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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13828 ***
+
+LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE
+
+OF
+
+_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE_.
+
+Vol XII, No. 29.
+
+AUGUST, 1873.
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS
+  THE NEW HYPERION [Illustrated] By EDWARD STRAHAN.
+    II.--The Two Chickens.
+  OUR HOME IN THE TYROL [Illustrated] By MARGARET HOWITT.
+    CHAPTER VII.
+    CHAPTER VIII.
+  ON THE CHURCH STEPS By SARAH C. HALLOWELL.
+    CHAPTER I.
+    CHAPTER II.
+    CHAPTER III.
+    CHAPTER IV.
+    CHAPTER V.
+  INSIDE JAPAN By W.E. GRIFFIS.
+  JASON'S QUEST By CHARLES WARREN STODDARD.
+    I.
+    II.
+    III.
+    IV.
+  FOREBODINGS.
+  DEER-PARKS By REGINALD WYNFORD.
+  RAMBLES AMONG THE FRUITS AND FLOWERS OF THE TROPICS By FANNIE R. FEUDGE.
+  TWO PAPERS.--I.
+  A PRINCESS OF THULE By WILLIAM BLACK.
+    CHAPTER XII.--Transformation.
+    CHAPTER XIII.--By The Waters Of Babylon.
+  GOLD By ITA ANIOL PROKOP.
+  GLIMPSES OF GHOST-LAND By LUCY H. HOOPER.
+  AFTERNOON</a> By EMMA LAZARUS.
+  OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
+    Washington's Birthplace In 1873 By R.B.E.
+    Vicissitudes In High Life.
+    A Glass Of Old Madeira.
+    At A Matinée: A Monologue. By C.A.D.
+  NOTES.
+  LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
+    Books Received.
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+  THE FLOWERS OF WAR.
+  THE INVADERS OF ROMIAINVILLE.
+  STORY OF AN OLD MAN AND AN ELDER.
+  MERCHANDISE IN THE TEMPLE.
+  FATHER JOLIET.
+  THE TWO CHICKENS.
+  LOVE LEFT ALONE.
+  "FOND OF CHICKEN."
+  THE WIFE.
+  THE LONE CRUSADE.
+  TENDER CHARITY.
+  NECESSITY KNOWING LAW.
+  THE FERRY.
+  JOVE'S THUNDER.
+  SCHOOL.
+  ON WITH THE DANCE!
+  ENDYMION.
+  HOW THE MODERN DOG TREATS LAZARUS.
+  THE LAUGHING LACKEY.
+  THE PRESENT.
+  THE CONVALESCENT.
+  THE DIVIDED BURDEN.
+  SHARE MY CUP.
+  BREAKING STONES.
+  SICKNESS AND COURTSHIP.
+  THE WAGON.
+  DINNER-TIME!
+  FIDELITY.
+  A LITTLE VISITOR.
+  FRANCINE.
+  "DON'T WRING MY HEART!"
+  VIEW OF TAUFERS VALLEY.
+  SCHLOSS TAUFERS.
+  HAPPY SOULS IN PARADISE.
+  CROSSING THE TORRENT.
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW HYPERION.
+
+FROM PARIS TO MARLY BY WAY OF THE RHINE.
+
+II.--THE TWO CHICKENS.
+
+
+[Illustration: THE FLOWERS OF WAR.]
+
+"Thou art no less a man because thou wearest no hauberk nor mail sark,
+and goest not on horseback after foolish adventures."
+
+So I said, reassuring myself, thirty years ago, when, as Paul Flemming
+the Blond, I was meditating the courageous change of cutting off my
+soap-locks, burning my edition of Bulwer and giving my satin stocks to
+my shoemaker: I mean, when I was growing up--or, in the more beauteous
+language of that day, when Flemming was passing into the age of
+bronze, and the flowers of Paradise were turning to a sword in his
+hands.
+
+Well, I say it again, and I say it with boldness, you can wear a tin
+botany-box as bravely as a hauberk, and foolish adventures can be
+pursued equally well on foot.
+
+Stout, grizzled and short winded, I am just as nimble as ever in the
+pretty exercise of running down an illusion. Yet I must confess, as I
+passed the abattoirs of La Villette, whence blue-smocked butcher-boys
+were hauling loads of dirty sheepskins, I could not but compare myself
+to the honest man mentioned in one of Sardou's comedies: "The good
+soul escaped out of a novel of Paul de Kock's, lost in the throng
+on the Boulevard Malesherbes, and asking the way to the woods of
+Romainville."
+
+[Illustration: THE INVADERS OF ROMIAINVILLE.]
+
+Romainville! And hereabouts its tufts of chestnuts should be, or were
+wont to be of old. I am in the grimy quarter of Belleville. Scene of
+factories, of steam-works and tall bleak mansions as it is to-day,
+Belleville was once a jolly country village, separated on its hilltop
+from Paris, which basked at its feet like a city millionaire sprawling
+before the check apron and leather shoes of a rustic beauty. Inhabited
+by its little circle of a few thousand souls, it looked around itself
+on its eminence, seeing the vast diorama of the city on one side,
+and on the other the Près-Saint-Gervais, and the woods of Romainville
+waving off to the horizon their diminishing crests of green. A jolly
+old tavern, the Ile d'Amour, hung out its colored lamps among the
+trees, and the orchestra sounded, and the feet of gay young lovers,
+who now are skeletons, beat the floor. The street was a bower of
+lilacs, and opposite the Ile d'Amour was the village church.
+
+Then the workmen of the Paris suburbs were invaders: they besieged the
+village on Sundays in daring swarms, to be beaten back successfully by
+the duties of every successive Monday. Now they are fixed there. They
+are the colorless inhabitants of these many-storied houses. The town's
+long holiday is over. Where the odorous avenues of lilacs stretched
+along, affording bouquets for maman and the children and toothpicks
+for ferocious young warriors from the garrisons, are odious lengths
+of wall. Everything is changed, and from the gardens the grisettes of
+Alfred de Musset are with sighing sent. Their haunts are laboratories
+now, and the Ile d'Amour is a mayor's office.
+
+I, to whom the beer-scandals of the Rhine and the students' holidays
+of the Seine were among the Childe-Harold enormities of a not
+over-sinful youth, was sadly disappointed. Thinking of the groves of
+an Eden, I ran against the furnaces of a Pandemonium. For a stroll
+back toward my adolescence, Belleville was a bad beginning. I
+determined to console myself with the green meadows of Saint-Gervais
+and the pretty woods of Romainville. Attaining the latter was half
+an hour's affair among long walls and melancholy houses: at
+Saint-Gervais, a double file of walls and houses--at Romainville,
+houses and walls again. In the latter, where formerly there were
+scarcely three watches distributed amongst the whole village, I was
+incensed to find the shop of a clockmaker: it was somewhat consoling,
+though, to find it a clockmaker's of the most pronounced suburban
+kind, with pairs of wooden shoes amongst the guard-chains in the
+window, and pots of golden mustard ranged alternately with the
+antiquated silver turnips.
+
+Before the church I found yet standing a knotty little elder tree, a
+bewitched-looking vegetable. A beadle in a blouse, engaged in washing
+one of the large altar-candles with soap and water at the public pump,
+gave me the following history of the elder tree. I am passionately
+fond of legends, and this is one quite hot and fresh, only a hundred
+years old. Hear the tale of the elder of Romainville.
+
+The excellent curé of Romainville in the last century was a man of
+such a charitable nature that his all was in the hands of the
+poor. The grocer of the village, a potentate of terrific powers and
+inexorable temper, finally refused to trust him with the supply of
+oil necessary for the lamp in the sanctuary. Soon the sacred flame
+sputtered, palpitated, flapped miserably over the crusted wick: the
+curé, responsible before Heaven for the life of his lamp, tottered
+away from the altar with groans of anguish. Arrived in the garden, he
+threw himself on his knees, crying _Meâ culpâ_, and beating his bosom.
+The garden contained only medicinal plants, shaded by a linden and an
+elder: completely desperate, the unhappy priest fixed his moist eyes
+on the latter, when lo! the bark opened, the trunk parted, and a jet
+of clear aromatic liquid spouted forth, quite different from any sap
+yielded by elder before. It was oil. A miracle!
+
+The report spread. The grocer came and humbly visited the priest in
+his garden, his haughty hat, crammed with bills enough to have spread
+agony through all the cottages of Romainville, humbly carried between
+his legs. He came proposing a little speculation. In exchange for a
+single spigot to be inserted in the tree, and the hydraulic rights
+going with the same, he offered all the bounties dearest to the
+priestly heart--unlimited milk and honey, livers of fat geese and pies
+lined with rabbit. The priest, though hungry--hungry with the demoniac
+hunger of a fat and paunchy man--turned his back on the tempter.
+
+[Illustration: STORY OF AN OLD MAN AND AN ELDER.]
+
+One day a salad, the abstemious relish yielded by his garden herbs,
+was set on the table by Jeanneton. At the first mouthful the good curé
+made a terrible face--the salad tasted of lamp-oil. The unhappy girl
+had filled a cruet with the sacred fluid. From that day the bark
+closed and the flow ceased.
+
+There is one of the best oil-stories you ever heard, and one of the
+most recent of attested miracles. For my part, I am half sorry it is
+so well attested, and that I have the authority of that beadle in the
+blouse, who took my little two-franc piece with an expression of much
+intelligence. I love the Legend.
+
+[Illustration: MERCHANDISE IN THE TEMPLE.]
+
+The environs of Paris are but chary of Legend. I treasure this
+specimen, then, as if it had been a rare flower for my botany-box.
+
+But the botany-box indeed, how heavy it was growing! The umbrella, how
+awkward! The sun, how vigorous and ardent! Who ever supposed it could
+become so hot by half-past eight in the morning?
+
+[Illustration: FATHER JOLIET.]
+
+Certainly the ruthless box, which seemed to have taken root on my
+back, was heavier than it used to be. Had its rotundity developed,
+like its master's? I stopped and gathered a flower, meaning to analyze
+it at my next resting-place. I opened my box: then indeed I perceived
+the secret of its weightiness. It revealed three small rolls of
+oatmeal toasted, a little roast chicken, a bit of ham, some mustard
+in a cleaned-out inkstand! This now was the treachery of Josephine.
+Josephine, who never had the least sympathy for my botanical
+researches, and who had small comprehension of the nobler hungers and
+thirsts of the scientific soul, had taken it on her to convert my box
+into a portable meat-safe!
+
+Bless the old meddler, how I thanked her for her treason! The aspect
+of the chicken, in its blistered and varnished brown skin, reminded
+me that I was clamorously hungry. Shade of Apicius! is it lawful for
+civilized mortals to be so hungry as I was at eight or nine in the
+morning?
+
+At last I saw the end of that dusty, featureless street which
+stretches from the barrier to the extremity of Romainville. I saw
+spreading before me a broad plain, a kind of desert, where, by
+carefully keeping my eyes straight ahead, I could avoid the sight of
+all houses, walls, human constructions whatever.
+
+My favorite traveler, the celebrated Le Vaillant, to whom I am
+indebted for so many facts and data toward my great theory of
+Comparative Geography, says that in first reaching the solitudes of
+Caffraria he felt himself elated with an unknown joy. No traced road
+was before him to dictate his pathway--no city shaded him with its
+towers: his fortune depended on his own unaided instincts.
+
+I felt the same delight, the same liberty. Something like the heavy
+strap of a slave seemed to break behind me as I found myself quite
+clear of the metropolis. Mad schemes of unanticipated journeys danced
+through my head; I might amble on to Villemonble, Montfermeil, Raincy,
+or even to the Forest of Bondy, so dear to the experimental botanist.
+Had I not two days before me ere my compact with Hohenfels at Marly?
+And in two days you can go from Paris to Florence. Meantime, from the
+effects of famine, my ribs were sinking down upon the pelvic basin of
+my frame.
+
+The walk, the open air, the sight of the fowl, whose beak now burned
+into my bosom's core, had sharpened my appetite beyond bearing. Yet
+how could I eat without some drop of cider or soft white wine to
+drink? Besides, slave of convention that I have grown, I no longer
+understand the business of eating without its concomitants--a shelter
+and something to sit on.
+
+The plain became wearisome. There are two things the American-born,
+however long a resident abroad, never forgives the lack of in
+Europe. The first I miss when I am in Paris: it is the perpetual
+street-mending of an American town. Here the boulevards, smeared with
+asphaltum or bedded with crunched macadam, attain smoothness without
+life: you travel on scum. But in the dear old American streets the
+epidermis is vital: what strength and mutual reliance in the cobbles
+as they stand together in serried ranks, like so many eye-teeth! How
+they are perpetually sinking into prodigious ruts, along which the
+ponderous drays are forced to dance on one wheel in a paroxysm
+of agony and critical equipoise! But the perpetual state of
+street-mending, that is the crowning interest. What would I not
+sometimes give to exchange the Swiss sweeping-girls, plying their long
+brooms desolately in the mud, for the paviors' hammers of America,
+which play upon the pebbles like a carillon of muffled bells? As
+for the other lack, it is the want of wooden bridges. Far away in my
+native meadows gleams the silver Charles: the tramp of horses' hoofs
+comes to my ear from the timbers of the bridge. _Here_, with a pelt
+and a scramble your bridge is crossed: nothing addresses the heart
+from its stony causeway. But the low, arched tubes of wood that span
+the streams of my native land are so many bass-viols, sending out
+mellow thunders with every passing wagon to blend with the rustling
+stream and the sighing woods. Shall I never hear them again?
+
+A reminiscence more than ten years old came to give precision to my
+ramblings in the past. Beyond the rustic pathway I was now following I
+could perceive the hills of Trou-Vassou. Hereabouts, if memory served
+me, I might find a welcome, almost a home, and the clasp of cordial if
+humble hands. Here I might find folks who would laugh when I arrived,
+and would be glad to share their luncheon with me But--ten years gone
+by!
+
+[Illustration: THE TWO CHICKENS.]
+
+This computation chilled my hopes. What family remains ten years in a
+spot--above all, a spot on that fluctuating periphery of Paris, where
+the mighty capital, year after year, bursts belt after belt? Where
+might they have gone? Francine!--Francine must be twenty-two. Married,
+of course. Her husband, no doubt, has dragged her off to some
+other department. Her parents have followed. March, volunteer, and
+disentangle yourself from these profitless speculations!
+
+Ten minutes farther on, in the shade of the fort at Noisy-le-Sec,
+I saw a red gable and the sign of a tavern. As a tourist I have a
+passion for a cabaret: in practice, I find Véfours to unite perhaps a
+greater number of advantages.
+
+[Illustration: LOVE LEFT ALONE.]
+
+Some soldiers of the Fortieth were drinking and laughing in a corner.
+I took a table not far off, and drew my cold victuals out of my box of
+japanned tin, which they doubtless took for a new form of canteen. The
+red-fisted garçon, without waiting for orders, set up before me, like
+ten-pins, a castor in wood with two enormous bottles, and a litre of
+that rinsing of the vats which, under the name "wine of the country,"
+is so distressingly similar in every neighborhood. Resigned to
+anything, I was about drawing out my slice of ham, the chicken seeming
+to me just there somewhat too proud a bird and out of harmony with the
+local color, when my glance met two gray eyes regarding my own in the
+highest state of expansion. The lashes, the brows, the hair and the
+necklace of short beard were all very thick and quite gray. The face
+they garnished was that of the tavern-keeper.
+
+[Illustration: "FOND OF CHICKEN."]
+
+"Why, it is you, after all, Father Joliet!" I said, after a rapid
+inspection of his figure.
+
+[Illustration: THE WIFE.]
+
+"Ah, it is Monsieur Flemming, the Américain-flamand!" cried the host,
+striking one hand into the other at the imminent risk of breaking his
+pipe. In a trice he trundled off my bottle of rinsings, and replaced
+it by one of claret with an orange seal, set another glass, and posted
+himself in front of me.
+
+I asked the waiter for two plates, and with a slight blush evoked the
+chicken from my box. The soldiers of the Fortieth opened a battery of
+staring and hungry eyes.
+
+"And how came you here?" asked I of Joliet.
+
+"It is I who am at the head of the hotel," he replied, proudly
+pointing out the dimensions of the place by spreading his hands.
+"My old establishment has sunk into the fosses of the fort: it was a
+transaction between the government and myself."
+
+"And was the transaction a good one for you?"
+
+"Not so bad, not so bad," said he, winking his honest gray eyes with
+a world of simple cunning. "It cannot be so very bad, since I owe
+nothing on the hotel, and the cellar is full, and I am selling
+wholesale and retail."
+
+The vanity which a minute since had expanded his hands now got into
+his legs, and set them upright under his body. He stood upon them,
+his eyes proudly lowered upon the seal of the claret. A pang of envy
+actually crossed my mind. I, simple _rentier_, with my two little
+establishments pressing more closely upon my resources with every
+year's increase of house-rates, how could I look at this glorious
+small freeholder without comparisons?
+
+"So, then, Father Joliet," said I, "you are rich?"
+
+"At least I depend no longer on my horse, and that thanks to you and
+the government."
+
+"To me! What do you mean?"
+
+"Why, have you forgotten the two chickens?"
+
+[Illustration: THE LONE CRUSADE.]
+
+At the allusion to the chickens we caught each other's eye, and
+laughed like a pair of augurs. But the mysterious fowls shall be
+explained to the reader.
+
+[Illustration: TENDER CHARITY.]
+
+[Illustration: NECESSITY KNOWING LAW.]
+
+I need not explain that I have cast my lot with the Colonial Americans
+of Paris, and taken their color. It is a sweet and luxurious mode of
+life. The cooks send round our dinners quite hot, or we have faultless
+servants, recommended from one colonist to another: these capital
+creatures sometimes become so thoroughly translated into American
+that I have known them shift around from flat to flat in colonized
+households of the second and third stories without ever touching
+French soil for the best part of a lifetime. At our receptions,
+dancing-teas and so on we pass our time in not giving offence.
+Federals and Confederates, rich cotton-spinners from Rhode Island and
+farmers from thousand-acre granges in the West, are obliged to mingle
+and please each other. Naturally, we can have no more political
+opinions than a looking-glass. We entertain just such views as
+_Galignani_ gives us every morning, harmonized with paste from a dozen
+newspapers. Our grand national effort, I may say, the common
+principle that binds us together as a Colony, is to forget that we
+are Americans. We accordingly give our whole intellects to the task of
+appearing like Europeans: our women succeed in this particularly well.
+Miss Yuba Sequoia Smith, whose father made a fortune in water-rights,
+is now afraid to walk a single block without the attendance of a
+chambermaid in a white cap, though she came up from California quite
+alone by the old Panama route. Everybody agrees that our ladies dress
+well. Shall I soon forget how proud Mrs. Aquila Jones was when
+a gentleman of the emperor's body-guard took her for Marguerite
+Bellanger in the Bois? Our men, not having the culture of costume to
+attend to, are perhaps a little in want of a stand-point. Still,
+we can play billiards in the Grand Hôtel and buy fans at the
+Palais Royal. We go out to Saint-Cloud on horseback, we meet at the
+minister's; and I contend that there was something conciliatory and
+national in a Southern colonel offering to take Bigelow to see
+Menken at the Gaîté, or when I saw some West Pointers and a nephew of
+Beauregard's lighting the pipe of peace at a handsome tobacconist's
+in the Rue Saint-Honoré. The consciousness that we have no longer a
+nationality, and that nobody respects us, adds a singular calm, an
+elevation, to our views. Composed as our cherished little society is
+of crumbs from every table under heaven, we have succeeded in forming
+a way of life where the crusty fortitude and integrity of patriotism
+is unnecessary. Our circle is like the green palace of the magpies in
+Musset's _Merle Blanc_, and like them we live "de plaisir, d'honneur,
+de bavardage, de gloire et de chiffons."
+
+[Illustration: THE FERRY.]
+
+[Illustration: JOVE'S THUNDER.]
+
+I confess that there was a period, between the fresh alacrity of a
+stranger's reception in the Colony and the settled habits I have
+now fallen into, when I was rather uneasy. A society of migrators, a
+system woven upon shooting particles, like a rainbow on the rain,
+was odd. Residents of some permanency, like myself, were constantly
+forming eternal friendships with people who wrote to them in a month
+or two from Egypt. In this way a quantity of my friendships were
+miserably lacerated, until I learned by practice just how much
+friendship to give. At this period I was much occupied with vain
+conciliations, concessions and the reconciling of inconsistencies. A
+brave American from the South, an ardent disciple of Calhoun, was a
+powerful advocate of State Rights, and advocated them so well that
+I was almost convinced; when it appeared one day that the right of
+States to individual action was to cease in cases where a living
+chattel was to escape from the South to the North.
+
+[Illustration: SCHOOL.]
+
+In this case the State, in violation of its own
+laws unrecognizant of that kind of ownership, was to account for the
+property and give it back, in obedience to general Congressional order
+and to the most advanced principles of Centralization. Before I
+had digested this pill another was administered to me in that
+small English section of our circle which gave us much pride and an
+occasional son-in-law. This was by no less a person than my dear old
+friend Berkley, now grown a ruddy sexagenarian, but still given to
+eating breakfast in his bath-tub. The wealthy Englishman, who had
+got rich by exporting china ware, was sound on the subject of free
+commerce between nations. That any industry, no matter how young might
+be the nation practicing it, or how peculiar the difficulties of its
+prosecution, should ever be the subject of home protection, he stamped
+as a fallacy too absurd to be argued. The journals venturing such
+an opinion were childish drivelers, putting forth views long since
+exploded before the whole world. He was still loud in this opinion
+when his little book of epigrams, _The Raven of Zurich and Other
+Rhymes_, came out, and being bright and saucy was reprinted in
+America. The knowledge that he could not tax on a foreign soil his own
+ideas, the plastic pottery of his brain, was quite too much for
+his mental balance, and he took to inveighing against free trade
+in literary manufactures without the slightest perception of
+inconsistency, and with all the warmth, if not the eloquence, of Mr.
+Dickens on the same theme. The gradual accumulation of subjects like
+these--subjects _taboo_ in gentle society--soon made it apparent that
+in a Colony of such diverse colors, where every man had a sore spot
+or a grievance, and even the Cinderellas had corns in their little
+slippers, harmony could only be obtained by keeping to general
+considerations of honor, nobility, glory, and the politics of
+Beloochistan; on which points we all could agree, and where Mr.
+Berkley's witty eloquence was a wonder.
+
+[Illustration: ON WITH THE DANCE!]
+
+It is to my uneasy period, when I was sick with private griefs and
+giddy with striving to reconcile incompatibilities, that the episode
+of the Chickens belongs. I was looking dissatisfied out of one of
+my windows. Hohenfels, disappointed of a promenade by an afternoon
+shower, was looking dissatisfied out of the other. Two or three
+people, waiting for four o'clock lunch, were lounging about. I had
+just remarked, I believe, that I was a melancholy man, for ever
+drinking "the sweet wormwood of my sorrows." A dark phantom, like that
+of Adamastor, stood up between me and the stars.
+
+"Nonsense, you ingrate!" responded the baron from his niche, "you are
+only too happy. You are now in the precise position to define my
+old conception of the Lucky Dog. The Lucky Dog, you know, in my
+vocabulary, is he who, free from all domestic cares, saunters up and
+down his room in gown and slippers, drums on the window of a rainy
+afternoon, and, as he stirs his evening fire, snaps his fingers at the
+world, saying, 'I have no wife nor children, good or bad, to provide
+for.'"
+
+[Illustration: ENDYMION.]
+
+I replied that I did not willingly give way to grief, but that the
+main-spring of my life was broken.
+
+"Did you ever try," spoke up a buxom lady from a sofa--it was the
+Frau Kranich, widow of the Frankfort banker, the same who used to give
+balls while her husband was drugged to sleep with opium, and now for
+a long time in Paris for some interminable settlement with Nathan
+Rothschild--"Did you ever try the tonic of a good action? _I_ never
+did, but they actually say it rejuvenates one considerably."
+
+I avowed that I had more faith in the study of Geography.
+Nevertheless, to oblige her, I would follow any suggestion.
+
+[Illustration: HOW THE MODERN DOG TREATS LAZARUS.]
+
+"Benefit the next person who applies to you."
+
+"Madame, I will obey."
+
+At this moment a wagon of singular appearance drew up before my
+windows. I knew it well enough: it was the vehicle of a handy,
+convenient man who came along every other morning to pick up odd jobs
+from me and my neighbors. He could tinker, carpenter, mend harness:
+his wife, seated in the wagon by his side, was good at a button, or
+could descend and help Josephine with her ironing. A visit at this
+hour, however, was unprecedented.
+
+As Charles was beginning a conversation under the hood of the wagon, I
+opened the window. "Come into the room," I said.
+
+Hohenfels maliciously opened his. "Come in," he added "Monsieur
+Flemming is especially anxious to do you a benefit."
+
+The man, uncovering, was now standing in the little garden before
+the house--a man with a face at once intelligent and candid, which is
+unfortunately rare among the poor rascals of his grade. Although still
+young, he was growing gray: his blouse, patched and re-sewed at all
+the seams, was clean and whole. Poverty had tested him, but had as yet
+picked no flaws in him. By this time my windows were alive with faces.
+
+The man, humble but not awkward, made two or three respectful bows.
+"Monsieur," he said to me, "I hope you are fond of chickens. I am
+desirous to sell you a fine pair."
+
+[Illustration: THE LAUGHING LACKEY.]
+
+Chickens for me! and what was it supposed I should do with them?
+At this point the voice of the Frau Kranich was heard, clear and
+malicious: "It is a bargain: bring them in."
+
+At the same time the canvas cover of the wagon puffed outward, giving
+issue to a heavy sigh.
+
+The man went to a sort of great cage in lattice-work occupying the
+back of the vehicle. Then he backed his wagon up to the sidewalk, and
+we saw, sitting on the cage and framed by the oval of the wagon-cover,
+a young woman of excellent features, but sadly pale. She now held the
+two chickens in her lap, caressing them, laying their heads against
+her cheek, and enwreathing them in the folds of her great shawl. I
+could only close the bargain with the utmost speed, to be safe from
+ridicule.
+
+"Your price?" I asked.
+
+"Fix it yourself, sir," said the man, determined to confuse me. "You
+are doubtless thoroughly acquainted with poultry."
+
+"The nankeen--colored one," spoke up again the bell-like and
+inexorable voice from the other window, "is a yellow Crèvecoeur,
+very well formed and lively-looking: the slate-colored one is a
+Cochin-China, with only a few of the white feathers lacking from
+the head. They are chef-d'oeuvres, and are worth fully forty francs
+apiece."
+
+"Only look, sir, at their claws and bills, see their tongues, and
+observe under their wings: they are young, wholesome and of fine
+strain--"
+
+He was running on when I stopped him: "Here are a hundred francs for
+you, brave man."
+
+The patchwork blouse cut a caper, a look of lively joy shot from
+the man's eyes, where a tear was gathering, and the wagon, from its
+bursting cover, gave utterance to a sob.
+
+"Why sell them," I asked, touched in spite of myself, "if you are so
+attached to them? Is the money indispensable to you? I might possibly
+make an advance."
+
+"Ah, you are a real Christian--you are now," said the honest Joliet,
+polishing his eyeball with his coat-cuff. "The good woman holds by
+them, it is true. Holy Virgin! it's she that has raised them, and I
+may say brooded over them in the coop. The eggs were for our salad
+when we had nothing better than nettles and sorrel. But, day in and
+night in, we have no other lodging than our wagon, and the wife is
+promising to give me a dolly; and if we don't take out the cage, where
+will the cradle go, sir?"
+
+[Illustration: THE PRESENT.]
+
+The calculation appeared reasonable. I received the birds, and they
+were the heroes, in their boudoir under the piano, of that night's
+conversazione.
+
+[Illustration: THE CONVALESCENT.]
+
+[Illustration: THE DIVIDED BURDEN.]
+
+How hard it is for a life cast upon the crowded shores of the Old
+World to regain the place once lost is shown by the history of my
+honest friend Joliet. Born in 1812, of an excellent family living
+twenty miles from Versailles, the little fellow lost his mother before
+he could talk to her. When he was ten years old, his father, who had
+failed after some land speculations, and had turned all he had into
+money, tossed him up to the lintel of the doorway, kissed him, put a
+twenty-franc gold-piece into his little pocket, and went away to
+seek his fortune in Louisiana: the son never heard of him more. The
+lady-president of a charitable society, Mademoiselle Marx, took pity
+on the abandoned child: she fed him on bones and occasionally beat
+him. She was an ingenious and inventive creature, and made her own
+cat-o'-nine-tails: an inventor is for ever demonstrating the merits
+of his implement. Soon, discovering that he was thankless and
+unteachable, she made him enter, as youngest clerk, the law-office
+of her admirer and attorney, Constabule. This gentleman, not finding
+enough engrossing work to keep the lad out of mischief, allowed him to
+sweep his rooms and blacken his boots. Little Joliet, after giving a
+volatile air to a great many of his employer's briefs by making paper
+chickens of them, showed his imperfect sense of the favors done him
+by absconding. In fact, proud and independent, he was brooding over
+boyish schemes of an honorable living and a hasty fortune. He soon
+found that every profession required an apprenticeship, and that an
+apprenticeship could only be bought for money. He was obliged, then,
+to seek his grand fortune through somewhat obscure avenues. If I
+were to follow my poor Joliet through all his transmigrations and
+metempsychoses, as I have learned them by his hints, allusions and
+confessions, I should show him by turns working a rope ferry, where
+the stupid and indolent cattle, whose business it is to draw men, were
+drawn by him; then letter-carrier; supernumerary and call-boy in a
+village theatre; road-mender on a vicinal route; then a beadle,
+a bell-ringer, and a sub-teacher in an infant school, where he
+distributed his own ignorance impartially amongst his little patrons
+at the end of a stick; after this, big drum in the New Year's
+festivals, and ready at a moment's opportunity to throw down the
+drumstick and plunge among the dancers, for Joliet was a well-hinged
+lad, and the blood of nineteen years was tingling in his heels. After
+fluttering thus from branch to branch, like the poor birdling that
+cannot take its flight, discouraged by his wretched attempts at life,
+he plunged straight before him, hoping for nothing but a turn of luck,
+driving over the roads and fields, lending a hand to the farmers,
+sleeping in stables and garrets, or oftener in the open air;
+sometimes charitably sheltered in a kind man's barn, and perhaps--oh
+bliss!--honestly employed with him for a week or two; at others rudely
+repulsed as a good-for-nothing and vagabond. Vagabond! That truly was
+his profession now. He forgot the charms of a fixed abode. He came
+to like his gypsy freedom, the open air and complete independence. He
+laughed at his misery, provided it shifted its place occasionally.
+
+[Illustration: SHARE MY CUP.]
+
+[Illustration: BREAKING STONES.]
