbling misses, who
+prattle as water flows, without consciousness or effort, and of
+whiskered masters, who fancy Broadway the world, and the flirtations
+of miniature drawing-rooms, human nature, I believed, on your return
+from Europe, that an accepted suitor followed in your train, in the
+person of Sir George Templemore."
+
+"Nothing in my deportment, or in that of Sir George, or in that of
+any of my family, could justly have given rise to such a notion,"
+said Eve, quickly.
+
+"Justly! What has justice, or truth, or even probability, to do with
+a report, of which love and matrimony are the themes? Do you not know
+_society_ better than to fancy this improbability, child?"
+
+"I know that our own sex would better consult their own dignity and
+respectability, my dear Mrs. Bloomfield, if they talked less of such
+matters; and that they would be more apt to acquire the habits of
+good taste, not to say of good principles, if they confined their
+strictures more to things and sentiments than they do, and meddled
+less with persons."
+
+"And pray, is there no tittle-tattle, no scandal, no commenting on
+one's neighbours, in other civilized nations besides this?"
+
+"Unquestionably; though I believe, as a rule, it is every where
+thought to be inherently vulgar, and a proof of low associations."
+
+"In that, we are perfectly of a mind; for, if there be any thing that
+betrays a consciousness of inferiority, it is our rendering others of
+so much obvious importance to ourselves, as to make them the subjects
+of our constant conversation. We may speak of virtues, for therein we
+pay an homage to that which is good; but when we come to dwell on
+personal faults, it is rather a proof that we have a silent
+conviction of the superiority of the subject of our comments to
+ourselves, either in character, talents, social position, or
+something else that is deemed essential, than of our distaste for his
+failings. Who, for instance, talks scandal of his grocer, or of his
+shoemaker? No, no, our pride forbids this; we always make our betters
+the subject of our strictures by preference, taking up with our
+equals only when we can get none of a higher class."
+
+"This quite reconciles me to having been given to Sir George
+Templemore, by the world of New-York," said Eve, smiling.
+
+"And well it may, for they who have prattled of your engagement, have
+done so principally because they are incapable of maintaining a
+conversation on any thing else. But, all this time, I fear I stand
+accused in your mind, of having given advice unasked, and of feeling
+an alarm in an affair that affected others, instead of myself, which
+is the very sin that we lay at the door of our worthy Manhattanese.
+In common with all around me, then, I fancied Sir George Templemore
+an accepted lover, and, by habit, had gotten to associate you
+together in my pictures. Oh my arrival here, however, I will confess
+that Mr. Powis, whom, you will remember, I had never seen before,
+struck me as much the most dangerous man.--Shall I own all my
+absurdity?"
+
+"Even to the smallest shade."
+
+"Well, then, I confess to having supposed that, while the excellent
+father believed you were in a fair way to become Lady Templemore, the
+equally excellent daughter thought the other suitor, infinitely the
+most agreeable person."
+
+"What! in contempt of a betrothal?"
+
+"Of course I, at once, ascribed that part of the report to the usual
+embellishments. We do not like to be deceived in our calculations, or
+to discover that even our gossip has misled us. In pure resentment at
+my own previous delusion, I began to criticise this Mr. Powis--"
+
+"Criticise, Mrs. Bloomfield!"
+
+"To find fault with him, my dear; to try to think he was not just the
+handsomest and most engaging young man I had ever seen; to imagine
+what he ought to be, in place of what he was; and among other things,
+to inquire _who_ he was?"
+
+"You did not think proper to ask that question of any of _us_," said
+Eve, gravely.
+
+"I did not; for I discovered by instinct, or intuition, or
+conjecture--they mean pretty much the same thing, I believe--that
+there was a mystery about him; something that even his Templeton
+friends did not quite understand, and a lucky thought occurred of
+making my inquiries of another person."
+
+"They were answered satisfactorily," said Eve, looking up at her
+friend, with the artless confidence that marks her sex, when the
+affections have gotten the mastery of reason.
+
+"_Cosi, cosi_. Bloomfield has a brother who is in the Navy, as you
+know, and I happened to remember that he had once spoken of an
+officer of the name of Powis, who had performed a clever thing in the
+West Indies, when they were employed together against the pirates. I
+wrote to him one of my usual letters, that are compounded of all
+things in nature and art, and took an occasion to allude to a certain
+Mr. Paul Powis, with a general remark that he had formerly served,
+together with a particular inquiry if he knew any thing about him.
+All this, no doubt, you think very officious; but believe me, dear
+Eve, where there was as much interest as I felt and feel in you, it
+was very natural."
+
+"So far from entertaining resentment, I am grateful for your concern,
+especially as I know it was manifested cautiously, and without any
+unpleasant allusions to third persons."
+
+"In that respect I believe I did pretty well. Tom Bloomfield--I beg
+his pardon, Captain Bloomfield, for so he calls himself, at present--
+knows Mr. Powis well; or, rather _did_ know him, for they have not
+met for years, and he speaks of his personal qualities and
+professional merit highly, but takes occasion to remark that there
+was some mystery connected with his birth, as, before he joined the
+service he understood he was called Assheton, and at a later day,
+Powis, and this without any public law, or public avowal of a motive.
+Now, it struck me that Eve Effingham ought not to be permitted to
+form a connection with a man so unpleasantly situated, without being
+apprised of the fact. I was waiting for a proper occasion to do this
+ungrateful office myself, when accident made me acquainted with what
+has passed this evening, and perceiving that there was no time to
+lose, I came hither, more led by interest in you, my dear, perhaps,
+than by discretion."
+
+"I thank you sincerely for this kind concern in my welfare, dear Mrs.
+Bloomfield, and give you full credit for the motive. Will you permit
+me to inquire how much you know of that which passed this evening?"
+
+"Simply that Mr. Powis is desperately in love, a declaration that I
+take it is always dangerous to the peace of mind of a young woman,
+when it comes from a very engaging young man."
+
+"And my part of the dialogue--" Eve blushed to the eyes as she asked
+this question, though she made a great effort to appear calm--"my
+answer?"
+
+"There was too much of woman in me--of true, genuine, loyal, native
+woman, Miss Effingham, to listen to that had there been an
+opportunity. We were but a moment near enough to hear any thing,
+though that moment sufficed to let us know the state of feelings of
+the gentleman. I ask no confidences, my dear Eve, and now that I have
+made my explanations, lame though they be, I will kiss you and repair
+to the drawing-room, where we shall both be soon missed. Forgive me,
+if I have seemed impertinent in my interference, and continue to
+ascribe it to its true motive."
+
+"Stop, Mrs. Bloomfield, I entreat, for a single moment; I wish to say
+a word before we part. As you have been accidentally made acquainted
+with Mr. Powis's sentiments towards me, it is no more than just that
+you should know the nature of mine towards him----"
+
+Eve paused involuntarily, for, though she had commenced her
+explanation, with a firm intention to do justice to Paul, the
+bashfulness of her sex held her tongue tied, at the very moment her
+desire to speak was the strongest. An effort conquered the weakness,
+and the warm-hearted, generous-minded girl succeeded in commanding
+her voice.
+
+"I cannot allow you to go away with the impression, that there is a
+shade of any sort on the conduct of Mr. Powis," she said. "So far
+from desiring to profit by the accidents that have placed it in his
+power to render us such essential service, he has never spoken of his
+love until this evening, and then under circumstances in which
+feeling, naturally, perhaps I might say uncontrollably, got the
+ascendency."
+
+"I believe it all, for I feel certain Eve Effingham would not bestow
+her heart heedlessly."
+
+"Heart!--Mrs. Bloomfield!"
+
+"Heart, my dear; and now I insist on the subject's being dropped, at
+least, for the present. Your decision is probably not yet made--you
+are not yet an hour in possession of your suitor's secret, and
+prudence demands deliberation. I shall hope to see you in the
+drawing-room, and until then, adieu."
+
+Mrs. Bloomfield signed for silence, and quitted the room with the
+same light tread as that with which she had entered it.
+
+Chapter XXV.
+
+  "To show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very
+  age and body of the time, his form and pressure."
+
+  SHAKSPEARE.
+
+When Mrs. Bloomfield entered the drawing-room, she found nearly the
+whole party assembled. The Fun of Fire had ceased, and the rockets no
+longer gleamed athwart the sky; but the blaze of artificial light
+within, was more than a substitute for that which had so lately
+existed without.
+
+Mr. Effingham and Paul were conversing by themselves, in a window-
+seat, while John Effingham, Mrs. Hawker, and Mr. Howel were in an
+animated discussion on a sofa; Mr. Wenham had also joined the party,
+and was occupied with Captain Ducie, though not so much so as to
+prevent occasional glances at the trio just mentioned. Sir George
+Templemore and Grace Van Cortlandt were walking together in the great
+hall, and were visible through the open door, as they passed and
+repassed.
+
+"I am glad of your appearance among us, Mrs. Bloomfield," said John
+Effingham, "for, certainly more Anglo-mania never existed than that
+which my good friend Howel manifests this evening, and I have hopes
+that your eloquence may persuade him out of some of those notions, on
+which my logic has fallen like seed scattered by the way-side."
+
+"I can have little hopes of success where Mr. John Effingham has
+failed."
+
+"I am far from being certain of that; for, somehow Howel has taken up
+the notion that I have gotten a grudge against England, and he
+listens to all I say with distrust and distaste."
+
+"Mr. John uses strong language habitually, ma'am," cried Mr. Howel,
+"and you will make some allowances for a vocabulary that has no very
+mild terms in it; though, to be frank, I do confess that he seems
+prejudiced on the subject of that great nation."
+
+"What is the point in immediate controversy, gentlemen?" asked Mrs.
+Bloomfield, taking a seat.
+
+"Why here is a review of a late American work, ma'am, and I insist
+that the author is skinned alive, whereas, Mr. John insists that the
+reviewer exposes only his own rage, the work having a national
+character, and running counter to the reviewer's feelings and
+interests."
+
+"Nay, I protest against this statement of the case, for I affirm that
+the reviewer exposes a great deal more than his rage, since his
+imbecility, ignorance, and dishonesty, are quite as apparent as any
+thing else."
+
+"I have read the article," said Mrs. Bloomfield, after glancing her
+eye at the periodical, "and I must say that I take sides with Mr.
+John Effingham in his opinion of its character."
+
+"But do you not perceive, ma'am, that this is the idol of the
+nobility and gentry; the work that is more in favour with people of
+consequence in England than any other. Bishops are said to write for
+it!"
+
+"I know it is a work expressly established to sustain one of the most
+factitious political systems that ever existed, and that it
+sacrifices every high quality to attain its end."
+
+"Mrs. Bloomfield, you amaze me! The first writers of Great Britain
+figure in its pages."
+
+"That I much question, in the first place; but even if it were so, it
+would be but a shallow mystification. Although a man of character
+might write one article in a work of this nature, it does not follow
+that a man of no character does not write the next. The principles of
+the communications of a periodical are as different as their
+talents."
+
+"But the editor is a pledge for all.--The editor of this review is an
+eminent writer himself."
+
+"An eminent writer may be a very great knave, in the first place, and
+one fact is worth a thousand conjectures in such a matter. But we do
+not know that there is any responsible editor to works of this nature
+at all, for there is no name given in the title-page, and nothing is
+more common than vague declarations of a want of this very
+responsibility. But if I can prove to you that this article _cannot_
+have been written by a man of common honesty, Mr. Howel, what will
+you then say to the responsibility of your editor?"
+
+"In that case I shall be compelled to admit that he had no connexion
+with it."
+
+"Any thing in preference to giving up the beloved idol!" said John
+Effingham laughing. "Why not add at once, that he is as great a knave
+as the writer himself? I am glad, however, that Tom Howel has fallen
+into such good hands, Mrs. Bloomfield, and I devoutly pray you may
+not spare him."
+
+We have said that Mrs. Bloomfield had a rapid perception of things
+and principles, that amounted almost to intuition. She had read the
+article in question, and, as she glanced her eyes through its pages,
+had detected its fallacies and falsehoods, in almost every sentence.
+Indeed, they had not been put together with ordinary skill, the
+writer having evidently presumed on the easiness of the class of
+readers who generally swallowed his round assertions, and were so
+clumsily done that any one who had not the faith to move mountains
+would have seen through most of them without difficulty. But Mr.
+Howel belonged to another school, and he was so much accustomed to
+shut his eyes to palpable mystification mentioned by Mrs. Bloomfield,
+that a lie, which, advanced in most works, would have carried no
+weight with it, advanced in this particular periodical became
+elevated to the dignity of truth.
+
+Mrs. Bloomfield turned to an article on America, in the periodical in
+question, and read from it several disparaging expressions concerning
+Mr. Howel's native country, one of which was, "The American's first
+plaything is the rattle-snake's tail."
+
+"Now, what do you think of this assertion in particular, Mr. Howel?"
+she asked, reading the words we have just quoted.
+
+"Oh! that is said in mere pleasantry--it is only wit."
+
+"Well, then, what do you think of it as wit?"
+
+"Well, well, it may not be of a very pure water, but the best of men
+are unequal at all times, and more especially in their wit."
+
+"Here," continued Mrs. Bloomfield, pointing to another paragraph, "is
+a positive statement or misstatement, which makes the cost of the
+'civil department of the United States Government,' about six times
+more than it really is."
+
+"Our government is so extremely mean, that I ascribe that error to
+generosity."
+
+"Well," continued the lady, smiling, "here the reviewer asserts that
+Congress passed a law _limiting_ the size of certain ships, in order
+to please the democracy; and that the Executive privately evaded this
+law, and built vessels of a much greater size; whereas the provision
+of the law is just the contrary, or that the ships should not be
+_less_ than of seventy-four guns; a piece of information, by the way,
+that I obtained from Mr. Powis."
+
+"Ignorance, ma'am; a stranger cannot be supposed to know all the laws
+of a foreign country."
+
+"Then why make bold and false assertions about them, that are
+intended to discredit the country? Here is another assertion--'ten
+thousand of the men that fought at Waterloo would have marched
+through North America?' Do you believe that, Mr. Howel?"
+
+"But that is merely an opinion, Mrs. Bloomfield; any man may be wrong
+in his opinion."
+
+"Very true, but it is an opinion uttered in the year of our Lord one
+thousand eight hundred and twenty-eight; and after the battles of
+Bunker Hill, Cowpens, Plattsburg, Saratoga, and New-Orleans! And,
+moreover, after it had been proved that something very like ten
+thousand of the identical men who fought at Waterloo, could not march
+even ten miles into the country."
+
+"Well, well, all this shows that the reviewer is sometimes mistaken."
+
+"Your pardon Mr. Howel; I think it shows, according to your own
+admission, that his wit, or rather its wit, for there is no _his_
+about it--that its wit is of a very indifferent quality as witticisms
+even; that it is ignorant of what it pretends to know; and that its
+opinions are no better than its knowledge: all of which, when fairly
+established against one who, by his very pursuit, professes to know
+more than other people, is very much like making it appear
+contemptible."
+
+"This is going back eight or ten years--let us look more particularly
+at the article about which the discussion commences."
+
+"_Volontiers_"
+
+Mrs. Bloomfield now sent to the library for the work reviewed, and
+opening the review she read some of its strictures; and then turning
+to the corresponding passages in the work itself, she pointed out the
+unfairness of the quotations, the omissions of the context, and, in
+several flagrant instances, witticisms of the reviewer, that were
+purchased at the expense of the English language. She next showed
+several of those audacious assertions, for which the particular
+periodical was so remarkable, leaving no doubt with any candid
+person, that they were purchased at the expense of truth.
+
+"But here is an instance that will scarce admit of cavilling or
+objection on your part, Mr. Howel," she continued; "do me the favour
+to read the passage in the review."
+
+Mr. Howel complied, and when he had done, he looked expectingly at
+the lady.
+
+"The effect of the reviewer's statement is to make it appear that the
+author has contradicted himself, is it not?"
+
+"Certainly, nothing can be plainer."
+
+"According to your favourite reviewer, who accuses him of it, in
+terms. Now let us look at the fact. Here is the passage in the work
+itself. In the first place you will remark that this sentence, which
+contains the alleged contradiction, is mutilated; the part which is
+omitted, giving a directly contrary meaning to it, from that it bears
+under the reviewer's scissors."
+
+"It has some such appearance, I do confess."
+
+"Here you perceive that the closing sentence of the same paragraph,
+and which refers directly to the point at issue, is displaced, made
+to appear as belonging to a separate paragraph, and as conveying a
+different meaning from what the author has actually expressed."
+
+"Upon my word, I do not know but you are right!"
+
+"Well, Mr. Howel, we have had wit of no very pure water, ignorance as
+relates to facts, and mistakes as regards very positive assertions.
+In what category, as Captain Truck would say, do you place this?"
+
+"Why does not the author reviewed expose this?"
+
+"Why does not a gentleman wrangle with a detected pick-pocket?"
+
+"It is literary swindling," said John Effingham, "and the man who did
+it, is inherently a knave."
+
+"I think both these facts quite beyond dispute," observed Mrs.
+Bloomfield, laying down Mr. Howel's favourite review with an air of
+cool contempt; "and I must say I did not think it necessary to prove
+the general character of the work, at this late date, to any American
+of ordinary intelligence; much less to a sensible man, like Mr.
+Howel."
+
+"But, ma'am, there may be much truth and justice in the rest of its
+remarks," returned the pertinacious Mr. Howel, "although it has
+fallen into these mistakes."
+
+"Were you ever on a jury, Howel?" asked John Effingham, in his
+caustic manner.
+
+"Often; and on grand juries, too."
+
+"Well, did the judge never tell you, when a witness is detected in
+lying on one point, that his testimony is valueless on all others?"
+
+"Very true; but this is a review, and not testimony."
+
+"The distinction is certainly a very good one," resumed Mrs.
+Bloomfield, laughing, "as nothing, in general, can be less like
+honest testimony than a review!"
+
+"But I think, my dear ma'am, you will allow that all this is
+excessively biting and severe--I can't say I ever read any thing
+sharper in my life."
+
+"It strikes me, Mr. Howel, as being nothing but epithets, the
+cheapest and most contemptible of all species of abuse. Were two men,
+in your presence, to call each other such names, I think it would
+excite nothing but disgust in your mind. When the thought is clear
+and poignant, there is little need to have recourse to mere epithets;
+indeed, men never use the latter, except when there is a deficiency
+of the first."
+
+"Well, well, my friends," cried Mr. Howel, as he walked away towards
+Grace and Sir George, "this is a different thing from what I at first
+thought it, but still I think you undervalue the periodical."
+
+"I hope this little lesson will cool some of Mr. Howel's faith in
+foreign morality," observed Mrs. Bloomfield, as soon as the gentleman
+named was out of hearing; "a more credulous and devout worshipper of
+the idol, I have never before met."
+
+"The school is diminishing, but it is still large. Men like Tom
+Howel, who have thought in one direction all their lives, are not
+easily brought to change their notions, especially when the
+admiration which proceeds from distance, distance 'that lends
+enchantment to the view,' is at the bottom of their faith. Had this
+very article been written and printed round the corner of the street
+in which he lives, Howel would be the first to say that it was the
+production of a fellow without talents or principles, and was
+unworthy of a second thought."
+
+"I still think he will be a wiser, if not a better man, by the
+exposure of its frauds."