+
+One day, when Hazard, his ungenerous guardian, seemed to have
+quite forgotten him, he walked--on an empty stomach, as the doctors
+say--past the lofty walls of a château. A card was placed at the gate
+calling for additional hands at a job of digging. Each workman, it
+was promised, had a right to a plate of soup before beginning. This
+article tempted him. At the gate a lackey, laughing in his face,
+told him the notice had been posted there six months: workmen were no
+longer wanted. "Wait, though," said the servant, and in another minute
+gave the applicant a horse!--a real, live horse in blood and bones,
+but in bones especially. "There," said the domestic, "set a beggar
+on horseback and see him ride to the devil!" And, laughing with that
+unalloyed enjoyment which one's own wit alone produces, he retired
+behind his wicket.
+
+[Illustration: SICKNESS AND COURTSHIP.]
+
+The horse thus vicariously fulfilling the functions of a plate of soup
+was a wretched glandered beast--not old, but shunned on account of the
+contagious nature of his disease. Having received the order to take
+him to be killed at the abattoir, monsieur the valet, having better
+things to do, gave the commission to Joliet, with all its perquisites.
+
+Joliet did not kill the steed: he cured it. He tended it, he drenched
+it, he saved it. By what remedy? I cannot tell. I have never been a
+farrier, though Joliet himself made me perforce a poulterer. Many a
+bit of knowledge is picked up by those who travel the great roads. The
+sharp Bohemian, by playing at all trades, brushing against gentry of
+all sorts and scouring all neighborhoods, becomes at length a living
+cyclopaedia.
+
+[Illustration: THE WAGON.]
+
+Joliet, like Democritus and Plato, saw everything with his own eyes,
+learned everything at first hand. He was a keen observer, and in our
+interviews subsequent to the affair of the chickens I was more than
+once surprised by the extent of his information and the subtlety of
+his insight. His wits were tacked on to a number of remote supports.
+In our day, when each science has become so complicated, so obese,
+that a man's lifetime may be spent in exercising round one of them,
+there are hardly any generalizers or observers fit to estimate their
+relativity, except among the two classes called by the world idlers
+and ignorants--the poets and the Bohemians.
+
+Joliet, now having joined the ranks of the cavalry, found his account
+in his new dignity. He became an orderly, a messenger. He carried
+parcels, he transported straw and hay. If the burden was too heavy for
+the poor convalescent, the man took his own portion with a good grace,
+and the two mutually aided each other on the errand. Thanks to his
+horse, the void left by his failure to learn a trade was filled up by
+a daily and regular task: what was better, an affection had crept into
+his heart. He loved his charge, and his charge loved him.
+
+This great hotel, the world, seemed to be promising entertainment then
+for both man and beast, when an epoch of disaster came along--a season
+of cholera. In the villages where Joliet's business lay the doors just
+beginning to be hospitable were promptly shut against him. Where the
+good townsmen had recognized Assistance in his person, they now saw
+Contagion.
+
+[Illustration: DINNER-TIME!]
+
+If he had been a single man, he could have lain back and waited for
+better times. But he now had two mouths to feed. He kissed his horse
+and took a resolution.
+
+He had never been a mendicant. "Beggars don't go as hungry as I have
+gone," said he. "But what will you have? Nobility obliges. My father
+was a gentleman. I have broken stones, but never the _devoirs_ of my
+order."
+
+He left the groups of villages among which his new industry had lain.
+The cholera was behind him: trouble, beggary perhaps, was before him.
+As night was coming on, Joliet, listlessly leading his horse, which he
+was too considerate to ride, saw upon the road a woman whom he took
+in the obscurity for a farmer's wife of the better class or a decent
+villager. For an introduction the opportunity was favorable enough.
+On her side, the _quasi_ farmer's wife, seeing in the dusk an honest
+fellow dragging a horse, took him for a "gentleman's gentleman" at
+the least, and the two accosted each other with that easy facility of
+which the French people have the secret. Each presented the other with
+a hand and a frank smile.
+
+[Illustration: FIDELITY.]
+
+Joliet, whom I have erred perhaps in comparing to Democritus, was
+nevertheless a laugher and a philosopher. But his grand ha-ha! usually
+infectious, was not shared on this occasion. The wanderer could not
+show much merriment. A sewing-woman with a capacity for embroidery,
+her needle had given her support, but now a sudden warning of
+paralysis, and symptoms of cholera added to that, had driven her
+almost to despair. She was without home, friend or profession.
+
+[Illustration: A LITTLE VISITOR.]
+
+Joliet set her incontinently on horseback, and walked by her side to
+a good village curé's two miles off--the same who had assisted him to
+his first communion, and for whom he subsequently became a beadle. The
+kind priest opened his arms to the man, his heart to the woman, his
+stable to the horse. For his second patient my Bohemian set in motion
+all his stock of curative ideas. In a month she was well, and the curé
+no longer had three pensioners, for of two of them he made one.
+
+Two poverties added may make a competence. Monsieur and Madame Joliet
+were good and willing. The man began to wear a strange not
+unbecoming air of solidity and good morals. The girls now saluted him
+respectfully when he passed through a village.
+
+One thing, however, in the midst of his proud honeymoon perplexed him
+much. Hardly married, and over head and ears in love, he knew not how
+to invite his bride to some wretched garret, himself deserting her to
+resume his former life in the open air. To give up the latter seemed
+like losing existence itself.
+
+One morning, as he asked himself the difficult question, a pair of
+old wheels at the door of a cartwright seemed of their own accord
+to resolve his perplexity. He bought them, the payment to be made in
+labor: for a week he blew the wheelwright's bellows. The wheels were
+his own: to make a wagon was now the affair of a few old boards and a
+gypsy's inventiveness.
+
+Thus was conceived that famous establishment where, for several years,
+lived the independent monarch and his spouse, rolling over the roads,
+circulating through the whole belt of villages around Paris, and
+carrying in their ambulant home, like the Cossacks, their utensils,
+their bed, their oven, their all.
+
+From town to town they carried packages, boxes and articles of barter.
+At dinner-time the van was rolled under a tree. The lady of the house
+kindled a fire in the portable stove behind a hedge or in a ditch. The
+hen-coop was opened, and the sage seraglio with their sultan prudently
+pecked about for food. At the first appeal they re-entered their cage.
+
+[Illustration: FRANCINE.]
+
+At the same appeal came flying up the dog of the establishment, a most
+piteous-looking griffin, disheveled, moulted, staring out of one eye,
+lame and wild. For devotion and good sense his match could be found
+nowhere. Like his horse, his wife, his house and the pins in his
+sleeve, Joliet had picked the collie up on the road.
+
+The arrival of a tiny visitor to the Bohemian's address made a
+change necessary. Little Francine's dowry was provided by my humorous
+acquisition of the yellow and slate-colored chickens.
+
+With his savings and my banknote Joliet determined to have a fixed
+residence. He succeeded of course. The walls, the windows, the doors,
+everything but the garden-patch, he picked up along the roads.
+
+[Illustration: "DON'T WRING MY HEART!"]
+
+Buried in eglantine and honeysuckle, soon no one would suspect the
+home-made character of Joliet's château. It became the centre of my
+botanizing excursions. Francine grew into a fair, slim girl, like the
+sweetest and most innocent of Gavarni's sketches, and sold flowers to
+the passers-by.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such were the souvenirs I had of this brave tavern-keeper in his old
+capacity of roadster and tramp. Now, after an hiatus of years, I
+found him before me in a different character at the beginning of my
+roundabout trips to Marly.
+
+But what had become of my favorite little rose-merchant?
+
+"Francine?" asked Joliet briskly, as if he was wondering whom I could
+mean by such a name. "You mean my wife? Poor thing! She is dead."
+
+"I am speaking of your daughter, Father Joliet."
+
+"Oh, my daughter, my girl Francine? She went to live with her
+godmother. It was ten years ago."
+
+"And you have not seen her since?"
+
+"Yes--yes--two years back. She has gone again."
+
+"To her godmother?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why so?"
+
+"Her godmother would not receive her. Don't wring my heart so, sir!"
+
+EDWARD STRAHAN.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+OUR HOME IN THE TYROL.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF TAUFERS VALLEY.]
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+We left the Hof one August Friday--we were not superstitious--a goodly
+company, sufficient to freight the rumbling old stage-wagon which
+jolted daily between Bruneck and Taufers, a distance of nine miles. At
+this village the sedater portion of the party were to settle down with
+books, pencils and drawing-paper until the Alpine visit should have
+been paid.
+
+The valley of Taufers, running northward with a grand vista to the
+north-west of the vast Zillerthal snow-fields, suggests at a distance
+the idea of a stern, joyless district. When in the broader Pusterthal
+the sunshine floods upland plain and slope, this important but narrow
+tributary valley lies steeped in its gloomy shade, the dark sides of
+the Sambock frowning grimly on the opposite shadowy Tesselberg. Great,
+therefore, was the surprise of some of the party to find, as we drove
+along, instead of melancholy solitude, prosperous villages basking in
+sunshine, whilst little children skipped merrily, and men and women
+worked amongst the golden stooks as if enjoying the labor of their
+hands. Yes, strange to say, effulgent sunshine everywhere on acre
+and meadow, and slanting down upon a wayside cottage garden, where
+a freshly-painted Christ lay drying between tall sunflowers. This
+cottage seemed the only shadow in this unexpectedly bright picture,
+for, occupied by a religious image-maker, crucifixes and wooden saints
+peeped wholesale out of the windows. Is it a want of sensibility in
+these poor Tyrolese peasants which causes them to cling tenaciously to
+such frightful material forms of religion, making them give prominence
+to every conceivable sign of sacred sorrow and suffering? But the
+jolting stage-wagon allowed us no time to analyze this painful,
+ever-recurring feature of the Tyrol. When we next looked up we
+saw above us, on a wooded crag, a square gray tower, which, once a
+stronghold, appears, as if exhausted with old age, to be tottering
+into the midst of lesser ruins.
+
+It was Neuhaus, once a fortress of the rigid old barons of Tuvers.
+Hugo, the sixth lord, died there in 1309, and in the chapel, which
+still stands, mass is said at stated periods for the salvation of his
+soul and the souls of his relations. The whole place would undoubtedly
+have been given over to the owls and the bats had not two adjacent
+springs--one of iron, the other of chalk and alum--been considered, a
+quarter of a century since, either as preventives or as cures for
+the cholera, then raging. A chalet was therefore planted on the rocks
+between the chapel and the castle, and a bath-house opened, which
+would probably be still much frequented on account of the beauty of
+the situation were the bath-owner only a little more attentive to the
+comfort of his humble guests.
+
+The valley, apparently so gloomy, proved not only cheerful, but full
+of romance and old-world memories. Other castles there were,
+perched gracefully on their crags; and thus, much sooner than we
+had anticipated, we found ourselves stopping at the Post in Taufers.
+Rather Sand in Taufers, the single appellation being used chiefly for
+the parent church, which, with a mortuary chapel and a house for
+the "young and sick," stands apart. Sand and Moritz, two prosperous
+villages, cluster with this group of buildings at the head of the
+valley, gathering like fiefs at the foot of the fine old castle, still
+one of the grandest feudal remains in ruin-bestrewn Tyrol. A third
+village, Müklen, though quite distinct, lies sufficiently near to
+deserve being included in the circle.
+
+The Post, in prospect of the increase of custom occasioned by the
+Pusterthal railway, had enlarged its borders during the past winter.
+Nor had it been deceived in the speculation, for, although only one
+up-and-down train in the day crawls along the valley, the news of the
+comfortable inn in the midst of beautiful scenery had already brought
+custom enough. Thus all our powers of persuasion were lost upon
+the handsome sister of the young wirth, a noted beauty of the
+neighborhood. "Their house was full already. Nine guests, who had
+never sent word beforehand, were quite out of the question, but the
+Herrschaft could be accommodated at the Elephant opposite, which was
+related to the Post."
+
+So, crossing over to the Elephant, the house being entirely empty,
+we found space and cleanliness, and might have found perfect comfort
+withal, had not the landlord and landlady proved in a perpetual state
+of somnolency, their few waking intervals being barely sufficient
+for the supply of the simplest wants. In spite of these and
+other unsatisfactory auspices, such as the tea being served in a
+soup-tureen, the stayers voted to remain at the Elephant in our
+absence, making up for all inward deficiencies by outdoor enjoyment.
+
+A country clown with an honest face, Ignaz by name, agreed for a
+trifle to carry our bundles and ample provision of food to the Olm. He
+made a serious matter of it, however, when he pertinaciously insisted
+on four in the morning being the hour for starting. The dispute
+finally ended by the agreement to allow Ignaz to carry our belongings
+at the hour he chose, seeing that all the village was ready to take an
+affidavit as to his honesty, and we being allowed the same freedom of
+choice for ourselves. All having thus been comfortably arranged, we
+sallied forth for an evening stroll.
+
+A turn in the quiet village street soon revealed the great massive
+castle on its plateau of rock--shattered towers, broken battlements,
+oriel and bay windows jutting out here and there, its bulwarks running
+down the precipice, but not, as formerly, shutting in the narrow gorge
+leading into the Ahrnthal, a busy, populous valley, closed in its turn
+by the snow-clad bulk of the Tauern, down which, on the farther side,
+the noted Kriml waterfall plunges. Remembering, from a visit paid to
+the castle in the former year, that an easy winding road, shaded
+by trees and commanding splendid mountain-views, led through the
+fortifications by the back of the castle to the great gateway, we
+chose it in preference to the steep, perpendicular path, which, always
+taken by the natives, led equally to the drawbridge and main entrance.
+To our extreme regret, however, we soon found our course impeded by
+the huge trunks of mighty pine trees lying in a perfect pell-mell
+above and on both sides of us. A glance up the hillside showed scores
+more of these slain giants. To proceed was almost hopeless, and
+we were forced to rest upon some timber and mark our future course
+between piles oozing with turpentine.
+
+Whilst we were engaged in our calculations, an old crone, who had
+been groping about in the crevices for chips and sticks, stopped, and
+seeing us thus penned in by tree boles, eyed us with a compassionate
+look. "Ja, ja!" said she, "with fallen trees all jumbled together it
+is hard for the Herrschaft to move on; but it's harder for us poor
+folks, who have seen the trees growing here ever since we were born,
+to hear day and night the axe going hack, hack, and the trees come
+thudding down. Sixteen strong Welschers from a distance do the work:
+they knew well enough a Taufern would have looked long at the sixers
+(ten-kreuzer pieces) before he would have shorn the mighty forests.
+Look you!" and she pointed to the sky. "As far as you can see they are
+felling."
+
+We looked, and sure enough the vast woods that clothed the lofty
+mountainsides were being ruthlessly cleared away. We suggested that a
+protest should be made.
+
+"Oh, na, na! The woods are none of ours. The graf de Ferraris too has
+sold the estate to a gesellschaft from Vienna. They care nothing for
+the castle, but are hungry for timber. The count lives a long way
+off, and does not feel it, but it must eat the heart of his aged
+lady mother to the fibres--she lives in the village--to know that
+foreigners are sweeping down masses of trees by wholesale--trees that
+have always kept the poor man's noodles boiling. And where are the
+planks to come from for our houses, our barns, our stables? And how
+can the cattle be kept from straying without fences of wood? Then,
+too, avalanches of snow and of stones will fall, and maybe overwhelm
+the village. Thanks to the Mother of God! they will drop on my grave,
+but, Lord Jesus, the children and the children's children!"
+
+Having given us these sad scraps of information, and heaving a
+big sigh, the poor old soul lifted up her bundle of chips and went
+fumbling forward over her stumbling-blocks.
+
+Sad and true was the picture which she had drawn. Nor does it,
+alas! belong exclusively to Taufers, but to the whole Tyrol. In many
+instances the people are themselves eager for this reckless clearing.
+They hope thereby to secure more pasturage, the feeding and rearing
+of cattle being the great idea of wealth to the Tyroler. So they make
+ready money of their timber, which now in the form of masts floats on
+the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal. The Venetians, requiring timber,
+have turned the once beautiful, richly-wooded Dalmatia into a dreary,
+barren land. In the Tyrol it is not generally foreigners, but the
+natives, who unhesitatingly sweep away woods, which, causing grass and
+plants to grow, have enabled human habitations to be erected on spots
+that would otherwise be but dreary wildernesses, the battle-fields of
+chilling winds and scorching sunshine. The precious timber, which like
+refuse they cart into the clumsy yawning craters called stoves, or
+else sell out of the country for economy so called, might not only
+supply the land for centuries with a proper amount of fuel, either as
+wood or charcoal, but bring prosperity to many a sequestered village
+if turned into tools and kitchen utensils, whilst still leaving
+thousands of trees for export. "The supply has never failed yet," say
+the Tyrolese: "why should we replant forests to have to cut them down
+again, when the ground, too, is good for grass or corn?" So the axe
+lies ruthlessly at the root of every tree, for a heavy reckoning
+hereafter to the Tyroler.
+
+With a weighing and balancing over every step which we took worthy
+of a diplomatist, we finally stood upon the drawbridge of the castle.
+Here the savage customs of the rude days in which it was built
+immediately impress the beholder. Traces remain of the ponderous iron
+portcullis, heavy wooden bars, arrow-holes, and slits in the masonry
+for the pouring of boiling water or oil upon adverse knight or lordly
+freebooter. A steep path leads through two great entrance-gates into
+the large inner court, which is erected upon the virgin rock. A roof
+of old wooden shingles shelters the well, and ancient rotting timber
+mingles everywhere with the impervious stone in the massive buildings
+of the castle, conveying a sense of weakness and decay in the midst of
+the strongest durability.
+
+Not only was the old castle dismantled, but apparently entirely
+abandoned this summer evening. We were preparing to return without
+seeing the interior when a little maiden arrived from the village, who
+with flushed face and timid mien drew the castle key from under a
+big stone, stood on tiptoe and turned the heavy lock, and the door
+creaking on its hinges we were left to wander at our will through
+old wainscoted rooms in the dreamy twilight. No spirit of modern
+restoration had ever reached them: they were allowed to remain just
+as inconvenient, but also just as quaint, as on the day of their
+erection. There were gloomy recesses enough, but there were likewise
+graceful carvings, mottoes, rare tracery and wood-work; while, strange
+to say, in several chambers grotesque wooden birds were suspended from
+the ceiling like malformed ducks, conveying at first no idea of the
+Holy Dove which the old lords had desired to symbolize, yet probably
+in those unquiet days their best conception of this emblem of peace.
+
+The barons not only fought, squabbled and feasted, but prayed too
+in their fashion; so we came upon the chapel, disfigured by barbaric
+effigies, tawdry ornamentation and flimsy modern artificial flowers.
+It is still used for the weekly mass which, as at Neuhaus, is read
+here for the peace of the turbulent lords of Tuvers. Still, within
+the memory of man a hermit occupied some narrow chambers adjoining the
+chapel. He had retired amongst these ruins of transitory greatness to
+warn his fellow-creatures against carnal passions, prayed for the dead
+and shrived the living. The old anchorite has passed, we hope, into
+heavenly repose, but cinders, which may almost be called holy ashes,
+still lie scattered on his deserted little hearth.
+
+The banqueting-hall, a fine though low room, supported on solid
+rounded arches, contains innumerable flour-and corn-bins, which,
+though dating from the Middle Ages, are still in perfect condition.
+Here knight and baron caroused, here mummers have played and bears
+have danced, whilst sword and spur clanked upon the rude stone floor.
+In the ladies' bower above many a minne-singer has struck his lyre.
+Nay, Oswald von Wolkenstein, a prince amongst troubadours, wearing
+his golden chain and brilliant orders, has brought tears from many a
+gentle eye as he sang to his harp his pathetic elegies, the cruelty of
+Sabina his lady, and his adventures in England, Spain and Persia.
+He was a noble, courtly knight, conversing in French, Moorish,
+Catalonian, Castilian, German, Latin, Wendisch, Lombardic and Russian;
+and his bones lie in the great cloister of Neustift, not half a day's
+journey from Taufers.
+
+How often, too, has the shrill sound of the bugle called to feats
+of arms in the court, to hawking and hunting in valley and
+mountain-forest! How many a crusader against Turk, infidel, _Prussian_
+and _Hussite_ has crossed the wooden drawbridge upon his war-horse!
+Yes, and what an excitement in the noble Catholic household when in
+the adjoining Ahrnthal the peasants, becoming enamored of Lutheranism,
+rose in the peasant war of 1525! How darkly, too, must they have
+painted the fanatical bauer Barthlmä Duregger of St. Peter's in the
+Ahrnthal, who, after being taken prisoner, escaped near their
+postern gate to circulate threats of fire and murder throughout the
+neighborhood, vowing to reduce Bruneck to ashes! Reappearing with a
+band of twelve poachers and twenty-six laborers, and accompanied
+by Peter Baszler of Antholz, he robbed and plundered the clergy,
+stripping the worthy priest Andreas Spaat of all his worldly goods,
+so that he died in the utmost poverty. Although much blood was shed
+in their pursuit, this lawless, misguided man and his band were never
+taken. Great as their sin would naturally seem to the noble family at
+the castle, no less lamentable and equally worthy of torture and
+death would the heretics of Bruneck appear. About the same time the
+sacrilegious books, as they were called, of Zwingli and Luther were
+sold there openly, conventicle hymns were sung in the streets, and the
+priest Stephan Gobi preached against the holy doctrine of confession
+and the invocation of saints; whilst the schoolmaster Bartholomew
+Huber, though he could not find time to teach the children the
+catechism, puzzled their innocent minds with Virgil's _Georgics_ and
+Cicero's _Letters_. Toward the end of the sixteenth century the heresy
+was suppressed, when the lords and ladies of Taufers Castle sang no
+doubt a triumphant Te Deum in their chapel. The inmates were not then
+barons of Tuvers proper, for the title having early become extinct
+the castle passed into many noble hands, sometimes reaching those of
+royalty. Such a booty never remained unoccupied, until, coming
+into the possession of Hieronymus, count of Ferraris, in 1685, his
+descendants gradually permitted it to fall into ruin, its evil days
+culminating under the present count, who sold the estate a few years
+since to a speculating company, who merely value it for the timber.
+The rooms which still remain habitable are tenanted by peasants and by
+the sixteen pitiless wood-cutters.
+
+Seven o'clock the next morning found Frau Anna, E----, the two
+Margarets and our good Moidel bound full of life and spirits for the
+Eder Olm. We had soon left the village of Moritz behind us, and were
+climbing a shady wood-path, when we met a peasant-woman with her
+daughter, and she exclaimed, "What! Herrschaft going to Rein! What big
+eyes they will make over the stones!"
+
+Sure enough, very big eyes were made by some of the Herrschaft. After
+ascending to a meadow amphitheatre, then resting in a sunny wood,
+redolent of pine odors, near the foundations of a ruined stronghold,
+the Burgkofel, we came upon a realm of gigantic boulders. Some, in
+the shape of huge granite slabs, formed a rude, continuous broadway;
+others, scarred and furrowed, but softened and beautified by golden
+and silver lichen, torn by storms and snow from the cyclopean
+mountain-walls, were scattered topsy-turvy on either hand; many had
+become lodged in the river, where they carried on a steady defence
+against the tumultuous Giessbach, which, having its rise in mountains
+ten thousand feet high, leapt, foaming milky white, over and between
+them, forming a long series of bold cascades for a distance of half a
+dozen miles. The road continued by the boisterous rapids, hemmed in on
+the other hand by woods and threatening mountain-walls. The thunder of
+the waters prevented continuous conversation: we therefore admired in
+silence the grandeur of the scene and the magnificent glimpses which
+slight curves in the road afforded ever and anon of neighboring
+mountain-peaks and wooded valleys below.
+
+No carriage of any kind can ascend this road. It would be difficult
+indeed for horses; nevertheless, the herds of cattle traverse it
+in the journey to and from the Olm, their hoofs being able to find
+foothold on the rock. Moidel said that the cattle were so delighted
+to go to the Alps for the summer after the winter's confinement in
+the stall that they made the journey with a kind of joyful impatience,
+going on still more eagerly as they approached the end. "Not so,
+however," added Moidel, "with the pigs. I have often sat and cried on
+these rocks at their perverse ways when I have had to bring them up.
+They would only stand still and grunt while I begged and prayed and
+pushed. When they reached the top a new spirit soon seized them: they
+were here, there and everywhere--in a week's time leaping like goats,
+as if they had taken to wine."
+
+We made the climb slowly, and noon was long passed when we reached
+the saw-mills, the first houses in the mountain parish of St. Wolfgang
+or Rein. The busy, purring mills stood on the edge of the Sarine at
+the extremity of a flat mountain-valley intersected by innumerable
+brooks, which, continually overflowing, turn it constantly into a
+lake. The grass had been under water a week previously, but was now
+sufficiently dry for us to sit and rest. Whilst we were so doing,
+Ignaz, our _träger_, stood before us, his empty basket on his back.
+
+"The barn is swept and garnished in readiness for the Herrschaft, and
+their bundles and parcels are arranged there in beautiful order--many
+bundles, and far heavier than they looked last night." Ignaz, however,
+was of opinion that though the pay was small the gentry meant well
+by him, and therefore he had not scrupled to take the food the worthy
+farmer's wife had offered him, leaving the Christian soul to be repaid
+by the gentlefolks when they came. And, moreover, he had advised the
+landlord at Rein that the gentry were passing through, so that they
+should not fail to find eatables ready, seeing hunger and weariness
+were best consoled by food.
+
+After which communication we regarded Ignaz as much less a clown than
+he looked. Pushing forward, we soon saw the little inn shining forth
+a mile farther up the valley--a small white chalet, with the
+pink-checked feather beds hanging to air in the upper gallery.
+
+Moidel looked grave over the dinner which the interposition of Ignaz
+had prepared for us. "The place is called Rein (clean)," she said,
+"but it is none of the cleanest. A Graf once reached Rein, and he
+thought it so pastoral that he asked at the inn for a drink of new
+milk, but the landlord shook his head and asked for other orders,
+seeing there was none in the house. Then the Graf said he would take
+cream, but the landlord shook his head and asked for other orders.
+Fresh eggs? Yes, the landlord said there were eggs, and begged him to
+step into the zechstube until they were boiled. When they came they
+made the very room smell, and the Graf in disgust ordered wine. This
+was speedily forthcoming, but with so dirty a glass that the Graf,
+making a long face, angrily called for the reckoning and departed."
+
+After Moidel's tale, and certain recollections of our own concerning
+the little hostel last year, we all approached the house with very
+humble expectations. The wirth, already on the lookout, received
+Moidel and two of the party as old friends, and hearing no nay he
+marshaled us up stairs, and flinging open a bed-room door, looked
+proudly triumphant as even Moidel uttered an exclamation of surprise.
+
+Whether constant reminders from his neighbors of the Graf's
+unfortunate visit, or a wave of civilization from the Pusterthal had
+reached this secluded mountain-inn, certain it is that twelve months
+had wrought a marvelous change here. Whilst the rest of the house
+remained rough, dirty and primitive, the landlord had devoted all
+his powers of taste and judgment upon this upper chamber. Leaning
+complacently against the door, he received our congratulations on the
+pretty ceiling and walls of carved deal wainscot, on the grand new
+bed, and the bouquet of fresh Edelweiss in a wash-basin, but showed
+surprise that the fiery tigers and gliding serpents which in a couple
+of gilt frames adorned the walls received no flattering comments from
+our lips. He next displayed a visitors' book, containing already some
+half dozen names, watching closely the astonishment it should produce
+in us as he prepared the table for our meal. But even the study of the
+names had to be interrupted, for he had purchased some steel knives
+and forks, which were, he considered, to bring him great credit and
+reputation; nor could he complete his work without hinting at the
+superiority of his table-cloth and napkins. Fortunately, a call from
+below that the pancakes were ready enabled us to have a little laugh
+to ourselves. Linen being used in all peasant houses, he had discarded
+it as vulgar, wearing himself an unbleached cotton shirt with an
+incipient frill, and supplying his guests with a table-cloth and
+napkins of the same material from an empty wash-basin.
+
+We had already discussed two dishes of hot pancakes--really worthy of
+commendation--enjoyed an hour's rest, taken coffee, and were rising to
+depart, when the landlady appeared with a hop, skip and jump. She was
+a lively, voluble little woman, who, though she had attired herself
+for us in two enormous cloth petticoats, a stuff bodice and yards of
+Bohemian lace in frills and ruffles, by way of displaying the wealth
+of her wardrobe, bobbed and curtseyed as if set on wires. Great was
+the difficulty, between the amusing, friendly wife and the husband
+proud of her and his inn, either to pay our bill or get away. They
+declared there was no hurry about the reckoning, and pressed us still
+to stay. Seeing our resolution, the wirth with a sigh produced a brown
+painted board from under his arm, a piece of chalk from his pocket,
+made the bill, gave us change out of a tea-cup, and amidst reiterated
+invitations to return if not satisfied with the barn, we tore
+ourselves away, their friendly good-byes and good wishes floating
+after us.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+We now left the Reinthal and turned into the side-valley of
+Bachernthal. It was the 17th of August, but the little plots of corn
+still waved long and green, giving a feeling of early summer. We
+were in a perfect paradise of an Alpine valley. Before us the great
+near-lying mountains, the princely Hoch Gall and the Gross Lengstein
+Glacier, shone like molten silver against the intense blue sky, whilst
+the Schnebige Nock rose pure and isolated across the narrow valley,
+suggesting to one of the party the simile of the swan-breasted maiden
+of Northern mythology.
+
+After passing several chalets we came to that of the Eder Olm. It
+belonged to the Hofbauer, and was occupied by his _pächter_ or bailiff
+the year round. Here, too, was the barn which we were to use as
+our night-quarters during our stay. It was a great wooden building,
+divided into three compartments, one being two-thirds filled with hay,
+on which we were intended to sleep. It was true that Josef the pächter
+had succeeded by means of sweeping and a little arrangement in making
+the barn really attractive; but, alas! alas! we had hardly begun
+preparing our beds when the horrible discovery was made that under the
+surface the hay was soaking wet. Josef could hardly be blamed for not
+telling us, as in the Tyrol the people regard lying on wet or dewy
+grass as a natural system of hydropathy.
+
+We had not shawls and cloaks enough to construct beds upon the barn
+floor, and the pächter's house, though substantial, was but a dark
+den, already stuffed full with wife and children. Must we, then,
+really return to the inn at Rein with its ornamental snakes and lions?
+
+It was dusk out of doors, but pitch dark within, save for the dim,
+uncertain light of a horn lantern, and, all regularly worn out with
+our ten miles' climb, we sighed for bed. It was futile, however,
+simply to exchange expressions of dismay; so, groping about, to our
+joy we alighted suddenly upon several bundles of clean, fresh straw
+stowed away in the farthest recess of the opposite division. In a
+trice a dangerous corn-chopping machine had been removed, the straw
+loosened and spread out, and, covered with shawls and water-proof, it
+formed as comfortable a great bed of Ware as ever weary bones could
+desire. Forming a row, the tired wanderers were soon sleeping
+the sleep of five just persons, the sound of several neighboring
+waterfalls soothing rather than disturbing slumber.