+
+"Not he. If you will excuse a homely and a coarse simile, 'he will
+return like a dog to his vomit, or the sow to its wallowing in the
+mire.' I never knew one of that school thoroughly cured, until he
+became himself the subject of attack, or, by a close personal
+communication, was made to feel the superciliousness of European
+superiority. It is only a week since I had a discussion with him on
+the subject of the humanity and the relish for liberty in his beloved
+model; and when I cited the instance of the employment of the
+tomahawk, in the wars between England and this country, he actually
+affirmed that the Indian savages killed no women and children, but
+the wives and offspring of their enemies; and when I told him that
+the English, like most other people, cared very little for any
+liberty but their own, he coolly affirmed that their own was the only
+liberty worth caring for!"
+
+"Oh yes," put in young Mr. Wenham, who had overheard the latter
+portion of the conversation, "Mr. Howel is so thoroughly English,
+that he actually denies that America is the most civilized country in
+the world, or that we speak our language better than any nation was
+ever before known to speak its own language."
+
+"This is so manifest an act of treason," said Mrs. Bloomfield,
+endeavouring to look grave, for Mr. Wenham was any thing but accurate
+in the use of words himself, commonly pronouncing "been," "ben,"
+"does," "dooze," "nothing," "nawthing," "few," "foo," &c. &c. &c.,
+"that, certainly, Mr. Howel should be arraigned at the bar of public
+opinion for the outrage."
+
+"It is commonly admitted, even by our enemies, that our mode of
+speaking is the very best in the world, which, I suppose, is the real
+reason why our literature has so rapidly reached the top of the
+ladder."
+
+"And is that the fact?" asked Mrs. Bloomfield, with a curiosity that
+was not in the least feigned.
+
+"I believe no one denies _that. You_ will sustain me in this, I
+fancy, Mr. Dodge?"
+
+The editor of the Active Inquirer had approached, and was just in
+time to catch the subject in discussion. Now the modes of speech of
+these two persons, while they had a great deal in common, had also a
+great deal that was not in common. Mr. Wenham was a native of New-
+York, and his dialect was a mixture that is getting to be
+sufficiently general, partaking equally of the Doric of New England,
+the Dutch cross, and the old English root; whereas, Mr. Dodge spoke
+the pure, unalloyed Tuscan of his province, rigidly adhering to all
+its sounds and significations. "Dissipation," he contended, meant
+"drunkenness;" "ugly," "vicious;" "clever," "good-natured;" and
+"humbly," (homely) "ugly." In addition to this finesse in
+significations, he had a variety of pronunciations that often put
+strangers at fault, and to which he adhered with a pertinacity that
+obtained some of its force from the fact, that it exceeded his power
+to get rid of them. Notwithstanding all these little peculiarities,
+peculiarities as respects every one but those who dwelt in his own
+province, Mr. Dodge had also taken up the notion of his superiority
+on the subject of language, and always treated the matter as one that
+was placed quite beyond dispute, by its publicity and truth.
+
+"The progress of American Literature," returned the editor, "is
+really astonishing the four quarters of the world. I believe it is
+very generally admitted, now, that our pulpit and bar are at the very
+summit of these two professions. Then we have much the best poets of
+the age, while eleven of our novelists surpass any of all other
+countries. The American Philosophical Society is, I believe,
+generally considered the most acute learned body now extant, unless,
+indeed, the New-York Historical Society may compete with it, for that
+honour. Some persons give the palm to one, and some to the other;
+though I myself think it would be difficult to decide between them.
+Then to what a pass has the drama risen of late years! Genius is
+getting to be quite a drug in America!"
+
+"You have forgotten to speak of the press, in particular," put in the
+complacent Mr. Wenham. "I think we may more safely pride ourselves on
+the high character of the press, than any thing else."
+
+"Why, to tell you the truth, sir," answered Steadfast, taking the
+other by the arm, and leading him so slowly away, that a part of what
+followed was heard by the two amused listeners, "modesty is so
+infallibly the companion of merit, that _we_ who are engaged in that
+high pursuit do not like to say any thing in our own favour. You
+never detect a newspaper in the weakness of extolling itself; but,
+between ourselves, I may say, after a close examination of the
+condition of the press in other countries, I have come to the
+conclusion, that, for talents, taste, candour, philosophy, genius,
+honesty, and truth, the press of the United States stands at the
+very----"
+
+Here Mr. Dodge passed so far from the listeners, that the rest of the
+speech became inaudible, though from the well-established modesty of
+the man and the editor, there can be little doubt of the manner in
+which he concluded the sentence.
+
+"It is said in Europe," observed Johr Effingham, his fine face
+expressing the cool sarcasm in which he was so apt to indulge, "that
+there are _la vieille_ and _la Jeune France_. I think we have now had
+pretty fair specimens of _old_ and _young_ America; the first
+distrusting every thing native, even to a potatoe: and the second
+distrusting nothing, and least of all, itself."
+
+"There appears to be a sort of pendulum-uneasiness in mankind," said
+Mrs. Bloomfield, "that keeps opinion always vibrating around the
+centre of truth, for I think it the rarest thing in the world to find
+man or woman who has not a disposition, as soon as an error is
+abandoned, to fly off into its opposite extreme. From believing we
+had nothing worthy of a thought, there is a set springing up who
+appear to have jumped to the conclusion that we have every thing."
+
+"Ay, this is _one_ of the reasons that all the rest of the world
+laugh at us."
+
+"Laugh at us, Mr. Effingham! Even _I_ had supposed the American name
+had, at last, got to be in good credit in other parts of the world."
+
+"Then even _you_, my dear Mrs. Bloomfield, are notably mistaken.
+Europe, it is true, is beginning to give us credit for not being
+quite as bad as she once thought us; but we are far, very far, from
+being yet admitted to the ordinary level of nations, as respects
+goodness."
+
+"Surely they give us credit for energy, enterprize, activity----"
+
+"Qualities that they prettily term, rapacity, cunning, and swindling!
+I am far, very far, however, from giving credit to all that it suits
+the interests and prejudices of Europe, especially of our venerable
+kinswoman, Old England, to circulate and think to the prejudice of
+this country, which, in my poor judgment, has as much substantial
+merit to boast of as any nation on earth; though, in getting rid of a
+set of ancient vices and follies, it has not had the sagacity to
+discover that it is fast falling into pretty tolerable--or if you
+like it better--intolerable substitutes."
+
+"What then do _you_ deem our greatest error--our weakest point?"
+
+"Provincialisms, with their train of narrow prejudices, and a
+disposition to set up mediocrity as perfection, under the double
+influence of an ignorance that unavoidably arises from a want of
+models, and of the irresistible tendency to mediocrity, in a nation
+where the common mind so imperiously rules."
+
+"But does not the common mind rule every where? Is not public opinion
+always stronger than law?"
+
+"In a certain sense, both these positions may be true. But in a
+nation like this, without a capital, one _that is all provinces_, in
+which intelligence and tastes are scattered, this common mind wants
+the usual direction, and derives its impulses from the force of
+numbers, rather than from the force of knowledge. Hence the fact,
+that the public opinion never or seldom rises to absolute truth. I
+grant you that _as_ a mediocrity, it is well; much better than common
+even; but it is still a mediocrity."
+
+"I see the justice of your remark, and I suppose we are to ascribe
+the general use of superlatives, which is so very obvious, to these
+causes."
+
+"Unquestionably; men have gotten to be afraid to speak the truth,
+when that truth is a little beyond the common comprehension; and thus
+it is that you see the fulsome flattery that all the public servants,
+as they call themselves, resort to, in order to increase their
+popularity, instead of telling the wholesome facts that are needed."
+
+"And what is to be the result?"
+
+"Heaven knows. While America is so much in advance of other nations,
+in a freedom from prejudices of the old school, it is fast
+substituting a set of prejudices of its own, that are not without
+serious dangers. We may live through it, and the ills of society may
+correct themselves, though there is one fact that men aces more evil
+than any thing I could have feared."
+
+"You mean the political struggle between money and numbers, that has
+so seriously manifested itself of late!" exclaimed the quick-minded
+and intelligent Mrs. Bloomfield.
+
+"_That_ has its dangers; but there is still another evil of greater
+magnitude. I allude to the very general disposition to confine
+political discussions to political men. Thus, the private citizen,
+who should presume to discuss a political question, would be deemed
+fair game for all who thought differently from himself. He would be
+injured in his pocket, reputation, domestic happiness, if possible;
+for, in this respect, America is much the most intolerant nation I
+have ever visited. In all other countries, in which discussion is
+permitted at all, there is at least the _appearance_ of fair play,
+whatever may be done covertly; but here, it seems to be sufficient to
+justify falsehood, frauds, nay, barefaced rascality, to establish
+that the injured party has had the audacity to meddle with public
+questions, not being what the public chooses to call a public man. It
+is scarcely necessary to say that, when such an opinion gets to be
+effective, it must entirely defeat the real intentions of a popular
+government."
+
+"Now you mention it," said Mrs. Bloomfield, "I think I have witnessed
+instances of what you mean."
+
+"Witnessed, dear Mrs. Bloomfield! Instances are to be seen as often
+as a man is found freeman enough to have an opinion independent of
+party. It is not for connecting himself with party that a man is
+denounced in this country, but for daring to connect himself with
+truth. Party will bear with party, but party will not bear with
+truth. It is in politics as in war, regiments or individuals may
+desert, and they will be received by their late enemies with open
+arms, the honour of a soldier seldom reaching to the pass of refusing
+succour of any sort; but both sides will turn and fire on the
+countrymen who wish merely to defend their homes and firesides."
+
+"You draw disagreeable pictures of human nature, Mr. Effingham."
+
+"Merely because they are true, Mrs. Bloomfield. Man is worse than the
+beasts, merely because he has a code of right and wrong, which he
+never respects. They talk of the variation of the compass, and even
+pretend to calculate its changes, though no one can explain the
+principle that causes the attraction or its vagaries at all. So it is
+with men; they pretend to look always at the right, though their eyes
+are constantly directed obliquely; and it is a certain calculation to
+allow of a pretty wide variation--but here comes Miss Effingham,
+singularly well attired, and more beautiful than I have ever before
+seen her!"
+
+The two exchanged quick glances, and then, as if fearful of betraying
+to each other their thoughts, they moved towards our heroine, to do
+the honours of the reception.
+
+Chapter XXVI.
+
+          "Haply, when I shall wed, That lord, whose hand must take
+  my plight, shall carry Half my love with him, half my care and
+  duty."
+
+  CORDELIA.
+
+As no man could be more gracefully or delicately polite than John
+Effingham, when the humour seized him, Mrs. Bloomfield was struck
+with the kind and gentleman-like manner with which he met his young
+kinswoman on this trying occasion, and the affectionate tones of his
+voice, and the winning expression of his eye, as he addressed her.
+Eve herself was not unobservant of these peculiarities, nor was she
+slow in comprehending the reason. She perceived at once that he was
+acquainted with the state of things between her and Paul. As she well
+knew the womanly fidelity of Mrs. Bloomfield, she rightly enough
+conjectured that the long observation of her cousin, coupled with the
+few words accidentally overheard that evening had even made him
+better acquainted with the true condition of her feelings, than was
+the case with the friend with whom she had so lately been conversing
+on the subject.
+
+Still Eve was not embarrassed by the conviction that her secret was
+betrayed to so many persons. Her attachment to Paul was not the
+impulse of girlish caprice, but the warm affection of a woman, that
+had grown with time, was sanctioned by her reason, and which, if it
+was tinctured with the more glowing imagination and ample faith of
+youth, was also sustained by her principles and her sense of right.
+She knew that both her father and cousin esteemed the man of her own
+choice, nor did she believe the little cloud that, hung over his
+birth could do more than have a temporary influence on his own
+sensitive feelings. She met John Effingham, therefore, with a frank
+composure, returned the kind pressure of his hand, with a smile such
+as a daughter might bestow on an affectionate parent, and turned to
+salute the remainder of the party, with that lady-like ease which had
+got to be a part of her nature.
+
+"There goes one of the most attractive pictures that humanity can
+offer," said John Effingham to Mrs. Bloomfield, as Eve walked away;
+"a young, timid, modest, sensitive girl, so strong in her principles,
+so conscious of rectitude, so pure of thought, and so warm in her
+affections, that she views her selection of a husband, as others view
+their acts of duty and religious faith. With her love has no shame,
+as it has no weakness."
+
+"Eve Effingham is as faultless as comports with womanhood; and yet I
+confess ignorance of my own sex, if she receive Mr. Powis as calmly
+as she received her cousin."
+
+"Perhaps not, for in that case, she could scarcely feel the passion.
+You perceive that he avoids oppressing her with his notice, and that
+the meeting passes off without embarrassment. I do believe there is
+an elevating principle in love, that, by causing us to wish to be
+worthy of the object most prized, produces the desired effects by
+stimulating exertion. There, now, are two as perfect beings as one
+ordinarily meets with, each oppressed by a sense of his or her
+unworthiness to be the choice of the other."
+
+"Does love, then, teach humility; successful love too?"
+
+"Does it not? It would be hardly fair to press this matter on you, a
+married woman; for, by the pandects of American society, a man may
+philosophize on love, prattle about it, trifle on the subject, and
+even analyze the passion with, a miss in her teens, and yet he shall
+not allude to it, in a discourse with a matron. Well, _chacun a son
+gout_; we are, indeed, a little peculiar in our usages, and have
+promoted a good deal of village coquetry, and the flirtations of the
+may-pole, to the drawing-room."
+
+"Is it not better that such follies should be confined to youth, than
+that they should invade the sanctity of married life, as I understand
+is too much the case elsewhere?"
+
+"Perhaps so; though I confess it is easier to dispose of a straight-
+forward proposition from a mother, a father, or a commissioned
+friend, than to get rid of a young lady, who, _propria persona_,
+angles on her own account. While abroad, I had a dozen proposals--"
+
+"Proposals!" exclaimed Mrs. Bloomfield, holding up both hands, and
+shaking her head incredulously.
+
+"Proposals! Why not, ma'am?--am I more than fifty? am I not
+reasonably youthful for that period of life, and have I not six or
+eight thousand a year--"
+
+"Eighteen, or you are much scandalized."
+
+"Well, eighteen, if you will," coolly returned the other, in whose
+eyes money was no merit, for he was born to a fortune, and always
+treated it as a means, and not as the end of life; "every dollar is a
+magnet, after one has turned forty. Do you suppose that a single man,
+of tolerable person, well-born, and with a hundred thousand francs of
+_rentes_, could entirely escape proposals from the ladies in Europe?"
+
+"This is so revolting to all our American notions, that, though I
+have often heard of such things, I have always found it difficult to
+believe them!"
+
+"And is it more revolting for the friends of young ladies to look out
+for them, on such occasions, than that the young ladies should take
+the affair into their own hands, as is practised quite as openly,
+here?"
+
+"It is well you are a confirmed bachelor, or declarations like these
+would mar your fortunes. I will admit that the school is not as
+retiring and diffident as formerly; for we are all ready enough to
+say that no times are egual to our own times; but I shall strenuously
+protest against your interpretation of the nature and artlessness of
+an American girl."
+
+"Artlessness!" repeated John Effingham, with a slight lifting of the
+eye-brows; "we live in an age when new dictionaries and vocabularies
+are necessary to understand each other's meaning. It is artlessness,
+with a vengeance, to beset an old fellow of fifty, as one would
+besiege a town. Hist!--Ned is retiring with his daughter, my dear
+Mrs. Bloomfield, and it will not be long before I shall be summoned
+to a family council. Well, we will keep the secret until it is
+publicly proclaimed."
+
+John Effingham was right, for his two cousins left the room together,
+and retired to the library, but in a way to attract no particular
+attention, except in those who were enlightened on the subject of
+what had already passed that evening. When they were alone, Mr.
+Effingham turned the key, and then he gave a free vent to his
+paternal feelings.
+
+Between Eve and her parent, there had always existed a confidence
+exceeding that which it is common to find between father and
+daughter. In one sense, they had been all in all to each other, and
+Eve had never hesitated about pouring those feelings into his breast,
+which, had she possessed another parent, would more naturally have
+been confided to the affection of a mother. When their eyes first
+met, therefore, they were mutually beaming with an expression of
+confidence and love, such as might, in a measure, have been expected
+between two of the gentler sex. Mr Effingham folded his child to his
+heart, pressed her there tenderly for near a minute in silence, and
+then kissing her burning cheek he permitted her to look up.
+
+"This answers all my fondest hopes, Eve"--he exclaimed; "fulfils my
+most cherished wishes for thy sake."
+
+"Dearest sir!"
+
+"Yes, my love, I have long secretly prayed that such might be your
+good fortune; for, of all the youths we have met, at home or abroad,
+Paul Powis is the one to whom I can consign you with the most
+confidence that he will cherish and love you as you deserve to be
+cherished and loved!"
+
+"Dearest father, nothing but this was wanting to complete my perfect
+happiness."
+
+Mr. Effingham kissed his daughter again, and he was then enabled to
+pursue the conversation with greater composure.
+
+"Powis and I have had a full explanation," he said, "though in order
+to obtain it, I have been obliged to give him strong encouragement"
+
+"Father!"
+
+"Nay, my love, your delicacy and feelings nave been sufficiently
+respected, but he has so much diffidence of himself, and permits the
+unpleasant circumstances connected with his birth to weigh so much on
+his mind, that I have been compelled to tell him, what I am sure you
+will approve, that we disregard family connections, and look only to
+the merit of the individual."
+
+"I hope, father, nothing was said to give Mr. Powis reason to suppose
+we did not deem him every way our equal."
+
+"Certainly not. He is a gentleman, and I can claim to be no more.
+There is but one thing in which connections ought to influence an
+American marriage, where the parties are suited to each other in the
+main requisites, and that is to ascertain that neither should be
+carried, necessarily, into associations for which their habits have
+given them too much and too good tastes to enter into. A _woman_,
+especially, ought never to be transplanted from a polished to
+an unpolished circle; for, when this is the case, if really a
+lady, there will be a dangerous clog on her affection for her
+husband. This one great point assured, I see no other about which a
+parent need feel concern."
+
+"Powis, unhappily, has no connections in this country; or none with
+whom he has any communications; and those he has in England are of a
+class to do him credit."
+
+"We have been conversing of this, and he has manifested so much
+proper feeling that it has even raised him in my esteem. I knew his
+father's family, and must have known his father, I think, though
+there were two or three Asshetons of the name of John. It is a highly
+respectable family of the middle states, and belonged formerly to the
+colonial aristocracy. Jack Effingham's mother was an Assheton."
+
+"Of the same blood, do you think, sir? I remembered this when Mr.
+Powis mentioned his father's name, and intended to question cousin
+Jack on the subject."
+
+"Now you speak of it, Eve, there _must_ be a relationship
+between them. Do you suppose that our kinsman is acquainted with the
+fact that Paul is, in truth, an Assheton?"
+
+Eve told her father that she had never spoken with their relative on
+the subject, at all.
+
+Then ring the bell and we will ascertain at once how far my
+conjecture is true. You can have no false delicacy, my child, about
+letting your engagement be known to one as near and as dear to us, as
+John."
+
+"Engagement, father!"