+
+In the early morning it was put to the vote and carried that eider
+down and spring mattresses were useless innovations after luxurious
+straw, and that whilst some benighted people might regard us as having
+been in purgatory, we had been in paradise, and hoped to be there
+again within twenty-four hours. And the barn, too! How poor in
+comparison seemed a conventional house on this sweet Sunday morning!
+We had prudently filled all the large apertures in the eaves and
+wooden sides the night before with hay, but there were plenty of
+crevices for the sun to peep in by, whilst with wafts of mountain-air
+it entered freely by the folding barn door as Moidel gently passed in
+and out, on breakfast matters intent. Corn- and grain-bins, sieves,
+flails and ladders pleased us better for the nonce than formal
+furniture, although none the less convenient did we find the great
+square wooden table and the benches which the pächter had thoughtfully
+placed on the threshing-floor which formed the central division.
+
+[Illustration: SCHLOSS TAUFERS.]
+
+On one side of the barn a small room had been boarded off. It
+contained empty milk-pans, ox-bells, old ropes and cords, together
+with two chests and two pairs of men's strong leather boots.
+This, Moidel suggested, should be used as joint store-room and
+dressing-room. Fortunately, however, we had applied it to neither
+requirement, when a singular occurrence took place which might be
+classed as a ghost-story at night or an optical delusion by day. The
+great barn-door quietly opened, Moidel having gone out and shut it,
+and two figures--one in soiled homespun shirt and _loden_ trousers,
+wooden clogs, with a little black leather skull-cap on his head and a
+pipe in his mouth; the other older, in leather breeches, brown knitted
+worsted jacket, and an old black silk handkerchief tied round his
+neck--glided in. We could have sworn that they were Jakob and the old
+senner Franz, but no response came to our exclamation of recognition,
+and in a second they had vanished into the said little room, where all
+remained, however, as silent as before. Two of us now began even to
+doubt, but the other two were positive, that figures had floated
+in. Ten minutes later the mystery was solved by the identical Jakob,
+attended by Franz, reappearing from the chamber, not, however, in
+the hard-working dress in which they had entered, but in full
+Sunday array, the leather boots upon their feet and broad-brimmed,
+flower-bedecked beavers in their hands. Poor Jakob! sore must
+have been his perplexity when, in the hope of slinking into his
+wardrobe-room unobserved, we had come open-eyed upon him in his soiled
+array. At the cost of apparent rudeness, arising chiefly from shyness,
+he had silently disappeared, the old servant following his example.
+Now, however, they could both freely welcome us to the Olm, expressing
+the pleasure it would give them to accompany us to the senner huts on
+their return with Moidel at ten o'clock from church.
+
+This was Jakob's first introduction to Frau Anna and E----. He eyed
+them closely and silently for some minutes; then said, "I like them:
+they look good!" and so they went to mass.
+
+The barn and chalet called Eder formed part of the Hofbauer's lower
+Alp, where a little later in the season the cattle were brought down
+for several weeks of pasturage before they descended to their winter
+home. We were now bound in company with the returning church-goers for
+the group of senner huts belonging to the larger still more elevated
+tract, which the Hofbauer rented in company with five other bauers.
+Leaving the meadows very shortly after quitting our night-quarters,
+where we seemed already in the very bosom of the snow-mountains, we
+began again to ascend through a wood of primeval pines and fir trees,
+long gray moss hanging from their hoary branches like patriarchs'
+beards, whilst round their stems, amidst a chaos of rocks, were spread
+the softest carpets of moss and lichen. In the centre of the wood,
+where an opening covered with the finest turf afforded an agreeable
+resting-place, as usual a cross--that most familiar object in a
+Tyrolese landscape--had been erected. In this instance, more striking
+and melancholy than ever, for this general point of attraction to
+peasants seemed here, in the very heart of the mountains, to be
+forgotten and despised. Small in size, as if wood had been grudged
+in this land of wood, the writing on the cross erased by storms,
+the dissevered arms and limbs were painfully scattered on the sward
+below--type indeed as of a powerless Saviour unable to save or to
+bless. Indeed, so offensive and discordant did this pitiable emblem
+appear, and in such mocking contrast to the sublimity of the scene,
+that we spoke of it to Moidel, as, laden with our eatables, she came
+slowly up behind. "Ah," she replied, "it is not that the cross is
+left unregarded, nor is it age which has thus damaged it, but the wild
+storms and lasting snows. A new cross is often erected, but it has not
+long been exposed before it is again utterly defaced. The herdsmen
+and senners, however, see the meaning under it, and it keeps them
+straight, Fräulein."
+
+Well-intentioned but slow of apprehension, these poor peasants cling
+to a carved Christ, and feel a horrible alarm, as if you were offering
+them a vacant creed, when you touch upon anything higher. Thus Moidel,
+though very intelligent, looked somewhat grave and quiet until the
+woods opened and she had to point out the senner huts. These were rude
+but very picturesque log cabins, built in a clearing amongst a steep
+chaos of rocks, with the glaciers and the majestic peak of the
+Hoch Gall shining above all. Five were dwelling-houses, the rest
+cattle-sheds and barns: our people's hut was the highest of the group,
+and we had a long climb over the boulders before we reached it.
+
+Seeing us approaching, good old Franz, who had gone forward in
+advance, fastened on his apron and fried marvelous monograms and
+circles of cream batter, of which we, the guests, were soon partaking
+in the best room, otherwise the store-room and dairy. The hut was
+divided into two compartments, both entered by adjoining doors from
+the outside. Seated on milking-stools in somewhat dangerous proximity
+to pans of rich cream, balls of butter and cheeses, the salt and
+meal-bin served as our dining table. In the kitchen, Franz, resting
+from his successful culinary labors, sat with Moidel and Jakob by the
+hearth, where huge blocks of stone kept the fire in compass, the smoke
+curling out of the door, and enjoyed in return some of our ham, wine
+and almond cake.
+
+[Illustration: HAPPY SOULS IN PARADISE.]
+
+The hut was close quarters, even for the two ordinary inmates: there
+were, however, innumerable contrivances for stowing away all kinds of
+useful things, besides notches in the thick wooden partition for hands
+and feet when at night they crept to their burrow of hay under the
+low eaves. Everything with the exception of the old stone floor was
+scrupulously clean: without, the pigs dabbled in the mire between
+the rugged rocks, and nettles grew, but beyond, mountains, woods and
+illimitable space were spread in uninterrupted fullness.
+
+Resting after dinner at a little distance from the huts, we learned
+from Jakob, who was full of excitement on the subject, that shortly
+after we left the inn at Rein the preceding evening a gentleman
+from Bohemia arrived. He immediately communicated to the wirth his
+intention of ascending one of the three great mountains rising from
+the Bachernthal, either the Hoch Gall (11,283 feet high), the Wild
+Gall or the Schnebige Nock, both some thousand feet lower, but perhaps
+even more attractive, as still possessing the charm of untrodden
+summits. The wirth consequently sent for a fine, clever young fellow,
+Johann Ausserkofer, a friend of Jakob's, and whose home we had passed
+on the previous night before reaching the Eder Olm. He had ascended
+the Hoch Gall with two gentlemen in the August of the former year,
+and now recommended an attempt at the still virgin Wild Gall. The
+arrangement being speedily made, for extra help and security Johann
+fetched his younger brother, Josef, as a companion, and the little
+party started by torchlight at two o'clock in the morning.
+
+Jakob now produced a telescope, through which he hoped we might detect
+moving figures amongst the snow of the Wild Gall. In vain we strained
+our eyes through the greasy old telescope, for neither moving figures
+nor stationary black dots were visible. Even Jakob with his eagle
+eye confessed to seeing no trace of man either amongst the irregular
+ash-colored rocks or upon the snowy curves of the Wild Gall, which,
+like a huge white-crested breaker at sea, upheaved itself in the air
+as in the very act of turning. Quite as solitary and untrodden did
+it look as its still more stately sister, the Hoch Gall, a mountain
+deservedly the especial pride of the district, its lofty pinnacle
+piercing the sky, whilst a vast sheet of thick, pure snow hung
+straight and smooth down its concave sides, a huge mountain-buttress
+linking the lower portion of this snow pyramid to the white,
+glittering expanse of the Gross Lengstein Glacier--a buttress of
+many thousand feet, standing prominently forth like an antediluvian
+monster, on whose gigantic pachydermatous flanks the shattered,
+blasted stems of dead uniform fir trees shone out a silvery gray,
+mingling in color with the loose, glittering débris which had slidden
+into the upland valley just below. Two silver threads descending from
+the glaciers of the Hoch Gall wound through these fallen stones into
+the green turf of the Bachernthal, but whether formed of snow or water
+it would have been difficult to decide, had not ever and anon a sound
+as of a distant train been borne upon the breeze, proving them to be
+brooks, which helped to swell the roaring, tumbling Giessbach, whose
+boisterous acquaintance we had already made.
+
+The Hoch Gall, which has been twice ascended, was first attempted in
+1869 by a very adventurous, clever young Alpine climber, Karl Hofmann,
+the only son of a well-known physician of Munich--a youth of whom it
+is said that no study was too difficult, no danger too great, no
+peak too high for him. Innumerable were the mountains which he scaled
+between 1866 and 1870, and of which he wrote excellent, accurate
+descriptions: then laying down his young life--he was but
+twenty-three--on September 2, 1870, in the fierce battle of Sedan, his
+spirit passed away to mightier slopes, to more delectable mountains.
+
+Again, in the August of 1871, after our first visit to the Olm, the
+ascent was repeated by two other members of the Tyrolese Alpine Club,
+Herr Richter and Herr Strüdl. They brought with them two experienced
+men--one the chief guide of the Gross Glockner, the other of the
+Venediger Spitze--and, except for Hofmann's written description, had
+to plan and calculate for themselves, there being no local knowledge
+of the mountain attainable, as the two guides who accompanied the
+young explorer were also dead.
+
+Although well provided with their own guides, they thought it right
+to take some active young man of the neighborhood with them, in order
+that he in his turn might help future climbers. At the recommendation
+of the landlord of Rein--who on this important occasion commenced
+his visitors' book--they chose for the purpose Jakob's friend, Johann
+Ausserkofer. They started by torchlight one Monday morning, and after
+a steep climb through a wild mountain-forest on the opposite side of
+the Bachernthal, crossing a vast glacier and the crevasse between the
+Hoch Gall and the Wild Gall, began the real ascent, which proved so
+perpendicular as to be achieved principally with the aid of ropes.
+After a toilsome nine hours and a quarter they had the good fortune to
+reach the summit in safety. The weather was favorable, and the view,
+in Richter's opinion, far surpassed the much-vaunted panorama from the
+Kriml Tauern. A long rest, and raising a cromlech in memory of their
+bold achievement, and then the steep descent over snow and glaciers
+was effected, and St. Wolfgang reached after fourteen hours of toil
+and great danger.
+
+[Illustration: CROSSING THE TORRENT.]
+
+At half-past four, Jakob, having crossed the valley in search of his
+oxen, came upon the Bohemian gentleman--whose name afterward proved to
+be Dr. Hecht--with the two Ausserkofers, and learned their adventures
+in the ascent of the Wild Gall. After clambering over steep, slippery
+glaciers they had begun the climb proper at five o'clock in the
+morning, Dr. Hecht pushing forward in order to be the first human
+being who had ever placed his foot upon the summit of the mountain.
+He had indeed almost reached the highest point when a dark, terrific
+chasm suddenly yawned beneath him, entirely cutting off all farther
+progress. The three explorers, although considerably dejected by
+the disagreeable check and the waste of labor and time which it
+had involved, determining not to be baffled, resolved to make a
+considerable détour. After having, with much trouble, reached a lower
+plateau, they attacked the precipitous, almost invincible mountain
+from another side, the still early hour of the day alone permitting
+the renewal of the attempt. Leaving their telescope and provisions to
+await their return, they boldly scrambled, crept and worked their way
+up the scaly side, and finally reached the summit in safety. The view
+thence they declared to be magnificent. They too raised a cromlech,
+and then a giddy descent followed. However, all three were full of
+spirits when Jakob met them, and the Ausserkofers declared that they
+were ready henceforth to pilot any other tourist to the summit for a
+moderate four or five gulden apiece.
+
+Jakob, as herdsman, had left us at three o'clock to look after the
+cattle, we strolling with him as far as a wild old wood which formed a
+strange contrast to this Sunday afternoon, as lovely an August day as
+ever rejoiced the earth. The near yet unattainable Hoch Gall glittered
+coldly white between the stems and branches of gigantic pines, which,
+scathed and bleached by lightning and storm, rose in the form of
+ruined towers or lay tumbled about in the wildest, dreariest confusion
+amongst the rugged enormous rocks, fit emblems of the forest in
+the Inferno inhabited by the souls of the lost. Nor was this stern,
+forbidding scene enlivened when a melancholy man, carrying the dead
+body of a goat across his shoulders, crossed the torrent on a fallen
+tree and advanced slowly up the craggy path, followed by a little boy
+timidly picking his way behind.
+
+"Ach, Mathies, in God's name, another goat!" said Moidel, lifting
+her eyes from a little book, the life of the odd, humane Joseph II.,
+which, bought for a few kreuzers at a fair, was worth as many guldens
+in the pleasure which it gave her.
+
+The man glanced from under his eyebrows, and answered with a sigh,
+"_Gott hat's so wölln, Diendl_" ("God would have it so, maiden"); and
+then he added in dialect, "It was a beautiful creature. I missed it in
+the reckoning last night. After mass I strode far and wide searching
+it, until an hour since I found the body hanging by a hind hoof from a
+cleft in the Auvogl Nock. See, it has broken its leg in its struggles.
+Ah, poor beast! A solitary, cruel death, _und hast ma g'nomma mei
+Ruah_" ("and it has taken my rest from me").
+
+"Poor Mathies! his half dozen goats are all that he has in the world.
+He rents one of father's huts, but since he has brought them to the
+Olm two or three are already dead." This Moidel explained to us as he
+moved dejectedly forward. "Father, however, told him that our Olm was
+bad for goats. They not only slip from the rocks, but grow thin and
+weakly. Just the reverse of the cattle. Onkel Johann--there is no one
+so deep as he in cattle--says that every blade of grass on our Olm is
+worth half a pint of milk. And it's not the air, nor the water,
+nor the winds that make it wholesome, but some law that he cannot
+understand. Who can? There is Jagdhaus, a wonderfully fertile
+_sennerei_ an hour beyond Rein. It is far finer than our Olm, which
+is so mountainous that timid new-comers amongst the cattle must first
+teach themselves to walk about; but at Jagdhaus, which is as large
+as a village, all the land is smooth, fat pasturage for miles. Yet
+a curse rests on the place for which neither priests nor farmers can
+account. Some seasons, it is true, all goes well, but in others the
+cattle are suddenly bitten, fall dead, and their flesh then turns
+black and rustles like paper. Some say that it is an insect or animal
+that attacks them; others, that it is caused by the grass which they
+eat; and there are again others who are sure that it is a phantom
+which, touching them, blasts them. And there seems reason in the idea,
+because when the priest of Taufers, who has an Olm there, goes and
+says mass and prays for the cattle, or when the _Sterniwitz_ (landlord
+of the Stern), who has acres of pasturage and many heads of cattle at
+Jagdhaus, pays a Capuchin to go thither and pray, the murrain ceases."
+
+In Moidel's tale we had almost forgotten our long walk back to the
+barn and the arrangement for supper previously at the huts. Now, it
+curiously happened that whilst waiting for the tea-pan--rather than
+tea-kettle--to boil, I accidentally alighted upon a people's calendar,
+published at Brixen for the current year, protruding its somewhat
+greasy pages from behind a churn; and after turning over long
+black-and red-lettered lists of fasts and feasts, came upon some
+pertinent advice to the Tyrolese farmers by Adolph Trientl, concerning
+_Milzbrand_. He described it as a dreadful pestilence, the scourge
+of many a mountain-pasture. Hundreds of cattle, he tells them, are
+sacrificed to it yearly. Even the deer and lesser game die from the
+contagion, as well as human beings; death in the latter case being
+occasioned either by eating the meat of diseased animals or by having
+cuts or wounds which have come in contact with the victims. Even the
+bite of a fly which has fed on the contaminated meat will propagate
+the malady. Hides or reins made of the skins are known years after
+to reproduce Milzbrand. Where the body of an affected animal has been
+buried the ground becomes contagious for a long run of years, the
+cattle pasturing there being attacked. The only remedy consists in
+burning the contaminated body, and then keeping the live-stock from
+the place where the victim fell. When Milzbrand appears the farmer
+feels he has no option between sacrificing his cattle and abandoning
+for a season his rich pastures. And yet a little attention might soon
+cause a remedy, the evil often arising from the water of a particular
+pool or brook, which if carefully guarded against makes the rest of
+the Alp perfectly secure.
+
+When I ventured to quote from the calendar to Moidel, suggesting that
+at Jagdhaus it might certainly be the water, she remained impervious
+to any new views on the subject. "There was Milzbrand, and that might
+arise from the water, for all she knew, but at Jagdhaus it was a rod
+of God, which only prayer averted."
+
+Adolf Trientl appears to be a Tyrolese priest, who travels annually
+through his native land watching closely the agriculture and domestic
+economy, and trying, countenanced by government, to help his country
+people to an easier working life, healthier houses and more profitable
+land. To the credit of the clergy of Brixen, his practical often pithy
+remarks are published in their church calendar. He and his colleagues
+must, however, use almost supernatural patience and energy before they
+can move a Tyroler one jot from the beaten path which his ancestors
+have taken for a thousand years before him. The people are perfectly
+content, it is pleaded, with the existing state of things: why should
+they change their sowing or ploughing any more than the sun his course
+or the mountains their position? Changes, like bad weather, breed
+discontent.
+
+We had brought no books with us for our five days at the Olm, and in
+the pauses of our out-door enjoyment the calendar, greasy rather from
+contact with butter and milk than with fingers, afforded amusing,
+profitable reading: a lecture may often be pleasant to hear when not
+addressed to one's self.
+
+Moidel, Jakob and Franz, though they had looked with blind eyes on
+the print, did not turn deaf ears when we spoke; only we had to manage
+that all we said and thought did not come as a quoted sermon, but as
+suggestions and inquiries from us, who did not know half as much about
+a dairy and farm-life as they did. First of all, we tried to make them
+believe that the staff of life need not of necessity be rye bread
+of so hard and flinty a nature as to require in every house a square
+wooden board and iron chopper to cut it.
+
+"Yes," said Moidel, "it is very hard for old people, who must needs
+sop it, but while one's teeth are good the crunching is a pleasure.
+And then it must needs be dry, because the oven can only be heated
+once in three months. I wish it could come round oftener, for there
+is no going to bed on baking nights, with some three hundred loaves to
+pop into the oven."
+
+"How could the poor bake often," suggested Jakob, "when there is only
+one oven amongst them in the village?"
+
+"Why," said we, looking very learned, "you have a common schoolmaster,
+and a common swineherd, and a common goose-boy: why not have a common
+baker, who knew how to make good, light dough, and could bake a good
+batch of bread for each family weekly?"
+
+To Franz, eating good bread only a few days old appeared woeful
+extravagance. "Bread," he said, "should be like rocks to last, not
+like snow to melt away. The rye meal would fly before the wind at that
+rate, and where would the poor man then be?"
+
+Butter and cheese-making, however, involved hours of deep discussion.
+You would indeed have thought that man merely came into the world to
+make butter and cheese. Personal experience after two summers in
+the Tyrol had made us reflect very much upon the butter and cheese
+question. Whether regarded as a luxury or a necessity, the Swiss
+Gruyère and Emmenthal cheese and the fresh dainty pats of butter made
+the contrast striking in the Tyrol. The milk and cream were rich and
+delicious, but became simply loathsome when transformed into butter
+or cheese. We wondered how and why it was that we could never obtain
+perfectly palatable butter, until we discovered the universal practice
+of churning it, without salt, into huge oblong balls, large as the
+nave of a wheel, which naturally soon turn rancid. It does not on this
+account lose its value to the natives, who use very little butter,
+melting it down into a clarified dripping called Schmalz for their
+endless fryings and frizzlings. This badly made butter is, however,
+often adorned with the emblems of the Passion, such as the cross,
+ladder, crown of thorns and nails. It was so at the Hofbauer's Olm.
+It is considered to enhance the value of the butter _Kugel_ or ball,
+especially when given to the priest in payment for masses said for
+dead relations. The Ursuline Sisters were paid for Moidel's education
+in butter.
+
+And the native cheese!--meagre cheese, as it is justly called--a
+poor, insipid, not overclean curd cheese. The curds are often merely
+squeezed in a cloth, then turned out and placed upon an upper shelf to
+dry, where they look like the back portions of gigantic skulls until
+damp and mould somewhat destroy the resemblance. The kind called fat
+cheese is not much better. It is, however, made with greater care, and
+dried in bands of pine bark in the Alpine kitchen. This distasteful
+butter and cheese, the sole result of gallons of rich milk and cream
+and many a long summer week upon the lofty Alp, becomes still
+more distasteful when the milk and cream are kept in the one hot,
+over-crowded sleeping-room, or in a dairy where the goatherd sleeps
+amongst the milk-dishes. The mountain dwellings are dark and badly
+constructed, and if furnished with a proper dairy, the prejudiced
+housewife often refuses to use it, believing that cream will not set
+unless the milk is warm; thus, much becomes sour, and is either thrown
+away or turned into a still more inferior cheese. Or she purposely
+lets the cream become rancid before she churns, that the children
+may not take too great a fancy to the Schmalz, and thus it may last
+longer!
+
+We had tasted already too much of this milky tree of knowledge not to
+learn with pleasure from the Brixen calendar that in different parts
+of the Tyrol co-operative _sennereien_ had been started with the
+greatest success. A manager was employed in each who understood
+perfectly the Swiss mode of cheese-making and the best manner of
+churning. Thus, the most excellent produce was gained from the same,
+or rather from a smaller, quantity of milk, when the reckless waste
+was deducted. Each shareholder had the right of skimming the milk
+from his own cows, taking what he required for his personal use, or
+he might send his entire share of butter, cheese, whey and goats' milk
+with the common stock to market, where such co-operative wares already
+brought the highest price. Thus, the farmer gained both ways, not only
+receiving more money, but saving in dairy utensils, house room and
+fuel, and his wife in labor.
+
+Great was our glee over these enlightened and successful efforts; but
+a friendly dispute immediately arose when one amongst us expressed a
+surprise that the half dozen bauers who shared the Olm in common
+did not manage matters on this improved principle. They would find
+themselves richer, more care-free men. Moidel declared her inability
+to form an opinion. Old Franz, however, had much to say. He thought
+it would be foolish. Why need the Hofbauer mix himself up with others,
+when he only wanted to make meagre cheese for family use, while if
+there were any over it always brought its worth in kreuzers at the
+market? And then the pounds and pounds of butter were all wanted for
+Schmalz. It might be sweeter, it is true, if they could melt it down
+at the hut, but then there was the fear of setting the place on fire,
+and the home-melted Schmalz went fast enough, as Moidel knew. And as
+for the artificial Schmalz which was being sold in the towns now,
+it was made of palm-oil, fresh suet and butter, and colored with
+the yellow dye called Orleans; and people praised this machine-made
+Schmalz and talked of progress! But he hoped, so long as he handled a
+frying-pan, to stick to good old Schmalz and good old ways.
+
+MARGARET HOWITT.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+ON THE CHURCH STEPS.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+What a picture she was as she sat there, my own Bessie! and what a
+strange place it was to rest on, those church steps! Behind us lay the
+Woolsey woods, with their wooing fragrance of pine and soft rushes of
+scented air; and the lakes were in the distance, lying very calm
+in the cloud-shadows and seeming to wait for us to come. But to-day
+Bessie would nothing of lakes or ledges: she would sit on the church
+steps.
+
+In front of us, straight to the gate, ran a stiff little walk of white
+pebbles, hard and harsh as some bygone creed.
+
+"Think of little bare feet coming up here, Bessie!" I said with a
+shiver. "It is too hard. And every carriage that comes up the hill
+sees us."
+
+"And why shouldn't they see us?" said my lady, turning full upon me.
+"I am not ashamed to be here."
+
+"Churches should always have soft walks of turf; and lovers," I would
+fain have added, "should have naught but whispering leaves about
+them."
+
+But Bessie cut me short in her imperious way: "But we are not lovers
+this morning: at least," with a half-relenting look at my rueful face,
+"we are very good friends, and I choose to sit here to show people
+that we are."
+
+"What do you care for _people_--the Bartons or the Meyricks?" as I
+noticed a familiar family carriage toiling up the hill, followed by
+a lighter phaeton. I recognized already in the latter vehicle the
+crimson feather of Fanny Meyrick, and "the whip that was a parasol."
+
+"Shall I step out into the road this minute, and stop those ladies
+like a peaceable highwayman, and tell them you have promised to marry
+me, and that their anxiety as to our intimacy may be at rest? Give me
+but leave and I will do it. It will make Mrs. Barton comfortable. Then
+you and I can walk away into those beckoning woods, and I can have you
+all to myself."
+
+Indeed she was worth having. With the witchery that some girls know,
+she had made a very picture of herself that morning, as I have
+said. Some soft blue muslin stuff was caught up around her in airy
+draperies--nothing stiff or frilled about her: all was soft and
+flowing, from the falling sleeve that showed the fair curve of her arm
+to the fold of her dress, the ruffle under which her little foot
+was tapping, impatiently now. A little white hat with a curling blue
+feather shaded her face--a face I won't trust myself to describe, save
+by saying that it was the brightest and truest, as I then thought, in
+all the world.
+
+She said something rapidly in Italian--she is always artificial when
+she uses a foreign tongue--and this I caught but imperfectly, but it
+had a proverbial air about it of the error of too hasty assumptions.
+
+"Well, now I'll tell you something," she said as the carriages
+disappeared over the top of the hill. "Fanny Meyrick is going abroad
+in October, and we shall not see her for ever so long."
+
+Going abroad? Good gracious! That was the very thing I had to tell
+her that morning--that I too was ordered abroad. An estate to be
+settled--some bothering old claim that had been handed down from
+generation to generation, and now springing into life again by the
+lapsing of two lives on the other side. But how to tell her as she
+looked up into my face with the half-pleading, half-imperious smile
+that I knew so well? How to tell her _now_?
+
+So I said nothing, but foolishly pushed the little pebbles aside with
+my stick, fatuously waiting for the subject to pass. Of course my
+silence brought an instant criticism: "Why, Charlie, what ails you?"
+
+"Nothing. And really, Bessie, what is it to us whether Fanny Meyrick
+go or stay?"
+
+"I shouldn't have thought it _was_ anything. But your silence, your
+confusion--Charlie, you do care a little for her, after all."
+
+Two years ago, before Bessie and I had ever met, I had fluttered
+around Fanny Meyrick for a season, attracted by her bright brown
+eyes and the gypsy flush on her cheek. But there were other moths
+fluttering around that adamantine candle too; and I was not long in
+discovering that the brown eyes were bright for each and all, and that
+the gypsy flush was never stirred by feeling or by thought. It was
+merely a fixed ensign of health and good spirits. Consequently the
+charm had waned, for me at least; and in my confessions to Bessie
+since our near intimacy it was she, not I, who had magnified it into
+the shadow even of a serious thought.
+
+"Care for her? Nonsense, Bessie! Do you want me to call her a mere
+doll, a hard, waxen--no, for wax will melt--a Parian creature, such
+as you may see by the dozens in Schwartz's window any day? It doesn't
+gratify you, surely, to hear me say that of any woman."
+
+And then--what possessed me?--I was so angry at myself that I took
+a mental _résumé_ of all the good that could be said of Fanny
+Meyrick--her generosity, her constant cheerfulness; and in somewhat
+headlong fashion I expressed myself: "I won't call her a dolt and an
+idiot, even to please you. I have seen her do generous things, and she
+is never out of temper."
+
+"Thanks!" said Bessie, nodding her head till the blue feather
+trembled. "It is as well, as Aunt Sloman says, to keep my shortcomings
+before you."
+
+"When did Aunt Sloman say that?" I interrupted, hoping for a diversion
+of the subject.
+
+"This morning only. I was late at breakfast. You know, Charlie, I was
+_so_ tired with that long horseback ride, and of course everything
+waited. Dear aunty never _will_ begin until I come down, but sits
+beside the urn like the forlornest of martyrs, and reads last night's
+papers over and over again."
+
+"Well? And was she sorry that she had not invited me to wait with
+her?"
+
+"Yes," said Bessie. "She said all sorts of things, and," flushing
+slightly, "that it was a pity you shouldn't know beforehand what you
+were to expect."
+
+"I wish devoutly that I had been there," seizing the little hand
+that was mournfully tapping the weatherbeaten stone, and forcing the
+downcast eyes to look at me. "I think, both together, we could have
+pacified Aunt Sloman."
+
+It _was_ a diversion, and after a little while Bessie professed she
+had had enough of the church steps.
+
+"How those people do stare! Is it the W----s, do you think, Charlie? I
+heard yesterday they were coming."
+
+From our lofty position on the hillside we commanded the road leading
+out of the village--the road that was all alive with carriages on this
+beautiful September morning. The W---- carriage had half halted to
+reconnoitre, and had only not hailed us because we had sedulously
+looked another way.
+
+"Let's get away," I said, "for the next carnage will not only stop,
+but come over;" and Bessie suffered herself to be led through the
+little tangle of brier and fern, past the gray old gravestones with
+"Miss Faith" and "Miss Mehitable" carved upon them, and into the leafy
+shadow of the waiting woods.
+
+Other lovers have been there before us, but the trees whisper no
+secrets save their own. The subject of our previous discussion was not
+resumed, nor was Fanny Meyrick mentioned, until on our homeward road
+we paused a moment on the hilltop, as we always did.
+
+It is indeed a hill of vision, that church hill at Lenox. Sparkling
+far to the south, the blue Dome lay, softened and shining in the
+September sun. There was ineffable peace in the faint blue sky, and,
+stealing up from the valley, a shimmering haze that seemed to veil the
+bustling village and soften all the rural sounds.
+
+Bessie drew nearer to me, shading her eyes as she looked down into the
+valley: "Charlie dear, let us stay here always. We shall be happier,
+better here than to go back to New York."
+
+"And the law-business?" I asked like a brutal bear, bringing the
+realities of life into my darling's girlish dream.
+
+"Can't you practice law in Foxcroft, and drive over there every
+morning? People do."
+
+"And because they do, and there are enough of them, I must plod along
+in the ways that are made for me already. We can make pilgrimages
+here, you know."
+
+"I suppose so," said Bessie with a sigh.
+
+Just then Fanny Kemble's clock in the tower above us struck the
+hour--one, two, three.
+
+"Bless me! so late? And there's that phaeton coming back over the hill
+again. Hurry, Charlie! don't let them see us. They'll think that we've
+been here all the time." And Bessie plunged madly down the hill, and
+struck off into the side-path that leads into the Lebanon road. The
+last vibrations of the bell were still trembling on the air as I
+caught up with her again.
+
+But again the teasing mood of the morning had come over her. Quite out
+of breath with the run, as we sat down to rest on the little porch of
+Mrs. Sloman's cottage she said, very earnestly, "But you haven't once
+said it."
+
+"Said what, my darling?"
+
+"That you are glad that Fanny is going abroad."
+
+"Nonsense! Why should I be glad?"
+
+"Are you sorry, then?"
+
+If I had but followed my impulse then, and said frankly that I was,
+and why I was! But Mrs. Sloman was coming through the little hall: I
+heard her step. Small time for explanation, no time for reproaches.
+And I could not leave Bessie, on that morning of all others, hurt or
+angry, or only half convinced.
+
+"No, I am not sorry," I said, pulling down a branch of honeysuckle,
+and making a loop of it to draw around her neck. "It is nothing,
+either way."
+
+"Then say after me if it is nothing--feel as I feel for one minute,
+won't you?"
+
+"Yes, indeed."
+
+"Say, after me, then, word for word, 'I am glad, _very_ glad, that
+Fanny Meyrick is to sail in October. I would not have her stay on this
+side for _worlds_!"
+
+And like a fool, a baby, I said it, word for word, from those sweet
+smiling lips: "I am glad, _very_ glad, that Fanny Meyrick is to sail
+in October. I would not have her stay on this side for _worlds_!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+The next day was Sunday, and I was on duty at an early hour, prepared
+to walk with Bessie to church. My darling was peculiar among women in
+this: her church-going dress was sober-suited; like a little gray nun,
+almost, she came down to me that morning. Her dress, of some soft gray
+stuff, fell around her in the simplest folds, a knot of brown ribbon
+at her throat, and in her hat a gray gull's wing.
+
+I had praised the Italian women for the simplicity of their
+church-attire: their black dresses and lace veils make a picturesque
+contrast with the gorgeous ceremonials of the high altar. But there
+was something in this quiet toilet, so fresh and simple and girl-like,
+that struck me as the one touch of grace that the American woman can
+give to the best even of foreign taste. Not the dramatic abnegation
+indicated by the black dress, but the quiet harmony of a life atune.
+
+Mrs. Sloman was ready even before Bessie came down. She was a
+great invalid, although her prim and rigid countenance forbore any
+expression save of severity. She had no pathos about her, not a touch.
+Whatever her bodily sufferings may have been--and Bessie dimly hinted
+that they were severe to agony at times--they were resolutely shut
+within her chamber door; and when she came out in the early morning,
+her cold brown hair drawn smoothly over those impassive cheeks, she
+looked like a lady abbess--as cold, as unyielding and as hard.
+
+There was small sympathy between the aunt and niece, but a great deal
+of painstaking duty on the one side, and on the other the habit of
+affection which young girls have for the faces they have always known.
+
+Mrs. Sloman had been at pains to tell me, when my frequent visits to
+her cottage made it necessary that I should in some fashion explain to
+her as to what I wanted there, that her niece, Bessie Stewart, was in
+nowise dependent on her, not even for a home. "This cottage we rent
+in common. It was her father's desire that her property should
+not accumulate, and that she should have nothing at my hands but
+companionship, and"--with a set and sickly smile--"advice when it was
+called for. We are partners in our expenses, and the arrangement can
+be broken up at any moment."
+
+Was this all? No word of love or praise for the fair young thing that
+had brightened all her household in these two years that Bessie had
+been fatherless?
+
+I believe there was love and appreciation, but it was not Mrs.
+Sloman's method to be demonstrative or expansive. She approved of the
+engagement, and in her grim way had opened an immediate battery of
+household ledgers and ways and means. Some idea, too, of making me
+feel easy about taking Bessie away from her, I think, inclined her to
+this business-like manner. I tried to show her, by my own manner, that
+I understood her without words, and I think she was very grateful to
+be spared the expression of feeling. Poor soul! repression had become
+such a necessity to her!
+
+So we talked on gravely of the weather, and of the celebrated Doctor
+McQ----, who was expected to give us an argumentative sermon that
+morning, until _my_ argument came floating in at the door like a calm
+little bit of thistledown, to which our previous conversation had been
+as the thistle's self.
+
+The plain little church was gay that morning. Carriage after carriage
+drove up with much prancing and champing, and group after group of
+city folk came rustling along the aisles. It was a bit of Fifth Avenue
+let into Lenox calm. The World and the Flesh were there, at least.
+
+In the hush of expectancy that preceded the minister's arrival there
+was much waving of scented fans, while the well-bred city glances took
+in everything without seeming to see. I felt that Bessie and I
+were being mentally discussed and ticketed. And as it was our first
+appearance at church since--well, _since_--perhaps there was just a
+little consciousness of our relations that made Bessie seem to retire
+absolutely within herself, and be no more a part of the silken crowd
+than was the grave, plain man who rose up in the pulpit.
+
+I hope the sermon was satisfactory. I am sure it was convincing to a
+brown-handed farmer who sat beside us, and who could with difficulty
+restrain his applauding comment. But I was lost in a dream of a near
+heaven, and could not follow the spoken word. It was just a quiet
+little opportunity to contemplate my darling, to tell over her
+sweetness and her charm, and to say over and again, like a blundering
+school-boy, "It's all mine! mine!"
+
+The congregation might have been dismissed for aught I knew, and
+left me sitting there with her beside me. But I was startled into the
+proprieties as we stood up to sing the concluding hymn. I was standing
+stock-still beside her, not listening to the words at all, but with
+a pleasant sense of everything being very comfortable, and an
+old-fashioned swell of harmony on the air, when suddenly the book
+dropped from Bessie's hand and fell heavily to the floor. I should
+have said she flung it down had it been on any other occasion, so
+rapid and vehement was the action.
+
+I stooped to pick it up, when with a decided gesture she stopped me.
+I looked at her surprised. Her face was flushed, indignant, I thought,
+and instantly my conscience was on the rack. What had I done, for my
+lady was evidently angry?
+
+Glancing down once more toward the book, I saw that she had set her
+foot upon it, and indeed her whole attitude was one of excitement,
+defiance. Why did she look so hot and scornful? I was disturbed and
+anxious: what was there in the book or in me to anger her?
+
+As quickly as possible I drew her away from the bustling crowd when
+the service was concluded. Fortunately, there was a side-door through
+which we could pass out into the quiet churchyard, and we vanished
+through it, leaving Mrs. Sloman far behind. Over into the Lebanon
+road was but a step, and the little porch was waiting with its cool
+honeysuckle shade. But Bessie did not stop at the gate: she was in no
+mood for home. And yet she would not answer my outpouring questions as
+to whether she was ill, or what _was_ the matter.
+
+"I'll tell you in a minute. Come, hurry!" she said, hastening along up
+the hill through all the dust and heat.
+
+At last we reached that rustic bit of ruin known popularly as the
+"Shed." It was a hard bit of climbing, but I rejoiced that Bessie, so
+flushed and excited at the start, grew calmer as we went; and when,
+the summit reached, she sat down to rest on a broken board, her color
+was natural and she seemed to breathe freely again.
+
+"Are they all hypocrites, do you think, Charlie?" she said suddenly,
+looking up into my face.
+
+"They? who? Bessie, what have I done to make you angry?"
+
+"You? Nothing, dear goose! I am angry at myself and at everybody else.
+Did it flash upon you, Charlie, what we were singing?"
+
+Then she quoted the lines, which I will not repeat here, but they
+expressed, as the sole aspiration of the singer, a desire to pass
+eternity in singing hymns of joy and praise--an impatience for the
+time to come, a disregard of earth, a turning away from temporal
+things, and again the desire for an eternity of sacred song.
+
+"Suppose I confess to you," said I, astonished at her earnestness,
+"that I did not at all know what I was singing?"
+
+"That's just it! just what makes it so dreadful! _Nobody_ was thinking
+about it--nobody! Nobody there wanted to give up earth and go straight
+to heaven and sing. I looked round at all the people, with their new
+bonnets, and the diamonds, and the footmen in the pews up stairs, and
+I thought, What lies they are all saying! Nobody wants to go to heaven
+at all until they are a hundred years old, and too deaf and blind and
+tired out to do anything on earth. My heaven is here and now in my own
+happiness, and so is yours, Charlie; and I felt so convicted of being
+a story-teller that I couldn't hold the book in my hand."
+
+"Well, then," said I, "shall we have one set of hymns for happy
+people, and another for poor, tired-out folks like that little
+dressmaker that leaned against the wall?" For Bessie herself had
+called my attention to the pale little body who had come to the church
+door at the same moment with us.
+
+"No, not two sets. Do you suppose that she, either, wants to _sing_ on
+for ever? And all those girls! Sorry enough they would be to have to
+die, and leave their dancing and flirtations and the establishments
+they hope to have! It wouldn't be much comfort to them to promise them
+they should _sing_. Charlie, I want a hymn that shall give thanks that
+I am alive, that I have _you_."
+
+"Could the dressmaker sing that?"
+
+"No;" and Bessie's eyes sought the shining blue sky with a wistful,
+beseeching tenderness. "Oh, it's all wrong, Charlie dear. She ought to
+tell us in a chant how tired and hopeless she is for this world; and
+we ought to sing to her something that would cheer her, help her, even
+in this world. Why must she wait for all her brightness till she dies?
+So perfectly heartless to stand up along side of her and sing _that_!"
+
+"Well," I said, "you needn't wait till next Sunday to bring her your
+words of cheer."
+
+In a minute my darling was crying on my shoulder. I could understand
+the outburst, and was glad of it.
+
+All athrill with new emotions, new purposes, an eternity of love,
+she had come to church to be reminded that earth was naught, that the
+trials and tempests here would come to an end some day, and after, to
+the patiently victorious, would come the hymns of praise. _Earth_
+was very full that morning to her and me; _earth_ was a place for
+worshipful harmonies; and yet the strong contrast with the poor
+patient sufferer who had passed into church with us was too much for
+Bessie: she craved an expression that should comprehend alike her
+sorrow and our abundant joy.
+
+The tempest of tears passed by, and we had bright skies again. Poor
+Mrs. Sloman's dinner waited long that day; and it was with a guilty
+sense that she was waiting too that we went down the hill at a
+quickened pace when the church clock, sounding up the hillside, came
+like a chiding voice.
+
+And a double sense of guiltiness was creeping over me. I must return
+to New York to-morrow, and I had not told Bessie yet of the longer
+journey I must make so soon. I put it by again and again in the short
+flying hours of that afternoon; and it was not until dusk had fallen
+in the little porch, as we sat there after tea, and I had watched the
+light from Mrs. Sloman's chamber shine down upon the honeysuckles and
+then go out, that I took my resolution.
+
+"Bessie," I said, leaning over her and taking her face in both my
+hands, "I have something to tell you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+"I have something to tell you;" and without an instant's pause I went
+on: "Mr. D---- has business in England which cannot be attended to
+by letter. One of us must go, and they send me. I must sail in two
+weeks."
+
+It was a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, and Bessie gave a little gasp
+of surprise: "So soon! Oh, Charlie, take me with you!" Realizing in
+the next instant the purport of the suggestion, she flung away from my
+hands and rushed into the parlor, where a dim, soft lamp was burning
+on the table. She sat down on a low chair beside it and hid her face
+on the table in her hands.
+
+Like a flash of lightning all the possibilities of our marriage before
+many days--arranging it with Mrs. Sloman, and satisfying my partners,
+who would expect me to travel fast and work hard in the short time
+they had allotted for the journey,--all came surging and throbbing
+through my brain, while my first answer was not given in words.
+
+When I had persuaded Bessie to look at me and to answer me in turn,
+I hoped we should be able to talk about it with the calm judgment it
+needed.
+
+"To leave my wife--my wife!"--how I lingered on the word!--"in some
+poky lodgings in London, while I am spending my day among dusty boxes
+and files of deeds in a dark old office, isn't just my ideal of our
+wedding-journey; but, Bessie, if _you_ wish it so--"
+
+What was there in my tone that jarred her? I had meant to be
+magnanimous, to think of her comfort alone, of the hurry and business
+of such a journey--tried to shut myself out and think only of her in
+the picture. But I failed, of course, and went on stupidly, answering
+the quick look of question in her eyes: "If you prefer it--that is,
+you know, I must think of you and not of myself."
+
+Still the keen questioning glance. What new look was this in her eyes,
+what dawning thought?
+
+"No," she answered after a pause, slowly withdrawing her hand from
+mine, "think of yourself."
+
+I had expected that she would overwhelm me in her girlish way with
+saucy protestations that she would be happy even in the dull London
+lodgings, and that she would defy the law-files to keep me long from
+her. This sudden change of manner chilled me with a nameless fear.
+
+"If _I_ prefer it! If _I_ wish it! I see that I should be quite in
+your way, an encumbrance. Don't talk about it any more."
+
+She was very near crying, and I wish to heaven she had cried. But she
+conquered herself resolutely, and held herself cold and musing before
+me. I might take her hand, might kiss her unresisting cheek, but she
+seemed frozen into sudden thoughtfulness that it was impossible to
+meet or to dispel.
+
+"Bessie, you know you are a little goose! What could I wish for in
+life but to carry you off this minute to New York? Come, get your hat
+and let's walk over to the parsonage now. We'll get Doctor Wilder to
+marry us, and astonish your aunt in the morning."
+
+"Nonsense!" said Bessie with a slight quiver of her pretty, pouting
+mouth. "Do be rational, Charlie!"
+
+I believe I was rational in my own fashion for a little while, but
+when I ventured to say in a very unnecessary whisper, "Then you will
+go abroad with me?" Bessie flushed to her temples and rose from the
+sofa. She had a way, when she was very much in earnest, or very much
+stirred with some passionate thought, of pacing the parlor with her
+hands clasped tightly before her, and her arms tense and straining at
+the clasping hands. With her head bent slightly forward, and her brown
+hair hanging in one long tress over her shoulder, she went swiftly
+up and down, while I lay back on the sofa and watched her. She would
+speak it out presently, the thought that was hurting her. So I felt
+secure and waited, following every movement with a lover's eye. But
+I ought not to have waited. I should have drawn her to me and shared
+that rapid, nervous walk--should have compelled her with sweet force
+to render an account of that emotion. But I was so secure, so entirely
+one with her in thought, that I could conceive of nothing but a
+passing tempest at my blundering, stupid thoughtfulness for her.
+
+Suddenly at the door she stopped, and with her hand upon it said,
+"Good-night, Charlie;" and was out of the room in a twinkling.
+
+I sprang from the sofa and to the foot of the stairs, but I saw only a
+glimpse of her vanishing dress; and though I called after her in
+low, beseeching tones, "Bessie! Bessie!" a door shut in the distant
+corridor for only answer.
+
+What to do? In that decorous mansion I could not follow her; and my
+impulse to dash after her and knock at her door till she answered me,
+I was forced to put aside after a moment's consideration.
+
+I stood there in the quiet hall, the old clock ticking away a solemn
+"I-told-you-so!" in the corner. I made one step toward the kitchen
+to send a message by one of the maids, but recoiled at the suggestion
+that this would publish a lovers' quarrel. So I retreated along the
+hall, my footsteps making no noise on the India matting, and entered
+the parlor again like a thief. I sat down by the table: "Bessie will
+certainly come back: she will get over her little petulance, and know
+I am here waiting."
+
+All about the parlor were the traces of my darling. A soft little coil
+of rose-colored Berlin wool, with its ivory needle sheathed among the
+stitches, lay in a tiny basket. I lifted it up: the basket was made
+of scented grass, and there was a delicious sweet and pure fragrance
+about the knitting-work. I took possession of it and thrust it into my
+breast-pocket. A magazine she had been reading, with the palest slip
+of a paper-knife--a bit of delicate Swiss wood--in it, next came in my
+way. I tried to settle down and read where she had left off, but the
+words danced before my eyes, and a strange tune was repeating in my
+ears, "Good-night, Charlie--good-night and good-bye!"
+
+One mad impulse seized me to go out under her window and call to her,
+asking her to come down. But Lenox nights were very still, and the
+near neighbors on either side doubtless wide awake to all that was
+going on around the Sloman cottage.
+
+So I sat still like an idiot, and counted the clock-strokes, and
+nervously calculated the possibility of her reappearance, until I
+heard, at last, footsteps coming along the hall in rapid tread. I
+darted up: "Oh, Bessie, I knew you would come back!" as through the
+open door walked in--Mary, Mrs. Sloman's maid!
+
+She started at seeing me: "Excuse me, sir. The parlor was so--I
+thought there was no one here."
+
+"What is it, Mary?" I asked with assumed indifference. "Do you want
+Miss Bessie? She went up stairs a few moments ago."
+
+"No, sir. I thought--that is--" glancing down in awkward confusion at
+the key she held in her hand. She was retiring again softly when I saw
+in the key the reason of her discomposure.
+
+"Did you come in to lock up, Mary?" I asked with a laugh.
+
+"Yes, sir. But it is of no consequence. I thought you had gone, sir."
+
+"Time I was, I suppose. Well, Mary, you shall lock me out, and then
+carry this note to Miss Bessie. It is so late that I will not wait for
+her. Perhaps she is busy with Mrs. Sloman."
+
+Something in Mary's face made me suspect that she knew Mrs. Sloman
+to be sound asleep at this moment; but she said nothing, and waited
+respectfully until I had scribbled a hasty note, rifling Bessie's
+writing-desk for the envelope in which to put my card. Dear child!
+there lay my photograph, the first thing I saw as I raised the dainty
+lid.
+
+"Bessie," I wrote, "I have waited until Mary has come in with her
+keys, and I suppose I must go. My train starts at nine to-morrow
+morning, but you will be ready--will you not?--at six to take a
+morning walk with me. I will be here at that hour. You don't know how
+disturbed and anxious I shall be till then."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Morning came--or rather the long night came to an end at last--and at
+twenty minutes before six I opened the gate at the Sloman cottage.
+It was so late in September that the morning was a little hazy and
+uncertain. And yet the air was warm and soft--a perfect reflex, I
+thought, of Bessie last night--an electric softness under a brooding
+cloud.
+
+The little house lay wrapped in slumber. I hesitated to pull the bell:
+no, it would startle Mrs. Sloman. Bessie was coming: she would surely
+not make me wait. Was not that her muslin curtain stirring? I would
+wait in the porch--she would certainly come down soon.
+
+So I waited, whistling softly to myself as I pushed the withered
+leaves about with my stick and drew strange patterns among them. Half
+an hour passed.
+
+"I will give her a gentle reminder;" so I gathered a spray from the
+honeysuckle, a late bloom among the fast-falling leaves, and aimed
+it right at the muslin curtain. The folds parted and it fell into the
+room, but instead of the answering face that I looked to see, all was
+still again.
+
+"It's very strange," thought I. "Bessie's pique is not apt to last so
+long. She must indeed be angry."
+
+And I went over each detail of our last night's talk, from her first
+burst of "Take me with you!" to my boggling answers, my fears, so
+stupidly expressed, that it would be anything but a picturesque
+bridal-trip, and the necessity that there was for rapid traveling and
+much musty, old research.
+
+"What a fool I was not to take her then and there! She _is_ myself:
+why shouldn't I, then, be selfish? When I do what of all things I want
+to, why can't I take it for granted that she will be happy too?" And
+a hot flush of shame went over me to think that I had been about to
+propose to her, to my own darling girl, that we should be married as
+soon as possible _after_ I returned from Europe.
+
+Her love, clearer-sighted, had striven to forestall our separation:
+why should we be parted all those weary weeks? why put the sea between
+us?
+
+I had accepted all these obstacles as a dreary necessity, never
+thinking for the moment that conventional objections might be
+overcome, aunts and guardians talked over, and the whole matter
+arranged by two people determined on their own sweet will.
+
+What a lumbering, masculine plan was mine! _After I returned from
+Europe!_ I grew red and bit my lips with vexation. And now my dear
+girl was shy and hurt. How should I win back again that sweet impulse
+of confidence?
+
+Presently the household began to stir. I heard unbarring and
+unbolting, and craftily retreated to the gate, that I might seem to be
+just coming in, to the servant who should open the door.
+
+It was opened by a housemaid--not the Mary of the night before--who
+stared a moment at seeing me, but on my asking if Miss Bessie was
+ready yet to walk, promised smilingly to go and see. She returned in
+a moment, saying that Miss Bessie begged that I would wait: she was
+hurrying to come down.
+
+The child! She has slept too soundly. I shall tell her how insensate
+she must have been, how serenely unconscious when the flower came in
+at the window.
+
+The clock on the mantel struck seven and the half hour before Bessie
+appeared. She was very pale, and her eyes looked away at my greeting.
+Passively she suffered herself to be placed in a chair, and then, with
+something of her own manner, she said hurriedly, "Don't think I got
+your note, Charlie, last night, or I wouldn't, indeed I wouldn't, have
+kept you waiting so long this morning."
+
+"Didn't Mary bring it to you?" I asked, surprised.
+
+"Yes: that is, she brought it up to my room, but, Charlie dear, I
+wasn't there: I wasn't there all night. I did shut my door, though I
+heard you calling, and after a little while I crept out into the entry
+and looked over the stairs, hoping you were there still, and that I
+could come back to you. But you were not there, and everything was so
+still that I was sure you had gone--gone without a word. I listened
+and listened, but I was too proud to go down into the parlor and see.
+And yet I could not go back to my room, next Aunt Sloman's. I went
+right up stairs to the blue room, and stayed there. Mary must have put
+your note on my table when she came up stairs. I found it there this
+morning when I went down."
+
+"Poor darling! And what did you do all night in the blue room? I am
+afraid," looking at her downcast eyes, "that you did not sleep--that
+you were angry at me."
+
+"At you? No, at myself," she said very low.
+
+"Bessie, you know that my first and only thought was of the hurry and
+worry this journey would cost you. You know that to have you with me
+was something that I had scarce dared to dream."
+
+"And therefore," with a flash of blue eyes, "for me to dare to dream
+it was--" and again she hid her face.
+
+"But, my precious, don't you know that it was for _you_ to suggest
+what I wanted all the time, but thought it would be too much to ask?"
+For I had discovered, of course, in my morning's work among the dead
+leaves on the porch, that I had desired it from the moment I had
+known of my journey--desired it without acknowledging it to myself or
+presuming to plan upon it.
+
+At this juncture breakfast was announced, and the folding doors thrown
+open that led into the breakfast-parlor, disclosing Mrs. Sloman seated
+by the silver urn, and a neat little table spread for three, so quick
+had been the housemaid's intuitions.
+
+"Good-morning, Charles: come get some breakfast. You will hardly be in
+time for your train," suggested Aunt Sloman in a voice that had in it
+all the gloom of the morning. Indeed, the clouds had gathered heavily
+during the parlor scene, and some large drops were rattling against
+the window.
+
+I looked at my watch. After eight! Pshaw! I will let this train go,
+and will telegraph to the office. I can take the night train, and thus
+lose only a few hours. So I stayed.
+
+What rare power had Bessie in the very depths of her trouble, and with
+her face pale and eyes so heavy with her last night's vigil--what gift
+that helped her to be gay? Apparently not with an effort, not forced,
+she was as joyous and frank as her sunniest self. No exaggeration of
+laughter or fun, but the brightness of her every-day manner, teasing
+and sparkling round Aunt Sloman, coquetting very naturally with me.
+It was a swift change from the gloomy atmosphere we had left behind in
+the parlor, and I basked in it delighted, and feeling, poor fool! that
+the storm was cleared away, and that the time for the singing of birds
+was come.
+
+I was the more deceived. I did not know all of Bessie yet. Her horror
+of a scene, of any suspicion that there was discord between us, and
+her rare self-control, that for the moment put aside all trouble,
+folded it out of sight and took up the serene old life again for a
+little space.
+
+"Aunt Maria," said Bessie, pushing aside her chair, "won't you take
+care of Mr. Munro for a little while? I have a letter to write that I
+want him to take to New York."
+
+Aunt Maria would be happy to entertain me, or rather to have me
+entertain her. If I would read to her, now, would I be so kind, while
+she washed up her breakfast cups?
+
+How people can do two things at once I am sure I cannot understand;
+and while the maid brought in the large wooden bowl, the steam of
+whose household incense rose high in the air, I watched impatient for
+the signal to begin. When the tea-cups were all collected, and Aunt
+Sloman held one by the handle daintily over the "boiling flood,"
+"Now," she said with a serene inclination of her head, "if you
+please."
+
+And off I started at a foot-pace through the magazine that had been
+put into my hands. Whether it was anything about the "Skelligs," or
+"Miss Sedgwick's Letters," or "Stanley-Livingstone," I have not the
+remotest idea. I was fascinated by the gentle dip of each tea-cup,
+and watched from the corner of my eye the process of polishing each
+glittering spoon on a comfortable crash towel.
+
+Then my thoughts darted off to Bessie. Was she indeed writing to her
+old trustee? Judge Hubbard was a friend of my father's, and would
+approve of me, I thought, if he did not agree at once to the hurried
+marriage and ocean journey.
+
+"What an unconscionable time it takes her! Don't you think so, Mrs.
+Sloman?" I said at last, after I had gone through three several papers
+on subjects unknown.
+
+I suppose it was scarcely a courteous speech. But Mrs. Sloman smiled a
+white-lipped smile of sympathy, and said, "Yes; I will go and send her
+to you."
+
+"Oh, don't hurry her," I said falsely, hoping, however, that she
+would.
+
+Did I say before that Bessie was tall? Though so slight that you
+always wanted to speak of her with some endearing diminutive, she
+looked taller than ever that morning; and as she stood before me,
+coming up to the fireplace where I was standing, her eyes looked
+nearly level into mine. I did not understand their veiled expression,
+and before I had time to study it she dropped them and said hastily,
+"Young man, I am pining for a walk."
+
+"In the rain?"
+
+"Pshaw! This is nothing, after all, but a Scotch mist. See, I am
+dressed for it;" and she threw a tartan cloak over her shoulder--a
+blue-and-green tartan that I had never seen before.
+
+"The very thing for shipboard," I whispered as I looked at her
+admiringly.
+
+Her face was flushed enough now, but she made no answer save to stoop
+down and pat the silly little terrier that had come trotting into the
+room with her.
+
+"Fidget shall go--yes, he shall go walking;" and Fidget made a gray
+ball of himself in his joy at the permission.
+
+Up the hill again we walked, with the little Skye terrier cantering in
+advance or madly chasing the chickens across the road.
+
+"Did you finish your letter satisfactorily?" I asked, for I was
+fretting with impatience to know its contents.
+
+"Yes. I will give it to you when you leave to-night."
+
+"Shall we say next Saturday, Bessie?" said I, resolving to plunge at
+once into the sea of our late argument.
+
+"For what? For you to come again? Don't you always come on Saturday?"
+
+"Yes, but this time I mean to carry you away."
+
+A dead pause, which I improved by drawing her hand under my arm and
+imprisoning her little gray glove with my other hand. As she did not
+speak, I went on fatuously: "You don't need any preparation of gowns
+and shawls; you can buy your _trousseau_ in London, if need be; and
+we'll settle on the ship, coming over, how and where we are to live in
+New York."
+
+"You think, then, that I am all ready to be married?"
+
+"I think that my darling is superior to the nonsense of other
+girls--that she will be herself always, and doesn't need any
+masquerade of wedding finery."
+
+"You think, then," coldly and drawing her hand away, "that I am
+different from other girls?" and the scarlet deepened on her cheek.
+"You think I say and do things other girls would not?"
+
+"My darling, what nonsense! You say and do things that other girls
+_cannot_, nor could if they tried a thousand years."
+
+"Thanks for the compliment! It has at least the merit of dubiousness.
+Now, Charlie, if you mention Europe once in this walk I shall be
+seriously offended. Do let us have a little peace and a quiet talk."
+
+"Why, what on earth can we talk about until this is settled? I can't
+go back to New York, and engage our passage, and go to see Judge
+Hubbard--I suppose you were writing to him this morning?"
+
+She did not answer, but seemed bent on making the dainty print of her
+foot in the moist earth of the road, taking each step carefully, as
+though it were the one important and engrossing thing in life.
+
+"--Unless," I went on, "you tell me you will be ready to go back with
+me this day week. You see, Bessie dear, I _must_ sail on the fixed
+day. And if we talk it over now and settle it all, it will save no end
+of writing to and fro."
+
+"Good-morning!" said a gay voice behind us--Fanny Meyrick's voice. She
+was just coming out of one of the small houses on the roadside. "Don't
+you want some company? I've been to call on my washerwoman, and I'm so
+glad I've met you. Such an English morning! Shall I walk with you?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+If I could have changed places with Fidget, I could scarce have
+expressed my disapproval of the new-comer more vehemently than he.
+Miss Meyrick seemed quite annoyed at the little dog's uncalled-for
+snapping and barking, and shook her umbrella at him in vain. I was
+obliged to take him in hand myself at last, and to stand in the road
+and order him to "Go home!" while the two young ladies walked on,
+apparently the best of friends.
+
+When I rejoined them Fanny Meyrick was talking fast and unconnectedly,
+as was her habit: "Yes, lodgings in London--the dearest old house in
+Clarges street. Such a butler! He looks like a member of Parliament.
+We stayed there once before for three days. I am just going to settle
+into an English girl. Had enough of the Continent. Never do see
+England now-a-days, nobody. All rush off. So papa is going to have a
+comfortable time. Embassy? Oh, I know the general well."
+
+I looked beseechingly at Bessie. Why wouldn't she say that we too
+would be there in London lodgings? Perhaps, then, Fanny Meyrick might
+take the hint and leave us soon.
+
+But Bessie gave no sign, and I relapsed into a somewhat impatient
+_résumé_ of my own affairs. Yes: married quietly on Saturday; leave
+here on Monday morning train; take, yes, Wednesday's steamer. I could
+arrange it with my law-partners to be absent a little longer
+perhaps, that there might be some little rest and romance about the
+wedding-journey.
+
+Two or three times in the course of that morning--for she stayed with
+us all the morning--Fanny Meyrick rallied me on my preoccupation and
+silence: "He didn't use to be so, Bessie, years ago, I assure you.
+It's very disagreeable, sir--not an improvement by any means."
+
+Then--I think without any malice prepense, simply the unreasoning
+rattle of a belle of two seasons--she plunged into a description of
+a certain fête at Blankkill on the Hudson, the occasion of our first
+acquaintance: "He was so young, Bessie, you can't imagine, and blushed
+so beautifully that all the girls were jealous as could be. We were
+very good friends--weren't we?--all that summer?"
+
+"And are still, I hope," said I with my most sweeping bow. "What have
+I done to forfeit Miss Meyrick's esteem?"