+
+"Yes, engagement," returned the smiling parent, "for such I already
+deem it. I have ventured, in your behalf, to plight your troth to
+Paul Powis, or what is almost equal to it; and in return I can give
+you back as many protestations of unequalled fidelity, and eternal
+constancy, as any reasonable girl can ask."
+
+Eve gazed at her lather in a way to show that reproach was mingled
+with fondness, for she felt that, in this instance, too much of the
+precipitation of the other sex had been manifested in her affairs;
+still, superior to coquetry and affectation, and much too warm in her
+attachments to be seriously hurt, she kissed the hand she held, shook
+her head reproachfully, even while she smiled, and did as had been
+desired.
+
+"You have, indeed, rendered it important to us to know more of Mr.
+Powis, my beloved father," she said, as she returned to her seat,
+"though I could wish matters had not proceeded quite so fast."
+
+"Nay, all I promised was conditional, and dependent on yourself. You
+have nothing to do, if I have said too much, but to refuse to ratify
+the treaty made by your negotiator."
+
+"You propose an impossibility,", said Eve, taking the hand, again,
+that she had so lately relinquished, and pressing it warmly between
+her own; "the negotiator is too much revered, has too strong a right
+to command, and is too much confided in to be thus dishonoured.
+Father, I _will_, I _do_, ratify all you _have_, all you _can_
+promise in my behalf."
+
+"Even, if I annul the treaty, darling?"
+
+"Even, in that case, father. I will marry none without your consent,
+and have so absolute a confidence in your tender care of me, that I
+do not even hesitate to say, I will marry him to whom you contract
+me."
+
+"Bless you, bless you, Eve; I do believe you, for such have I ever
+found you, since thought has had any control over your actions.
+Desire Mr. John Effingham to come hither"--then, as the servant
+closed the door, he continued,--"and such I believe you will continue
+to be until your dying day."
+
+"Nay, reckless, careless father, you forget that you yourself have
+been instrumental in transferring my duty and obedience to another.
+What if this sea-monster should prove a tyrant, throw off the mask,
+and show himself in his real colours? Are you prepared, then,
+thoughtless, precipitate, parent"--Eve kissed Mr, Effingham's cheek
+with childish playfulness, as she spoke, her heart swelling with
+happiness the whole time, "to preach obedience where obedience would
+then be due?"
+
+"Hush, precious--I hear the step of Jack; he must not catch us
+fooling in this manner."
+
+Eve rose; and when her kinsman entered the room, she held out her
+hand kindly to him, though it was with an averted face and a tearful
+eye.
+
+"It is time I was summoned," said John Effingham, after he had drawn
+the blushing girl to him and kissed her forehead, "for what between
+_tete a tetes_ with young fellows, and _tete a tetes_ with
+old fellows, this evening, I began to think myself neglected. I hope
+I am still in time to render my decided disapprobation available?"
+
+"Cousin Jack!" exclaimed Eve, with a look of reproachful mockery,
+"_you_ are the last person who ought to speak of disapprobation,
+for you have done little else but sing the praises of the applicant,
+since you first met him."
+
+"Is it even so? then, like others, I must submit to the consequences
+of my own precipitation and false conclusions. Am I summoned to
+inquire how many thousands a year I shall add to the establishment of
+the new couple? As I hate business, say five at once: and when the
+papers are ready, I will sign them, without reading,"
+
+"Most generous cynic," cried Eve, "I would I dared, now, to ask a
+single question!"
+
+"Ask it without scruple, young lady, for this is the day of your
+independence and power. I am mistaken in the man, if Powis do not
+prove to be the captain of his own ship, in the end."
+
+"Well, then, in whose behalf is this liberality really meant; mine,
+or that of the gentleman?"
+
+"Fairly enough put," said John Effingham, laughing, again drawing Eve
+towards him and saluting her cheek; "for if I were on the rack, I
+could scarcely say which I love best, although you have the
+consolation of knowing, pert one, that you get the most kisses."
+
+"I am almost in the same state of feeling myself, John, for a son of
+my own could scarcely be dearer to me than Paul."
+
+"I see, indeed, that I _must_ marry," said Eve hastily, dashing
+the tears of delight from her eyes, for what could give more delight
+than to hear the praises of her beloved, "if I wish to retain my
+place in your affections. But, father, we forget the question you
+were to put to cousin Jack."
+
+"True, love. John, your mother was an Assheton?"
+
+"Assuredly, Ned; you are not to learn my pedigree at this time of
+day, I trust."
+
+"We are anxious to make out a relationship between you and Paul; can
+it not be done?"
+
+"I would give half my fortune, Eve consenting, were it so!--What
+reason is there for supposing it probable, or even possible?"
+
+"You know that he bears the name of his friend, and adopted parent,
+while that of his family is really Assheton."
+
+"Assheton!" exclaimed the other, in a way to show that this was the
+first he had ever heard of the fact.
+
+"Certainly; and as there is but one family of this name, which is a
+little peculiar in the spelling--for here it is spelt by Paul
+himself, on this card--we have thought that he must be a relation of
+yours. I hope we are not to be disappointed."
+
+"Assheton!--It is, as you say, an unusual name; nor is there more
+than one family that bears it in this country, to my knowledge. Can
+it be possible that Powis is truly an Assheton?"
+
+"Out of all doubt," Eve eagerly exclaimed; "we have it from his own
+mouth. His father was an Assheton, and his mother was--"
+
+"Who!" demanded John Effingham, with a vehemence that startled his
+companions.
+
+"Nay, that is more than I can tell you, for he did not mention the
+family name of his mother; as she was a sister of Lady Dunluce,
+however, who is the wife of General Ducie, the father of our guest,
+it is probable her name was Dunluce."
+
+"I remember no relative that has made such a marriage, or who _can_
+have made such a marriage; and yet do I personally and intimately
+know every Assheton in the country."
+
+Mr. Effingham and his daughter looked at each other, for it at once
+struck them all painfully, that there must be Asshetons of another
+family.
+
+"Were it not for the peculiar manner in which this name is spelled,"
+said Mr. Effingham, "I could suppose that there are Asshetons of whom
+we know nothing, but it is difficult to believe that there can be
+such persons of a respectable family of whom we never heard, for
+Powis said his relatives were of the Middle States--"
+
+"And that his mother was called Dunluce?" demanded John Effingham
+earnestly, for he too appeared to wish to discover an affinity
+between himself and Paul.
+
+"Nay, father, this I think he did not say; though it is quite
+probable; for the title of his aunt is an ancient barony, and those
+ancient baronies usually became the family name."
+
+"In this you must be mistaken, Eve, since he mentioned that the right
+was derived through his mother's mother, who was an Englishwoman."
+
+"Why not send for him at once, and put the question?" said the
+simple-minded Mr. Effingham; "next to having him for my own son, it
+would give me pleasure, John, to learn that he was lawfully entitled
+to that which I know you have done in his behalf."
+
+"That is impossible," returned John Effingham. "I am an only child,
+and as for cousins through my mother, there are so many who stand in
+an equal degree of affinity to me, that no one in particular can be
+my heir-at-law. If there were, I am an Effingham; my estate came from
+Effinghams, and to an Effingham it should descend in despite of all
+the Asshetons in America."
+
+"Paul Powis included!" exclaimed Eve, raising a finger reproachfully.
+
+"True, to him I have left a legacy; but it was to a Powis, and not to
+an Assheton."
+
+"And yet he declares himself legally an Assheton, and not a Powis."
+
+"Say no more of this, Eve; it is unpleasant to me. I hate the name of
+Assheton, though it was my mother's, and could wish never to hear it
+again."
+
+Eve and her father were mute, for their kinsman, usually so proud and
+self-restrained, spoke with suppressed emotion, and it was plain
+that, for some hidden cause, he felt even more than he expressed. The
+idea that there should be any thing about Paul that could render him
+an object of dislike to one as dear to her as her cousin, was
+inexpressibly painful to the former, and she regretted that the
+subject had ever been introduced. Not so with her father. Simple,
+direct, and full of truth, Mr. Effingham rightly enough believed that
+mysteries in a family could lead to no good, and he repeated his
+proposal of sending for Paul, and having the matter cleared up at
+once.
+
+"You are too reasonable, Jack," he concluded, "to let an antipathy
+against a name that was your mother's, interfere with your sense of
+right. I know that some unpleasant questions arose concerning your
+succession to my aunt's fortune, but that was all settled in your
+favour twenty years ago, and I had thought to your entire
+satisfaction."
+
+"Unhappily, family quarrels are ever the most bitter, and usually
+they are the least reconcileable," returned John Effingham,
+evasively.--"I would that this young man's name were any thing but
+Assheton! I do not wish to see Eve plighting her faith at the altar,
+to any one bearing that, accursed name!"
+
+"I shall plight my faith, if ever it be done, dear cousin John, to
+the man, and not to his name."
+
+"No, no--he must keep the appellation of Powis by which we have all
+learned to love him, and to which he has done so much credit."
+
+"This is very strange, Jack, for a man who is usually as discreet and
+as well regulated as yourself. I again propose that we send for Paul,
+and ascertain precisely to what branch of this so-much-disliked
+family he really belongs."
+
+"No, father, if you love me, not now!" cried Eve, arresting Mr.
+Effingham's hand as it touched the bell-cord; "it would appear
+distrustful, and even cruel, were we to enter into such an inquiry so
+soon. Powis might think we valued his family, more than we do
+himself,"
+
+"Eve is right, Ned; but I will not sleep without learning all. There
+is an unfinished examination of the papers left by poor Monday, and I
+will take an occasion to summon Paul to its completion, when an
+opportunity will offer to renew the subject of his own history; for
+it was at the other investigation that he first spoke frankly to me,
+concerning himself."
+
+"Do so, cousin Jack, and let it be at once," said Eve earnestly. "I
+can trust you with Powis alone, for I know how much you respect and
+esteem him in your heart. See, it is already ten."
+
+"But, he will naturally wish to spend the close of an evening like
+this engaged in investigating something very different from Mr.
+Monday's tale," returned her cousin; the smile with which he spoke
+chasing away the look of chilled aversion that had so lately darkened
+his noble features.
+
+"No, not to-night," answered the blushing Eve. "I have confessed
+weakness enough for one day. Tomorrow, if you will--if he will,--but
+not to-night. I shall retire with Mrs. Hawker, who already complains
+of fatigue; and you will send for Powis, to meet you in your own
+room, without unnecessary delay."
+
+Eve kissed John Effingham coaxingly, and as they walked together out
+of the library, she pointed towards the door that led to the
+chambers. Her cousin laughingly complied, and when in his own room,
+he sent a message to Paul to join him.
+
+"Now, indeed, may I call you a kinsman," said John Effingham, rising
+to receive the young man, towards whom he advanced, with extended
+hands, in his most winning manner. "Eve's frankness and your own
+discernment have made us a happy family!"
+
+"If any thing could add to the felicity of being acceptable to Miss
+Effingham," returned Paul, struggling to command his feelings, "it is
+the manner in which her father and yourself have received my poor
+offers."
+
+"Well, we will now speak of it no more. I saw from the first which
+way things were tending, and it was my plain-dealing that opened the
+eyes of Templemore to the impossibility of his ever succeeding, by
+which means his heart has been kept from breaking."
+
+"Oh! Mr. Effingham, Templemore never loved-Eve Effingham! I thought
+so once, and he thought so, too; but it could not have been a love
+like mine."
+
+"It certainly differed in the essential circumstance of reciprocity,
+which, in itself, singularly qualifies the passion, so far as
+duration is concerned. Templemore did not exactly know the reason why
+he preferred Eve; but, having seen so much of the society in which he
+lived, I was enabled to detect the cause. Accustomed to an elaborate
+sophistication, the singular union of refinement and nature caught
+his fancy; for the English seldom see the last separated from
+vulgarity; and when it is found, softened by a high intelligence and
+polished manners, it has usually great attractions for the _biases_."
+
+"He is fortunate in having so readily found a substitute for Eve
+Effingham!"
+
+"This change is not unnatural, neither. In the first place, I, with
+this truth-telling 'tongue, destroyed all hope, before he had
+committed himself by a declaration; and then Grace Van Cortlandt
+possesses the great attraction of nature, in a degree quite equal to
+that of her cousin. Besides, Templemore, though a gentleman, and a
+brave man, and a worthy one, is not remarkable for qualities of a
+very extraordinary kind. He will be as happy as is usual for an
+Englishman of his class to be, and he has no particular right to
+expect more. I sent for you, however, less to talk of love, than to
+trace its unhappy consequences in this affair, revealed by the papers
+of poor Monday. It is time we acquitted ourselves of that trust. Do
+me the favour to open the dressing-case that stands on the toilet-
+table; you will find in it the key that belongs to the bureau, where
+I have placed the secretary that contains the papers."
+
+Paul did as desired. The dressing-case was complicated and large,
+having several compartments, none of which were fastened. In the
+first opened, he saw a miniature of a female so beautiful, that his
+eve rested on it, as it might be, by a fascination.--Notwithstanding
+some difference produced by the fashions of different periods, the
+resemblance to the object of his love, was obvious at a glance. Borne
+away by the pleasure of the discovery, and actually believing that he
+saw a picture of Eve, drawn in a dress that did not in a great degree
+vary from the present attire, fashion having undergone no very
+striking revolution in the last twenty years, he exclaimed--
+
+"This is indeed a treasure, Mr. Effingham, and most sincerely do I
+envy you its possession. It is like, and yet, in some particulars, it
+is unlike--it scarcely does Miss Effingham justice about the nose and
+forehead!"
+
+John Effingham started when he saw the miniature in Paul's hand, but
+recovering himself, he smiled at the eager delusion of his young
+friend, and said with perfect composure--
+
+"It is not Eve, but her mother. The two features you have named in
+the former came from my family; but in all the others, the likeness
+is almost identical."
+
+"This then is Mrs. Effingham!" murmured Paul, gazing on the face of
+the mother of his love, with a respectful melancholy, and an interest
+that was rather heightened than lessened by a knowledge of the truth.
+"She died young, sir?"
+
+"Quite; she can scarcely be said to have become an angel too soon,
+for she was always one."
+
+This was said with a feeling that did not escape Paul, though it
+surprised him. There were six or seven miniature-cases in the
+compartment of the dressing-box, and supposing that the one which lay
+uppermost belonged to the miniature in his hand, he raised it, and
+opened the lid with a view to replace the picture of Eve's mother,
+with a species of pious reverence. Instead of finding an empty case,
+however, another miniature met his eye. The exclamation that now
+escaped the young man was one of delight and surprise.
+
+"That must be my grandmother, with whom you are in such raptures, at
+present," said John Effingham, laughing--"I was comparing it
+yesterday with the picture of Eve, which is in the Russia-leather
+case, that you will find somewhere there. I do not wonder, however,
+at your admiration, for she was a beauty in her day, and no woman is
+fool enough to be painted after she grows ugly."
+
+"Not so--not so--Mr. Effingham! This is the miniature I lost in the
+Montauk, and which I had given up as booty to the Arabs. It has,
+doubtless, found its way into your state-room, and has been put among
+your effects by your man, through mistake. It is very precious to me,
+for it is nearly every memorial I possess of my own mother!"
+
+"Your mother!" exclaimed John Effingham rising. "I think there must
+be some mistake, for I examined all those pictures this very morning,
+and it is the first time they have been opened since our arrival from
+Europe. It cannot be the missing picture."
+
+"Mine it is certainly; in that I cannot be mistaken!"
+
+"It would be odd indeed, if one of my grandmothers, for both are
+there, should prove to be your mother.--Powis, will you have the
+goodness to let me see the picture you mean."
+
+Paul brought the miniature and a light, placing both before the eyes
+of his friend.
+
+"That!" exclaimed John Effingham, his voice sounding harsh and
+unnatural to the listener,--"that picture like _your_ mother!"
+
+"It is her miniature--_the_ miniature that was transmitted to
+me, from those who had charge of my childhood. I cannot be mistaken
+as to the countenance, or the dress."
+
+"And your father's name was Assheton?"
+
+"Certainly--John Assheton, of the Asshetons of Pennsylvania."
+
+John Effingham groaned aloud; when Paul stepped back equally shocked
+and surprised, he saw that the face of his friend was almost livid,
+and that the hand which held the picture shook like the aspen.
+
+"Are you unwell, dear Mr. Effingham?"
+
+"No--no--'tis impossible! This lady never had a child. Powis, you
+have been deceived by some fancied, or some real resemblance. This
+picture is mine, and has not been out of my possession these five and
+twenty years."
+
+"Pardon me, sir, it is the picture of my mother, and no other; the
+very picture lost in the Montauk."
+
+The gaze that John Effingham cast upon the young man was ghastly; and
+Paul was about to ring the bell, but a gesture of denial prevented
+him.
+
+"See," said John Effingham, hoarsely, as he touched a spring in the
+setting, and exposed to view the initials of two names interwoven
+with hair--"is this, too, yours?"
+
+Paul looked surprised and disappointed.
+
+"That certainly settles the question; my miniature had no such
+addition; and yet I believe that sweet and pensive countenance to be
+the face of my own beloved mother, and of no one else."
+
+John Effingham struggled to appear calm; and, replacing the pictures,
+he took the key from the dressing case, and, opening the bureau, he
+took out the secretary. This he signed for Powis, who had the key, to
+open; throwing himself into a chair, though every thing was done
+mechanically, as if his mind and body had little or no connection
+with each other.
+
+"Some accidental resemblance has deceived you as to the miniature,"
+he said, while Paul was looking for the proper number among the
+letters of Mr. Monday. "No--no--that _cannot_ be the picture of
+your mother. She left no child. Assheton did you say, was the name of
+your father?"
+
+"Assheton--John Assheton--about that, at least, there can have been
+no mistake. This is the num her at which we left off--will you, sir,
+or shall I, read?"
+
+The other made a sign for Paul to read; looking, at the same time, as
+if it were impossible for him to discharge that duty himself.
+
+"This is a letter from the woman who appears to have been entrusted
+with the child, to the man Dowse," said Paul, first glancing his eyes
+over the page,--"it appears to be little else but gossip--ha!--what
+is this, I see?"
+
+John Effingham raised himself in his chair, and he sat gazing at
+Paul, as one gazes who expects some extraordinary developement,
+though of what nature he knew not.
+
+"This is a singular passage," Paul continued--"so much so as to need
+elucidation. 'I have taken the child with me to get the picture from
+the jeweller, who has mended the ring, and the little urchin knew it
+at a glance.'"
+
+"What is there remarkable in that? Others beside ourselves have had
+pictures;-and this child knows its own better than you."
+
+"Mr. Effingham, such a thing occurred to myself! It is one of those
+early events of which I still retain, have ever retained, a vivid
+recollection. Though little more than an infant at the time, well do
+I recollect to have been taken in this manner to a jeweller's, and
+the delight I felt at recovering my mother's picture, that which is
+now lost, after it had not been seen for a month or two."
+
+"Paul Blunt--Powis--Assheton "--said John Effingham, speaking so
+hoarsely as to be nearly unintelligible, "remain here a few minutes--
+I will rejoin you."
+
+John Effingham arose, and, notwithstanding he rallied all his powers,
+it was with extreme difficulty he succeeded in reaching the door,
+steadily rejecting the offered assistance of Paul, who was at a loss
+what to think of so much agitation in a man usually so self-possessed
+and tranquil. When out of the room, John Effingham did better, and he
+proceeded to the library, followed by his own man, whom he had
+ordered to accompany him with a light.