+
+"Nothing, except that you used to find your way oftener to Meyrick
+Place than you do now. Well, I won't scold you for that: I shall make
+up for that on the other side."
+
+What did she mean? She had no other meaning than that she would have
+such compensation in English society that her American admirers would
+not be missed. She did not know of my going abroad.
+
+But Bessie darted a quick glance from her to me, and back again to
+her, as though some dawning suspicion had come to her. "I hope,"
+she said quietly, "that you may have a pleasant winter. It will be
+delightful, won't it, Charlie?"
+
+"Oh, very!" I answered, but half noting the under-meaning of her
+words, my mind running on deck state-rooms and the like.
+
+"Charlie," said Miss Meyrick suddenly, "do you remember what happened
+two years ago to-day?"
+
+"No, I think not."
+
+Taking out a little book bound in Russia leather and tipped with gold,
+she handed it to Bessie, who ran her eye down the page: it was open at
+September 28th.
+
+"Read it," said Fanny, settling herself composedly in her shawl, and
+leaning back against a tree with half-shut eyes.
+
+"'_September 28th_'" Bessie read, in clear tones which had a strange
+constraint in them, "'Charlie Munro saved my life. I shall love
+him for ever and ever. We were out in a boat, we two, on the
+Hudson--moonlight--I was rowing. Dropt my oar into the water. Leaned
+out after it and upset the boat. Charlie caught me and swam with me to
+shore.'"
+
+A dead silence as Bessie closed the book and held it in her hand.
+
+"Oh," said I lightly, "that isn't worth chronicling--that! It was
+no question of saving lives. The New York boat was coming up, if I
+remember."
+
+"Yes, it was in trying to steer away from it that I dropped my oar."
+
+"So you see it would have picked us up, any how. There was nothing but
+the ducking to remember."
+
+"Such a figure, Bessie! Imagine us running along the road to the gate!
+I could scarcely move for my dripping skirts; and we frightened papa
+so when we stepped up on the piazza out of the moonlight!"
+
+To stop this torrent of reminiscences, which, though of nothings, I
+could see was bringing the red spot to Bessie's cheek, I put out my
+hand for the book: "Let me write something down to-day;" and I hastily
+scribbled: "_September_ 28. Charles Munro and Bessie Stewart, to sail
+for Europe in ten days, ask of their friend Fanny Meyrick her warm
+congratulations."
+
+"Will that do?" I whispered as I handed the book to Bessie.
+
+"Not at all," said Bessie scornfully and coldly, tearing out the leaf
+as she spoke and crumpling it in her hand.--"Sorry to spoil your book,
+Fanny dear, but the sentiment would have spoiled it more. Let us go
+home."
+
+As we passed the hotel on that dreary walk home, Fanny would have
+left us, but Bessie clung to her and whispered something in a pleading
+voice, begging her, evidently, to come home with us.
+
+"If Mr. Munro will take word to papa," she said, indicating that
+worthy, who sat on the upper piazza smoking his pipe.
+
+"We will walk on," said Bessie coldly. "Come, Fanny dear."
+
+Strange, thought I as I turned on my heel, this sudden fond intimacy!
+Bessie is angry. Why did I never tell her of the ducking? And yet when
+I remembered how Fanny had clung to me, how after we had reached
+the shore I had been forced to remind her that it was no time for
+sentimental gratitude when we both were shivering, I could see why
+I had refrained from mentioning it to Bessie until our closer
+confidences would allow of it.
+
+No man, unless he be a downright coxcomb, will ever admit to one woman
+that another woman has loved him. To his wife--perhaps. But how much
+Fanny Meyrick cared for me I had never sought to know. After
+the dismal ending of that moonlight boat-row--I had been already
+disenchanted for some time before--I had scarce called at Meyrick
+Place more than civility required. The young lady was so inclined to
+exaggerate the circumstance, to hail me as her deliverer, that I felt
+like the hero of a melodrama whenever we met. And after I had met
+Bessie there were pleasanter things to think about--much pleasanter.
+
+How exasperating girls can be when they try! I had had my _congé_ for
+the walk home, I knew, and I was vexed enough to accept it and stay at
+the hotel to dinner.
+
+"I will not be played upon in this way. Bessie knows that I stayed
+over the morning train just to be with her, and piled up for to-morrow
+no end of work, as well as sarcastic remarks from D. & Co. If she
+chooses to show off her affection for Fanny Meyrick in these few hours
+that we have together--Fanny Meyrick whom she _hated_ yesterday--she
+may enjoy her friendship undisturbed by me."
+
+So I loitered with my cigar after dinner, and took a nap on the sofa
+in my room. I was piqued, and did not care to conceal it. As the clock
+struck five I bethought me it was time to betake me to the Sloman
+cottage. A sound of wheels and a carriage turning brought me to the
+window. The two young ladies were driving off in Fanny Meyrick's
+phaeton, having evidently come to the hotel and waited while it was
+being made ready.
+
+"Pique for pique! Serves me right, I suppose."
+
+Evening found me at the Sloman cottage, waiting with Mrs. Sloman by
+the tea-table. Why do I always remember her, sitting monumental by the
+silver urn?
+
+"The girls are very late to-night."
+
+"Yes." I was beginning to be uneasy. It was nearing train-time again.
+
+"Such lovely moonlight, I suppose, has tempted them, or they may be
+staying at Foxcroft to tea."
+
+Indeed? I looked at my watch: I had ten minutes.
+
+A sound of wheels: the phaeton drove up.
+
+"Oh, Charlie," said Bessie as she sprang out, "you bad boy! you'll
+miss your train again. Fanny here will drive you to the hotel. Jump
+in, quick!"
+
+And as the moonlight shone full on her face I looked inquiringly into
+her eyes.
+
+"The letter," I said, "for Judge Hubbard?" hoping that she would go to
+the house for it, and then I could follow her for a word.
+
+"Oh! I had almost forgotten. Here it is;" and she drew it from her
+pocket and held it out to me in her gloved hand. I pressed the hand
+to my lips, riding-glove and all, and sprang in beside Fanny, who was
+with some difficulty making her horse stand still.
+
+"Good-bye!" from the little figure at the gate. "Don't forget, Fanny,
+to-morrow at ten;" and we were off.
+
+By the wretched kerosene lamp of the car, going down, I read my
+letter, for it was for me: "I will not go to Europe, and I forbid you
+to mention it again. I shall never, never forget that _I_ proposed
+it, and that you--_accepted_ it. Come up to Lenox once more before you
+go."
+
+This was written in ink, and was sealed. It was the morning's note.
+But across the envelope these words were written in pencil: "Go to
+Europe with Fanny Meyrick, and come up to Lenox, both of you, when you
+return."
+
+SARAH C. HALLOWELL.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+INSIDE JAPAN.
+
+
+A double pleasure rewards the pioneer who is the first to penetrate
+into the midst of a new people. Besides the rare exhilaration felt in
+treading soil virgin to alien feet, it acts like mental oxygen to look
+upon and breathe in a unique civilization like that of Japan. To feel
+that for ages millions of one's own race have lived and loved, enjoyed
+and suffered and died, living the fullness of life, yet without the
+religion, laws, customs, food, dress and culture which seem to us
+to be the vitals of our social existence, is like walking through a
+living Pompeii.
+
+I confess to a chronic desire to explore the Island Empire in which I
+dwell. Having already, in the central provinces of Japan, trodden many
+a path never before touched by foreign foot, I yearned to explore
+the twin provinces of Kadzusa and Awa, which form the peninsula lying
+between the Gulf of Yeddo and the Pacific Ocean. A timely holiday and
+a passport from the Japanese foreign office enabled me to start toward
+the end of March, the time when all Japan is glorious with blossoming
+plum trees, and the camellia trees in forests of bloom are marshaled
+by thousands on the mountain-slopes.
+
+I was glad to get away from Yeddo: I had a fit of anti-Caucasianism,
+and wished to dwell a while amidst things purely Japanese. There
+were too many foreigners in Yeddo. In that city of only eight hundred
+thousand Japanese there are now full two hundred foreigners of all
+nationalities; and of these, fifty or more are Americans. It was too
+much like home and too little like Japan. Should I go to Yokohama,
+the case was worse. Nearly twelve hundred of the sons of Japheth dwelt
+there, and to reach that upstart European city one must travel on a
+railway and see telegraph-poles all along the line. What _was_ the
+use of living in Japan? Every young Japanese, too, in the capital is
+brainful of "civilization," "progress," "reform," etc. I half suspect
+a few cracks in the craniums belonging to some of the youths who wish
+to introduce law, religion, steam, language, frock-coats and tight
+boots by edict and ordinance. There was too much civilization. I
+yearned for something more primitive, something more purely Japanese;
+and tramping into the country I should find it. I should eat Japanese
+food--profanely dubbed "chow-chow;" sleep in Japanese beds--on the
+floor; talk Japanese--as musical as Italian; and live so much like an
+old-time native that I should feel as one born on the soil. By that
+time, returning to Yeddo as a Japanese of the period, I should of
+course burn to adopt railways, telegraphs and balloons, codify the
+laws, improve upon United States postage, coinage and dress-coats, and
+finish off by annexing the English language after I had cut out all
+irregularities and made all the crooked spelling straight.
+
+So, resolving to be a heathen for a week at least, I left Yeddo one
+afternoon, though it took several hours to do so: the big city is one
+of distances more magnificent than those of Washington. I started in
+a _jin-riki-sha_, which baby-carriage on adult wheels has already been
+described, so as to be tolerably familiar to all American readers.
+The "team" of this "man-power carriage" consists of two men, pulling
+tandem--one in the shafts, the other running ahead with a rope over
+his shoulder, and, until the recent passage of a law commanding
+decency, attired only in his cuticle and a loin-cloth two inches wide.
+You take three coolies when you wish to be stylish, while four are
+not an unknown sensation in Yeddo. With these and fresh relays you can
+travel sixty, or even eighty, miles a day; and I have known one man to
+run thirty miles on the stretch.
+
+Of all the modes of traveling in Japan, the jin-riki-sha is the most
+pleasant. The _kago_ is excruciating. It is a flat basket, swung on
+a pole and carried on the shoulders of two men. If your neck does
+not break, your feet go hopelessly to sleep. Headaches seem to lodge
+somewhere in the bamboos, to afflict every victim entrapped in it. To
+ride in a kago is as pleasant as riding in a washtub or a coffin slung
+on a pole. In some mountain-passes stout native porters carry you
+pickapack. Crossing the shallow rivers, you may sit upon a platform
+borne on men's shoulders as they wade. Saddle-horses are not to be
+publicly hired, but pack-horses are pleasant means of locomotion.
+These animals and their leaders deserve a whole chapter of description
+for themselves. Fancy a brass-bound peaked pack-saddle rising a foot
+above the animal's back, with a crupper-strap slanting down to clasp
+the tail. The oft-bandied slur, that in Japan everything goes by
+contraries, has a varnish of truth on it when we notice that the most
+gorgeous piece of Japanese saddlery is the crupper, which, even on
+a pack-horse, is painted crimson and gilded gloriously. The man who
+leads the horse is an animal that by long contact and companionship
+with the quadruped has grown to resemble him in disposition and
+ejaculation: at least, the equine and the human seem to harmonize well
+together. This man is called in Japanese "horse side." He is dressed
+in straw sandals and the universally worn _kimono_, or blue cotton
+wrapper-like dress, which is totally unfitted for work of any kind,
+and which makes the slovens of Japan--a rather numerous class--always
+look as if they had just got out of bed. At his waist is the usual
+girdle, from which hangs the inevitable bamboo-and-brass pipe, the
+bowl of which holds but a pellet of the mild fine-cut tobacco of the
+country. The pipe-case is connected with a tobacco-pouch, in which
+are also flint, steel and tinder. All these are suspended by a cord,
+fastened to a wooden or ivory button, which is tucked up through the
+belt. On his head, covering his shaven mid-scalp and right-angled
+top-knot, is a blue cotton rag--not handkerchief, since such an
+article in Japan is always made of paper. This head-gear is usually
+fastened over the head by twisting the ends under the nose. With a
+rope six feet long he leads his horse, which trusts so implicitly
+to its master's guidance that we suspect the prevalence of blindness
+among the Japanese pack-horses arises from sheer lack of the exercise
+of their eyesight. These unkempt brutes are strangers to curry-combs
+and brushes, though a semi-monthly scrubbing in hot water keeps them
+tolerably clean. Their shoes are a curiosity: the hoofs are not shod
+with iron, but with straw sandals, tied on thrice or oftener daily.
+Grass is scarce in Japan, and oats are unknown. The nags live on
+beans, barley, and the stalks, leaves and tops of succulent plants,
+with only an occasional wisp of hay or grass.
+
+In certain districts horses of one or the other sex, as the law
+determines, are kept exclusively. Horses of the gentler sex in Japan
+are usually led by women. During part of my journey to the place which
+I am about to describe the leader of the mare I bestrode was a maiden
+of some forty summers--a neat, spare, vinegar-faced sylph, who had
+evidently long since left the matrimonial market, and had devoted
+herself to making one horse happy for the rest of her pilgrimage. That
+she was neither wife nor widow I discovered, not by asking questions,
+but by the manner in which her hair was dressed. Japanese virgins and
+wives have each distinct coiffures, by which, apart from the shaven
+eyebrows and the teeth dyed black of the married women, the _musume_
+or young maiden may be known. The widow who has resolved never to
+marry again (always too old or ugly) is distinguished by her smooth
+skull, every hair of which is shaved off. A lady of rank may also be
+known by her coiffure; and many other distinctions are thus noted.
+
+I waited three-quarters of an hour for my horse and its leader to
+appear at the post-relay at which I sat down, and was stared at during
+that time by about three hundred pairs of eyes. The populace of
+each village turned out _en masse_ to see the foreigner, and they
+diligently improved their time in examining him from crown to
+boot-sole. Like everything else in the rural districts of Japan, my
+guide was not in a hurry, and could not understand why a foreigner
+should be. But finally arriving, she bowed very low and invited me
+to climb up on the saddle, and off we started for a mountain ride of
+eight miles.
+
+A Japanese pack-horse, at his best, seems always swaying between two
+opinions: his affection for the bestower of his beans and that for the
+repose of the stable mutually attract him. On this occasion the little
+woman gently led the horse over the rough places and down the steep
+paths with the ejaculation, _Mite yo! Mite yo!_ but when the beast
+stopped too long to meditate or to chew the bit, as if vainly trying
+to pick its teeth, a lively jerk of the rope and a "You old beast!
+come on," started the animal on its travels. Finally, when the
+creature stopped to deliberate upon the propriety of going forward at
+all, the vials of the wrath of the Japanese spinster exploded, and I
+was tempted to believe her affections had been blighted. But when we
+met any of her friends on the road, or passed the wayside shops or
+farm-houses, the scolder of horses was the lady who wished all _Ohaio_
+("Good-morning"), or remarked that the weather was very fine; and when
+joked for carrying a foreigner, replied, "Yes, it is the first time I
+have had the honor."
+
+I need not trouble the reader with many details of geography. My
+trip lasted eight days, during which I passed over two hundred miles,
+two-thirds of the way on foot. I made the entire circuit of the lower
+half of the peninsula, but shall dwell only on my visit to Kanozan
+(Deer Mountain), famous for its lovely scenery, temple and Booddhist
+monastery. From the top of the mountain there are visible innumerable
+valleys, nearly the whole of the Gulf of Yeddo, and the white-throned
+Foosiyama, called the highest mountain in Japan and the most beautiful
+in the world. We spent the night previous in Kisaradzu, the capital
+of the now united provinces, and a neat little city, just beginning to
+introduce foreign civilization. Its streets were lighted with Yankee
+lamps and Pennsylvania petroleum. Postal boxes after the Yankee custom
+were erected and in use. Gingham umbrellas were replacing those made
+of oiled paper. Barbers' poles, painted white with the spiral red
+band, were set up, and within the shops Young Japan had his queue
+cut off and his hair dressed in foreign style. Ignorant of the
+significance of the symbolic relic of the old days, when the barber
+was doctor and dentist also, and made his pole represent a bandage
+wound around a broken limb, the Japanese barber has, in many cases,
+added a green or blue band. Not being an adept in the use of that
+refractory language which Young Japan would so like to flatten out and
+plane down for vernacular use, the Japanese barber is not always happy
+in executing the English legend for his sign-board. The following are
+specimens:
+
+                  "A HAIR-DRESSING SALOON FOR
+                    JAPANES AND FOREIGNER."
+
+                        "SHOP OF HAIR."
+
+                   "HAIRS CUT IN THE ENGLISH
+                      AND FRENCH FASHION."
+
+Passing out of Kisaradzu, and winding up to Kanozan over the narrow
+bridle-path, we pass the usual terraced rice-fields watered by
+descending rivulets, and the usual thatched and mud-walled cottages,
+which characterize every landscape in Japan, besides long rows of
+tall _tsubaki_ (camellia) trees, forty feet high and laden with their
+crimson and white splendors. Along the road are the little wayside
+shrines and sacred portals of red wood which tell where the worshipers
+of the Shintoo faith adore their gods and offer their prayers without
+image, idol or picture. The far more numerous images and shrines
+of Booddha the sage, Amida the queen of heaven, and hundred-armed
+Kuannon, tell of the popular faith of the masses of Japan in the
+gentle doctrines of the Indian sage. The student of comparative
+religions is interested in noticing how a code of morals founded
+upon atheistic humanitarianism, in its origin utterly destitute
+of theology, has developed into a colossal system of demonology,
+dogmatics, eschatology, myths and legends, with a pantheon more
+populous than that of old Rome. Many of the images by the wayside are
+headless, cloven by frost, overturned by earthquakes, and so pitted
+by time as to resemble petrified smallpox patients rather than
+divinities. Nature neither respects dogma nor worships the gods made
+by men, and the moss and the lichens have muffled up the idols and
+eaten the substance of the sacred stone. Here Booddha wears a robe
+of choicest green, and there the little saxafrage waves its white
+blossoms from the shoulder of Amida, rending asunder her stone body.
+Even the little stone columns which contain a guiding hand pointing
+out the road to Kanozan are dedicated to Great Shaka (Booddha).
+Passing one of the larger temples, we meet a company of pilgrims.
+Actual sight and reasoning from experience in other lands agree in
+telling me that they are women, and most of them old women. They
+return my salute, politely striving to conceal their wonder at the
+first _to-jin_ they have ever looked upon.
+
+I would wager that these people, like most of the rustics in Japan,
+have always believed the foreigners from Europe and America to be
+certainly ruffians, and most probably beasts. Many of them,
+without having heard; of Darwin or Monboddo, believe all the "hairy
+foreigners" to be descendants of dogs. Their first meeting with a
+foreigner sweeps away the cobwebs of prejudice, and they are ashamed
+of their former ignorance. In extorting from Japanese friends their
+first ideas about foreigners, I have been forcibly reminded of some
+popular ideas concerning the people of China and Japan which are still
+entertained at home, especially by the queens of the kitchen and the
+lords of the hod.
+
+After the fashion in Japan, I inquire of the pilgrims whence they came
+and whither they are going. Leaning upon their staves and unslinging
+their huge round, conical hats, they give me to know that they have
+come on foot from Muja, nearly one hundred and fifty miles distant,
+and that they will finish their pilgrimage at Kominato--where the
+great founder of the Nichiren sect (one of the last developments of
+Booddhism in Japan) was born--twenty-seven miles beyond the point
+at which we met. I inform them that I have come over seven thousand
+miles, and will also visit Nichiren's birthplace. "_Sayo de gozarimos!
+Naru hodo?_" ("Indeed, is it possible?")
+
+I have reached their hearts through the gates of surprise. A foreigner
+visiting Nichiren's birthplace! And coming seven thousand miles too!
+The old ladies become loquacious. They pour out their questions
+by dozens. Do you have Booddhist temples in America? Of course the
+Nichiren sect flourishes there? When I politely answer No to both
+questions, a look of disappointed surprise and pity steals over both
+the ruddy and the wrinkled faces. "Then he is a heathen!" says the
+expression on their faces. How strange that no Booddhist temples exist
+in the foreigner's country! Ah, perhaps, then, the Shintoo religion is
+the religion of the foreigner's country? "No? _Naru hodo!_ Then what
+_do_ you believe in?"
+
+It did not take long to answer that question. There is no country in
+the world in which Christianity has been more publicly and universally
+advertised. For three centuries, in every city, village and hamlet and
+on every highway, the names of Christianity and its Founder have been
+proclaimed on the edict-boards and in the public law-books of the
+empire as belonging to a corrupt and hateful doctrine; which should
+a man believe, he would be punished on earth by fines, imprisonment,
+perhaps death, and in _jigoku_ (hell) by torments eternal. "Whosoever
+believeth in Christ shall be damned--whosoever believeth not shall be
+saved," was the formula taught by the priests for centuries. I pointed
+to the board on which hung the edicts prohibiting Christianity, and
+told them I believed in that doctrine, and that Christ was the One
+adored and loved by us. A volley of _naru hodos_, spoken with bated
+breath, greeted this announcement, and I could only understand the
+whispered "Why, that is the sect whose followers will go to hell!"
+The old ladies could not walk fast, and we soon parted, after many
+a strange question concerning morals, customs and the details of
+civilization in the land of the foreigner. Be it said, in passing,
+that the present liberal and enlightened government of Japan, in spite
+of priestly intolerance and the bigotry of ignorance, resisting even
+to blood, has decided upon the recission of the slanderous falsehoods
+against the faith of Christendom; and Japan, though an Asiatic nation,
+will soon grant toleration to all creeds.
+
+The path wound up through higher valleys, revealing bolder scenery.
+Afar off, in the sheen of glorified distance, the water slanted to the
+sky. The white bosoms of the square-sailed junks heaved with breezy
+pulses, the mountains were thrones of stainless blue, the floods
+of sunny splendor and the intense fullness of light, for which the
+cloudless sky of Japan is remarkable, told the reason for the naming
+of Niphon, of which "Japan" is but the foreigner's corruption,
+"Great Land of the Fountain of Light." Anon we entered the groves
+of mountain-pines anchored in the rocks, and with girths upon which
+succeeding centuries had clasped their zones. They seemed like
+Nature's senators in council as they whispered together and murmured
+in the breeze that reached us laden with music and freighted with
+resinous aroma. Reaching a hamlet called Mute ("six hands"), I sit
+outside an inn on one of the benches which are ever ready for the
+traveler, and shaded overhead by a screen of boughs. A young girl
+brings me water, the ever-ready cup of tea, and fire for the pipe
+which I am supposed to smoke. A short rest, another hour's climb and
+walk, and we are in the village of Kanozan, which is scarcely more
+than a street of hotels. Situated on the ridge of the mountain, it
+rises like an island in a sea of pines.
+
+In imagining a Japanese hotel, good reader, please dismiss all
+architectural ideas derived from the Continental or the Fifth Avenue.
+Our hotels in Japan, outwardly at least, are wooden structures, two
+stories high, often but one. Their roofs are usually thatched, though
+the city caravansaries are tiled. They are entirely open on the front
+_ground_ floor, and about six feet from the sill or threshold rises a
+platform about a foot and a half high, upon which the proprietor may
+be seen seated on his heels behind a tiny railing ten inches high,
+busy with his account-books. If it is winter he is engaged in the
+absorbing occupation of all Japanese tradesmen at that time of
+year--warming his hands over a charcoal fire in a low brazier. The
+kitchen is usually just next to this front room, often separated
+from the street only by a latticed partition. In evolving a Japanese
+kitchen out of his or her imagination, the reader must cast away the
+rising conception of Bridget's realm. Blissful, indeed, is the thought
+as I enter the Japanese hotel that neither the typical servant-girl
+nor the American hotel-clerk is to be found here. The landlord comes
+to meet me, and, falling on his hands and knees, bows his head to the
+floor. One or two of the pretty girls out of the bevy usually seen
+in Japanese hotels comes to assist me and take my traps. Welcomes,
+invitations and plenty of fun greet me as I sit down to take off my
+shoes, as all good Japanese do, and as those filthy foreigners don't
+who tramp on the clean mats with muddy boots. I stand up unshod, and
+am led by the laughing girls along the smooth corridors, across an
+arched bridge which spans an open space in which is a rookery, garden,
+and pond stocked with goldfish, turtles and marine plants. The room
+which my fair guides choose for me is at the rear end of the house,
+overlooking the grand scenery for which Kanozan is justly famous all
+over the empire. Ninety-nine valleys are said to be visible from
+the mountain-top on which the hotel is situated, and I suspect that
+multiplication by ten would scarcely be an exaggeration. A world of
+blue water and pines, and the detailed loveliness of the rolling
+land, form a picture which I lack power to paint with words. The water
+seemed the type of repose, the earth of motion.
+
+Enjoying to the full that rapture of first vision which one never
+feels twice, I turned and entered the room, which made up in neatness
+what it lacked in luxury. Furniture in a Japanese house there is
+none. Like all the others, the floor of my room was covered with soft
+matting two inches thick, made into sections six feet long and three
+feet wide, and bound with a black border. The dimensions of a room may
+always be expressed by the number of mats. The inside of the mats is
+of rice straw, the outside is of the finest and smoothest matting.
+There are no chairs, stools, sofas or anything to sit down upon,
+though, having long since forgotten the fact, we find a ready seat on
+the floor. On one side of the room, occupying one-half of its space,
+is the _tokonoma_, a little platform anciently used for the bed, two
+feet wide and five or six inches high. In one corner is a large vase
+containing four or five boughs broken from a plum tree crowded with
+blossoms, and a large bunch of white, crimson and dappled camellias,
+both single and double. In the centre is the sword-rack, found in
+every samurai's house, yet now obsolete, since Japan's chivalry have
+laid aside their two swords. On the other half of the room, occupying
+the same side as the tokonoma, is a series of peculiar shelves like
+those of an open Japanese cabinet, though larger; and at the top of
+these is a little closet closed by sliding doors. The other three
+sides of the room are of sliding partitions six feet high, made of
+fine white wood, latticed in small squares and covered with paper,
+through which mellow, softened light fills the room. On the plastered
+wall above the latticed sliding doors hangs a framed tablet on which
+are written Chinese characters, which, having the Japanese letters
+at the side, tell in terse and poetical phrase that "This room is the
+chamber of peaceful meditation, into which the moonlight streams."
+Some of the lattice and other work is handsomely carved and wrought,
+and a paper screen along the wall which separates this room from the
+next is covered with verses of Japanese poetry. Were it cold weather,
+a brazier, with some live coals in it, would be brought for us to
+toast our hands and feet and to shiver over, as stoves and hard coal
+are not Japanese institutions. First of all, however, at present, one
+of the _musumes_ brings me a _tobacco-bon_ or tray, in which is fire
+to light my pipe, the Japanese scarcely having a conception of a man
+who does not smoke.
+
+My description of a Japanese room will answer, in the main, for any
+in Japan _as it was_--from the artisan's to the emperor's. Even
+the palaces of the mikado in Kioto never contained tables, chairs,
+bedsteads or any such inconvenient and space-robbing thing. The tables
+upon which they ate, played chess or wrote were six inches or a foot
+high. A Japanese of the old style thinks the cumbrous furniture in our
+Western dwellings impertinent and unnecessary. In the eye of aesthetic
+Japanese a room crowded with luxurious upholstery is a specimen of
+barbaric pomp, delighting the savage and unrefined eye of the hairy
+foreigners, but shocking to the purged vision and the refined taste
+of one born in great Niphon. No such tradesman as an upholsterer or
+furniture-dealer exists in Japan. The country is a paradise for young
+betrothed couples who would wed with light purses. One sees love in a
+cottage on a national scale here. That terrible lion of expense, the
+furnishing of a house, that stands ever in the way of so many loving
+pairs desirous of marriage and a home of their own, is a bugbear not
+known in Japan. A chest of drawers for clothing, a few mats, two or
+three quilts for a bed on the floor, some simple kitchen utensils,
+and the house is furnished. Why should we litter these neatly matted
+rooms, why cover with paint and gilding virgin wood of faultless
+grain, or mar the sweet simplicity and airy roominess of our
+(Japanese) chambers by loading them with all kinds of unnecessary
+luxuries?
+
+These reflections are broken in upon by Miss Cherry-blossom, one of
+the maids, who glides in, kneels upon the floor, and sets down a tiny
+round tray with a baby tea-pot and a cup the size of an egg. Pouring
+out some tea, enough to half fill one of these porcelain thimbles, she
+sets it in the socket of another yet tinier tray, and bowing her head
+coquettishly, begs me to drink. Having long since learned to quaff
+Japan's fragrant beverage guiltless of milk or sugar, I drain the cup.
+Miss Cherry-blossom, sitting upright upon her heels, folds her dress
+neatly under her knees, gives her loose robe a twitch, revealing to
+advantage her white-powdered neck, the prized point of beauty in a
+Japanese maiden, and then asks the usual questions as to whence
+I came, whither I am going, and to what country I belong. These,
+according to the Japanese code of etiquette, are all polite questions;
+and in return, violating no dictum which the purists of Kioto or Yeddo
+have laid down, I inquire her age ("Your honorable years, how many?").
+The answer, "_Ju-hachi_," makes known that she is eighteen years of
+age. Chatting further, I learn what things there are to be seen in the
+neighborhood, whether foreigners have been there before, the distance
+to the next village, the history of the old temple near by, etc. All
+this is told with many a laugh and a little pantomime--she naturally
+committing the mistake of speaking louder and faster to the foreigner
+who cannot fully understand her dialect or allusions--when a new
+character appears upon the scene.
+
+A very jolly, matronly-looking woman, evidently the landlady, pulls
+aside one of the sliding paper doors, and bowing low on her hands and
+knees, smiles cavernously with her jet-black teeth, which, like all
+correct and cleanly women in Japan, she dyes on alternate days. She
+asks concerning dinner, and whether it is the honorable wish of the
+visitor to eat Japanese food. The answer being affirmative, both
+matron and maiden disappear to prepare the meal, evidently thinking it
+a fine joke. No such thing as a common dining-room exists in Japanese
+hotels. Caste has hitherto been too strictly observed to allow of such
+an idea. Every guest eats in his own room, sitting on his calves and
+heels. The preparations are simple, though of course I speak now of
+every-day life.
+
+Miss Peach-blossom appears, bearing in her hand a table four inches
+high, one foot square, and handsomely lacquered red and black. Behind
+her comes a young girl carrying a rice-box and plate of fish. Most
+gracefully she sets it down with the apology, "I have kept you long
+waiting," and the invitation, "Please take up."
+
+On the table are four covered bowls, two very small dishes containing
+pickles and soy, and a little paper bag in which is a pair of
+chopsticks. The place of each article is foreordained by gastronomic
+etiquette, and rigidly observed. In the first bowl is soup, in the
+second a boiled mixture consisting of leeks, mushrooms, lotus-root
+and a kind of sea-weed. In a third are boiled buckwheat cakes or
+dumplings, and _tofu_ or bean-curd. In the porcelain cup is rice. In
+an oblong dish, brought in during the meal, is a broiled fish in soy.