+
+"Desire Captain Ducie to give me the favour of his company for a
+moment," he then said, motioning to the servant to withdraw. "You
+will not be needed any longer."
+
+It was but a minute before Captain Ducie stood before him. This
+gentleman was instantly struck with the pallid look, and general
+agitation of the person he had come to meet, and he expressed an
+apprehension that he was suddenly taken ill. But a motion of the hand
+forbade his touching the bell-cord, and he waited in silent wonder at
+the scene which he had been so unexpectedly called to witness.
+
+"A glass of that water, if you please, Captain Ducie," said John
+Effingham, endeavouring to smile with gentleman-like courtesy, as he
+made the request, though the effort, caused his countenance to appear
+ghastly again. A little recovered by this beverage, he said more
+steadily--
+
+"You are the cousin of Powis, Captain Ducie."
+
+"We are sisters' children, sir."
+
+"And your mother is"
+
+"Lady Dunluce--a peeress in her own right."
+
+"But, what--her family name?"
+
+"Her own family name has been sunk in that of my father, the Ducies
+claiming to be as old and as honourable a family, as that from which
+my mother inherits her rank. Indeed the Dunluce barony has gone
+through so many names, by means of females, that I believe there is
+no intention to revive the original appellation of the family which
+was first summoned."
+
+"You mistake, me--your mother--when she married--was--"
+
+"Miss Warrender."
+
+"I thank you, sir, and will trouble you no longer," returned John
+Effingham, rising and struggling to make his manner second the
+courtesy of his words--"I have troubled you, abruptly--incoherently I
+fear--your arm--"
+
+Captain Ducie stepped hastily forward, and was just in time to
+prevent the other from falling senseless on the floor, by receiving
+him in his own arms.
+
+Chapter XXVII.
+
+  "What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for
+  her."
+
+  HAMLET.
+
+The next morning, Paul and Eve were alone in that library which had
+long been the scene of the confidential communications of the
+Effingham family. Eve had been weeping, nor were Paul's eyes entirely
+free from the signs of his having given way to strong sensations.
+Still happiness beamed in the countenance of each, and the timid but
+affectionate glances with which our heroine returned the fond,
+admiring look of her lover, were any thing but distrustful of their
+future felicity. Her hand was in his, and it was often raised to his
+lips, as they pursued the conversation.
+
+"This is so wonderful," exclaimed Eve, after one of the frequent
+musing pauses in which both indulged "that I can scarcely believe
+myself awake. That you Blunt, Powis, Assheton, should, after all,
+prove an Effingham!
+
+"And I, who have so long thought myself an orphan, should find a
+living father, and he a man like Mr. John Effingham!"
+
+I have long thought that something heavy lay at the honest heart of
+cousin Jack--you will excuse me Powis, but I shall need time to learn
+to call him by a name of greater respect."
+
+"Call him always so, love, for I am certain it would pain him to meet
+with any change in you. He _is_ your cousin Jack"
+
+"Nay, he may some day unexpectedly become _my_ father too, as he
+has so wonderfully become yours," rejoined Eve, glancing archly at
+the glowing face of the delighted young man; "and then cousin Jack
+might prove too familiar and disrespectful a term."
+
+"So much stronger does your claim to him appear than mine, that I
+think, when that blessed day shall arrive, Eve, it will convert him
+into _my_ cousin Jack, instead of your father. But call _him_
+as you may, why do you still insist on calling _me_ Powis?"
+
+"That name will ever be precious in my eyes! You abridge me of my
+rights, in denying me a change of name. Half the young ladies of the
+country marry for the novelty of being called Mrs. Somebody else,
+instead of the Misses they were, while I am condemned to remain Eve
+Effingham for life."
+
+"If you object to the appellation, I can continue to call myself
+Powis. This has been done so long now as almost to legalize the act."
+
+"Indeed, no--you are an Effingham, and as an Effingham ought you to
+be known. What a happy lot is mine! Spared even the pain of parting
+with my old friends, at the great occurrence of my life, and finding
+my married home the same as the home of my childhood!"
+
+"I owe every thing to you, Eve, name, happiness, and even a home."
+
+"I know not that. Now that it is known that you are the great-
+grandson of Edward Effingham, I think your chance of possessing the
+Wigwam would be quite equal to my own, even were we to look different
+ways in quest of married happiness. An arrangement of that nature
+would not be difficult to make, as John Effingham might easily
+compensate a daughter for the loss of her house and lands by means of
+those money-yielding stocks and bonds, of which he possesses so
+many."
+
+"I view it differently. _You_ were Mr.--my father's heir--how
+strangely the word father sounds in unaccustomed ears!--But you were
+my father's chosen heir, and I shall owe to you, dearest, in addition
+to the treasures of your heart and faith, my fortune."
+
+"Are you so very certain of this, ingrate?--Did not Mr. John
+Effingham--cousin Jack--adopt you as his son even before he knew of
+the natural tie that actually exists between you?"
+
+"True, for I perceive that you have been made acquainted with most of
+that which has passed. But I hope, that in telling you his own offer,
+Mr.--that my father did not forget to tell you of the terms on which
+it was accepted?"
+
+"He did you ample justice, or he informed me that you stipulated
+there should be no altering of wills, but that the unworthy heir
+already chosen, should still remain the heir."
+
+"And to this Mr--"
+
+"Cousin Jack," said Eve, laughing, for the laugh comes easy to the
+supremely happy.
+
+"To this cousin Jack assented?"
+
+"Most true, again. The will would not have been altered, for your
+interests were already cared for."
+
+"And at the expense of yours, dearest? Eve!"
+
+"It would have been at the expense of my better feelings, Paul, had
+it not been so. However, that will can never do either harm or good
+to any, now."
+
+"I trust it will remain unchanged, beloved, that I may owe as much to
+you as possible."
+
+Eve looked kindly at her betrothed, blushed even deeper than the
+bloom which happiness had left on her cheek, and smiled like one who
+knew more than she cared to express.
+
+"What secret meaning is concealed behind the look of portentous
+signification?"
+
+"It means, Powis, that I have done a deed that is almost criminal. I
+have destroyed a will."
+
+"Not my father's!"
+
+"Even so--but it was done in his presence, and if not absolutely with
+his consent, with his knowledge. When he informed me of your superior
+rights, I insisted on its being done, at once, so, should any
+accident occur, you will be heir at law, as a matter of course.
+Cousin Jack affected reluctance, but I believe he slept more sweetly,
+for the consciousness that this act of justice had been done."
+
+"I fear he slept little, as it was; it was long past midnight before
+I left him, and the agitation of his spirits was such as to appear
+awful in the eyes of a son!"
+
+"And the promised explanation is to come, to renew his distress! Why
+make it at all? is it not enough that we are certain that you are his
+child? and for that, have we not the solemn assurance, the
+declaration of almost a dying man!"
+
+"There should be no shade left over my mother's fame. Faults there
+have been, somewhere, but it is painful, oh! how painful! for a child
+to think evil of a mother."
+
+"On this head you are already assured. Your own previous knowledge,
+and John Effingham's distinct declarations, make your mother
+blameless."
+
+"Beyond question; but this sacrifice must be made to my mother's
+spirit. It is now nine; the breakfast-bell will soon ring, and then
+we are promised the whole of the melancholy tale. Pray with me, Eve,
+that it may be such as will not wound the ear of a son!"
+
+Eve took the hand of Paul within both of hers, and kissed it with a
+sort of holy hope, that in its exhibition caused neither blush nor
+shame. Indeed so bound together were these young hearts, so ample and
+confiding had been the confessions of both, and so pure was their
+love, that neither regarded such a manifestation of feeling,
+differently from what an acknowledgement of a dependence on any other
+sacred principle would have been esteemed. The bell now summoned them
+to the breakfast-table, and Eve, yielding to her sex's timidity,
+desired Paul to precede her a few minutes, that the sanctity of their
+confidence might not be weakened by the observation of profane eyes.
+
+The meal was silent; the discovery of the previous night, which had
+been made known to all in the house, by the declarations of John
+Effingham as soon as he was restored to his senses, Captain Ducie
+having innocently collected those within hearing to his succour,
+causing a sort of moral suspense that weighed on the vivacity if not
+on the comforts of the whole party, the lovers alone excepted.
+
+As profound happiness is seldom talkative, the meal was a silent one,
+then; and when it was ended, they who had no tie of blood with the
+parties most concerned with the revelations of the approaching
+interview, delicately separated, making employments and engagements
+that left the family at perfect liberty; while those who had been
+previously notified that their presence would be acceptable, silently
+repaired to the dressing-room of John Effingham. The latter party was
+composed of Mr. Effingham, Paul, and Eve, only. The first passed into
+his cousin's bed-room, where he had a private conference that lasted
+half an hour. At the end of that time, the two others were summoned
+to join him.
+
+John Effingham was a strong-minded and a proud man, his governing
+fault being the self-reliance that indisposed him to throw himself on
+a greater power, for the support, guidance, and counsel, that all
+need. To humiliation before God, however, he was not unused, and of
+late years it had got to be frequent with him, and it was only in
+connexion with his fellow-creatures that his repugnance to admitting
+even of an equality existed. He felt how much more just, intuitive,
+conscientious even, were his own views than those of mankind, in
+general; and he seldom deigned to consult with any as to the opinions
+he ought to entertain, or as to the conduct he ought to pursue. It is
+scarcely necessary to say, that such a being was one of strong and
+engrossing passions, the impulses frequently proving too imperious
+for the affections, or even for principles. The scene that he was now
+compelled to go through, was consequently one of sore mortification
+and self-abasement; and yet, feeling its justice no less than its
+necessity, and having made up his mind to discharge what had now
+become a duty, his very pride of character led him to do it manfully,
+and with no uncalled-for reserves. It was a painful and humiliating
+task, notwithstanding; and it required all the self-command, all the
+sense of right, and all the clear perception of consequences, that
+one so quick to discriminate could not avoid perceiving, to enable
+him to go through it with the required steadiness and connexion.
+
+John Effingham received Paul and Eve, seated in an easy chair; for,
+while he could not be said to be ill, it was evident that his very
+frame had been shaken by the events and emotions of the few preceding
+hours. He gave a hand to each, and, drawing Eve affectionately to
+him, he imprinted a kiss on a cheek that was burning, though it paled
+and reddened in quick succession, the heralds of the tumultuous
+thoughts within. The look he gave Paul was kind and welcome, while a
+hectic spot glowed on each cheek, betraying that his presence excited
+pain as well as pleasure. A long pause succeeded this meeting, when
+John Effingham broke the silence.
+
+"There can now be no manner of question, my dear Paul," he said,
+smiling affectionately but sadly as he looked at the young man,
+"about your being my son. The letter written by John Assheton to your
+mother, after the separation of your parents, would settle that
+important point, had not the names, and the other facts that have
+come to our knowledge, already convinced me of the precious truth;
+for precious and very dear to me is the knowledge that I am the
+father of so worthy a child. You must prepare yourself to hear things
+that it will not be pleasant for a son to listen--"
+
+"No, no--cousin Jack--_dear_ cousin Jack!" cried Eve, throwing
+herself precipitately into her kinsman's arms, "we will hear nothing
+of the sort. It is sufficient that you are Paul's father, and we wish
+to know no more--will hear no more."
+
+"This is like yourself, Eve, but it will not answer what I conceive
+to be the dictates of duty. Paul had two parents; and not the
+slightest suspicion ought to rest on one of them, in order to spare
+the feelings of the other. In showing me this kindness you are
+treating Paul inconsiderately."
+
+"I beg, dear sir, you will not think too much of me, but entirely
+consult your own judgment--your own sense of--in short, dear father,
+that you will consider yourself before your son."
+
+"I thank you, my children--what a word, and what a novel sensation is
+this, for me, Ned!--I feel all your kindness, but if you would
+consult my peace of mind, and wish me to regain my self-respect, you
+will allow me to disburthen my soul of the weight that oppresses it.
+This is strong language; but, while I have no confessions of
+deliberate criminality, or of positive vice to make, I feel it to be
+hardly too strong for the facts. My tale will be very short, and I
+crave your patience, Ned, while I expose my former weakness to these
+young people." Here John Effingham paused, as if to recollect
+himself; then he proceeded with a seriousness of manner that caused
+every syllable he uttered to tell on the ears of his listeners. "It
+is well known to your father, Eve, though it will probably be new to
+you," he said, "that I felt a passion for your sainted mother, such
+as few men ever experience for any of your sex. Your father and
+myself were suitors for her favour at the same time, though I can
+scarcely say, Edward, that any feeling of rivalry entered into the
+competition."
+
+"You do me no more than justice, John, for if the affection of my
+beloved Eve could cause me grief, it was because it brought you
+pain."
+
+"I had the additional mortification of approving of the choice she
+made; for, certainly, as respected her own happiness, your mother did
+more wisely in confiding it to the regulated, mild, and manly virtues
+of your father, than in placing her hopes on one as eccentric and
+violent as myself."
+
+"This is injustice, John. You may have been positive, and a little
+stern, at times, but never violent, and least of all with a woman."
+
+"Call it what you will, it unfitted me to make one so meek, gentle,
+and yet high-souled, as entirely happy as she deserved to be, and as
+you did make her, while she remained on earth. I had the courage to
+stay and learn that your father was accepted, (though the marriage
+was deferred two years in consideration for my feelings,) and then
+with a heart, in which mortified pride, wounded love, a resentment
+that was aimed rather against myself than against your parents, I
+quitted home, with a desperate determination never to rejoin my
+family again. This resolution I did not own to myself, even, but it
+lurked in my intentions unowned, festering like a mortal disease; and
+it caused me, when I burst away from the scene of happiness of which
+I had been a compelled witness, to change my name, and to make
+several inconsistent and extravagant arrangements to abandon my
+native country even."
+
+"Poor John!" exclaimed his cousin, involuntarily, "this would have
+been a sad blot on our felicity, had we known it!"
+
+"I was certain of that, even when most writhing under the blow you
+had so unintentionally inflicted, Ned; but the passions are
+tyrannical and inconsistent masters. I took my mother's name, changed
+my servant, and avoided those parts of the country where I was known.
+At this time, I feared for my own reason, and the thought crossed my
+mind, that by making a sudden marriage I might supplant the old
+passion, which was so near destroying me, by some of that gentler
+affection which seemed to render you so blest, Edward."
+
+"Nay, John, this was, itself, a temporary tottering of the reasoning
+faculties,"
+
+"It was simply the effect of passions, over which reason had never
+been taught to exercise a sufficient influence. Chance brought me
+acquainted with Miss Warrender, in one of the southern states, and
+she promised, as I fancied, to realize all my wild schemes of
+happiness and resentment."
+
+"Resentment, John?"
+
+"I fear I must confess it, Edward, though it were anger against
+myself. I first made Miss Warrender's acquaintance as John Assheton,
+and some months had passed before I determined to try the fearful
+experiment I have mentioned. She was young, beautiful, well-born,
+virtuous and good; if she had a fault, it was her high spirit--not
+high temper, but she was high-souled and proud."
+
+"Thank God, for this!" burst from the inmost soul of Paul, with
+unrestrainable feeling.
+
+"You have little to apprehend, my son, on the subject of your
+mother's character; if not perfect, she was wanting in no womanly
+virtue, and might, nay ought to have made any reasonable man happy.
+My offer was accepted, for I found her heart disengaged. Miss
+Warrender was not affluent, and, in addition to the other
+unjustifiable motives that influenced me, I thought there would be a
+satisfaction in believing that I had been chosen for myself, rather
+than for my wealth. Indeed, I had got to be distrustful and
+ungenerous, and then I disliked the confession of the weakness that
+had induced me to change my name. The simple, I might almost say,
+loose laws of this country, on the subject of marriage, removed all
+necessity for explanations, there being no bans nor license
+necessary, and the Christian name only being used in the ceremony. We
+were married, therefore, but I was not so unmindful of the rights of
+others, as to neglect to procure a certificate, under a promise of
+secrecy, in my own name. By going to the place where the ceremony was
+performed, you will also find the marriage of John Effingham and
+Mildred Warrender duly registered in the books of the church to which
+the officiating clergyman belonged. So far, I did what justice
+required, though, with a motiveless infatuation for which I can now
+hardly account, which _cannot_ be accounted for, except by
+ascribing it to the inconsistent cruelty of passion, I concealed my
+real name from her with whom there should have been no concealment. I
+fancied, I tried to fancy I was no impostor, as I was of the family I
+represented myself to be, by the mother's side; and. I wished to
+believe that my peace would easily be made when I avowed myself to be
+the man I really was. I had found Miss Warrender and her sister
+living with a well-intentioned but weak aunt, and with no male
+relative to make those inquiries which would so naturally have
+suggested themselves to persons of ordinary worldly prudence. It is
+true, I had become known to them under favourable circumstances, and
+they had good reason to believe me an Assheton from some accidental
+evidence that I possessed, which unanswerably proved my affinity to
+that family, without, betraying my true name. But there is so little
+distrust in this country, that, by keeping at a distance from the
+places in which I was personally known, a life might have passed
+without exposure."
+
+"This was all wrong, dear cousin Jack," said Eve, taking his hand and
+affectionately kissing it, while her face kindled with a sense of her
+sex's rights, "and I should be unfaithful to my womanhood were I to
+say otherwise. You had entered into the most solemn of all human
+contracts, and evil is the omen when such an engagement is veiled by
+any untruth. But, still, one would think you might have been happy
+with a virtuous and affectionate wife!"
+
+"Alas! it is but a hopeless experiment to marry one, while the heart
+is still yearning towards another. Confidence came too late; for,
+discovering my unhappiness, Mildred extorted a tardy confession from
+me; a confession of all but the concealment of the true name; and
+justly wounded at the deception of which she had been the dupe, and
+yielding to the impulses of a high and generous spirit, she announced
+to me that she was unwilling to continue the wife of any man on such
+terms. We parted, and I hastened into the south-western states, where
+I passed the next twelvemonth in travelling, hurrying from place to
+place, in the vain hope of obtaining peace of mind. I plunged into
+the prairies, and most of the time mentioned was lost to me as
+respects the world, in the company of hunters and trappers."
+
+"This, then, explains your knowledge of that section of the country,"
+exclaimed Mr. Effingham, "for which I have never been able to
+account! We thought you among your old friends in Carolina, all that
+time."
+
+"No one knew where I had secreted myself, for I passed under another
+feigned name, and had no servant, even. I had, however, sent an
+address to Mildred, where a letter would find me; for, I had begun to
+feel a sincere affection for her, though it might not have amounted
+to passion, and looked forward to being reunited, when her wounded
+feelings had time to regain their tranquillity. The obligations of
+wedlock are too serious to be lightly thrown aside, and I felt
+persuaded that neither of us would be satisfied in the end, without
+discharging the duties of the state into which we had entered."
+
+"And why did you not hasten to your poor wife, cousin Jack," Eve
+innocently demanded, "as soon as you returned to the settlements?"
+
+"Alas! my-dear girl, I found letters at St. Louis announcing her
+death. Nothing was said of any child, nor did I in the least suspect
+that I was about to become a father. When Mildred died, I thought all
+the ties, all the obligations, all the traces of my ill-judged
+marriage were extinct; and the course taken by her relations, of
+whom, in this country, there remained very few, left me no
+inclination to proclaim it. By observing silence, I continued to pass
+as a bachelor, of course; though had there been any apparent reason
+for avowing what had occurred, I think no one who knows me, can
+suppose I would have shrunk from doing so."
+
+"May I inquire, my dear sir," Paul asked, with a timidity of manner
+that betrayed how tenderly he felt it necessary to touch on the
+subject at all--"may I inquire, my dear sir, what course was taken by
+my mother's relatives?"
+
+"I never knew Mr. Warrender, my wife's brother, but he had the
+reputation of being a haughty and exacting man. His letters were not
+friendly; scarcely tolerable; for he affected to believe I had given
+a false address at the west, when I was residing in the middle
+states, and he threw out hints that to me were then inexplicable, but
+which the letters left with me, by Paul, have sufficiently explained.
+I thought him cruel and unfeeling at the time, but he had an excuse
+for his conduct."
+
+"Which was, sir--?" Paul eagerly inquired.
+
+"I perceive by the letters you have given me, my son, that your
+mother's family had imbibed the opinion, that I was John Assheton, of
+Lancaster, a man of singular humours, who had made an unfortunate
+marriage in Spain, and whose wife, I believe, is still living in
+Paris, though lost to herself and her friends. My kinsman lived
+retired, and never recovered the blow. As he was one of the only
+persons of the name, who could have married your mother, her
+relatives appear to have taken up the idea that he had been guilty of
+bigamy, and of course that Paul was illegitimate. Mr. Warrender, by
+his letters, appears even to have had an interview with this person,
+and, on mentioning his wife, was rudely repulsed from the house. It
+was a proud family, and Mildred being dead, the concealment of the
+birth of her child was resorted to, as a means of averting a fancied
+disgrace. As for myself, I call the all-seeing eye of God to witness,
+that the thought of my being a parent never crossed my mind, until I
+learned that a John Assheton was the father of Paul, and that the
+miniature of Mildred Warrender, that I received at the period of our
+engagement, was the likeness of his mother. The simple declaration of
+Captain Ducie concerning the family name of his mother, removed all
+doubt."
+
+"But, cousin Jack, did not the mention of Lady Dunluce, of the
+Ducies, and of Paul's connections, excite curiosity?"
+
+"Concerning what, dear? I could have no curiosity about a child of
+whose existence I was ignorant. I did know that the Warrenders had
+pretensions to both rank and fortune in England, but never heard the
+title, and cared nothing about money that would not probably, be
+Mildred's. Of General Ducie I never even heard, as he married after
+my separation, and subsequently to the receipt of my brother-in-law's
+letters, I wished to forget the existence of the family. I went to
+Europe, and remained abroad seven years and as this was at a time
+when the continent was closed against the English, I was not in a way
+to hear any thing on the subject. On my return, my wife's aunt was
+dead; the last of my wife's brothers was dead; her sister must then
+have been Mrs. Ducie; no one mentioned the Warrenders, all traces of
+whom were nearly lost in this country, and to me the subject was too
+painful to be either sought or dwelt on. It is a curious fact, that,
+in 1829, during our late visit to the old world, I ascended the Nile
+with General Ducie for a travelling companion. We met at Alexandria,
+and wont to the cataracts and returned in company, He knew me as John
+Effingham, an American traveller of fortune, if of no particular
+merit, and I knew him as an agreeable English general officer. He had
+the reserve of an Englishman of rank, and seldom spoke of his family,
+and it was only on our return, that I found he had letters from his
+wife, Lady Dunluce; but little did I dream that Lady Dunluce was
+Mabel Warrender. How often are we on the very verge of important
+information, and yet live on in ignorance and obscurity! The Ducies
+appear finally to have arrived at the opinion that the marriage was
+legal, and that no reproach rests on the birth of Paul, by the
+inquiries made concerning the eccentric John Assheton."
+
+"They fancied, in common with my uncle Warrender, for a long time,
+that the John Assheton whom you have mentioned, sir," said Paul, "was
+my father. But. some accidental information, at a late day, convinced
+them of their error, and then they naturally enough supposed that it
+was the only other John Assheton that could be heard of, who passes,
+and probably with sufficient reason, for a bachelor. This latter
+gentleman I have myself always supposed to be my father, though he
+has treated two or three letters I have written to him, with the
+indifference with which one would be apt to treat the pretensions of
+an impostor. Pride has prevented me from attempting to renew the
+correspondence lately."
+
+"It is John Assheton of Bristol, my mother's brother's son, as
+inveterate a bachelor as is to be found in the Union" said John
+Effingham, smiling, in spite of the grave subject and deep emotions
+that had so lately been uppermost in his thoughts. "He must have
+supposed your letters were an attempt at mystification on the part of
+some of his jocular associates, and I am surprised that he thought it
+necessary to answer them at all."
+
+"He did answer but one, and that reply certainly had something of the
+character you suggest, sir. I freely forgive him, now I understand
+the truth, though his apparent contempt gave me many a bitter pang at
+the time. I saw Mr. Assheton once in public, and observed him well,
+for, strange as it is, I have been thought to resemble him."
+
+"Why strange? Jack Assheton and myself have, or rather had a strong
+family likeness to each other, and, though the thought is new to me,
+I can now easily trace this resemblance to myself. It is rather an
+Assheton than an Effingham look, though the latter is not wanting."
+
+"These explanations are very clear and satisfactory," observed Mr.
+Effingham, "and leave little doubt that Paul is the child of John
+Effingham and Mildred Warrender; but they would be beyond all cavil,
+were the infancy of the boy placed in an equally plain point of view,
+and could the reasons be known why the Warrenders abandoned him to
+the care of those who yielded him up to Mr. Powis."
+
+"I see but little obscurity in that," returned John Effingham. "Paul
+is unquestionably the child referred to in the papers left by poor
+Monday, to the care of whose mother he was intrusted, until, in his
+fourth year, she yielded him to Mr. Powis, to get rid of trouble and
+expense, while she kept the annuity granted by Lady Dunluce. The
+names appear in the concluding letters; and had we read the latter
+through at first, we should earlier have arrived at, the same
+conclusion, Could we find the man called Dowse, who appears to have
+instigated the fraud, and who married Mrs. Monday, the whole thing
+would be explained."
+
+"Of this I am aware," said Paul, for he and John Effingham had
+perused the remainder of the Monday papers together, after the
+fainting fit of the latter, as soon as his strength would admit; "and
+Captain Truck is now searching for an old passenger of his, who I
+think will furnish the clue. Should we get this evidence, it would
+settle all legal questions."
+
+"Such questions will never be raised," said John Effingham, holding
+out his hand affectionately to his son; "you possess the marriage
+certificate given to your mother, and I avow myself to have been the
+person therein styled John Assheton. This fact I have endorsed on the
+back of the certificate; while here is another given to me in my
+proper name, with the endorsement made by the clergyman that I passed
+by another name, at the ceremony."
+
+"Such a man, cousin Jack, was unworthy of his cloth!" said Eve with
+energy.
+
+"I do not think so, my child. He was innocent of the original
+deception; this certificate was given after the death of my wife, and
+might do good, whereas it could do no harm. The clergyman in question
+is now a bishop, and is still living. He may give evidence if
+necessary, to the legality of the marriage."
+
+"And the clergyman by whom I was baptized is also alive," cried Paul,
+"and has never lost sight of me He was, in part, in the confidence of
+my mother' family, and even after I was adopted by Mr. Powis he kept
+me in view as one of his little Christians as he termed me. It was no
+less a person than Dr.----."
+
+"This alone would make out the connection and identity," said Mr.
+Effingham, "without the aid of the Monday witnesses. The whole
+obscurity has arisen from John's change of name, and his ignorance of
+the fact that his wife had a child. The Ducies appear to have had
+plausible reasons, too, for distrusting the legality of the marriage;
+but all is now clear, and as a large estate is concerned, we will
+take care that no further obscurity shall rest over the affair."
+
+"The part connected with the estate is already secured," said John
+Effingham, looking at Eve with a smile. "An American can always make
+a will, and one that contains but a single bequest is soon written.
+Mine is executed, and Paul Effingham, my son by my marriage with
+Mildred Warrender, and lately known in the United States' Navy as
+Paul Powis, is duly declared my heir. This will suffice for all legal
+purposes, though we shall have large draughts of gossip to swallow."
+
+"Cousin Jack!"
+
+"Daughter Eve!"
+
+"Who has given cause for it?"
+
+"He who commenced one of the most sacred of his earthly duties, with
+an unjustifiable deception. The wisest way to meet it, will be to
+make our avowals of the relationship as open as possible."
+
+"I see no necessity, John, of entering into details," said Mr.
+Effingham; "you were married young, and lost your wife within a year
+of your marriage. She was a Miss Warrender, and the sister of Lady
+Dunluce; Paul and Ducie are declared cousins, and the former proves
+to be your son, of whose existence you were ignorant. No one will
+presume to question any of us, and it really strikes me that all
+rational people ought to be satisfied with this simple account of the
+matter."
+
+"Father!" exclaimed Eve, with her pretty little hands raised in the
+attitude of surprise, "in what capital even, in what part of the
+world, would such a naked account appease curiosity? Much less will
+it suffice here, where every human being, gentle or simple, learned
+or ignorant, refined or vulgar, fancies himself a constitutional
+judge of all the acts of all his fellow-creatures?"
+
+"We have at least the consolation of knowing that no revelations will
+make the matter any worse, or any better," said Paul, "as the gossips
+would tell their own tale, in every case, though its falsehood were
+as apparent as the noon-day sun. A gossip is essentially a liar, and
+truth is the last ingredient that is deemed necessary to his other
+qualifications; indeed, a well authenticated fact is a death-blow to
+a gossip. I hope, my dear sir, you will say no more than that I am
+your son, a circumstance much too precious to me to be omitted."
+
+John Effingham looked affectionately at the noble young man, whom he
+had so long esteemed and admired; and the tears forced themselves to
+his eyes, as he felt the supreme happiness that can alone gladden a
+parent's heart.
+
+Chapter XXVIII.
+
+  "For my part, I care not: I say little; but when the time comes,
+  there shall be smiles."--NYM.
+
+Although Paul Effingham was right, and Eve Effingham was also right,
+in their opinions of the art of gossiping, they both forgot one
+qualifying circumstance, that, arising from different causes,
+produces the same effect, equally in a capital and in a province. In
+the first, marvels form a nine days' wonder from the hurry of events;
+in the latter, from the hurry of talking. When it was announced in
+Templeton that Mr. John Effingham had discovered a son in Mr. Powis,
+as that son had conjectured, every thing but the truth was rumoured
+and believed, in connection with the circumstance. Of course it
+excited a good deal of a natural and justifiable curiosity and
+surprise in the trained and intelligent, for John Effingham had
+passed for a confirmed bachelor; but they were generally content to
+suffer a family to have feelings and incidents that were not to be
+paraded before a neighbourhood. Having some notions themselves of the
+delicacy and sanctity of the domestic affections, they were willing
+to respect the same sentiments in others. But these few excepted, the
+village was in a tumult of surmises, reports, contradictions,
+confirmations, rebutters, and sur-rebutters, for a fortnight. Several
+village _elegants_, whose notions of life were obtained in the
+valley in which they were born, and who had turned up their noses at
+the quiet, reserved, gentleman-like Paul, because he did not happen
+to suit their tastes, were disposed to resent his claim to be his
+father's son, as if it were an injustice done to their rights; such
+commentators on men and things uniformly bringing every thing down to
+the standard of serf. Then the approaching marriages at the Wigwam
+had to run the gauntlet, not only of village and county criticisms,
+but that of the mighty Emporium itself, as it is the fashion to call
+the confused and tasteless collection of flaring red brick houses,
+marten-box churches, and colossal taverns, that stands on the island
+of Manhattan; the discussion of marriages being a topic of never-
+ending interest in that well regulated social organization, after the
+subjects of dollars, lots, and wines, have been duly exhausted. Sir
+George Templemore was transformed into the Honourable Lord George
+Templemore, and Paul's relationship to Lady Dunluce was converted, as
+usual, into his being the heir apparent of a Duchy of that name;
+Eve's preference for a nobleman, as a matter of course, to the
+_aristocratical_ tastes imbibed during a residence in foreign
+countries; Eve, the intellectual, feminine, instructed Eve, whose
+European associations, while they had taught her to prize the
+refinement, grace, _retenue_, and tone of an advanced condition
+of society, had also taught her to despise its mere covering and
+glitter! But, as there is no protection against falsehood, so is
+there no reasoning with ignorance.
+
+A sacred few, at the head of whom were Mr. Steadfast Dodge and Mrs.
+Widow-Bewitched Abbott, treated the matter as one of greater gravity,
+and as possessing an engrossing interest for the entire community.
+
+"For my part, Mr. Dodge," said Mrs. Abbott, in one of their frequent
+conferences, about a fortnight after the _eclaircissement_ of
+the last chapter, "I do not believe that Paul Powis is Paul Effingham
+at all. You say that you knew him by the name of Blunt when he was a
+younger man?"
+
+"Certainly, ma'am. He passed universally by that name formerly, and
+it may be considered as at least extraordinary that he should have
+had so many aliases. The truth of the matter is, Mrs. Abbott, if
+truth could be come at, which I always contend is very difficult in
+the present state of the world--"
+
+"You never said a juster thing, Mr. Dodge!" interrupted the lady,
+feelings impetuous as hers seldom waiting for the completion of a
+sentence, "I never can get hold of the truth of any thing now; you
+may remember you insinuated that Mr. John Effingham himself was to be
+married to Eve, and, lo and behold! it turns out to be his son!"
+
+"The lady may have changed her mind, Mrs. Abbott: she gets the same
+estate with a younger man."
+
+"She's monstrous disagreeable, and I'm sure it will be a relief to
+the whole village when she is married, let it be to the father, or to
+the son. Now, do you know, Mr. Dodge, I have been in a desperate
+taking about one thing, and that is to find that, bony fie-dy, the
+two old Effinghams are not actually brothers! I knew that they
+_called_ each other cousin Jack and cousin Ned, and that Eve
+affected to call her uncle _cousin_ Jack, but then she has so
+many affectations, and the people are so foreign, that I looked upon
+all that as mere pretence; I said to myself a neighbourhood _ought_
+to know better about a man's family than he _can_ know himself,
+and the neighbourhood all declared they were brothers; and yet
+it turns out, after all, that they are only cousins!"
+
+"Yes, I do believe that, for once, the family was right in that
+matter, and the public mistaken."
+
+"Well, I should like to know who has a better right to be mistaken
+than the public, Mr. Dodge. This is a free country, and if the people
+can't sometimes be wrong, what is the mighty use of their freedom? We
+are all sinful wretches, at the best, and it is vain to look for any
+thing but vice from sinners."
+
+"Nay, my dear Mrs. Abbott, you are too hard on yourself, for every
+body allows that _you_ are as exemplary as you are devoted to
+your religious duties."
+
+"Oh! I was not speaking particularly of myself, sir; I am no egotist
+in such things, and wish to leave my own imperfections to the charity
+of my friends and neighbours. But, do you think, Mr. Dodge, that a
+marriage between Paul Effingham, for so I suppose he must be-called,
+and Eve Effingham, will be legal? Can't it be set aside, and if that
+should be the case, wouldn't the fortune go to the public?"
+
+"It _ought_ to be so, my dear ma'am, and I trust the day is not
+distant when it will be so. The people are beginning to understand
+their rights, and another century will not pass, before they will
+enforce them by the necessary penal statutes. We have got matters so
+now, that a man can no longer indulge in the aristocratic and selfish
+desire to make a will, and, take my word for it, we shall not stop
+until we bring every thing to the proper standard."
+
+The reader is not to suppose from his language that Mr. Dodge was an
+agrarian, or that he looked forward to a division of property, at
+some future day; for, possessing in his own person already, more than
+what could possibly fall to an individual share, he had not the
+smallest desire to lessen its amount by a general division. In point
+of fact he did not know his own meaning, except as he felt envy of
+all above him, in which, in truth, was to be found the whole secret
+of his principles, his impulses, and his doctrines. Any thing that
+would pull down those whom education, habits, fortune, or tastes, had
+placed in positions more conspicuous than his own, was, in his eyes,
+reasonable and just--as any thing that would serve him, in person,
+the same ill turn, would have been tyranny and oppression. The
+institutions of America, like every thing human, have their bad as
+well as their good side; and while we firmly believe in the relative
+superiority of the latter, as compared with other systems, we should
+fail of accomplishing the end set before us in this work, did we not
+exhibit, in strong colours, one of the most prominent consequences
+that has attended the entire destruction of factitious personal
+distinctions in the country, which has certainly aided in bringing
+out in bolder relief than common, the prevalent disposition in man to
+covet that which is the possession of another, and to decry merits
+that are unattainable.
+
+"Well, I rejoice to hear this," returned Mrs. Abbott, whose
+principles were of the same loose school as those of her companion,
+"for I think no one should have rights but those who have experienced
+religion, if you would keep vital religion in a country. There goes
+that old sea-lion, Truck, and his fishing associate, the commodore,
+with their lines and poles, as usual, Mr. Dodge; I beg you will call
+to them, for I long to hear what the first can have to say about his
+beloved Effinghams, now?"
+
+Mr. Dodge complied, and the navigator of the ocean and the navigator
+of the lake, were soon seated in Mrs. Abbott's little parlour, which
+might be styled the focus of gossip, near those who were so lately
+its sole occupants.
+
+"This is wonderful news, gentlemen," commenced Mrs. Abbott, as soon
+as the bustle of the entrance had subsided. "Mr. Powis is Mr.
+Effingham, and it seems that Miss Effingham is to become Mrs.
+Effingham. Miracles will never cease, and I look upon this as one of
+the most surprising of my time."
+
+"Just so, ma'am," said the commodore, winking his eye, and giving the
+usual flourish with a hand; "your time has not been that of a day
+neither, and Mr. Powis has reason to rejoice that he is the hero of
+such a history. For my part, I could not have been more astonished,
+were I to bring up the sogdollager with a trout-hook, having a cheese
+paring for the bait."
+
+"I understand," continued the lady, "that there are doubts after all,
+whether this miracle be really a true miracle. It is hinted that Mr.
+Powis is neither Mr. Effingham nor Mr. Powis, but that he is actually
+a Mr. Blunt. Do you happen to know any thing of the matter, Captain
+Truck?"
+
+"I have been introduced to him, ma'am, by all three names, and I
+consider him as an acquaintance in each character. I can assure you,
+moreover, that he is A, No. 1, on whichever tack you take him; a man
+who carries a weather helm in the midst of his enemies."
+
+"Well, I do not consider it a very great recommendation for one to
+have enemies, at all. Now, I dare say, Mr. Dodge, _you_ have not
+an enemy on earth!"
+
+"I should be sorry to think that I had, Mrs. Abbott. I am every man's
+friend, particularly the poor man's friend, and I should suppose that
+every man _ought_ to be my friend. I hold the whole human family
+to be brethren, and that they ought to live together as such."
+
+"Very true, sir; quite true--we _are_ all sinners, and ought to
+look favourably on each other's failings. It is no business of mine--
+I say it is no business of ours, Mr. Dodge, who Miss Eve Effingham
+marries; but were she _my_ daughter, I do think I should not
+like her to have three family names, and to keep her own in the
+bargain!"