+Lifting off the covers and adjusting my chopsticks deftly, I begin.
+The bowl of rice is first attacked, and quickly finished. The
+attendant damsel proffers her lacquered waiter, and uncovering the
+steaming tub of rice paddles out another cupful. It is etiquette to
+dispose of unlimited cups of rice and soup, but a deadly breach of
+good manners to ask to have the other two bowls replenished. Of course
+at the hotels whatever the larder affords can be ordered. Boiled eggs,
+cracked and peeled before you by the tapering fingers of the damsels,
+are considered choice articles of food. Raw fish, thinly sliced and
+eaten with radish, sauce, ginger sprouts, etc., is highly enjoyed by
+the Japanese, who are surprised to find the dish disliked by their
+foreign guests. A member of one of the embassies sent to Europe
+confessed that amid the luxuries of continental tables, he longed for
+the raw fish and grated radish of his native land. Some articles of
+our own diet, especially cheese and butter, are as heartily detested
+by the Japanese as their raw fish is by us. The popular idea at home,
+that the Japanese live chiefly on mice and crawfish, and that the
+foreigners are in chronic danger of starvation, is matched by that of
+some Japanese, who, finding that the "hairy foreigners" do not eat
+the food of human beings--_i.e._ Japanese--wonder what they do eat. A
+member of the present embassy in Europe, when first leaving his native
+land, was thus addressed by his anxious mother: "Now, Yazirobe, you
+are going to those strange countries, where I am afraid you will get
+very little to eat: do take some rice with you." I confess that on
+first landing in Japan I could not relish Japanese diet and cookery.
+Barring eggs and rice, everything tasted like starch or sawdust. The
+flavors seemed raw and earthy, or suggested dishcloths not too well
+scalded. I suspect that a good deal of Philadelphia and Caucasian
+pride lined the alimentary canal of the writer. Now, after a ten-mile
+tramp, a Japanese meal tastes very much as it does to one native and
+to the diet born.
+
+Besides the young damsel who presides, there is another, less neatly
+dressed. Her apron is suggestive of the kitchen, and altogether she
+seems a Cinderella by the fireplace. This damsel is evidently a supe
+or scullion. She is not so self-possessed as her superior companion,
+and while observing the foreigner with a mild stare, unskillfully
+concealing her mirth, she finally explodes when he makes a _faux pas_
+with the chopsticks and drops a bit of fish on the clean matting.
+Thereupon she is dispatched to the kitchen for a floor-cloth, and
+severely lectured for laughing aloud, and is told to stay among the
+pots and pans till she learns better manners.
+
+Dinner over, a siesta on the soft mats is next in order. These mats
+seem made for sleep and indolence. No booted foot ever defiles them.
+Every one leaves his clogs on the ground outside, and glides about in
+his mitten-like socks, which have each a special compartment for the
+great toe. My waiting damsel having gone out, and there being no such
+things as bells, I do as the natives and clap my hands. A far-off
+answer of _Hei--i--i_ is returned, and soon the shuffling of feet
+is heard again. The housewife appears with the usual low bow, and,
+smiling so as to again display what resembles a mouthful of coal, she
+listens to the request for a pillow. Opening the little closet before
+spoken of, she produces the desired article. It is not a ticking bag
+of baked feathers enclosed in a dainty, spotless case of white linen,
+but a little upright piece of wood, six inches high and long, and one
+wide, rounded at the bottom like the rockers of a cradle. On the
+top, lying in a groove, is a tiny rounded bag of calico filled with
+rice-chaff, about the size of a sausage. The pillow-case is a piece of
+white paper wrapped around the top, and renewed in good hotels daily
+for each guest. One can rest about four or six inches of the side of
+his _os occipitis_ on a Japanese pillow, and if he wishes may rock
+himself to sleep, though the words suggest more than the facts
+warrant. By sleeping on civilized feathers one gets out of training,
+and the Japanese pillows feel very hard and very much in one place.
+The dreams which one has on these pillows are characteristic. In my
+first some imps were boring gimlet-holes in the side of my skull,
+until they had honeycombed it and removed so much brain that I felt
+too light-headed to preserve my equilibrium. On the present occasion,
+after falling asleep, I thought that the pillow on which I lay pressed
+its shape into my head, and the skull, to be repaired, was being
+trepanned. My head actually tumbling off the pillow was the cause of
+the fancied operation being suddenly arrested. A short experience in
+traveling among the Japanese has satisfied me that they are one of
+the most polite, good-natured and happy nations in the world. By
+introducing foreign civilization into their beautiful land they may
+become richer: they need not expect to be happier.
+
+W.E. GRIFFIS.
+
+
+
+
+JASON'S QUEST.
+
+
+I.
+
+This is a story of love for love, and how it came to naught. In it
+there shall be no marrying from mercenary motives; the manoeuvering
+mother-in-law is suppressed; Nature takes her course; and in the
+climax I strive to prove how sad a thing it is that men are modest and
+women weak.
+
+Still, I do not lose faith in humanity, but hope for better things in
+the broad, bright future. I would respectfully call attention to
+the moral of this tale, and, as for the heroes and heroines of the
+hereafter, I cheerfully leave them to regulate their affairs upon a
+different basis; which basis, I devoutly believe, will be one of the
+inevitable results of time.
+
+But, lo! the heroine approaches and the story begins!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Life with some of us is but the grouping of a few brilliant or sombre
+tableaux, which are like the famous lines in an epic that immortalize
+the whole. Maud's life was such a one, and her years had been rather
+unpicturesque until now, when the shadows began to deepen and the
+lights to grow more intense. In fact, she seemed to be approaching
+some sort of a climax, and she began to grow nervous about it, being
+just woman enough to dwell somewhat anxiously upon her anticipated
+_début_, and to hope for at least a decent appearance in her
+extremity.
+
+The good-hearted, commonplace people of a pleasant country down the
+coast--which I will call Dreamland for convenience' sake--thought
+of Maud only as a gentle and humane little lady, with a comfortable
+income and a character above reproach. So Maud abode in peace with her
+maids at the seaside cottage, spending the still hours of Dreamland
+between her rose-garden on the sunny slope to the southward and the
+conservatory of lily-like nuns on the hill toward the sea.
+
+Maud was unhappy in a world which had treated her very kindly indeed,
+and it was simply because she had a dove's heart, that was always
+fluttering in a strange place, and the face of a nun, that was for
+ever getting looked at by all sorts of people, much as it disliked
+that kind of treatment from the best of them.
+
+The only reason why Maud preferred such a dull place as Dreamland to
+the splendid metropolis up the coast was that she might have a quiet
+time of it, and not be annoyed by the impudent metropolitans. In fact,
+she was tired of her lovers--all save one, a fine young fellow named
+Jason, but better known in Dreamland as John. I have mentioned, I
+believe, that Maud was in very good circumstances: I am sorry to
+add that Jason wasn't. He was rich only in his untried youth and the
+promises of a glorious manhood.
+
+Jason loved Maud, and she knew it as well as she ever knew anything in
+her life--she knew it without his having told her. Had she not divined
+it by the infallible intuition of the heart, she might have lived
+believing herself unloved, for Jason hadn't the remotest idea of
+mentioning the fact. He could barely live comfortably by himself,
+frugal as he was; and he would not go to her empty-handed, though
+Heaven knows she had enough for two, and was dying to share it with
+him. He went his way, and the way was tedious enough in those days.
+Like a mirage, happiness glimmered before him, but his upright and
+patient steps brought him no nearer to its alluring vista.
+
+Youth is impatient and sanguine, and Jason, in his impetuous and
+hopeful youth, besought the oracle, whose prophetic utterances seemed
+to imply that his future and his fortune lay in some distant land,
+and that it would be wise for him to seek it at once. Jason, like his
+illustrious predecessor, resolved to go over the sea in search of the
+golden fleece. It was the most adventurous thing he ever did, and Maud
+thought it a hopeless and a willful act; yet she could do nothing
+but hold her peace, while her poor heart was as near to breaking
+as possible--much nearer to breaking than it is usually safe for a
+maiden's heart to be.
+
+So Jason gathered his mates--a reckless lot they were, too--and,
+having laden his barque and swung into the stream, his men said their
+final adieux, receiving quantities of pincushions and bookmarks, so
+indispensable to Argonauts, as testimonials of eternal fidelity from
+the maids of Dreamland.
+
+Jason strode to the cottage and kissed the hand of Maud as if it
+were the hand of a princess; after which, with much embarrassment, he
+plucked a rose from her garden, while a pang pierced his heart till it
+ached again, and a thorn probed his finger till a drop of blood
+fell upon a myrtle leaf; which leaf Maud coveted, and keeps to this
+day--hugged to her in her grave-clothes.
+
+It is of course best that this life should not be perfect, for the
+life to come might suffer by comparison; yet it is one of the cruelest
+decrees of Nature--if Nature has really decreed what seems so wholly
+against her--that a woman's heart must bide its time and be silent in
+the presence of its natural mate while every attribute of her being
+implores his recognition; and that the truest men are too honorable
+or too proud to yield themselves, having no offering but their honest
+love to lay at the feet of their mistresses. If it were not so, the
+princess would not have mourned in her garden for her flown mate, and
+there would have been much happiness on short notice.
+
+Driven forth by the propitious winds, the barque fled from the shore,
+while Maud, seated among her roses, with weeping and wringing of
+hands, poured out upon the winds the burden of her love.
+
+Why didn't Jason catch a syllable of that fervent prayer, reef, and
+come home to her? Then I need not have written this history, and all
+would have been well in Dreamland. But he didn't. He heard nothing
+but the sibilant waters as they rushed under his keel: he thought of
+nothing but the rose that was withering in the secret locker of his
+cabin, and of the wound in his heart that was gaping and as fresh as
+ever. So the night-winds hurried him onward, and the darkness absorbed
+the outlines of the dear Dreamland coast.
+
+Maud watched the barque while it lessened and lessened in the
+distance, and the clouds blew over her, and it grew chilly and damp in
+the rose-garden--as chilly and damp as though it were not the abode of
+a princess who was beloved of the noblest of men. She watched the sail
+till it faded suddenly beyond the headland, and between it and her
+loomed the dark towers of the convent. Out on that troubled sea,
+seeking the golden fleece in some remote kingdom, tossed on the
+treacherous waves for her sake, in her white and radiant dreams she
+beheld Jason. Yet ever between him and her, hiding the lessening
+barque from the slope of the rose-garden, loomed the dark towers of
+the convent.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+Jason and his fellows coursed the seas, scanning with eager eyes
+the cloudy belt of the horizon, hopefully seeking some signs of the
+Fortunate Islands, of whose indescribable beauty and untold wealth
+they had heard many surmises. Day after day they pressed on between
+the same blank sky and the same blank sea, but there was no token to
+gladden the eyes of the watchers. Jason grew impatient at last: he had
+called upon nearly all the saints in the calendar, and was growing to
+be a very poor sort of a Catholic, inasmuch as he doubted the efficacy
+of his prayers and the ability of saints to answer them. He didn't
+realize that there might be good reasons for their not being answered
+under the existing circumstances; which is a matter worthy of the
+consideration of all of us.
+
+The fact was, the Fortunate Islands were not one-half so wonderful as
+had been represented; and the saints knew it well enough. Had Jason
+invested there, as he purposed doing at the time of his embarkment,
+he might have sunk all that he possessed--which was little enough
+to float, as one would think--and then Maud might have tended her
+rose-garden and carried fruit-offerings to the sweet-faced nuns
+till she was gray and limping, for all Jason's fine notions of
+independence--namely, a good income from the rise of stocks in the
+Fortunate Islands, and two souls and two hearts doing the same sort of
+thing at the same time, with complete and unqualified success, in that
+sweet rose-garden on the sunny slope to the southward.
+
+That was the way life went with Captain Jason of the Argonauts, called
+John, for short, in Dreamland, while the crew growled a good deal at
+their ill-luck, and began to fear that if things went on in that way
+much longer they would have more fasts than Fridays in the week. Those
+were trying times for all of them, and when land was made at last, and
+it proved to be a temptation and a snare, Jason ordered a special fast
+and a mass for the salvation of the souls in imminent peril. Out in
+the world at last, thousands of miles from the unsophisticated
+people of Dreamland, Jason beheld the dread Symplegades rocking their
+enormous bulks upon the waves, and liable at any moment to swing
+together with a terrific and deadly crash. Probably they were whales
+at play: it may have been two currents of the sea rushing into
+each other's arms: at all events, it was something deluding, though
+temporary, and perhaps the selfsame difficulty experienced by the
+original J. when he went after the original fleece.
+
+My hero was young and unschooled in the world's wickedness, but he
+knew that where two opposing elements come together with much force,
+whatever happens to lie between them must suffer. What should be done
+was a question of no little importance to the Argonauts. Most of
+them were in favor of running the risk of a collision and letting the
+vessel drive straight through. Jason thought this a judgment worthy
+of young men whose lady-loves give expression to their most sacred
+sentiments by gifts of pincushions and bookmarks. But he had something
+to consider more than they--yea, more than any other living man--in
+exemplification of the pleasing fallacy that besets all lovers in all
+ages. Blessed be God that it is so!
+
+The original Jason in the fable let loose a dove upon the waters, and
+the dove lost only a tail-feather or two when the clashing islands
+clashed their worst, and in the moment of the rebound the Argo swept
+through in safety. The modern J. thought of this in his predicament,
+and having turned it in his mind, he concluded that whereas the
+pioneer Argonaut did not meet his princess till after his encounter
+with the elements, he was not worthy of consideration; for had he
+known her and loved her as some one knew and loved some one else
+at that moment, most likely he would not have valued his life so
+slightly. He clewed up his canvas like a wise mariner, and lay to
+while the Symplegades butted one another with their foreheads of
+adamant, and the sea was white with terror all about them. Jason
+was no coward: he would have braved the passage had he alone been
+concerned in the result; but for Maud in her rose-garden and for the
+future, dear to him as his hope of heaven, he paused and trembled.
+
+It is a pity there should be so little pausing and trembling among
+the clashing islands when life hangs in the balance and the odds are
+against it. But there always has been and always will be this little,
+because we believe that nothing but experience is capable of teaching
+us, and experience invariably teaches it all wrong end to, so that we
+begin our lesson with a disaster and conclude it with a slow recovery.
+
+During Jason's hour of deliberation his guardian angel, who was the
+only one having his interests really at heart, and who loved him
+unselfishly,--this angel advised him in the similitude of a dream to
+"luff a little and go round the obstacles." Jason luffed, and passed
+on with colors flying; which was doubtless much better than trying to
+squeeze through the floating islands in the midst of an exceedingly
+disagreeable sea.
+
+Then came the land beyond, the long-sought kingdom, full of arts and
+wiles. Jason was beset with ten thousand temptations, and was more
+than once upon the point of falling into a snare, when, however, he
+seemed to behold the apparition of his withered rose, which bloomed
+and blushed again at such times, and gave out a faint fragrance, so
+like a breath from that Eden on the sunny slope that he paused and
+grew strong, and was saved.
+
+His troubles were not yet over. There was the bargaining for the
+golden fleece, and the tempting offer of the dragons' teeth which
+he was to sow. They were the lusts of the body, that, once planted,
+spring up an armed force of bloody and persistent accusers. But
+that precious rose! How it blossomed over and over for his especial
+benefit, a perpetual warning and an unfailing talisman--a very
+profitable sort of blossom to wear in one's button-hole in these
+times! But such blossoms are scarce indeed.
+
+In due course of time that potent charm got him the golden fleece in a
+very natural and business-like way, and, rejoicing in his possessions,
+Jason returned to his vessel and trimmed his sails for home.
+
+Merry the hearts that sailed with him, and fresh the winds that wafted
+them onward, while, as is usual at sea, nothing occurred during the
+voyage worth mentioning an hour after its occurrence. Jason in his new
+joy had almost forgotten that withered token. In deep remorse at his
+thoughtlessness, he sought his treasure, and, horror of horrors! every
+leaf had fallen from the stem, the blossom was annihilated for ever.
+He dwelt upon this episode morbidly, as upon a presentiment: he
+pictured in his mind the hill-slope cottage deserted, the rose-garden
+wasted and full of tares, and the bleak wind blowing whither it listed
+through those avenues of beauty, for desolation possessed them all. He
+groaned in spirit and wrestled with his new and invisible adversary,
+beseeching the Most Merciful, from the bitterness of his suspense, a
+speedy deliverance or a happy death.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+There were thistles and tares in the unkept rose-garden, and
+the cottage was abandoned to a sisterhood of doves, who mourned
+perpetually for their lost princess. The place was desolate, yet there
+had been no sudden desertion of it. For many months no news had been
+heard of the Argonauts. They were considerably overdue: the sages of
+Dreamland shook their grizzly heads. They were just as sage and shaky
+in those days as in these degenerate times. The maids of the hamlet
+wept for a season, then turned from sorrowing, dried their tears, took
+unto themselves new lovers, and the world wagged well in Dreamland.
+
+But Maud was a truer soul than any amongst them: she prayed hourly
+for Jason's prosperity, and was trusting and hopeful until it seemed
+almost that something had whispered to her the fate of the voyagers.
+Then she mourned night and day: she went into retirement with the
+sweet-faced nuns at the headland, whose secluded life had ever been
+very grateful to her. She gave out of her bounty to all who asked, and
+rested not then, but sought the sick and the suffering, and they were
+comforted, and blessed her who had blessed them. They began to think
+her half an angel in Dreamland, and it seemed as though she were not
+made for this world at all. The same thing happens now occasionally,
+and in this way we acknowledge our shortcomings before our fellow-men
+and women when we find some one considerably above the average who
+shames us into confessing it. I hope the Recording Angel is within
+hearing at these precious moments.
+
+The world certainly possessed no charms for one of Maud's temperament:
+it never did possess any for her. She was as out of place in it as a
+mourning dove in a city mob. Her spirit sought tranquillity, and she
+found it in the serene and changless convent life. You and I might
+seek in vain for anything like peace of spirit in such a place: we
+might find it a stale and profitless imprisonment; and perhaps it
+speaks badly for both of us that it is so. The violet finds its silent
+cell in the earth-crevice by the hidden spring a sufficient refuge,
+and rejoices in it, but the sea-grass that has all its life tossed in
+the surges would think that a very dull sort of existence. There are
+human violets in the world, and human sunflowers and poppies, and
+doves also, and apes and alligators; and some of them come within one
+of being inhuman; and sometimes that _one_ drops out, and the inhuman
+swallows up the human.
+
+Maud was the mourning dove seeking its bower of shade: she used to
+fancy herself a nun, and followed the prescribed duties of the house
+as faithfully as Sister Grace herself. She knelt in the little chapel
+of the convent till her back ached and her knees were lame, but it was
+a never-failing joy in time of trouble, and her time of tremble had
+come. Maud said many prayers before an altar of exceeding loveliness,
+where fresh flowers seemed to breathe forth an unusual fragrance.
+There was a statue of the Virgin, said to possess some miraculous
+qualities: tradition whispered that on two or three occasions the
+expression on the face of the statue had been seen to change visibly.
+Maud heard of this, and was very eager to witness the miracle, for it
+was thought to be nothing less than miraculous by the good Sisters.
+She bowed before the altar for hours, and dreamed of the marble face
+till she seemed to see its features smiling upon her and its small,
+slim hand beckoning her back to prayer. She grew nervous and pale and
+almost ill with watching and waiting, and at last was found prostrate
+and insensible at the foot of the statue, overcome with excitement
+and exhaustion. When she grew better she vowed she had seen the head
+bowing to her, and the hands spread over her in benediction: no one
+could deny it, for she was alone in the chapel. After that there was
+a feast of lilies at the convent, and Maud became Sister Somebody or
+other, and never again set foot beyond the great gates of the convent
+wall.
+
+The consecration was doubtless a blessing to her, for she was happy in
+her new home, and found a sphere of usefulness that employed her hours
+to the best advantage. Moreover, she grew to be a sensible nun, and
+ceased to look for supernatural demonstrations in the neighborhood of
+the chapel. She grew hearty, and was cheerful, and sang at her work,
+and prayed with more honesty and less sentiment. Her life was as
+placid as a river whose waters are untroubled by tempestuous winds,
+and upon her bosom light cares, like passing barges, left but a
+momentary wake.
+
+As Maud mused in her cell one day, through the narrow barred window
+she caught a glimpse of the burnished sea bearing upon its waves a
+weather-beaten barque inward bound. There was danger that her mind
+might wander off, piloted by her dreamy and worshipful eyes. She
+arose, drew across the opening a leathern curtain, and returned with
+undisturbed complacence to her prayers.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+Jason, having among his freights the veritable golden fleece, still
+coursed the seas, but beheld with rapture the fair outlines of the
+Dreamland coast traced in the far blue and mysterious horizon. The
+wind freshened: hour after hour they were nearing port, and as the
+whole familiar picture grew more and more distinct, Jason saw the
+convent towers looming like a great shadow, and afterward the sunny
+slope whereon the rose-garden grew.
+
+The manner of his quitting the barque before she was fairly within
+communication with the shore was hardly worthy of his calling. I
+forbear to dwell upon this exhibition of human weakness, for almost
+any one in Jason's shoes would have been equally regardless of the
+regulations, and in consequence proportionally unseamanlike.
+
+With soiled garments and unshorn beard Jason ran to the hill. No one
+of the idlers in port recognized the returned wanderer, and he assured
+himself of the fact before venturing upon his visit to the dove-cot
+where Maud dwelt, for he wished to gaze upon her from afar, and in
+silence to worship her, unknown and unregarded. When he reached the
+wicket, breathless with haste and excitement, he at once beheld the
+ruin of his hopes--the thistles in the paths, the roses overgrown and
+choked with weeds, the sad and general decay. Jason smote his breast
+in a paroxysm of despair, while the doves fluttered out from the porch
+of the cottage in amazement at the approach of a human foot to their
+domains.
+
+What could it mean? he asked himself again and again, while suspicions
+taunted him almost to madness. Up and down that disordered garden he
+paced like a ghostly sentinel; the doves fluttered to and fro, and
+were dismayed; the night-winds came in from the chilly sea, and the
+dews gathered in his beard. Through the deepening dusk he beheld the
+lights of the little town below him: across the solemn silence floated
+the clear notes of the vesper-bell. Jason turned toward the tower on
+the headland. A single ray of light stealing from one of the high,
+narrow windows shot through the mist toward heaven. "The ladder
+of Jacob's dream," said Jason: "on it the angels are ascending and
+descending in their visitations. Oh that I, like Jacob, might receive
+intelligence from these!"
+
+With the heaviest heart that ever burdened man he returned to the town
+and entered the open doors of the church, seeking a few moments of
+repose. An alien in his own land and unwelcomed of any, Jason sought
+the good priest and learned the fate of Maud. She was dead to the
+world and to him. It was but the realization of his fears, and he
+was in some measure prepared for it; yet the best part of the man was
+killed with the force of that blow. His only hope was gone. He set
+his house in order, like one about to leave it, never to return:
+his golden fleece was made over to enrich the convent, and, as the
+magnanimous offering of a homelesss and nameless voyager, it delights
+the happy creatures within those walls, and the shrine of the Virgin
+was made more wonderfully beautiful than it is possible to conceive.
+
+That night Jason walked in the shadow of the lofty walls and poured
+out his sorrowful prayers upon the winds that swept about them. Once
+in his agony he beat at the massive gates, demanding in the name of
+God and of mercy admittance for a lost soul that had no shelter save
+under that roof, and no salvation away from it; but his bleeding hands
+made no impression upon the ponderous doors, and the silent inmates
+at prayer heard nothing save their own whispers, or dreamed in their
+cells of heaven and of peace.
+
+So the cry of that hopeless soul rang up to the stars unanswered, and
+the night frowned down upon him with impenetrable darkness.
+
+End of the tragedy of Jason's Quest, which might easily have been a
+pleasant comedy if Maud had only spoken her mind in the right place.
+Will women never learn--since God has given them the same instincts
+with man, to love, to trust, to doubt, to hate and to make themselves
+at times disagreeable, even with a more complete success than men in
+each of these lines of dramatic business--that God must have intended
+also that they should have the equal right to choose the particular
+object upon which they may exercise those various offices of love,
+trust, etc., etc.? I shall never cease to wonder why they are
+persistently and stupidly silent through six thousand years, content
+to let their hearts wither and die within them, or surrender at
+last to the wretched apology for a lover who offers himself as a
+substitute, and is surprised at rinding himself accepted.
+
+To be sure, it is less dramatic. Jason might have come back and
+married Maud: there would have been a pretty wedding and some
+delightful hours before things grew dull and commonplace, as they must
+have done ultimately. That rose-garden would have come to grief
+when once the children got to playing in it; Jason, on some tedious
+afternoon, when overhauling old letters and the like, would have
+thrown out that withered rose (of precious memory), quite forgetful
+of its significance; Maud would have lost her myrtle leaf in
+house-cleaning. Yet what were the odds? A withered rose and a myrtle
+leaf are scarcely worth the keeping.
+
+You will remember how it turned out in the days of the gods: Jason
+wearied of Medea and the children; Medea was disgusted with such
+conduct, and behaved like a savage; there was general unhappiness in
+the family; and I blush for my sex--which is Jason's--whenever I think
+of it. Now, if my Jason had married his Maud, it would have scarcely
+been worth noticing beyond the simple register in the _Daily
+Dreamlander_, after having been thrice published from the pulpit
+between the Gospel and the Creed--"Jason to Maud."
+
+As Jason was not heard of after the windy night under the wall of the
+convent, there were many surmises concerning his disappearance. It was
+thought that he had again embarked upon some voyage of discovery.
+I believe he had, and it was a desperate one for him. The other
+Argonauts married such maids as were left unmarried, and they did
+well to do so. Some of the old sweethearts regretted their haste, and
+looked enviously upon the new brides of Dreamland; but most of them
+were satisfied with their children, and contented with such husbands
+as Heaven had sent them.
+
+Life grew slow in the little drowsy seaport; the old tales of
+the Symplegades were stale and tedious; the Argonauts had become
+spiritless and corpulent and lazy. One night a great gale swept in
+from the sea: the earth fairly trembled under the repeated shocks
+of the breakers. Old people looked troubled and young people looked
+scared, and on the worst night of all the convent bell was heard to
+toll, and then everybody feared something dreadful was happening to
+the nuns, and everybody lay still and hoped it would soon be over.
+The nuns wondered who rang the bell; and when every one had denied all
+knowledge of it, it was known that most likely the devil had rung it,
+for it was a dreadful night, and such a one as he best likes to be out
+in.
+
+In the morning, when the wind and the sea had gone down somewhat,
+the wreckers found a stark corpse among the rocks under the headland,
+lying with its face to the tower. It was dreadfully mangled: no
+one could identify it as being any one in particular, and it
+was impossible to know whether death had occurred by accident or
+intentionally; so it was shrouded and put away out of Christian burial
+in the common field of the unfortunate. The nuns sang a _requiem_, as
+was their custom, and Maud prayed earnestly for all followers of the
+sea; and the echo of her _miserere_ is the saddest line in the story
+of Jason's Quest.
+
+CHARLES WARREN STODDARD.
+
+
+
+
+FOREBODINGS.
+
+
+  What weight is this which presses on my soul?
+    Powerless to rise, I sink amidst the dust:
+  The days in solemn cycle o'er me roll,
+    While, praying, I can only wait and trust.
+
+  --Trust the dear Hand that all my life has led
+    Through pastures green, by waters pure and still:
+  If now He leads me through dark ways and dread,
+    Shall I dare murmur, whatsoe'er His will?
+
+
+
+
+DEER-PARKS.
+
+
+There is nothing in England at the present day much more distinctly
+an institution of that country than its deer-parks. Although it
+seems probable that the Saxons had some sort of enclosed or partially
+enclosed chases where deer were hunted or taken in the toils, the
+regular and systematic enclosure of parks would appear to have come
+in with the Normans. According to the old Norman law, no subject
+could form a park without a grant from the Crown, or immemorial
+prescription, which was held presumptive evidence of such a grant.
+
+On the Continent there would appear to have been much more strictness
+in this respect than in England. "In April, 1656," says Reresby in his
+travels, "I returned to Saumur, where I stayed two months: then I went
+to Thouars in Brittany, where the duke of Trémouille hath his best
+house. Thouars is looked upon as one of the best manors in all
+France, not so much for profit (a great extent of land there sometimes
+affording not much rent), but for greatness of tenure; five hundred
+gentlemen, it is said, holding their lands from it. Going to wait on
+the duke, I found him very kind when I told him my country, the late
+earl of Derby having married his sister. [1] He commanded me to dine
+with him, and the next time mounted me upon one of his horses to wait
+on him a-hunting in his park, which, not being two miles about, I
+thought of little compass to belong to so great a person, till I found
+that few are allowed to have any there save the princes of the blood.
+So true is it that there are more parks in England than in all Europe
+besides."
+
+A large park would appear to have been among the many luxuries of the
+princely Medici, for Reresby says: "Ten miles from Florence the duke
+hath another country-house, nothing so considerable in itself as in
+its situation, standing betwixt several hills on one side, covered
+with vines and olive trees, and a valley divided into many walks by
+rows of trees leading different ways: one leads to a park where the
+great duke hath made a paddock course by the direction of Signior
+Bernard Gascoigne, an Italian, who, having served our late king in
+his wars, carried the pattern from England. Near to this house,
+Poggio-Achaiano, is another park, the largest in Italy, or rather
+chase, said to be thirty miles in compass."
+
+Foremost amongst English parks is Windsor. The immense tracts by which
+Windsor was formerly surrounded consisted of park and forest. Windsor
+Forest has gradually diminished in size. In the time of Charles I. it
+contained twelve parishes, and probably covered not less than 100,000
+acres. According to a survey in 1789-92, it amounted to 59,600 acres,
+of which the enclosed property of the Crown amounted to 5454. Like all
+the other forests in England, it has been much encroached on, and now
+consists of only some 1450 acres adjoining Windsor Great Park. The
+rest of the land formerly composing it has been sold or leased. Enough
+of the forest remains, in conjunction with the park, to enable the
+visitor to make many delightful excursions. The most agreeable way
+of seeing this sylvan country is on horseback. Perhaps nowhere in the
+world can one get a more delicious canter. By a little management it
+is easy to take a ride of twenty-five miles without more than a couple
+of miles off the turf. In 1607 the Great Park was stated at 3650
+acres: it consists now of about one thousand acres less.
+
+The principal royal park in modern days, next to Windsor, is Richmond.