+
+"The Effinghams hold their heads very much up, though it is not easy
+to see _why_; but so they do, and the more names the better,
+perhaps, for such people," returned the editor. "For my part, I treat
+them with condescension, just as I do every body else; for it is a
+rule with me, Captain Truck, to make use of the same deportment to a
+king on his throne, as I would to a beggar in the street."
+
+"Merely to show that you do not feel yourself to be above your
+betters. We have many such philosophers in this country."
+
+"Just so," said the commodore.
+
+"I wish I knew," resumed Mrs. Abbott; for there existed in her head,
+as well as in that of Mr. Dodge, such a total confusion on the
+subject of deportment, that neither saw nor felt the cool sarcasm of
+the old sailor; "I wish I knew, now, whether Eve Effingham has really
+been regenerated! What is your opinion, commodore?"
+
+"Re-what, ma'am," said the commodore, who was not conscious of ever
+having heard the word before; for, in his Sabbaths on the water,
+where he often worshipped God devoutly in his heart, the language of
+the professedly pious was never heard; "I can only say she is as
+pretty a skiff as floats, but I can tell you nothing about
+resuscitation--indeed, I never heard of her having been drowned."
+
+"Ah, Mrs. Abbott, the very best friends of the Effinghams will not
+maintain that they are pious. I do not wish to be invidious, or to
+say unneighbourly things; but were I upon oath, I could testify to a
+great many things, which would unqualifiedly show, that none of them
+have ever experienced."
+
+"Now, Mr. Dodge, you know how much I dislike scandal," the widow-
+bewitched cried affectedly, "and I cannot tolerate such a sweeping
+charge. I insist on the proofs of what you say, in which, no doubt,
+these gentlemen will join me."
+
+By proofs, Mrs. Abbott meant allegations.
+
+"Well, ma'am, since you insist on my _proving_ what I have said,
+you shall not be disappointed. In the first place, then, they _read_
+their family prayers out of a book."
+
+"Ay, ay," put in the captain; "but that merely shows they have some
+education; it is done every where."
+
+"Your pardon, sir; no people but the Catholics and the church people
+commit this impiety. The idea of _reading_ to the Deity, Mrs.
+Abbott, is particularly shocking to a pious soul."
+
+"As if the Lord stood in need of letters! _That_ is very bad, I
+allow; for at _family_ prayers, a form becomes mockery."
+
+"Yes, ma'am; but what do you think of cards?"
+
+"Cards!" exclaimed Mrs. Abbott, holding up her pious hands, in holy
+horror.
+
+"Even so; foul paste-board, marked with kings and queens," said the
+captain. Why this is worse than a common sin, being unqualifiedly
+anti-republican."
+
+"I confess I did not expect-this! I had heard that Eve Effingham was
+guilty of indiscretions, but I did not think she was so lost to
+virtue, as to touch a card. Oh! Eve Effingham; Eve Effingham, for
+what is your poor diseased soul destined!"
+
+"She dances, too, I suppose you know that," continued Mr. Dodge, who
+finding his popularity a little on the wane, had joined the meeting
+himself, a few weeks before, and who did not fail to manifest the
+zeal of a new convert.
+
+"Dances!" repeated Mrs. Abbott, in holy horror.
+
+"Real fi diddle de di!" echoed Captain Truck.
+
+"Just so," put in the commodore; "I have seen it with my own eyes.
+But, Mrs. Abbott, I feel bound to tell you that your own daughter--"
+
+"Biansy-Alzumy-Anne!" exclaimed the mother in alarm.
+
+"Just so; my-aunty-all-suit-me-anne, if that is her name. Do you
+know, ma'am, that I have seen your own blessed daughter, my-aunty-
+Anne, do a worse thing, even, than dancing!"
+
+"Commodore, you are awful! What _could_ a child of mine do that
+is worse than dancing?"
+
+"Why, ma'am, if you _will_ hear all, it is my duty to tell you.
+I saw aunty-Anne (the commodore was really ignorant of the girl's
+name) jump a skipping-rope, yesterday morning, between the hours of
+seven and eight. As I hope ever to see the sogdollager, again, ma'am,
+I did!"
+
+"And do you this as bad as dancing?"
+
+"Much worse, ma'am, to my notion. It is jumping about without music,
+and without any grace, either, particularly as it was performed by
+my-aunty-Anne."
+
+"You are given to light jokes. Jumping the skipping-rope is not
+forbidden in the bible."
+
+"Just so; nor is dancing, if I know any thing about it; nor, for that
+matter, cards."
+
+"But waste of time is; a sinful waste of time; and evil-passions, and
+all unrighteousness."
+
+"Just so. My-aunty-Anne was going to the pump for water--I dare say
+you sent her--and she was misspending her time; and as for evil
+passions, she did not enjoy the hop, until she and your neighbour's
+daughter had pulled each other's hair for the rope, as if they had
+been two she-dragons. Take my word for it, ma'am, it wanted for
+nothing to make it sin of the purest water, but a cracked fiddle."
+
+While the commodore was holding Mrs. Abbott at bay, in this manner,
+Captain Truck, who had given him a wink to that effect, was employed
+in playing off a practical joke at the expense of the widow. It was
+one of the standing amusements of these worthies, who had gotten to
+be sworn friends and constant associates, after they had caught as
+many fish as they wished, to retire to the favourite spring, light,
+the one his cigar, the other his pipe, mix their grog, and then
+relieve their ennui, when tired of discussing men and things, by
+playing cards on a particular stump. Now, it happens that the captain
+had the identical pack which had been used on all such occasions in
+his pocket, as was evident in the fact that the cards were nearly as
+distinctly marked on their backs, as on their faces. These cards he
+showed secretly to his companion, and when the attention of Mrs.
+Abbott was altogether engaged in expecting the terrible announcement
+of her daughter's errors, the captain slipped them, kings, queens and
+knaves, high, low, jack and the game, without regard to rank, into
+the lady's work-basket. As soon as this feat was successfully
+performed, a sign was given to the commodore that the conspiracy was
+effected, and that disputant in theology gradually began to give
+ground, while he continued to maintain that jumping the rope was a
+sin, though it might be one of a nominal class. There is little
+doubt, had he possessed a smattering of phrases, a greater command of
+biblical learning, and more zeal, that the fisherman might have
+established a new shade of the Christian faith; for, while mankind
+still persevere in disregarding the plainest mandates of God, as
+respects humility, the charities, and obedience, nothing seems to
+afford them more delight than to add to the catalogue of the offences
+against his divine supremacy. It was perhaps lucky for the commodore,
+who was capital at casting a pickerel line, but who usually settled
+his polemics with the fist, when hard pushed, that Captain Truck
+found leisure to come to the rescue.
+
+"I'm amazed, ma'am," said the honest packet-master, "that a woman of
+your sanctity should deny that jumping the rope is a sin, for I hold
+that point to have been settled by all our people, these fifty years.
+You will admit that the rope cannot be well-jumped without levity."
+
+"Levity, Captain Truck! I hope you do not insinuate that a daughter
+of mine discovers levity?"
+
+"Certainly, ma'am; she is called the best rope jumper in the village,
+I hear; and levity, or lightness of carriage, is the great requisite
+for skill in the art. Then there are 'vain repetitions' in doing the
+same thing over and over so often, and 'vain repetitions' are
+forbidden even in our prayers. I can call both father and mother to
+testify to that fact."
+
+"Well, this is news to me! I must speak to the minister about it."
+
+"Of the two, the skipping-rope is rather more sinful than dancing,
+for the music makes the latter easy; whereas, one has to force the
+spirit to enter into the other. Commodore, our hour has come, and we
+must make sail. May I ask the favour, Mrs. Abbott, of a bit of thread
+to fasten this hook afresh?"
+
+The widow-bewitched turned to her basket, and raising a piece of
+calico, to look for the thread "high, low, jack and the game," stared
+her in the face. When she bent her eyes towards her guests, she
+perceived all three gazing at the cards, with as much apparent
+surprise and curiosity, as if two of them knew nothing of their
+history.
+
+"Awful!" exclaimed Mrs. Abbott, shaking both hands,--"awful--awful--
+awful! The powers of darkness have been at work here!"
+
+"They seem to have been pretty much occupied, too," observed the
+captain, "for a better thumbed pack I never yet found in the
+forecastle of a ship."
+
+"Awful--awful--awful!--This is equal to the forty days in the
+wilderness, Mr. Dodge."
+
+"It is a trying cross, ma'am."
+
+"To my notion, now," said the captain, "those cards are not worse
+than the skipping-rope, though I allow that they might have been
+cleaner."
+
+But Mrs. Abbott was not disposed to view the matter so lightly. She
+saw the hand of the devil in the affair, and fancied it was a new
+trial offered to her widowed condition.
+
+"Are these actually cards!" she cried, like one who distrusted the
+evidence of her senses.
+
+"Just so, ma'am," kindly answered the commodore; "This is the ace of
+spades, a famous fellow to hold when you have the lead; and this is
+the Jack, which counts one, you know, when spades are trumps. I never
+saw a more thorough-working pack in my life."
+
+"Or a more thoroughly worked pack," added the captain, in a condoling
+manner. "Well, we are not all perfect, and I hope Mrs. Abbott will
+cheer up and look at this matter in a gayer point of view. For myself
+I hold that a skipping-rope is worse than the Jack of spades, Sundays
+or week days. Commodore, we shall see no pickerel to-day, unless we
+tear ourselves from this good company."
+
+Here the two wags took their leave, and retreated to the skiff; the
+captain, who foresaw an occasion to use them, considerately offering
+to relieve Mrs. Abbott from the presence of the odious cards,
+intimating that he would conscientiously see them fairly sunk in the
+deepest part of the lake.
+
+When the two worthies were at a reasonable distance from the shore,
+the commodore suddenly ceased rowing, made a flourish with his hand,
+and incontinently began to laugh, as if his mirth had suddenly broken
+through all restraint. Captain Truck, who had been lighting a cigar,
+commenced smoking, and, seldom indulging in boisterous merriment, he
+responded with his eyes, shaking his head from time to time, with
+great satisfaction, as thoughts more ludicrous than common came over
+his imagination.
+
+"Harkee, commodore," he said, blowing the smoke upward, and watching
+it with his eye until it floated away in a little cloud, "neither of
+us is a chicken. You have studied life on the fresh water, and I have
+studied life on the salt. I do not say which produces the best
+scholars, but I know that both make better Christians than the jack-
+screw system."
+
+"Just so. I tell them in the village that little is gained in the end
+by following the blind; that is my doctrine, sir."
+
+"And a very good doctrine it would prove, I make no doubt, were you
+to enter into it a little more fully--"
+
+"Well, sir, I can explain--"
+
+"Not another syllable is necessary. I know what you mean as well as
+if I said it myself, and, moreover, short sermons are always the
+best. You mean that a pilot ought to know where he is steering, which
+is perfectly sound doctrine. My own experience tells me, that if you
+press a sturgeon's nose with your foot, it will spring up as soon as
+it is loosened. Now the jack-screw will heave a great strain, no
+doubt; but the moment it is let up, down comes all that rests on it,
+again. This Mr. Dodge, I suppose you know, has been a passenger with
+me once or twice?"
+
+"I have heard as much--they say he was tigerish in the fight with the
+niggers--quite an out-and-outer."
+
+"Ay, I hear he tells some such story himself; but harkee, commodore,
+I wish to do justice to all men, and I find there is very little of
+it inland, hereaway. The hero of that day is about to marry your
+beautiful Miss Effingham; other men did their duty too, as, for
+instance, was the case with Mr. John Effingham; but Paul Blunt-Powis-
+Effingham finished the job. As for Mr. Steadfast Dodge, sir, I say
+nothing, unless it be to add that he was nowhere near _me_ in
+that transaction; and if any man felt like an alligator in Lent, on
+that occasion, it was your humble servant."
+
+"Which means that he was not nigh the enemy, I'll swear before a
+magistrate."
+
+"And no fear of perjury. Any one who saw Mr. John Effingham and Mr.
+Powis on that day, might have sworn that they were father and son,
+and any one who _did not see_ Mr. Dodge might have said at once,
+that he did not belong to their family. That is all, sir; I never
+disparage a passenger, and, therefore, shall say no more than merely
+to add, that Mr. Dodge is no warrior."
+
+"They say he has experienced religion, lately, as they call it."
+
+"It is high time, sir, for he had experienced sin quite long enough,
+according to my notion. I hear that the man goes up and down the
+country disparaging those whose shoe-ties he is unworthy to unloose,
+and that he has published some letters in his journal, that are as
+false as his heart; but let him beware, lest the world should see,
+some rainy day, an extract from a certain log-book belonging to a
+ship called the Montauk. I am rejoiced at this marriage after all,
+commodore, or marriages rather, for I understand that Mr. Paul
+Effingham and Sir George Templemore intend to make a double bowline
+of it to-morrow morning. All is arranged, and as soon as my eyes have
+witnessed that blessed sight, I shall trip for New-York again."
+
+"It is clearly made out then, that the young gentleman is Mr. John
+Effingham's son?"
+
+"As clear as the north-star in a bright night. The fellow who spoke
+to me at the Fun of Fire has put us in a way to remove the last
+doubt, if there were any doubt. Mr. Effingham himself, who is so
+cool-headed and cautious, says there is now sufficient proof to make
+it good in any court in America, That point may be set down as
+settled, and, for my part, I rejoice it is so, since Mr. John
+Effingham has so long passed for an old bachelor, that it is a credit
+to the corps to find one of them the father of so noble a son."
+
+Here the commodore dropped his anchor, and the two friends began to
+fish. For an hour neither talked much, but having obtained the
+necessary stock of perch, they landed at the favourite spring, and
+prepared a fry. While seated on the grass, alternating be tween the
+potations of punch, and the mastication of fish, these worthies again
+renewed the dialogue in their usual discursive, philosophical, and
+sentimental manner.
+
+"We are citizens of a surprisingly great country, commodore,"
+commenced Mr. Truck, after one of his heaviest draughts; "every body
+says it, from Maine to Florida, and what every body says must be
+true."
+
+"Just so, sir. I sometimes wonder how so great a country ever came to
+produce so little a man as myself."
+
+"A good cow may have a bad calf, and that explains the matter. Have
+you many as virtuous and pious women in this part of the world, as
+Mrs. Abbott?"
+
+"The hills and valleys are filled with them. You mean persons who
+have got so much religion that they have no room for any thing else?"
+
+"I shall mourn to my dying day, that you were not brought up to the
+sea! If you discover so much of the right material on fresh-water,
+what would you have been on salt? The people who suck in nutriment
+from a brain and a conscience like those of Mr. Dodge, too,
+commodore, must get, in time, to be surprisingly clear-sighted."
+
+"Just so; his readers soon overreach themselves. But it's of no great
+consequence, sir; the people of this part of the world keep nothing
+long enough to do much good, or much harm."
+
+"Fond of change, ha?"
+
+"Like unlucky fishermen, always ready to shift the ground. I don't
+believe, sir, that in all this region you can find a dozen graves of
+sons, that lie near their fathers. Every body seems to have a mortal
+aversion to stability,"
+
+"It is hard to love such a country, commodore!"
+
+"Sir, I never try to love it. God has given me a pretty sheet of
+water, that suits my fancy and wants, a beautiful sky, fine green
+mountains, and I am satisfied. One may love God, in such a temple,
+though he love nothing else."
+
+"Well, I suppose if you love nothing, nothing loves you, and no
+injustice is done."
+
+"Just, so, sir. Self has got to be the idol, though in the general
+scramble a man is sometimes puzzled to know whether he is himself, or
+one of the neighbours."
+
+"I wish I knew your political sentiments, commodore; you have been
+communicative on all subjects but that, and I have taken up the
+notion that you are a true philosopher."
+
+"I hold myself to be but a babe in swaddling-clothes compared to
+yourself, sir; but such as my poor opinions are, you are welcome to
+them. In the first place, then, sir, I have lived long enough on this
+water to know that every man is a lover of liberty in his own person,
+and that he has a secret distaste for it in the persons of other
+people. Then, sir, I have got to understand that patriotism means
+bread and cheese, and that opposition is every man for himself."
+
+"If the truth were known, I believe, commodore, you have buoyed out
+the channel!"
+
+"Just so. After being pulled about by the salt of the land, and using
+my freeman's privileges at their command, until I got tired of so
+much liberty, sir, I have resigned, and retired to private life,
+doing most of my own thinking out here on the Otsego-Water, like a
+poor slave as I am."
+
+"You ought to be chosen the next President!"
+
+"I owe my present emancipation, sir, to the sogdollager. I first
+began to reason about such a man as this Mr. Dodge, who has thrust
+himself and his ignorance together into the village, lately, as an
+expounder of truth, and a ray of light to the blind. Well, sir, I
+said to myself, if this man be the man I know him to be as a man, can
+he be any thing better as an editor?"
+
+"That was a home question put to yourself, commodore; how did you
+answer it?"
+
+"The answer was satisfactory, sir, to myself, whatever it might be to
+other people. I stopped his paper, and set up for myself. Just about
+that time the sogdollager nibbled, and instead of trying to be a
+great man, over the shoulders of the patriots and sages of the land,
+I endeavoured to immortalize myself by hooking him. I go to the
+elections now, for that I feel to be a duty, but instead of allowing
+a man like this Mr. Dodge to tell me how to vote, I vote for the man
+in public that I would trust in private."
+
+"Excellent! I honour you more and more every minute I pass in your
+society. We will now drink to the future happiness of those who will
+become brides and bridegrooms to-morrow. If all men were as
+philosophical and as learned as you, commodore, the human race would
+be in a fairer way than they are to-day."
+
+"Just so; I drink to them with all my heart. Is it not surprising,
+sir, that people like Mrs. Abbott and Mr. Dodge should have it in
+their power to injure such as those whose happiness we have just had
+the honour of commemorating in advance?"
+
+"Why, commodore, a fly may bite an elephant, if he can find a weak
+spot in his hide. I do not altogether understand the history of the
+marriage of John Effingham, myself; but we see the issue of it has
+been a fine son. Now I hold that when a man fairly marries, he is
+bound to own it, the same as any other crime; for he owes it to those
+who have not been as guilty as himself, to show the world that he no
+longer belongs to them."
+
+"Just so; but we have flies in this part of the world that will bite
+through the toughest hide."
+
+"That comes from there being no quarter-deck in your social ship,
+commodore. Now aboard of a well-regulated packet, all the thinking is
+done aft; they who are desirous of knowing whereabouts the vessel is,
+being compelled to wait till the observations are taken, or to sit
+down in their ignorance. The whole difficulty comes from the fact
+that sensible people live so far apart in this quarter of the world,
+that fools have more room than should fall to their share. You
+understand me, commodore?"
+
+"Just so," said the commodore, laughing, and winking. "Well, it is
+fortunate that there are some people who are not quite as weak-minded
+as some other people. I take it, Captain Truck, that you will be
+present at the wedding?"
+
+The captain now winked in his turn, looked around him to make sure no
+one was listening, and laying a finger on his nose, he answered, in a
+much lower key than was usual for him--
+
+"You can keep a secret, I know, commodore. Now what I have to say is
+not to be told to Mrs. Abbott, in order that it may be repeated and
+multiplied, but is to be kept as snug as your bait, in the bait-box."
+
+"You know your man, sir."
+
+"Well then, about ten minutes before the clock strikes nine, to-
+morrow morning, do you slip into the gallery of New St. Paul's, and
+you shall see beauty and modesty, when 'unadorned, adorned the most.'
+You comprehend?"
+
+"Just so," and the hand was flourished even more than usual.
+
+"It does not become us bachelors to be too lenient to matrimony, but
+I should be an unhappy man, were I not to witness the marriage of
+Paul Powis to Eve Effingham."
+
+Here both the worthies, "freshened the nip," as Captain Truck called
+it, and then the conversation soon got to be too philosophical and
+contemplative for this unpretending record of events and ideas.
+
+Chapter XXIX
+
+  "Then plainly know, my heart's dear love is set On the fair
+  daughter of rich Capulet; As mine on hers, so hers is set on mine;
+  And all combined, save what thou must confine By holy marriage."
+
+  ROMEO AND JULIET.
+
+The morning chosen for the nuptials of Eve and Grace arrived, and all
+the inmates of the Wigwam were early afoot, though the utmost care
+had been taken to prevent the intelligence of the approaching
+ceremony from getting into the village. They little knew, however,
+how closely they were watched; the mean artifices that were resorted
+to by some who called themselves their neighbours, to tamper with
+servants, to obtain food for conjecture, and to justify to themselves
+their exaggerations, falsehoods, and frauds. The news did leak out,
+as will presently be seen, and through a channel that may cause the
+reader, who is unacquainted with some of the peculiarities of
+American life, a little surprise.
+
+We have frequently alluded to Annette, the _femme de chambre_
+that had followed Eve from Europe, although we have had no occasion
+to dwell on her character, which was that of a woman of her class, as
+they are well known to exist in France. Annette was young, had
+bright, sparkling black eyes, was well made, and had the usual
+tournure and manner of a Parisian grisette. As it is the besetting
+weakness of all provincial habits to mistake graces for grace,
+flourishes for elegance, and exaggeration for merit, Annette soon
+acquired a reputation in her circle, as a woman of more than usual
+claims to distinction. Her attire was in the height of the fashion,
+being of Eve's cast-off clothes, and of the best materials, and
+attire is also a point that is not without its influence on those who
+are unaccustomed to the world.
+
+As the double ceremony was to take place before breakfast, Annette
+was early employed about the person of her young mistress, adorning
+it in the bridal robes. While she worked at her usual employment, the
+attendant appeared unusually agitated, and several times pins were
+badly pointed, and new arrangements had to supersede or to supply the
+deficiencies of her mistakes. Eve was always a model of patience, and
+she bore with these little oversights with a quiet that would have
+given Paul an additional pledge of her admirable self-command, as
+well as of a sweetness of temper that, in truth, raised her almost
+above the commoner feelings of mortality.
+
+"_Vous etes un peu agitee, ce matin, ma bonne Annette_," she
+merely observed, when her maid had committed a blunder more material
+than common.
+
+"_J'espere que Mademoiselle a ete contente de moi, jusqu' a
+present_," returned Annette, vexed with her own awkwardness, and
+speaking in the manner in which it is usual to announce an intention
+to quit a service.
+
+"Certainly, Annette, you have conducted yourself well, and are very
+expert in your _metier_. But why do you ask this question, just
+at this moment?"
+
+"_Parceque_--because--with mademoiselle's permission, I intended
+to ask for my _conge_."
+
+"_Conge_! Do you think of quitting me, Annette?"
+
+"It would make me happier than anything else to die in the service of
+mademoiselle, but we are all subject to our destiny"--the
+conversation was in French--"and mine compels me to cease my services
+as a _femme de chambre_."
+
+"This is a sudden, and for one in a strange country, an extraordinary
+resolution. May I ask, Annette, what you propose to do?"
+
+Here, the woman gave herself certain airs, endeavoured to blush, did
+look at the carpet with a studied modesty that might have deceived
+one who did not know the genus, and announced her intention to get
+married, too, at the end of the present month.
+
+"Married!" repeated Eve--"surely not to old Pierre, Annette!"
+
+"Pierre, Mademoiselle! I shall not condescend to look at Pierre.
+_Je vais me marier avec un avocat_."
+
+"_Un avocat_!"
+
+"_Oui, Mademoiselle_. I will marry myself with Monsieur
+Aristabule Bragg, if Mademoiselle shall permit."
+
+Eve was perfectly mute with astonishment, notwithstanding the proofs
+she had often seen of the wide range that the ambition of an American
+of a certain class allows itself. Of course, she remembered the
+conversation on the Point, and it would not have been in nature, had
+not a mistress who had been so lately wooed, felt some surprise at
+finding her discarded suitor so soon seeking consolation in the
+smiles of her own maid. Still her surprise was less than that which
+the reader will probably experience at this announcement; for, as has
+just been said, she had seen too much of the active and pliant
+enterprise of the lover, to feel much wonder at any of his moral
+_tours de force_. Even Eve, however, was not perfectly acquainted
+with the views and policy that had led Aristabulus to seek this
+consummation to his matrimonial schemes, which must be explained
+explicitly, in order that they may be properly understood.
+
+Mr. Bragg had no notion of any distinctions in the world, beyond
+those which came from money, and political success. For the first he
+had a practical deference that was as profound as his wishes for its
+enjoyments; and for the last he felt precisely the sort of reverence,
+that one educated under a feudal system, would feel for a feudal
+lord. The first, after several unsuccessful efforts, he had found
+unattainable by means of matrimony, and he turned his thoughts
+towards Annette, whom he had for some months held in reserve, in the
+event of his failing with Eve and Grace, for on both these heiresses
+had he entertained designs, as a _pis aller_. Annette was a
+dress-maker of approved taste, her person was sufficiently
+attractive, her broken English gave piquancy to thoughts of no great
+depth, she was of a suitable age, and he had made her proposals and
+been accepted, as soon as it was ascertained that Eve and Grace were
+irretrievably lost to him. Of course, the Parisienne did not hesitate
+an instant about becoming the wife of _un avocat;_ for,
+agreeably to her habits, matrimony was a legitimate means of
+bettering her condition in life. The plan was soon arranged. They
+were to be married as soon as Annette's month's notice had expired,
+and then they were to emigrate to the far west, where Mr. Bragg
+proposed to practise law, or keep school, or to go to Congress, or to
+turn trader, or to saw lumber, or, in short, to turn his hand to any
+thing that offered; while Annette was to help along with the _menage_,
+by making dresses, and teaching French; the latter occupation
+promising to be somewhat peripatetic, the population being
+scattered, and few of the dwellers in the interior deeming it
+necessary to take more than a quarter's instruction in any of the
+higher branches of education; the object being to _study_, as it
+is called, and not to _know_. Aristabulus, who was filled with
+_go-aheadism_, would have shortened the delay, but this Annette
+positively resisted; her _esprit de corps_ as a servant, and all
+her notions of justice, repudiating the notion that the connexion
+which had existed so long between Eve and herself, was to be cut off
+at a moment's warning. So diametrically were the ideas of the
+_fiances_ opposed to each other, on this point, that at one time it
+threatened a rupture, Mr. Bragg asserting the natural independence of
+man to a degree that would have rendered him independent of all
+obligations that were not effectually enacted by the law, and Annette
+maintaining the dignity of a European _femme de chambre,_ whose
+sense of propriety demanded that she should not quit her place
+without giving a month's warning. The affair was happily decided by
+Aristabulus's receiving a commission to tend a store, in the absence
+of its owner; Mr. Effingham, on a hint from his daughter, having
+profited by the annual expiration of the engagement, to bring their
+connexion to an end.
+
+This termination to the passion of Mr. Bragg would have afforded Eve
+a good deal of amusement at any other moment; but a bride cannot be
+expected to give too much of her attention to the felicity and
+prospects of those who have no natural or acquired claims to her
+affection. The cousins met, attired for the ceremony, in Mr.
+Effingham's room, where he soon came in person, to lead them to the
+drawing-room. It is seldom that two more lovely young women are
+brought together on similar occasions. As Mr. Effingham stood between
+them, holding a hand of each, his moistened eyes turned from one to
+the other in honest pride, and in an admiration that even his
+tenderness could not restrain. The _toilettes_ were as simple as
+the marriage ceremony will permit; for it was intended that there
+should be no unnecessary parade; and, perhaps, the delicate beauty of
+each of the brides was rendered the more attractive by this
+simplicity, as it has often been justly remarked, that the fair of
+this country are more winning in dress of a less conventional
+character, than when in the elaborate and regulated attire of
+ceremonies. As might have been expected, there was most of soul and
+feeling in Eve's countenance, though Grace wore an air of charming
+modesty and nature. Both were unaffected, simple and graceful, and we
+may add that both trembled as Mr. Effingham took their hands.
+
+"This is a pleasing and yet a painful hour," said that kind and
+excellent man; "one in which I gain a son, and lose a daughter."
+
+"And _I_, dearest uncle," exclaimed Grace, whose feelings
+trembled on her eye-lids, like the dew ready to drop from the leaf,
+"have _I_ no connexion with your feelings?"
+
+"You are the daughter that I lose, my child, for Eve will still
+remain with me. But Templemore has promised to be grateful, and I
+will trust his word."
+
+Mr. Effingham then embraced with fervour both the charming young
+women, who stood apparelled for the most important event of their
+lives, lovely in their youth, beauty, innocence, and modesty; and
+taking an arm of each, he led them below. John Effingham, the two
+bridegrooms, Captain Ducie, Mr. and Mrs. Bloomfield, Mrs. Hawker,
+Captain Truck, Mademoiselle Viefville, Annette, and Ann Sidley, were
+all assembled in the drawing-room, ready to receive them; and as soon
+as shawls were thrown around Eve and Grace, in order to conceal the
+wedding dresses, the whole party proceeded to the church.
+
+The distance between the Wigwam and New St. Paul's was very trifling,
+the solemn pines of the church-yard blending, from many points, with
+the gayer trees in the grounds of the former; and as the buildings in
+this part of the village were few, the whole of the bridal train
+entered the tower, unobserved by the eyes of the curious. The
+clergyman was waiting in the chancel, and as each of the young men
+led the object of his choice immediately to the altar, the double
+ceremony began without delay. At this instant Mr. Aristabulus Dodge
+and Mrs. Abbot advanced from the rear of the gallery, and coolly took
+their seats in its front. Neither belonged to this particular church,
+though, having discovered that the marriages were to take place that
+morning by means of Annette, they had no scruples on the score of
+delicacy about thrusting themselves forward on the occasion; for, to
+the latest moment, that publicity-principle which appeared to be
+interwoven with their very natures, induced them to think that
+nothing was so sacred as to be placed beyond the reach of curiosity.
+They entered the church, because the church they held to be a public
+place, precisely on the principle that others of their class conceive
+if a gate be blown open by accident, it removes all the moral
+defences against trespassers, as it removes the physical.
+
+The solemn language of the prayers and vows proceeded none the less
+for the presence of these unwelcome intruders; for, at that grave
+moment, all other thoughts were hushed in those that more properly
+belonged to the scene. When the clergyman made the usual appeal to
+know if any man could give a reason why those who stood before him
+should not be united in holy wedlock, Mrs. Abbott nudged Mr. Dodge,
+and, in the fulness of her discontent, eagerly inquired in a whisper,
+if it were not possible to raise some valid objection. Could she have
+had her pious wish, the simple, unpretending, meek, and _church_-going
+Eve, should never be married. But the editor was not a man to act
+openly in any thing, his particular province lying in insinuations
+and innuendoes. As a hint would not now be available, he determined
+to postpone his revenge to a future day. We say revenge, for
+Steadfast was of the class that consider any happiness, or
+advantage, in which they are not ample participators, wrongs done to
+themselves.
+
+That is a wise regulation of the church, which makes the marriage
+ceremony brief, for the intensity of the feelings it often creates
+would frequently become too powerful to be suppressed, were it
+unnecessarily prolonged. Mr. Effingham gave away both the brides, the
+one in the quality of parent, the other in that of guardian, and
+neither of the bridegrooms got the ring on the wrong finger. This is
+all we have to of the immediate scene at the altar. As soon as the
+benediction was pronounced, and the brides were released from the
+first embraces of their husbands, Mr. Effingham, without even kissing
+Eve, threw the shawls over their shoulders, and, taking an arm of
+each, he led them rapidly from the church, for he felt reluctant to
+suffer the holy feelings that were uppermost in his heart to be the
+spectacle of rude and obtrusive observers. At the door, he
+relinquished Eve to Paul, and Grace to Sir George, with a silent
+pressure of the hand of each, and signed for them to proceed towards
+the Wigwam. He was obeyed, and in less than half an hour from the
+time they had left the drawing-room, the whole party was again
+assembled in it.
+
+What a change had been produced in the situation of so many, in that
+brief interval!
+
+"Father!" Eve whispered, while Mr. Effingham folded her to his heart,
+the unbidden tears falling from both their eyes--"I am still thine!"
+
+"It would break my heart to think otherwise, darling. No, no--I have
+not lost a daughter, but have gained a son."
+
+"And what place am I to occupy in this scene of fondness?" inquired
+John Effingham, who had considerately paid his compliments to Grace
+first, that she might not feel forgotten at such a moment, and who
+had so managed that, she was now receiving the congratulations of the
+rest of the party; "am I to lose both son and daughter?"
+
+Eve, smiling sweetly through her tears, raised herself from her own
+father's arms, and was received in those of her husband's parent.
+After he had fondly kissed her forehead several times, without
+withdrawing from his bosom, she parted the rich hair on his forehead,
+passing her hand down his face, like an infant, and said softly--
+
+"Cousin Jack!"
+
+"I believe this must be my rank and estimation still Paul shall make
+no difference in our feeling; we will love each other as we have ever
+done."
+
+"Paul can be nothing new between you and me. You have always been a
+second father in my eyes, and in my heart, too, dear--dear cousin
+Jack."
+
+John Effingham pressed the beautiful, ardent, blushing girl to his
+bosom again; and as he did so, both felt, notwithstanding their
+language, that a new and dearer tie than ever bound them together.
+Eve now received the compliments of the rest of the party, when the
+two brides retired to change the dresses in which they had appeared
+at the altar, for their more ordinary attire.
+
+In her own dressing-room, Eve found Ann Sidley, waiting with
+impatience to pour out her feelings, the honest and affectionate
+creature being much too sensitive to open the floodgates of her
+emotions in the presence of third parties.
+
+"Ma'am--Miss Eve--Mrs. Effingham!" she exclaimed as soon as her young
+mistress entered, afraid of saying too much, now that her nursling
+had become a married woman.
+
+"My kind and good Nanny!" said Eve, taking her old nurse in her arms,
+their tears mingling in silence for near a minute. "You have seen
+your child enter on the last of her great earthly engagements, Nanny,
+and I know you pray that they may prove happy."
+
+"I do--I do--I do--ma'am--madam--Miss Eve--what am I to call you in
+future, ma'am?"
+
+"Call me Miss Eve, as you have done since my childhood, dearest
+Nanny."
+
+Nanny received this permission with delight, and twenty times that
+morning she availed herself of the permission; and she continued to
+use the term until, two years later, she danced a miniature Eve on
+her knee, as she had done its mother before her, when matronly rank
+began silently to assert its rights, and our present bride became
+Mrs. Effingham.
+
+"I shall not quit you, ma'am, now that you are married?" Ann Sidley
+timidly asked; for, although she could scarcely think such an event
+within the bounds of probability, and Eve had already more than once
+assured her of the contrary with her own tongue, still did she love
+to have assurance made doubly sure. "I hope nothing will ever happen
+to make me quit you, ma'am?"
+
+"Nothing of that sort, with my consent, ever shall happen, my
+excellent Nanny. And now that Annette is about to get married, I
+shall have more than the usual necessity for your services."
+
+"And Mamerzelle, ma'am?" inquired Nanny, with sparkling eyes; "I
+suppose she, too, will return to her own country, now you know every
+thing, and have no farther occasion for her?"
+
+"Mademoiselle Viefville will return to France in the autumn, but it
+will be with us all; for my dear father, cousin Jack, my husband--"
+Eve blushed as she pronounced the novel word--"and myself, not
+forgetting you my old nurse, will all sail for England, with Sir
+George and Lady Templemore, on our way to Italy, the first week in
+October."
+
+"I care not, ma'am, so that I go with you. I would rather we did not
+live in a country where I cannot understand all that the people say
+to you, but wherever you are will be my earthly paradise."
+
+Eve kissed the true-hearted woman, and, Annette entering, she changed
+her dress.
+
+The two brides met at the head of the great stairs, on their way back
+to the drawing-room. Eve was a little in advance, but, with a half-
+concealed smile, she gave way to Grace, curtsying gravely, and
+saying--
+
+"It does not become _me_ to precede Lady Templemore--I, who am
+only Mrs. Paul Effingham."
+
+"Nay, dear Eve, I am not so weak as you imagine. Do you not think I
+should have married him had he not been a baronet?"
+
+"Templemore, my dear coz, is a man any woman might love, and I
+believe, as firmly as I hope it sincerely, that he will make you
+happy."
+
+"And yet there is one woman who would not love him, Eve!"
+
+Eve looked steadily at her cousin for a moment, was startled, and
+then she felt gratified that Sir George had been so honest, for the
+frankness and manliness of his avowal was a pledge of the good faith
+and sincerity of his character. She took her cousin affectionately by
+the hand, and said--
+
+"Grace, this confidence is the highest compliment you can pay me, and
+it merits a return. That Sir George Templemore may have had a passing
+inclination for one who so little deserved it, is possibly true--but
+my affections were another's before I knew him."
+
+"You never would have married Templemore, Eve; he says himself, now,
+that you are quite too continental, as he calls it, to like an
+Englishman."
+
+"Then I shall take the first good occasion to undeceive him; for I do
+_like_ an Englishman, and he is the identical man."
+
+As few women are jealous on their wedding-day, Grace took this in
+good part, and they descended the stairs together, side by side,
+reflecting each other's happiness, in their timid but conscious
+smiles. In the great hall, they were met by the bridegrooms, and each
+taking the arm of him who had now become of so vast importance to
+her, they paced the room to and fro, until summoned to the _dejeuner
+a la fourchette_, which had been prepared under the especial
+superintendence of Mademoiselle Viefville, after the manner
+of her country.
+
+Wedding-days, like all formally prepared festivals, are apt to go off
+a little heavily. Such, however, was not the case with this, for
+every appearance of premeditation and preparation vanished with this
+meal. It is true the family did not quit the grounds, but, with this
+exception, ease and tranquil happiness reigned throughout. Captain
+Truck was alone disposed to be sentimental, and, more than once, as
+he looked about him, he expressed his doubts whether he had pursued
+the right course to attain happiness,
+
+"I find myself in a solitary category," he said, at the dinner-
+table, in the evening. "Mrs. Hawker, and both the Messrs.
+Effinghams, _have been_ married; every body else _is_ married, and I
+believe I must take refuge in saying that I _will be_ married, if I
+can now persuade any one to have me. Even Mr. Powis, my right-hand
+man, in all that African affair, has deserted me, and left me like a
+single dead pine in one of your clearings, or a jewel-block dangling
+at a yard-arm, without a sheave. Mrs. Bride--" the captain styled
+Eve thus, throughout the day, to the utter neglect of the claims of
+Lady Templemore--"Mrs. Bride, we will consider my forlorn condition
+more philosophically, when I shall have the honour to take you, and
+so many of this blessed party, back again to Europe, where I found
+you. Under your advice I think I might even yet venture."