+This covers more than two thousand acres, and, thanks to the railway,
+may almost be regarded as a lung of London, being only eight miles
+distant from the city. Richmond Park is as replete as Windsor with
+historical association, and came into especial importance in the reign
+of Charles I. That king, who was excessively addicted to the sports of
+the field, had a strong desire to make a great park, for red as well
+as fallow deer, between Richmond and Hampton Court, where he had large
+wastes of his own, and great parcels of wood, which made it very fit
+for the use he designed it for; but as some parishes had rights of
+commonage in the wastes, and many gentlemen and farmers had good
+houses and farms intermingled with them which they had inherited or
+held on lease, and as, without including all these, the park would not
+be large enough for Charles's satisfaction, the king, who was willing
+to pay a very high price, expected people to gratify him by parting
+with their property. Many did so, but--like the blacksmith of Brighton
+who utterly refused to be bought out when George IV. was building his
+hideous pavilion, and the famous miller of Potsdam, that Mordecai at
+the gate of Sans Souci--"a gentleman who had the best estate, with a
+convenient house and gardens, would by no means part with it, and made
+a great noise as if the king would take away men's estates at his own
+pleasure." The case of this gentleman and his many minor adherents
+soon caused a regular row. The lord treasurer, Juxon, bishop of
+London, who accompanied Charles to the scaffold, and other ministers
+were very averse to the scheme, not only on account of the hostile
+feeling it had evoked, but because the purchase of the land and making
+a brick wall of ten miles around it, which was what the king wanted,
+was a great deal too costly for his depleted exchequer. However,
+Charles, with his usual fatal obstinacy, would not hear of abandoning
+the scheme, and told Lord Cottington, who did his utmost to dissuade
+him from it, "he was resolved to go through with it, and had already
+caused brick to be burned and much of the wall to be built." This
+beginning of the wall before people consented to part with their land
+or common rights, increased the public feeling on the subject, and,
+happening at a time when public opinion was growing strongly
+against arbitrary rule, was no doubt one of the circumstances which
+contributed to Charles's fall.
+
+George II. and Queen Caroline lived much at Richmond, and the
+interview between Jeanie Deans and Her Majesty took place here.
+Jeanie, it will be remembered, told her ducal friend that she thought
+the park would be "a braw place for the cows"--a sentiment similar
+to that of Mr. Black's Highland heroine, Sheila, who pronounced it "a
+beautiful ground for sheep."
+
+The practice of hunting deer in a park, now quite a thing of the past,
+appears to have been very prevalent at Richmond during this reign, and
+apparently was attended with considerable risk. In a chronicle of 1731
+we read:
+
+"_August_ 13, 1731. The royal family hunted a stag in Richmond new
+park: in the midst of the sport, Sir Robert Walpole's horse fell with
+him just before the queen's chaise, but he was soon remounted, and Her
+Majesty ordered him to bleed by way of precaution.
+
+"_Aug_. 28, 1731. The royal family hunted in Richmond Park, when the
+Lord Delaware's lady and Lady Harriet d'Auverquerque, daughter to the
+earl of Grantham, were overturned in a chaise, which went over them,
+but did no visible hurt. Mr. Shorter, one of the king's huntsmen, had
+a fall from his horse, and received a slight contusion in his head.
+
+"_Sept_. 13, 1731. Some of the royal family and persons of quality
+hunted a stag in Richmond Park. A stag gored the horse of Coulthorp
+Clayton, Esq., and threw him. The Lady Susan Hamilton was unhorsed.
+
+"_Sept_. 14, being Holy Rood Day, the king's huntsmen hunted their
+free buck in Richmond new park with bloodhounds, according to custom."
+
+It will be noted that this sport took place at a season when no
+hunting is now done in England.
+
+There are two other small royal parks within a walk of Richmond--Bushy
+and Hampton Court. Both contain magnificent trees.
+
+The New Forest is now the only royal appanage of the kind, and the
+House of Hanover has never made use of it for hunting purposes,
+although the Stuart kings were very fond of going there. It was to
+enjoy this territory that Charles II. commenced the magnificent
+palace at Winchester, the finished portions of which are now used as
+barracks. Nell Gwyn's quarters at the deanery are still shown. Up to
+1779 there was a great tract of royal forest-ground near London, on
+the Essex side, known as Enfield Chase, containing numbers of deer. If
+we remember rightly, it is alluded to in _The Fortunes of Nigel_.
+
+There are many more parks in the south than in the north of England--a
+circumstance which is remarkable, having regard to the wilder
+character of the ground in the former.
+
+According to a valuable work on parks published a few years ago by
+Mr. Shirley, a large landed proprietor, there are three hundred and
+thirty-four parks still stocked with deer in the different counties
+of England, and red deer are found in about thirty-one. It is
+supposed that the oldest is that attached to Eridge Castle, near that
+celebrated and most ancient of English watering-places, Tonbridge
+Wells, in Sussex. It is very extensive, and there are no less than
+ninety miles of grass drives cut through the park and woods. Almost
+the largest park is that attached to the present duke of Marlborough's
+famous seat, Blenheim. A large proportion of this magnificent demesne
+formed part of Woodstock Chase, a favorite hunting-seat of British
+sovereigns from an early date up to the time of Queen Anne. It was
+then granted by the Crown to the hero of Blenheim, far more fortunate
+in respect of the nation's gift than the hero of Waterloo, whose grant
+of lands lay in a swamp which it cost him a little fortune to drain.
+Next to Blenheim, in point of size, stands Tatton in Cheshire,
+the seat of Lord Egerton. It contains 2500 acres, and the portion
+appropriated to deer is far larger than at Blenheim. Tatton is from
+ten to eleven miles around.
+
+Another extensive park, 1500 acres, is that at Stowe, the duke of
+Buckingham's. When in 1848 the family misfortunes reached a climax
+which necessitated the sale of everything in Stowe House, the deer
+in the park were sold off. But twenty-five years have rolled by, and
+restored in a great degree the prosperity of the family. The duke is
+again living at his splendid ancestral seat, is by degrees restoring
+to their former home as the opportunity offers many of its scattered
+treasures, and has restocked the park with deer.
+
+Two parks pre-eminently famous for the magnificence of their oak
+timber are Keddleston, Lord Scarsdale's, in Derbyshire, and Bagot's
+Park, Lord Bagot's, in Staffordshire. The latter, which contains a
+thousand acres, is a very ancient enclosure. It contains, besides the
+deer, a herd of wild goats said to have been presented by Richard II.
+to an ancestor of the present owner.
+
+Parks vary from a paddock of twenty-one acres to twenty-eight hundred,
+but the most usual dimensions are from one hundred and fifty to four
+hundred acres. For a _multum in parvo_ of beautiful park scenery the
+traveler in search of these charming specimens of the picturesque may
+be advised to take a tour in Herefordshire and Worcestershire; and
+if he be a horseman he will do well to ride through the country.
+"Anyone," says Mr. Shirley, "who ascends the steep crest of the
+Malvern Hills in Worcestershire, and looks down from the summit of
+the ridge on the western side of the hills upon the richly wooded and
+beautifully undulating country which lies stretched beneath as far as
+the mountains of South Wales, would at once be struck with the 'bosky'
+nature of the scenery, and its perfect adaptation for the formation of
+deer-parks and sylvan residences."
+
+Grimsthorpe, Lady Aveland's (inherited from the dukes of Ancaster,
+extinct); Thoresby, Earl Manvers's, formerly the duke of Kingston's,
+father of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; and Knowsley, Lord Derby's, are
+also very large parks.
+
+A writer on Grimsthorpe in 1774 says: "On a former visit I was told
+that the park was sixteen miles and three quarters in circumference,
+and esteemed the largest in England: since then it has, nevertheless,
+been somewhat enlarged, but different spots in it are cultivated."
+
+A few parks have been created and others restocked during the present
+century. In Norfolk, Lord Kimberley, the present secretary of state
+for the colonies, has restored the deer which were removed during the
+present century, saying, it is reported, that "a place is not a place
+without deer"--a sentiment shared by many of his countrymen regarding
+an ancient grand-seigneur home. In the same county a new park has
+been created at Sandringham, the seat of the prince of Wales, the deer
+having been brought from Windsor. Sandringham Park and Woods were half
+a century ago a sandy waste, but fell into judicious hands and were
+admirably planted. The modern history of the place is remarkable.
+Toward the close of the century it became the property of a French
+refugee, Mr. Matou. This gentleman having been driven from his native
+country by the Revolution, conceived somehow the idea of importing
+from Sicily immense quantities of rabbit skins, which were used for
+making hats of a cheap kind which passed for beaver. In this way he
+acquired a large fortune. In England he mixed in the best society, and
+became very intimate with Earl Cowper, first husband of the well-known
+Lady Palmerston, and at his death bequeathed Sandringham to the
+Honorable Spencer Cowper, that nobleman's younger son, who married
+Lady Blessington's stepdaughter, Lady Harriet Gardiner, after her
+divorce from Count d'Orsay. When the prince of Wales was casting round
+for a country-seat, Sandringham was selected. Lord Palmerston was then
+in office, and some ill-natured things were said as to the sale of his
+stepson's place having been a much better thing for Mr. Cowper than
+for the prince of Wales. Vast sums have since been spent here.
+
+Where a deer-park has long existed on his paternal estate, it goes
+to an Englishman's heart to give it up. An incident in point occurred
+about twenty years ago. In a secluded part of Devonshire, approached
+by the narrow, high-hedged, tortuous lanes characteristic of that part
+of the country, stands a magnificent old Tudor mansion known as Great
+Fulford Hall. Here for upward of six hundred years have been seated
+the Fulfords, a family of Saxon origin, the rivals of the Tichbornes
+in antiquity. The mansion of Fulford was garrisoned by Charles I., and
+taken by a detachment of Cromwell's army in 1645. The marks they left
+behind them may be seen to this day. The Fulfords have supporters to
+their arms, a very rare circumstance in the case of commoners. These
+supporters are two Saracens, and were granted in consideration of
+services in the Crusades. "Sir Baldwin de Fulford fought a combat
+with a Saracen, for bulk and bigness an unequal match (as the
+representation of him cut in the wainscot at Fulford doth plainly
+shew), whom yet he vanquished, and rescued a lady." This gentleman's
+granddaughter was the mother of Henry VIII.'s favorite, Russell, first
+earl of Bedford, and the Fulfords are connected with a hundred other
+ancient and honorable houses. But for a long time the heads of the
+house have failed "to marry money;" and when this happens for two
+or three generations in the case of a country gentleman with a large
+family to portion off, the result must usually be impecuniosity. Thus,
+when the late Mr. Fulford succeeded to the family property in 1847,
+he found himself the owner of a majestic old dilapidated mansion,
+surrounded by a deer-park, which had been gradually growing less until
+the portion of the park devoted to this purpose was little more than a
+big field.
+
+Like his ancestor in the time of "the troubles," Mr. Baldwin Fulford
+was a Conservative, and had been very useful to his party. It was
+intended, therefore, to reward his services when the time came by a
+county office, which would have placed him at ease pecuniarily. When
+this office fell vacant the Tories were "in," and all seemed secure
+for Mr. Fulford's interest. But there's many a slip 'twixt cup and
+lip. A gentleman applied to the prime minister for the place for a
+friend of his, whose services to the party he duly dilated on.
+"I understood," said his lordship, "that Mr. Fulford's claims are
+considered paramount." "Mr. Fulford!" was the rejoinder. "I scarcely
+thought that such a place as this would be an object to Mr. Fulford--a
+gentleman of great position, with a deer-park and all that sort of
+thing." "A deer-park! You surprise me. I understood that Mr. Fulford's
+circumstances were extremely reduced. This alters the matter."
+Unfortunately, the, minister committed himself too far to draw back
+before making inquiries, when he learned that a deer-park having
+existed at Fulford for some four or five centuries, its owner had
+kept as a memento of grand old days a little remnant of the herd in
+a paddock, as before mentioned. He never recovered the blow of this
+disappointment. The heir to the property is, we believe, a son of the
+late bishop of Montreal. The family motto is "Bear up"--one eminently
+suited to its present condition, and we may hope that it will be
+followed so successfully that this ancient stock, which has held for
+so long a high place among the worthies of Devon, may once more win
+the smiles of Fortune.
+
+Many of the most picturesque parks are but little known, lying as
+they do remote from railway stations. Mr. Nesfield, the great
+landscape-gardener, considers that Longleat, the marquis of Bath's,
+near Warminster, has greater natural advantages than any park in
+England, and that these have been made the most of.
+
+Lord Stamford's park of Bradgate, in Leicestershire, is in the highest
+degree interesting. It is mostly covered with the common fern or
+brakes, and the projecting bare and abrupt rocks rising here and
+there, with a few gnarled and shivered oaks in the last stage of
+decay, present a scene of wildness and desolation in striking contrast
+to some of the beautiful adjoining valleys and fertile country.
+
+Another gem of its kind is Ugbrook. This is situated a few miles from
+the Newton-Abbot station of the South Devon Railway, and lies in a
+rocky nook on the confines of Dartmoor. Macaulay, whose brother was
+vicar of the neighboring parish of Bovey-Tracey, knew it well,
+and tells us in his _History_ that Clifford (a member of the Cabal
+ministry) retired to the woods of Ugbrook. He was a lucky man to have
+such paternal acres to retire to, but probably the visitor to-day sees
+this park in a condition which Charles's minister would indeed have
+enjoyed. There is no place in England where a man may feel more
+grateful to those who have gone before him for their taste and
+forethought in creating a sylvan paradise. Although not very large,
+this park contains almost every variety of scenery. There is a grove
+gloomy from the heavy shadows of the magnificent trees which compose
+it, glorious avenues of lime and beech, and monarch-like trees, which,
+standing alone amid an expanse of sward, show to the fullest advantage
+their superb proportions. Entering the park on one side, the road
+winds beside a river, to which the bank gently slopes on the one hand,
+whilst on the other it rises precipitately, clad with the greenest
+foliage. An especial feature of this place is what is known as "the
+riding park," a stretch of smooth turf extending some miles, from
+which you may get a view over thirty miles, with the rocky heights of
+Dartmoor Forest, where the autumn manoeuvres take place this year, on
+the one hand, and the Haldon Hills on the other. This ancient heritage
+is still the property of the Cliffords, the present peer being eighth
+baron in direct descent from the lord treasurer. The Cliffords have
+always remained constant to the Roman Catholic faith, and a Catholic
+chapel adjoins the mansion.
+
+A discriminating foreign tourist writes of Lord Hill's park,
+Hawkstone, in Shropshire, which, also lying rather off the beaten
+track, is comparatively little known: "I must in some respects give
+Hawkstone the preference over all I have seen. It is not art nor
+magnificence nor aristocratic splendor, but Nature alone to which it
+is indebted for this pre-eminence, and in such a degree that were I
+gifted with the power of adding to its beauty, I should ask, What can
+I add? Imagine a spot so commandingly placed that from its highest
+point you can let your eye wander over fifteen counties. Three sides
+of this wide panorama rise and fall in constant change of hill and
+dale like the waves of an agitated sea, and are bounded at the horizon
+by the strangely formed, jagged outline of the Welsh mountains, which
+at either end descend to a fertile plain shaded by thousands of lofty
+trees, and in the obscure distance, where it blends with the sky, is
+edged with a white misty line--the Atlantic Ocean."
+
+Moor Park, in Hertfordshire, is remarkable for the following tradition
+concerning it: In Charles II.'s reign it was bought by the duke of
+Monmouth, whose widow--she who
+
+  In pride of youth, in beauty's bloom,
+  Had wept o'er Monmouth's bloody tomb--
+
+is said to have ordered the heads of the trees in the park to be cut
+off on being informed of her husband's execution. This tradition is
+strengthened by the condition of many of the oaks here, which are
+decayed from the top. The duchess sold the place in 1720, thirty-five
+years after the duke's death. This is the Moor Park of apricot fame,
+but not the one where Sir William Temple lived when Swift was his
+secretary.
+
+Most of the oldest and finest trees in England are naturally to be
+found in the deer-parks. At Woburn, the duke of Bedford's, is the
+largest ash--ninety feet high and twenty-three feet six inches in
+circumference at the base. The Abbot's Oak, on which the last abbot
+was hung, stands, or lately stood, here. It is remarkable that oaks
+are more often struck by lightning than any other trees. At Tortworth,
+Lord Ducie's, in Gloucestershire, is a chestnut asserted to have been
+a boundary tree in the time of King John. So late as 1788 it produced
+great quantities of chestnuts. At five feet from the ground this tree
+measured fifty feet in circumference.
+
+The lover of fine trees should wander through the glades of Lord
+Leigh's park at Stoneleigh, in Warwickshire, where tall and shapely
+oaks grow with such symmetry that you do not guess their size, and are
+surprised to discover on measuring them how great it is.
+
+  Oh, how I love these solitudes
+    And places silent as the night--
+  There where no thronging multitudes
+    Disturb with noise their sweet delight!
+  Oh, how mine eyes are pleased to see
+    Oaks that such spreading branches bear,
+  Which, from old Time's nativity,
+    And th' envy of so many years,
+  Are still green, beautiful and fair
+  As at the world's first day they were!
+
+Writing of the confines of the ancient forest of Sherwood, Mr. Howitt
+says of those sylvan delights: "The great woods have fallen under the
+axe, and repeated enclosures have reduced the open forests, but at
+the Clipstone end still remains a remnant of its ancient woodlands,
+unrifled except of deer--a specimen of what the whole once was, and a
+specimen of consummate beauty and interest. The part called Bilhaghe
+is a forest of oaks, and is clothed with the most impressive aspect
+of age that can be presented to the eye in these kingdoms. Stonehenge
+does not give you a feeling of greater eld, because it is not composed
+of a material so easily acted on by the elements. But the hand of Time
+has been on these woods, and has stamped them with a most imposing
+character. The tempests, lightnings, winds and wintry violence of a
+thousand years have flung their force on these trees, and there they
+stand, trunk after trunk, scathed, hollow, gray, gnarled, stretching
+out their bare, sturdy arms, or their mingled foliage and ruin, a life
+in death. All is gray and old. The ground is gray beneath, the trees
+are gray with clinging lichens--the very heather and fern that spring
+beneath them have a character of the past. If you turn aside and step
+amongst them, your feet sink in a depth of moss and dry vegetation
+that is the growth of ages, or rather that ages have not been able to
+destroy. You stand and look round, and in the height of summer all
+is silent: it is like the fragment of a world worn out and forsaken.
+These were the trees under which King John pursued the red deer six
+hundred years ago, these were the oaks beneath which Robin Hood led
+up his bold band of outlaws.... Advance up this long avenue, which the
+noble owner of the forest tract has cut through it, and, looking right
+and left as you proceed, you will not be able long to refrain from
+turning into the tempting openings that present themselves. Enter
+which you please, you cannot be wrong. These winding tracks, just
+wide enough for a couple of people on horseback or in a pony phaeton,
+carpeted with a mossy turf which springs under your feet with a
+delicious elasticity, and closed in with shadowy trunks and flowery
+thickets--are they not lovely?"
+
+In the time of Elizabeth the largest park in Warwickshire, and one
+of the very finest in England, was that which surrounded the castle
+rendered classic ground by the immortal limning of Scott--Kenilworth.
+In a survey taken in the time of James I. it is stated that "the
+circuit of the castle mannours, parks and chase lying round together
+contain at least nineteen or twenty miles in a pleasant country, the
+like both for strength, state and pleasure not being within the realme
+of England." Kenilworth came to an end in Cromwell's time, a period
+very unfavorable to these sylvan paradises. He had the park cut up and
+divided amongst various grantees. How much damage was done to the
+park interest by the civil wars the following extract from the Life of
+Margaret, duchess of Newcastle, attests: "Of eight parks which my
+lord had before the wars, there was but one left that was not quite
+destroyed--viz. Welbeck Park of about four miles compass; for my
+lord's brother, Sir Charles Cavendish, who bought out the life of my
+lord in that lordship, saved most part of it from being cut down; and
+in Blore Park there were some few deer left. The rest of the parks
+were totally defaced and destroyed, both wood, pales and deer; amongst
+which was also Clipston Park of seven miles compass, wherein my lord
+had taken much delight formerly, it being rich of wood, and containing
+the greatest and tallest timber trees of all the woods he shad;
+insomuch that only the pale-row was valued at two thousand pounds. It
+was watered by a pleasant river that runs through it, full of fish and
+otters; was well stocked with deer, full of hares, and had great
+store of partridges, poots, pheasants, etc., besides all sorts of
+water-fowl; so that this park afforded all manner of sports, for
+hunting, hawking, coursing, fishing, etc., for which my lord esteemed
+it very much. And although his patience and wisdom is such that
+I never perceived him sad or discontented for his own losses and
+misfortunes, yet when he beheld the ruins of that park I observed him
+troubled, though he did little express it, only saying he had been
+in hopes it would not have been so much defaced as he found it, there
+being not one timber tree in it left for shelter."
+
+The number of deer-parks in Scotland and Ireland is small. The
+principal park in the former is that of the duke of Buccleuch at
+Dalkeith Palace, near Edinburgh. At Hamilton, belonging to the duke of
+that ilk, are wild cattle similar to those at Chillingham.
+
+A wonderfully picturesque Irish park is Rockingham, the Hon. L. King
+Harinan's, in the county Roscommon. The traveler will observe this
+beautiful and very extensive demesne as he goes from Boyle to Sligo.
+It is at the foot of the Curlew Mountains, and contains a magnificent
+sheet of water surrounding an island on which stands an ancient
+castle, still inhabitable. At Strokestown, in the same county, is a
+small park, where Mr. Mahon, its former owner, planted many years ago
+all sorts of forest trees, to see how far the deer would eat them: the
+only tree they entirely avoided was the beech.
+
+There is nothing grander in the three kingdoms than Lord Waterford's
+seat, Curraghmore. Taken with the adjoining woods, the demesne
+contains five thousand acres. The special feature of this superb place
+is grandeur; "not that arising from the costly and laborious exertions
+of man, but rather the magnificence of Nature. The beauty of
+the situation consists in the lofty hills, rich vales and almost
+impenetrable woods, which deceive the eye and give the idea of
+boundless forests. The variety of the scenery is calculated to please
+in the highest degree, and to gratify every taste."
+
+At Lyme Park, the splendid old seat of the Leghs in Cheshire, "a very
+remarkable custom," says Lysons, "of driving the red deer, which has
+not been practiced in any other park, either in England or abroad, was
+established about a century ago by an old park-keeper, who occupied
+that position for seventy years, dying at over one hundred years of
+age. It was his custom in May and June, when the animals' horns were
+tender, to go on horseback, with a rod in his hand, round the hills
+of this extensive park, and, having collected the deer, to drive them
+before him like a herd of common horned cattle, sometimes even opening
+a gate for them to pass through. When they came to a place before the
+hall called the Deer-Clod, they would stand in a collected body as
+long as the spectators thought fit; the young ones following their
+dams, and the old stags rising one against another and combating with
+their fore feet, not daring at this season of the year to make use of
+their horns. At the command of the keeper they would then move forward
+to a large piece of water and swim through the whole length of it,
+after which they were allowed to disperse."
+
+Following the example of the abbots, many of the bishops formerly had
+deer-parks, and up to 1831 the bishop of Durham, a prince-palatine
+in his diocese, had a park at his country-seat, still his residence,
+Bishops-Auckland; but now the only prelate enjoying this distinction
+is the bishop of Winchester, at Farnham Castle, in Hampshire.
+
+"There are some," says a writer in an early number of the _Westminster
+Review_, "who enclose immense possessions with walls and gates, and
+employ keepers with guns to guard every avenue to the vast solitudes
+by which they choose to be surrounded. Let such men pitch their
+tents in the deserts of Sahara or the wild prairies of America. What
+business have they here in the midst of a civilized community,
+linked together by chains of mutual obligation and dependence?" These
+observations apply to few private parks now-a-days. Permission to
+drive, ride or walk through them is rarely refused. Almost the only
+cases where there is much strictness in this respect are those of
+parks situated near a great watering place, such as Brighton or
+Tonbridge Wells. Thus, at the former, Lord Chichester's rule is that
+all persons on horseback or in carriages may pass through his ground,
+but foot-passengers are not allowed. The late Lord Abergavenny, a man
+of very shy and retiring disposition, was the least liberal park-owner
+in England. The gates of his superb demesne of Eridge very rarely
+revolved on their hinges; and this was the more remarkable, inasmuch
+as he did not reside there more than three months in the year. The
+story was told that at his accession to the property he had been
+more liberal, but that one day he was seated at luncheon alone when,
+suddenly looking up, he observed to his horror three proletarians
+flattening their noses against the window-pane, and gaping with
+exasperating interest at the august spectacle of a live lord at
+luncheon. To pull the bell and issue an order for the immediate
+removal of the intruders was, in the graphic language of the dime
+novel, the work of a moment; and from that hour the gates of Eridge
+were so rigorously sealed that it was often a matter of difficulty
+even for invited guests to obtain admittance.
+
+It may seem very ill-natured sometimes to refuse admittance on
+easy terms to such places, and to act apparently in a sort of
+dog-in-the-manger spirit. But it should be borne in mind that the
+privilege when accorded has not unfrequently been abused, more
+especially by the "lower middle class" of the English people, whose
+manners are often very intrusive. Such persons will approach close
+to the house, peer into the windows of private apartments, or push
+in amongst the family and guests while engaged in croquet or other
+out-door amusements. Another common offence is leaving a disgusting
+_débris_ lying about after a picnic in grounds which it costs the
+owners thousands of pounds yearly to keep in order. The sentiment from
+which such places are kept up is not that of vulgar display. They
+are hallowed by associations which are well depicted by the late Lord
+Lytton in an eloquent passage in _Earnest Maltravers_:
+
+"It is a wild and weird scene, one of those noble English parks at
+midnight, with its rough forest-ground broken into dell and valley,
+its never-innovated and mossy grass overrun with fern, and its
+immemorial trees, that have looked upon the birth, and look yet upon
+the graves, of a hundred generations. Such spots are the last proud
+and melancholy trace of Norman knighthood and old romance left to the
+laughing landscapes of cultivated England. They always throw something
+of shadow and solemn gloom upon minds that feel their associations,
+like that which belongs to some ancient and holy edifice. They are the
+cathedral aisles of Nature, with their darkened vistas, and columned
+trunks, and arches of mighty foliage. But in ordinary times the gloom
+is pleasing, and more delightful than all the cheerful lawns and sunny
+slopes of the modern taste."
+
+REGINALD WYNFORD.
+
+[Footnote 1: This was the famous Charlotte de la Trémouille, so
+admirably portrayed by Scott in _Peveril of the Peak_. Her direct
+male heirs terminated in her grandson, the tenth earl, and she is now
+represented in the female line by the duke of Atholl, who through her
+claims descent from the Greek emperors.]
+
+
+
+
+RAMBLES AMONG THE FRUITS AND FLOWERS OF THE TROPICS.
+
+TWO PAPERS.--I.
+
+
+"Well, Abdallah, what have you in view that can tempt one to a ramble
+on such a breezeless morning as this?" was my question of the turbaned
+exquisite who had just presented himself on the balcony where we sat
+at sunrise inhaling the fragrant breath of a thousand flowers. We
+were at Singapore, that little ocean gem at the foot of the Malayan
+peninsula, where, fair as a pearl, she nestles in the crested coronet
+of the deep blue sea. The whole island is but twenty-seven miles long,
+with a width varying from three to twelve; but in no other area of
+such limited dimensions can the tourist find so much of enchanting
+beauty and picturesqueness, or such a variety of tropical products, as
+in this "garden of the East." Without mountains, but with its central
+peak of Bookit Timá rising about six hundred feet above the sea, the
+scenery is diversified with richly-wooded hills, evergreen dales,
+and luxuriant jungle-growth drooping over and reflecting its graceful
+fringes in many a little babbling brook. The fruits of the island are
+varied and luscious, the foliage perennial, and its myriads of flowers
+so gorgeously tinted, so redolent of balmy odors, that one is fairly
+bewildered with the superabundance of sweets. Of course we were
+nothing loath to tarry a few weeks on this fairy isle, and we gladly
+availed ourselves of the opportunity thus afforded to enrich our
+herbariums and sketchbooks with new specimens by making occasional
+excursions to the jungles, and now and then a picnic to some of the
+thirty smaller islands that surround Singapore. But as the foreign
+tourist in those enervating tropical regions is not slow to acquire
+the Oriental love of ease and inveterate aversion to fatigue even in
+pleasure-seeking, we usually left our Mussulman comprador to seek out
+objects of interest and report to us beforehand, thus saving us from
+the weariness of many a bootless expedition, and catering to the
+precise tastes and desires of each of us in the way of adding to our
+treasures.
+
+On the morning in question Abdallah had just brought in the invariable
+morning coffee, served in the purest and tiniest of porcelain cups;
+and while we listlessly sipped the fragrant Mocha he seemed scanning
+our faces with more than usual interest, evidently expecting just such
+a question as I had asked. What a picture he was as he stood there
+in flowing robes and huge turban, with his jet black moustache and
+bronze-brown complexion, one small hand placed over the heart in token
+of his absolute devotion to the foreign sahibs, and his lithe, supple
+form leaning forward in the most obsequious attitude imaginable! His
+answer was characteristic:
+
+"Well, Madam Sahib, I find much beautiful flower, but not all where
+lady sahib can go, unless she can ride in sampán. Some roads too small
+for palanquin, and lady sahib's satin slipper must not be soiled with
+dust or mud. But I engage one big sampán with six men to pull, and, if
+the foreign sahibs all please, we make one grand picnic to Pulo Nánas
+(Pineapple Island) and Pulo Panjan. They can ride first to where boat
+is waiting, visit Pulo Nánas, take breakfast under orange tree, see
+much fine fruit trees, and then go to Pulo Panjan, where I gave orders
+for dinner to be served for the sahibs."
+
+"But pray tell us who is to serve it," laughingly responded one of our
+party. "Are we to have monkeys or wild squirrels for caterers? It must
+be one or the other, as I am sure I have been informed that neither of
+those islands are inhabited by human beings."
+
+"No man there, true, sahib," was our Mussulman's ready rejoinder.
+"But I send small boat with two men to pull, and two cooks, with rice,
+fowls, and everything wanted for breakfast and dinner. I believe they
+already at Pulo Nánas, cooking breakfast; the palanquins are also at
+the door; and so, if it be the sahibs' pleasure, it is better to start
+before the sun gets very high."
+
+All this certainly promised well for us pleasure-seekers, and was no
+doubt quite as satisfactory an arrangement for our scheming comprador,
+who always took care to add to every charge a very liberal commission
+for his own valuable services. We well knew that he was cheating us
+on a grand scale, but of what avail was such knowledge? We should
+gain nothing by discharging one who had at least the merit of being
+good-looking, well-mannered and pleasant-speaking, only to engage
+another less civil and probably no more honest. And in India all
+disbursements for personal and household expenses are made through
+these compradors or stewards--not of necessity, but because it is
+the custom of the country, and in the East one never rebels against
+established usage.