+
+"And I am overlooked entirely," cried Mr. Howel, who had been invited
+to make one at the wedding-feast; "what is to become of me, Captain
+Truck, if this marrying mania go any further?"
+
+"I have long had a plan for your welfare, my dear sir, that I will
+take this opportunity to divulge; I propose, ladies and gentlemen,
+that we enlist Mr. Howel in our project for this autumn, and that we
+carry him with us to Europe. I shall be proud to have the honour of
+introducing him to his old friend, the island of Great Britain."
+
+"Ah! that is a happiness, I fear, that is not in reserve for me!"
+said Mr. Howel, shaking his head. "I have thought of these things, in
+my time, but age will now defeat any such hopes."
+
+"Age, Tom Howel!" said John Effingham; "you are but fifty, like Ned
+and myself. We were all boys together, forty years ago, and yet you
+find us, who have so lately returned, ready to take a fresh
+departure. Pluck up heart; there may be a steam-boat ready to bring
+you back, by the time you wish to return."
+
+"Never," said Captain Truck, positively. "Ladies and gentlemen, it is
+morally impossible that the Atlantic should ever be navigated by
+steamers. That doctrine I shall maintain to my dying day; but what
+need of a steamer, when we have packets like palaces?"
+
+"I did not know, captain, that you entertained so hearty a respect
+for Great Britain--it is encouraging, really, to find so generous a
+feeling toward the old island in one of her descendants. Sir George
+and Lady Templemore, permit me to drink to your lasting felicity."
+
+"Ay--ay--I entertain no ill-will to England, though her tobacco laws
+are none of the genteelest. But my wish to export you, Mr. Howel, is
+less from a desire to show you England, than to let you perceive that
+there are other countries in Europe--"
+
+"Other countries!--Surely you do not suppose I am so ignorant of
+geography, as to believe that there are no other countries in
+Europe--no such places as Hanover, Brunswick, and Brunswick
+Lunenberg, and Denmark; the sister of old George the Third married
+the king of that country; and Wurtemberg, the king of which married
+the Princess Royal--"
+
+"And Mecklenburg-Strelitz," added John Effingham, gravely, "a
+princess of which actually married George the Third _propria
+persona_, as well as by proxy. Nothing can be plainer than your
+geography, Howel; but, in addition to these particular regions, our
+worthy friend the captain wishes you to know also, that there are
+such places as France, and Austria, and Russia, and Italy; though the
+latter can scarcely repay a man for the trouble of visiting it."
+
+"You have guessed my motive, Mr. John Effingham, and expressed it
+much more discreetly than I could possibly have done," cried the
+captain. "If Mr. Howel will do me the honour to take passage with me,
+going and coming, I shall consider the pleasure of his remarks on men
+and things, as one of the greatest advantages I ever possessed."
+
+"I do not know but I might be induced to venture as far as England,
+but not a foot farther."
+
+"_Pas a Paris!_" exclaimed Mademoiselle Viefville, who wondered
+why any rational being would take the trouble to cross the Atlantic,
+merely to see _Ce melancolique Londres;_ "you will go to _Paris_,
+for my sake, Monsieur Howel?"
+
+"For your sake, indeed, Mam'selle, I would do any thing, but hardly
+for my own. I confess I have thought of this, and I will think of it
+farther. I should like to see the King of England and the House of
+Lords, I confess, before I die."
+
+"Ay, and the Tower, and the Boar's-Head at East-Cheap, and the statue
+of the Duke of Wellington, and London Bridge, and Richmond Hill, and
+Bow Street, and Somerset House, and Oxford Road, and Bartlemy Fair,
+and Hungerford Market, and Charing-Cross--_old_ Charing-Cross,
+Tom Howel!"--added John Effingham, with a good-natured nod of the
+head.
+
+"A wonderful nation!" cried Mr. Howel, whose eyes sparkled as the
+other proceeded in his enumeration of wonders. "I do not think, after
+all, that I can die in peace, without seeing _some_ of these
+things--_all_ would be too much for me. How far is the Isle of
+Dogs, now, from St. Catherine's Docks, captain?"
+
+"Oh! but a few cables' lengths. If you will only stick to the ship
+until she is fairly docked, I will promise you a sight of the Isle of
+Dogs before you land, even. But then you must promise me to carry out
+no tobacco!"
+
+"No fear of me; I neither smoke nor chew, and it does not surprise me
+that a nation as polished as the English should have this antipathy
+to tobacco. And one might really see the Isle of Dogs before landing?
+It _is_ a wonderful country! Mrs. Bloomfield, will you ever be
+able to die tranquilly without seeing England?"
+
+"I hope, sir, whenever that event shall arrive, that it may be met
+tranquilly, let what may happen previously. I do confess, in common
+with Mrs. Effingham, a longing desire to see Italy; a wish that I
+believe she entertains from her actual knowledge, and which I
+entertain from my anticipations."
+
+"Now, this really surprises me. What _can_ Italy possess to
+repay one for the trouble of travelling so far?"
+
+"I trust, cousin Jack," said Eve, colouring at the sound of her own
+voice, for on that day of supreme happiness and intense emotions, she
+had got to be so sensitive as to be less self-possessed than common,
+"that our friend Mr. Wenham will not be forgotten, but that he may be
+invited to join the party."
+
+This representative of _la jeune Amerique_ was also present at
+the dinner, out of regard to his deceased father, who was a very old
+friend of Mr. Effingham's, and, being so favourably noticed by the
+bride, he did not fail to reply.
+
+"I believe an American has little to learn from any nation but his
+own," observed Mr. Wenham, with the complacency of the school to
+which he belonged, "although one might wish that all of this country
+should travel, in order that the rest of the world might have the
+benefit of the intercourse."
+
+"It is a thousand pities," said John Effingham, "that one of our
+universities, for instance, was not ambulant. Old Yale was so, in its
+infancy; but unlike most other creatures, it went about with greater
+ease to itself when a child, than it can move in manhood."
+
+"Mr. John Effingham loves to be facetious," said Mr. Wenham with
+dignity; for, while he was as credulous as could be wished, on the
+subject of American superiority, he was not quite as blind as the
+votaries of the Anglo-American school, who usually yield the control
+of all their faculties and common sense to their masters, on the
+points connected with their besetting weaknesses. "Every body is
+agreed, I believe, that the American imparts more than he receives,
+in his intercourse with Europeans."
+
+The smiles of the more experienced of this young man's listeners were
+well-bred and concealed, and the conversation turned to other
+subjects. It was easy to raise the laugh on such an occasion, and
+contrary to the usage of the Wigwam, where the men usually left the
+table with the other sex, Captain Truck, John Effingham, Mr.
+Bloomfield, and Mr. Howel, made what is called a night of it. Much
+delicious claret was consumed, and the honest captain was permitted
+to enjoy his cigar. About midnight he swore he had half a mind to
+write a letter to Mrs. Hawker, with an offer of his hand; as for his
+heart, that she well knew she had possessed for a long time.
+
+The next day, about the hour when the house was tranquil, from the
+circumstance that most of its inmates were abroad on their several
+avocations of boating, riding, shopping, or walking, Eve was in the
+library, her father having left it, a few minutes before, to mount
+his horse. She was seated at a table, writing a letter to an aged
+relative of her own sex, to communicate the circumstance of her
+marriage. The door was half open, and Paul appeared at it
+unexpectedly, coming in search of his young bride. His step had been
+so light, and so intently was our heroine engaged with her letter,
+that his approach was unnoticed, though it had now been a long time
+that the ear of Eve had learned to know his tread, and her heart to
+beat at its welcome sound. Perhaps a beautiful woman is never so
+winningly lovely as when, in her neat morning attire, she seems fresh
+and sweet as the new-born day. Eve had paid a little more attention
+to her toilette than usual even, admitting just enough of a properly
+selected jewelry, a style of ornament, that so singularly denotes the
+refinement of a gentlewoman, when used understandingly, and which so
+infallibly betrays vulgarity under other circumstances, while her
+attire had rather more than its customary finish, though it was
+impossible not to perceive, at a glance, that she was in an undress.
+The Parisian skill of Annette, on which Mr. Bragg based so many of
+his hopes of future fortune, had cut and fitted the robe to her
+faultlessly beautiful person, with a tact, or it might be truer to
+say a contact, so perfect, that it even left more charms to be
+imagined than it displayed, though the outline of the whole figure
+was that of the most lovely womanhood. But, notwithstanding the
+exquisite modelling of the whole form, the almost fairy lightness of
+the full, swelling, but small foot, about which nothing seemed lean
+and attenuated, the exquisite hand that appeared from among the
+ruffles of the dress, Paul stood longest in nearly breathless
+admiration of the countenance of his "bright and blooming bride."
+Perhaps there is no sentiment so touchingly endearing to a man, as
+that which comes over him as he contemplates the beauty, confiding
+faith, holy purity and truth that shine in the countenance of a
+young, unpractised, innocent woman, when she has so far overcome her
+natural timidity as to pour out her tenderness in his behalf, and to
+submit to the strongest impulses of her nature. Such was now the fact
+with Eve. She was writing of her husband, and, though her expressions
+were restrained by taste and education, they partook of her
+unutterable fondness and devotion. The tears stood in her eyes, the
+pen trembled in her hand, and she shaded her face as if to conceal
+the weakness from herself. Paul was alarmed, he knew not why, but Eve
+in tears was a sight painful to him. In a moment he was at her side,
+with an arm placed gently around her waist, and he drew her fondly
+towards his bosom.
+
+"Eve--dearest Eve!" he said--"what mean these tears?"
+
+The serene eye, the radiant blush, and the meek tenderness that
+rewarded his own burst of feeling, reassured the young husband, and,
+deferring to the sensitive modesty of so young a bride, he released
+hold, retaining only a hand.
+
+"It is happiness, Powis--nothing but excess of happiness, which makes
+us women weaker, I fear, than even sorrow."
+
+Paul kissed her hands, regarded her with an intensity of admiration,
+before which the eyes of Eve rose and fell, as if dazzled while
+meeting his looks, and yet unwilling to lose them; and then he
+reverted to the motive which had brought him to the library.
+
+"My father--_your_ father, that is now--"
+
+"Cousin Jack!"
+
+"Cousin Jack, if you will, has just made me a present, which is
+second only to the greater gift I received from your own excellent
+parent, yesterday, at the altar. See, dearest Eve, he has bestowed
+this lovely image of yourself on me; lovely, though still so far from
+the truth. And here is the miniature of my poor mother, also, to
+supply the place of the one carried away by the Arabs."
+
+Eve gazed long and wistfully at the beautiful features of this image
+of her husband's mother. She traced in them that pensive thought,
+that winning kindness, that had first softened her heart towards
+Paul, and her lips trembled as she pressed the insensible glass
+against them.
+
+"She must have been very handsome, Eve, and there is a look of
+melancholy tenderness in the face, that would seem almost to predict
+an unhappy blighting of the affections."
+
+"And yet this young, ingenuous, faithful woman entered on the solemn
+engagement we have just made, Paul, with as many reasonable hopes of
+a bright future as we ourselves!"
+
+"Not so, Eve--confidence and holy truth were wanting at the nuptials
+of my parents. When there is deception at the commencement of such a
+contract, it is not difficult to predict the end."
+
+"I do not think, Paul, you ever deceived; that noble heart of yours
+is too generous!"
+
+"If any thing can make a man worthy of such a love, dearest, it is
+the perfect and absorbing confidence with which your sex throw
+themselves on the justice and faith of ours. Did that spotless heart
+ever entertain a doubt of the worth of any living being on which It
+had set its affections?"
+
+"Of itself, often, and they say self-love lies at the bottom of all
+our actions."
+
+"You are the last person to hold this doctrine, beloved, for those
+who live most in your confidence declare that all traces of self are
+lost in your very nature."
+
+"Most in my confidence! My father--- my dear, kind father, has then
+been betraying his besetting weakness, by extolling the gift he has
+made."
+
+"Your kind, excellent father, knows too well the total want of
+necessity for any such thing. If the truth must be confessed, I have
+been passing a quarter of an hour with worthy Ann Sidley."
+
+"Nanny--dear old Nanny!--and you have been weak enough, traitor, to
+listen to the eulogiums of a nurse on her child!"
+
+"All praise of thee, my blessed Eve, is grateful to my ears, and who
+can speak more understandingly of those domestic qualities which lie
+at the root of domestic bliss, than those who have seen you in your
+most intimate life, from childhood down to the moment when you have
+assumed the duties of a wife?"
+
+"Paul, Paul, thou art beside thyself; too much learning hath made
+thee mad!"
+
+"I am not mad, most beloved and beautiful Eve, but blessed to a
+degree that might indeed upset a stronger reason."
+
+"We will now talk of other things," said Eve, raising his hand to her
+lips in respectful affection, and looking gratefully up into his fond
+and eloquent eyes; "I hope the feeling of which you so lately spoke
+has subsided, and that you no longer feel yourself a stranger in the
+dwelling of your own family."
+
+"Now that I can claim a right through you, I confess that my
+conscience is getting to be easier on this point. Have you been yet
+told of the arrangement that the older heads meditate in reference to
+our future means?"
+
+"I would not listen to my dear father when he wished to introduce the
+subject, for I found that it was a project that made distinctions
+between Paul Effingham and Eve Effingham, two that I wish,
+henceforth, to consider as one in all things."
+
+"In this, darling, you may do yourself injustice as well as me. But
+perhaps you may not wish _me_ to speak on the subject, neither."
+
+"What would my lord?"
+
+"Then listen, and the tale is soon told. We are each other's natural
+heirs. Of the name and blood of Effingham, neither has a relative
+nearer than the other, for, though but cousins in the third degree,
+our family is so small as to render the husband, in this case, the
+natural heir of the wife, and the wife the natural heir of the
+husband. Now your father proposes that his estates be valued, and
+that my father settle on you a sum of equal amount, which his wealth,
+will fully enable him to do, and that I become the possessor in
+reversion, of the lands that would otherwise have been yours."
+
+"You possess me, my heart, my affections, my duty; of what account is
+money after this!"
+
+"I perceive that you are so much and so truly woman, Eve, that we
+must arrange all this without consulting you at all."
+
+"Can I be in safer hands? A father that has always been too indulgent
+of my unreasonable wishes--a second parent that has only contributed
+too much to spoil me in the same thoughtless manner--and a----"
+
+"Husband," added Paul, perceiving that Eve hesitated at pronouncing
+to his face a name so novel though so endearing, "who will strive to
+do more than either in the same way."
+
+"Husband," she added, looking up into his face with a smile innocent
+as that of an infant, while the crimson tinge covered her forehead,
+"if the formidable word must be uttered, who is doing all he can to
+increase a self-esteem that is already so much greater than it ought
+to be."
+
+A light tap at the door caused Eve to start and look embarrassed,
+like one detected in a fault, and Paul to release the hand that he
+had continued to hold during the brief dialogue.
+
+"Sir--ma'am"--said the timid, meek voice of Ann Sidley, as she held
+the door ajar, without presuming to look into the room; "Miss Eve--
+Mr. Powis."
+
+"Enter, my good Nanny," said Eve, recovering her self-composure in a
+moment, the presence of her nurse always appearing to her as no more
+than a duplication of herself. "What is your wish?"
+
+"I hope I am not unreasonable, but I knew that Mr. Effingham was
+alone with you, here, and I wished--that is, ma'am,--Miss Eve--Sir--"
+
+"Speak your wishes, my good old nurse--am I not your own child, and
+is not this your own child's"--again Eve hesitated, blushed, and
+smiled, ere she pronounced the formidable word--"husband."
+
+"Yes, ma'am; and God be praised that it is so. I dreamt, it is now
+four years, Miss Eve; we were then travelling among the Denmarkers,
+and I dreamt that you were married to a great prince--"
+
+"But your dream has not come true, my good Nanny, and you see by this
+fact that it is not always safe to trust in dreams."
+
+"Ma'am, I do not esteem princes by the kingdoms and crowns, but by
+their qualities--and if Mr. Powis be not a prince, who is?"
+
+"That, indeed, changes the matter," said the gratified young wife;
+"and I believe, after all, dear Nanny, that I must become a convert
+to your theory of dreams."
+
+"While I must always deny it, good Mrs Sidley, if this is a specimen
+of its truth," said Paul, laughing. "But, perhaps this prince proved
+unworthy of Miss Eve, after all?"
+
+"Not he, sir; he made her a most kind and affectionate husband; not
+humouring all her idle wishes, if Miss Eve could have had such
+wishes, but cherishing her, and counselling her, and protecting her,
+showing as much tenderness for her as her own father, and as much
+love for her as I had myself."
+
+"In which case, my worthy nurse, he proved an invaluable husband,"
+said Eve, with glistening eyes--"and I trust, too, that he was
+considerate and friendly to you?"
+
+"He took me by the hand, the morning after the marriage, and said,
+Faithful Ann Sidley, you have nursed and attended my beloved when a
+child, and as a young lady; and I now entreat you will continue to
+wait on and serve her as a wife to your dying day. He did, indeed,
+ma'am; and I think I can now hear the very words he spoke so kindly.
+The dream, so far, has come good."
+
+"My faithful Ann," said Paul, smiling, and taking the hand of the
+nurse, "you have been all that is good and true to my best beloved,
+as a child, and as a young lady; and now I earnestly entreat you to
+continue to wait on her, and to serve her as _my_ wife, to your
+dying day."
+
+Nanny clapped her hands with a scream of delight, and bursting into
+tears, she exclaimed, as she hurried from the room,
+
+"It has all come true--it has all come true!"
+
+A pause of several minutes succeeded this burst of superstitious but
+natural feeling.
+
+"All who live near you appear to think you the common centre of their
+affections," Paul resumed; when his swelling heart permitted him to
+speak.
+
+"We have hitherto been a family of love--God grant it may always
+continue so."
+
+Another delicious silence, which lasted still longer than the other,
+followed. Eve then looked up into her husband's face with a gentle
+curiosity, and observed--
+
+"You have told me a great deal, Powis--explained all but one little
+thing, that, at the time, caused me great pain. Why did Ducie, when
+you were about to quit the Montauk together, so unceremoniously stop
+you, as you were about to get into the boat first; is the etiquette
+of a man-of-war so rigid as to justify so much rudeness, I had almost
+called it--?"
+
+"The etiquette of a vessel of war is rigid certainly, and wisely so.
+But what you fancied rudeness, was in truth a compliment. Among us
+sailors, it is the inferior who goes first _into_ a boat, and
+who _quits_ it last."
+
+"So much, then, for forming a judgment, ignorantly! I believe it is
+always safer to have no opinion, than to form one without a perfect
+knowledge of all the accompanying circumstances."
+
+"Let us adhere to this safe rule through life, dearest, and we may
+find its benefits. An absolute confidence, caution in drawing
+conclusions, and a just reliance on each other, may keep us as happy
+to the end of our married life, as we are at this blessed moment,
+when it is commencing under auspices so favourable as to seem almost
+providential."
+
+
+
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