+
+Our preparations were soon made: sketchbooks, drawing materials and
+covered baskets for specimens were transferred to the keeping of
+our faithful Mussulman, and we set out, anticipating a day of rare
+enjoyment. We were fortunate in securing the company of Mr. M----,
+the accomplished president of the Anglo-Chinese College, who had
+spent some thirty years in Singapore, and was well acquainted with its
+localities and objects of interest. He was like a complete volume with
+illustrations on everything pertaining to the East, could answer all
+manner of unheard-of questions about things that everybody else had
+forgotten, and had always ready an appropriate anecdote or story just
+to the point. His very dress was characteristic. It consisted of loose
+trousers of gray linen, and an old-fashioned white hunting-coat with
+Quaker collar, and huge pockets that would have answered very well
+for the saddle-bags of an itinerant surgeon. These were designed
+as receptacles for such stray "specimens" in botany, geology or
+conchology as he might chance to discover _en route_; while thrust
+into a smaller breast-pocket he carried a brace of huntsman's pistols,
+with antique powder-horn and shot-pouch slung over the shoulder. His
+hat was a Panama with low, round crown and a rim nearly as large as
+an ordinary umbrella. A Chinese youth, an orphan adopted by Mr. M----
+years before, accompanied his patron in a full suit of yellow nankin
+made _à la Chinoise_, with broad-brimmed straw hat, long, braided
+queue, and the inevitable Chinese fan. The rest of us donned our white
+linen "fatigue suits," and leghorn hats of such vast dimensions as
+bade the wearers have no thought for umbrellas. Thus equipped, we
+were ready for all sorts of emergencies--climbing rocks, diving into
+jungles or wading through muddy creeks.
+
+The drive was for the most part through spice plantations and groves
+of orange and palm, and, without delays, would have brought us in an
+hour's time to the coast. But we could not consent to press onward
+to the goal ahead without pausing for at least a glimpse of the many
+objects of interest on the way. First we strolled over a plantation
+of black pepper cultivated by Chinamen. The vine is a creeper with
+a knotty stem that if unpruned will reach the height of near thirty
+feet, but in order to render the vines more productive they are kept
+down to about a dozen or fifteen feet, and each is trained over a
+separate pole or prop. At each joint of the stem the plant puts out
+its fibrous tendrils, grasping the prop, and so climbing to the top.
+Whenever a vine happens to trail on the ground these tendrils, like
+strawberry "runners," shoot into the earth, but then they bear no
+fruit. The branches are short, brittle and easily broken, the leaves
+deep-green, heart-shaped and very abundant, and the blossom a cluster
+of small white flowers, almost destitute of odor. The fruit hangs in
+long clusters of some forty or fifty grains each, somewhat after the
+fashion of the wild grape, though much more diminutive in size. Until
+after it has reached its full size it is green, when at maturity of
+a bright red, and black only after it has become thoroughly dry. When
+the berries begin to redden the bunches are gathered and spread upon
+mats in the sun to dry: then the corns soon wither, turn black and
+drop from the stems, becoming thus the shriveled black pepper known in
+commerce. What is known among us as white pepper was formerly supposed
+to be a different species from the black; but the sole difference is
+in the curing, that intended for white pepper being placed in baskets
+under water until sufficiently swollen for the exterior pellicle to
+rub off by rolling in the hands after being again dried in the sun.
+The plants are propagated by cuttings, which are generally placed some
+six feet apart, sometimes being trained over the trunk of an old tree,
+and at others over a strong stake. The vines commence bearing the
+third year, and continue to do so for a dozen or more, when they
+are rooted up, new ones having been previously planted to take their
+places.
+
+We next called at two gambier plantations, both owned and conducted by
+Chinamen who came to the island a few years before as common coolies.
+The gambier (_Funis uncatis_) was formerly called terra japonica, from
+being supposed to be an earth and to come from Japan. It is grown
+on sandy soil or dry hills, and requires very little labor in
+cultivation. It is a slender-stemmed, vine-like shrub with oval-shaped
+leaves and pale purplish flowers in clusters. The seeds germinate in
+forty days, and the seedlings are transplanted when about nine inches
+high. When full grown they reach a height of ten feet or more, and
+after the first year the leaves and branches are regularly gathered
+and prepared for the market. Men and boys were engaged in plucking
+the leaves and conveying them, in mat-bags suspended on each end of a
+bamboo staff, to the boiling-ground. Here they were boiled until the
+water was evaporated, and the inspissated juice deposited, which we
+afterward saw drying in little squares. It is a powerful astringent,
+having one-tenth more tannin than any other substance known. It is
+used by the natives as a dye, also as a salve for wounds and for
+chewing with betel-nut and tobacco, besides being largely exported
+to Europe for tanning leather and for dyeing. All through the gambier
+plantations, and in every department of the labor of preparing it
+for the boiler, I observed that not a female was to be seen, and on
+inquiring the reason was gravely told that gambier plants would not
+flourish if touched by a woman! "Sensitive plants" indeed, so readily
+to discern the difference between the handling of the two sexes!
+
+Our next call was at a coffee plantation, where we saw sixty thousand
+young and healthy coffee trees, and two-thirds of them in a bearing
+condition, yielding in the aggregate not less than fifty thousand
+pounds of dry coffee per annum. The trees are beautifully formed, and
+rise naturally to the height of sixteen feet or more, but when under
+culture are kept at five or six feet for the convenience of collecting
+the ripe fruit. They are planted in rows, the leaves grow opposite
+each other, and many sessile flowers are produced at their insertion.
+The blossoms are pure white, and when the plants are in full bloom
+nothing can exceed their beauty or fragrance, the branches looking
+as if frosted with snow, while the air is filled with the delicate
+perfume. But the scene is brief as enchanting: the flowers fade a few
+hours after they are full blown, to be succeeded by tiny berries that
+are at first green, then a yellowish red, and finally ripen into a
+rich crimson or purple; after which, unless gathered at once, they
+shrivel and drop from the tree. This is about seven months after the
+blooms make their appearance. The pulp is torn off and separated
+from the seeds by means of a machine, and the grains, after being
+thoroughly washed, are dried in the sun and put up in bags. Chek
+Kongtwau, the Chinese proprietor of the plantation, not only walked
+with us over his grounds, and answered all our questions with
+exemplary patience, but insisted that we should go into the house, be
+presented to his wife and partake of a lunch. He regaled us with tea
+and coffee of his own growing and curing, excellent turtle steaks,
+boiled rice, and curry made of shrimps and cucumbers stewed together.
+For vegetables there were the Malay lobak, a tender white radish, and
+the cocoa-nut bud stewed in the milk of the ripe fruit; and as dessert
+we had placed before us, for the first time, the far-famed durian, so
+universal a favorite among Orientals as to command a higher price than
+any other fruit in market, yet so abominably disgusting in smell that
+the olfactories of few strangers can tolerate its approach. To me the
+odor seemed precisely that supposed to be produced by the admixture of
+garlic and assafoetida; and as a plate piled with the rich golden pulp
+was placed before me by our hostess, I came so near fainting as to be
+compelled to seek the open air. The old Chinaman followed me, and
+when he had learned the cause of my indisposition, laughed heartily,
+saying, "Wait a year or two. You have not been in the country long
+enough to appreciate this rare luxury. But when you have become
+initiated into a knowledge of its surpassing excellences, never an
+orange, pineapple or other fruit will you touch when a durian can be
+had."
+
+Just as we were re-entering our palanquins, Chek Kongtwau inquired
+whether we had yet seen the anoo palm or sago tree, of which he said
+there was but a solitary specimen in the island, most of the sago
+manufactured at Singapore being brought in its crude state from the
+swamps of Sumatra. He told us the famous tree was several miles from
+his house, out of our direct route, but if we had time to visit it he
+would undertake to guide us safely through the jungle to and from the
+tree. We found it standing in solitary grandeur in a low swamp, and
+lifting its long pinnated leaves from the extreme top of a trunk full
+thirty feet high and twenty-eight inches in diameter. Its general
+appearance is not unlike the cocoa-nut palm. Our conductor called the
+sago tree _sibla_, but the Malays give it the name of _rumbiga_. They
+say that each tree, if kept properly pruned down, will produce at
+least five hundred pounds of pith per annum; but it soon degenerates
+if suffered to grow to any considerable height. The pith is soaked
+in large troughs of running water until it dissolves and afterward
+settles, the sand and heavy dirt sinking beneath it, and the fibres
+and scum floating on top. After being separated from these impurities
+the sago is dried, and then granulated by passing it through
+perforated plates till it becomes smooth and polished like so many
+pearls, when it is packed in boxes and bags for sale. We did not see
+the process that day, of course, but afterward at the large factory on
+the river a few miles above the settlement.
+
+One more plantation, a grove of the stately areca-nut or betel trees,
+we determined to visit before taking the boat. The smooth road was
+bordered everywhere with the beautiful melastoma or Singapore rose, of
+perennial foliage and always in bloom, underneath acacias and palms;
+and the very earth was carpeted with beauty and fragrance enough to
+have formed the bridal-couch of a fairy queen. Over such a highway
+three miles were quickly made, and we alighted at the entrance of a
+narrow lane that led to the abode of Cassim Mootoo, the Malay owner
+and cultivator of the betel-nut plantation. At the outer door a stone
+monster of huge proportions and uncouth features kept guard against
+the uncanny spirits that are supposed to frequent out-of-the-way lanes
+and dreary passages. The planter received us pleasantly, accepted our
+apologies for troubling him, and offered to show us over the grounds.
+He was far less courtly in manners than the Chinese coffee-cultivator,
+to whom we should scarcely have ventured to offer a fee, while out of
+the Malay's cunning eyes there gleamed the evident expectation of a
+snug bonus of silver rupees, which he received as a matter of course
+when we bade him adieu, and having counted them over and jingled
+them for a moment in his fingers, he thrust them into his pouch as he
+re-entered the house.
+
+We found the areca trees planted in rows, and growing to the height of
+some forty feet, with straight, branchless trunks, terminated at the
+top with ten or twelve pinnated leaves, each of which is full five
+feet long. The fruit grows in clusters immediately below the tuft
+of leaves. The outer shell is of a bright golden hue, that gradually
+deepens to crimson as the fruit matures, and when opened shows a
+brown, astringent nut about the size of a nutmeg. This is the portion
+chewed with chunám and tobacco all over the East; and its use is so
+universal that one seldom meets a man, woman or child of any Oriental
+nation whose mouth is not filled, always and everywhere, with the
+execrable mixture. Pepper leaves are sprinkled with chunám (lime) and
+rolled up: a slice of betel-nut with a quid of tobacco is placed in
+the mouth first, and then the rolled-up leaf is bitten off, and all
+masticated together. When a visitor calls the betel-box is immediately
+passed to him; and as in regard to the eating of salt in Western Asia,
+so, in the eastern and southern portions, those who have once partaken
+of betel-nut together are ever after sworn to faithful and undying
+friendship. The use of the areca-nut preserves the teeth from decay,
+but keeps them stained of a disgusting brick-red color.
+
+On the outer edge of Cassim's plantation, where the soil was damp, we
+noticed several long rows of the nepah palm, generally known as attap,
+and extensively used for thatching houses in the East. It has the same
+huge pinnated leaves as most of the other palms, but is destitute of
+the long straight trunk, the leaves commencing from near the root, and
+the entire height being seldom more than twelve or fourteen feet. We
+saw also a few specimens of the hutan, a strange-looking palmate shrub
+with leaves fifteen feet long, which are generally used by the Malays
+for sails, in lieu of canvas, for their piratical proas. But the
+strangest of all the palms we saw was the talipát, so called from the
+Bali word _talipoin_, a priest; and the name was originally derived
+from the fact that the sacred fans used by Booddhist priests in
+their religious ceremonies are formed of its leaves. This fan is a
+prescribed item of clerical costume, and no conscientious Booddhist
+priest ever appears without this long-handled fan held directly in
+front of his face, to prevent the sacred countenance from coming in
+contact with anything unclean. The sacred books of the Booddhists and
+Brahmins are also written on the talipát palm leaves, as are many
+of their historical records and scientific works. This mammoth tree
+sometimes reaches the height of nearly two hundred feet, and its trunk
+the circumference of twelve feet. It lives to the age of nearly a
+century, but blossoms only a single time; during the whole period of
+its existence. The flower, some thirty feet in length, bursts with a
+loud explosion at maturity, and in dying scatters the seeds that are
+to produce the next generation of trees. A single leaf will sometimes
+measure forty feet in circumference; and it is no unusual sight on the
+Malabar coast, where storms are so fierce and sudden, to see ten or
+fifteen men finding shelter in a boat over which is spread a single;
+palm leaf, which effectually shields all from both wind and rain. When
+the storm has subsided the huge leaf may be folded up like a lady's
+fan, and is so light as to be readily carried by a man under one arm.
+The talipát never grows wild, it is said, as do most of the other
+palms; and it reaches its greatest perfection in the island of Ceylon.
+All that I ever met with were under cultivation, being tended and
+nursed with the utmost care. Indeed, half a dozen talipát palm trees
+are a fortune in themselves, the leaves being very profitable as
+merchandise, while a crop may be gathered every year during a long
+life, and then the tree be of sufficient value to be bequeathed to the
+heirs of the owner.
+
+Bidding adieu to our Malayan host, we once more entered the
+palanquins, and in a little while were set down on the coast, where
+lay our sampán with flag hoisted and pennons gayly flaunting in the
+breeze. First we passed Battu Bliah, "the sailing rock"--so called
+from its fancied resemblance to a ship under widespread canvas; then
+around an abrupt projection of Erskine's Hill, in a narrow passage
+between Singapore and Baltan Máteo, we came in full view of
+the promontory upon the highest point of which is built the
+palace-bungalow of the old sultan-rajah who held sway over the island
+previous to its purchase by Sir Stamford Raffles for the British
+government, in 1819. The old rajah has passed away, but the bungalow
+is still occupied by his son, a pensioner on the English Crown, and
+one of the most daring pirates in all that region--successful enough
+to have achieved a fame for prowess, but too crafty ever to be caught.
+
+At Pulo Nánas, where we were to lunch, we found the cloth was already
+laid on the green grass under the protecting shadow of a huge orange
+tree, whose ripe golden fruit offered a dainty dessert. We took our
+seats with the "professor" at the head, and were soon discussing the
+merits of boiled chicken, fried fish, omelette, oysters, turtle eggs
+and sundry fruits and confections with the zest created by seven hours
+of active exercise in the open air. Then came the reaction, inclining
+every one more to repose than research, and the hours would probably
+have been dreamed away barren of adventures, had it not been for our
+indomitable professor. We had missed him but a moment, when suddenly
+he reappeared, holding at arm's length what seemed in the distance
+about a dozen brown, scaly snakes a yard long, all strung together.
+Simultaneously the entire company sprang to their feet and started for
+a race as this regiment of frightful reptiles was thrust into their
+midst by the radiant "dominie," whose face was fairly aglow with
+mischief. "Where did they come from? What are you going to do with
+them?" exclaimed everybody at once, turning to look at the monsters as
+they lay passive and motionless where the professor had thrown them.
+"Give them to Saint Patrick, to keep company with those he drove out
+of the Emerald Isle; or we'll have them for dinner if you prefer,"
+was the laughing response. Reassured by the non-combatant air of the
+dreaded reptiles, we ventured a nearer approach, and our astonishment
+may readily be imagined when we found not snakes, but simply a cluster
+of the pendent blossoms of the rattan tree (_Arundo bambos_), one of
+the strangest of all the floral products of the tropics. They hang
+from the tree in clusters usually of ten or twelve, each a yard or
+more in length, looking like a soldier's aigrettes suspended among the
+green leaves, or perhaps still more like a string of chestnut-colored
+scales threaded through the centre. Waving to and fro in the summer
+breeze, as I afterward saw them, intertwined with the graceful
+tendrils of the beautiful passion-flower with its rare feathery
+chalice of purple and gold, and flanked on every side by ferns of
+exquisite symmetry, reflecting their dainty fringes in the clear
+waters, the _tout ensemble_ is one of radiant loveliness, seemingly
+too fair to be hidden away among lonely jungles.
+
+Consigning our newly acquired treasure to the keeping of the
+comprador, we sauntered forth in search of other discoveries, and were
+richly rewarded by finding several perfect specimens of the monkey-cup
+or pitcher-plant (_Nepenthes distillatoria_). This plant is found in
+moist places, such as are suited to the growth of ferns, mangroves
+and palmate shrubs. It has pendent from each leaf a natural pitcher or
+elongated cup, growing perfectly upright and capable of holding a pint
+or more of liquid. It is provided also with a natural cover, which
+when closed prevents the ingress of leaves or rubbish falling from
+other trees. The most curious circumstance connected with this strange
+plant is, that it is nearly always found full of pure, sparkling
+water, and that the lid closes of itself as soon as the receptacle is
+full, and opens whenever it is empty. The water is thus protected from
+dust, and kept always fit for the use of thirsty travelers, as well as
+of the immense troops of monkeys that inhabit tropical jungles. When
+the dainty cup has been drained of its refreshing contents, this
+wonderful little plant again throws wide the portals of its exhausted
+receptacle for the free entrance of rain or dew. Another plant, one
+we had often heard of, and sought for without success, the so-called
+oyster tree, was found, and proved to be nothing very wonderful after
+all. It is simply an ordinary oyster or other shell-fish, that, tired
+of lying in the mud, concludes by way of variety to try swinging
+in the air for a while, and so fastens itself to the long, pendent
+branches of the mangroves that grow luxuriantly on the shores of most
+tropical islands.
+
+There seeming to be no more objects of interest to detain us at Pulo
+Nánas, and our chuliahs having already gone on to prepare dinner at
+Pulo Panjan, we rallied our forces and followed suit. It was already
+four o'clock, and so near the equinoctial line, where there is no
+twilight, it is dark soon after six; but then Pulo Panjan was on our
+route homeward, and we should have time at least to dine and gather
+some of the beautiful flowers for which the island is famous, as well
+as to taste the white pineapple, a rare and exquisite variety that
+grows here in great abundance. Both rind and pulp are of a pale
+straw-color; hence the name, to distinguish this species from the
+ordinary golden-colored fruit, which is far inferior to the white.
+Those we obtained were magnificent specimens--large and juicy, with a
+flavor to tempt the appetite of the veriest epicure. Abdallah peeled
+them in such a way as to remove the bur entire, and brought them
+to our grassy "board" on pure white porcelain plates garnished with
+wreaths of fragrant flowers. Never were the gods feasted on nectar
+and ambrosia more divinely luscious than the white pines and golden
+mangoes, the rich juicy grapes and sparkling sherbet, with which
+we were regaled on that bright summer eve at the base of the old
+flagstaff towering above our heads.
+
+We had not much time for roaming, but gathered whole handfuls of the
+lotus or water-lily, with its pale-blue, golden or rose-tinted blooms
+gleaming up from the sparkling waters like the fabled charms of
+mermaid or sea-nymph. There are many varieties of this exquisite
+flower--blue, pink, carnation, bright yellow, royal purple fringed
+with gold, and, more beautiful than all, pure, virgin white, with
+the faintest possible rose tinge in the centre of each section of the
+corolla, a just perceptible blush, as of its own conscious loveliness.
+This last variety is the royal flower of Siam: it is borne before
+the king at weddings, funerals and all state festivals, and the royal
+reception-rooms are always beautifully decorated with the young buds
+arranged in costly vases of exquisite workmanship. The costly silk and
+lace canopies over the cradles of the infants of the king's family
+are also made in the form of a lotus reversed; and it is said that in
+cases of fever or eruptive diseases the leaves of the fresh lotus are
+spread over the royal couches, as being not only sanitary, but more
+agreeable to the invalid than the ordinary linen or silk bedding.
+Guided by the rare rich perfume of its waxen buds, we found a choice
+specimen of the bride-like moon-creeper, and bore if off, vine, blooms
+and all, to a place among the floral adornments of our own home.
+
+We reached home at eight o'clock, after a cruise, by sea and by land,
+of thirteen hours; but the day had been so replete with enjoyment that
+we scarcely felt conscious of fatigue, and were off again the next
+morning, soon after sun-rise, for a ride to Bookit Timá ("hill of
+tin"), the central and loftiest peak of Singapore Island. It is nine
+miles from the city, with a smooth road to the very summit, so that
+we might go either in pony palanquins or on horseback. We chose the
+latter, as affording us better opportunity for observation and
+the collection of "specimens," and, as we could readily gain the
+mountain-top in season for a nine o'clock breakfast, the heat would
+not be oppressive. Abdallah despatched the chuliahs, each with a stout
+load of provisions, table-ware and cooking-utensils, at dawn, and
+when we arrived our _déjeuner_ was ready to be served. The viands were
+tempting and the cookery faultless, but we could scarce do justice to
+either, so eager were we to begin our explorations on the summit and
+sides of this beautiful hill, or rather hills, for there are twin
+peaks closely connected, and each presenting an enchanting view of
+verdant fields and fertile valleys, of the neighboring city, the wide
+expanse of blue waters beyond, and the shipping in the harbor. Having
+satisfied ourselves with gazing at the distant prospect, we began to
+descend in search of adventures, sending our ponies ahead to await
+us at the base of the mountain, where we were to dine. Onward
+we strolled, gradually descending, every step marked by
+novelties--flowers, grasses, weeds and shrubs vieing with each other
+in varied and glad-some beauty. At length we sat down to rest beneath
+a huge bombax or cotton tree (_Bombax ceiba_), its widespread branches
+and thick foliage shielding us effectually from the noonday sun, a
+fragrant blossom falling occasionally into our laps or pelting us over
+head and shoulders, while with every passing zephyr the fleecy down
+from the ripe bolls floated hither and thither, looking for all the
+world like a snow-storm, except that the sun was shining luminously
+in the clear heavens. This tree must have been sixty feet in height,
+a grand, noble type of a green old age after scores of years well
+and usefully spent, still vigorous and productive. We met specimens
+afterward even taller and larger than this, and they are said
+sometimes to reach the height of a hundred feet. The timber is light
+and porous, and is in great demand for boats. Lower down, the various
+palms, especially the cocoa-nut and cabbage, were all about us. The
+former is found in nearly every tropical clime, and is of all trees
+the one most indispensable to the East Indian, furnishing him with
+meat, drink, medicine, clothing, lodging and fuel. The ripe kernel of
+the nut, besides being eaten, has expressed from it an excellent oil,
+that feeds all the lamps in an Oriental house, supplies the table with
+a most palatable substitute for butter, and the belle with a choice
+article of perfumery; the green nut affords a delicious beverage
+to the thirsty traveler; the fibrous covering of the nut is readily
+converted into strong and durable cordage, and the polished shells
+into drinking-cups, ladles and spoons; the leaves are frequently used
+for thatch, the wood for lathing and musical instruments, and the sap
+for toddy, an intoxicating drink very common in the East. The tree is
+graceful and pretty, with a tuft of large pinnated leaves at the top,
+and nestled cosily in their midst are the clusters of fruit. It grows
+to the height of forty or fifty feet, is long-lived, and bears fruit
+nearly the whole year round. The cabbage palm is much less common in
+a wild state, and few planters will take the trouble to cultivate
+it, since a whole tree must be destroyed to obtain a single dish. The
+edible part consists of snow-white flakes found just inside the bark
+near the top of the tree. When stewed in the expressed juice of the
+cocoa-nut it constitutes one of the most luscious dishes I have ever
+eaten. The tree is tall and large, and the pinnated leaves very long.
+
+In the moist portions of the jungle toward the foot of the hill were
+whole groves of the fragrant pandanus, ferns of infinite variety, and
+a species of wild mignonette with a perfume like that of commingled
+strawberries and lemon. Now and then we paused beneath the thick
+green foliage of the _Magnolia grandiflora_, as it towered in stately
+grandeur above its sister flowers, acknowledged queen of the parterre,
+and dispensing with genuine Oriental profusion its rare and delicious
+perfume. A step farther and our gaze was riveted by the modest purity
+of the spotless japonica, the fragrant tuberose and Cape jessamine,
+the graceful passion-flower, with its royal beauty and storied
+reminiscences, the peerless dauk-málé, fragrant and fair, the _Kalla
+Indica_, with its five long petals of heavenly blue, the gold-plant
+of the Chinese, and crimson boon-gah-riah of the Malays, the last two
+consecrated symbols in the religious rites of those nations. What a
+medley of sweets, flaunting their gay colors in the bright tropical
+sunshine! Then the innumerable company of roses--tea, moss, perpetual,
+cluster, climbing, variegated, and a score of others--how fair, fresh
+and fragrant they are, peerless, queen-like still, even amid such a
+gorgeous array of ripe floral charms! These, and a thousand others for
+which we have no names in our language, are scattered profusely over
+those sunny lands of dreamy beauty, vieing with each other in rare,
+rich perfume, exquisite grace of form and matchless blending of their
+warm, ripe colors.
+
+The next day we dined at Dr. Almeida's, and in his magnificent garden
+found several choice specimens of both the _Victoria regia_ and the
+_Rafflesia Arnoldi_, the two largest flowers in the world, each bloom
+measuring two feet in diameter. But the rarest of all the doctor's
+treasures was the night-blooming cereus. There were six blooms in full
+maturity--four on one stalk and two on another--creamy, waxen flowers
+of exquisite form, the leaves of the corolla of a pale golden hue
+and the petals intensely white. The calyx rises from a long, hollow
+footstalk, which is formed of rough plates overlapping each other like
+tiles on a roof. From the centre of this footstalk rises a bundle of
+filaments that encircle the style, stamens springing also from the
+insertion of the leaves of the corolla, lining it with delicate beauty
+and waving their slender forms with exquisite grace. But the
+real charm of the cereus is its wondrous perfume, exhaled just at
+night-fall, and readily discernible over the circuit of a mile. The
+peculiar odor cannot be understood by mere description, but partakes
+largely of that of sweet lilies, violets, the tuberose and vanilla.
+After the bud appears the growth is very rapid, often two or three
+inches a day--that is, in the height of the stalk, the flower
+expanding proportionately. When fully grown it begins to unfold
+its charms as the twilight deepens into night, and reaches perfect
+maturity about an hour before midnight: at three o'clock its glory is
+already beginning to wane, though scarcely perceptibly; but at dawn
+it is fading rapidly, and by sun-rise only a wilted, worthless wreck
+remains, good for nothing but to be "cast out and trodden under foot
+of men."
+
+FANNIE R. FEUDGE.
+
+
+
+
+A PRINCESS OF THULE.
+
+BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF "THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON."
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+TRANSFORMATION.
+
+
+Had Sheila, then, Lavender could not help asking himself, a bad
+temper, or any other qualities or characteristics which were apparent
+to other people, but not to him? Was it possible that, after all,
+Ingram was right, and that he had yet to learn the nature of the girl
+he had married? It would be unfair to say that he suspected something
+wrong about his wife--that he fancied she had managed to conceal
+something--merely because Mrs. Lavender had said that Sheila had a bad
+temper; but here was another person who maintained that when the days
+of his romance were over he would see the girl in another light.
+
+Nay, as he continued to ask himself, had not the change already begun?
+He grew less and less accustomed to see in Sheila a beautiful wild
+sea-bird that had fluttered down for a time into a strange home in
+the South. He had not quite forgotten or abandoned those imaginative
+scenes in which the wonderful sea-princess was to enter crowded
+drawing-rooms and have all the world standing back to regard her and
+admire her and sing her praises. But now he was not so sure that that
+would be the result of Sheila's entrance into society. As the date of
+a certain dinner-party drew near he began to wish she was more like
+the women he knew. He did not object to her strange sweet ways of
+speech, nor to her odd likes and dislikes, nor even to an unhesitating
+frankness that nearly approached rudeness sometimes in its scorn
+of all compromise with the truth; but how would others regard these
+things? He did not wish to gain the reputation of having married an
+oddity.
+
+"Sheila," he said on the morning of the day on which they were going
+to this dinner-party, "you should not say _like-a-ness_. There are
+only two syllables in _likeness_. It really does sound absurd to hear
+you say _like-a-ness_."
+
+She looked up to him with a quick trouble in her eyes. When had he
+spoken to her so petulantly before? And then she cast down her eyes
+again, and said submissively, "I will try not to speak like that. When
+you go out I take a book and read aloud, and try to speak like you;
+but I cannot learn all at once."
+
+"_I_ don't mind," he said. "But you know other people must think it
+so odd. I wonder why you should always say _gyarden_ for _garden_ now,
+when it is just as easy to say _garden_?"
+
+Once upon a time he had said there was no English like the English
+spoken in Lewis, and had singled out this very word as typical of one
+peculiarity in the pronunciation. But she did not remind him of that.
+She only said in the same simple fashion, "If you will tell me my
+faults I will try to correct them."
+
+She turned away from him to get an envelope for a letter she had been
+writing to her father. He fancied something was wrong, and perhaps
+some touch of compunction smote him, for he went after her and took
+her hand, and said, "Look here, Sheila. When I point out any trifles
+like that, you must not call them faults, and fancy I have any serious
+complaint to make. It is for your own good that you should meet the
+people who will be your friends on equal terms, and give them as
+little as possible to talk about."
+
+"I should not mind their talking about me," said Sheila with her eyes
+still cast down, "but it is your wife they must not talk about; and if
+you will tell me anything I do wrong I will correct it."
+
+"Oh, you must not think it is anything so serious as that. You will
+soon pick up from the ladies you will meet some notion of how you
+differ from them; and if you should startle or puzzle them a little at
+first by talking about the chances of the fishing or the catching of
+wild-duck, or the way to reclaim bogland, you will soon get over all
+that."
+
+Sheila said nothing, but she made a mental memorandum of three things
+she was not to speak about. She did not know why these subjects should
+be forbidden, but she was in a strange land and going to see strange
+people, whose habits were different from hers. Moreover, when her
+husband had gone she reflected that these people, having no fishing
+and no peat-mosses and no wild-duck, could not possibly be interested
+in such affairs; and thus she fancied she perceived the reason why she
+should avoid all mention of those things.
+
+When in the evening Sheila came down dressed and ready to go out,
+Lavender had to admit to himself that he had married an exceedingly
+beautiful girl, and that there was no country gawkiness about her
+manner, and no placid insipidity about her proud and handsome face.
+For one brief moment he triumphed in his heart, and had some wild
+glimpse of his old project of startling his small world with this
+vision from the northern seas. But when he got into the hired
+brougham, and thought of the people he was about to meet, and of the
+manner in which they would carry away such and such impressions of the
+girl, he lost faith in that admiration. He would much rather have
+had Sheila unnoticeable and unnoticed--one who would quietly take her
+place at the dinner-table, and attract no more special attention than
+the flowers, for example, which every one would glance at with some
+satisfaction, and then forget in the interest of talking and dining.
+He was quite conscious of his own weakness in thus fearing social
+criticism. He knew that Ingram would have taken Sheila anywhere in her
+blue serge dress, and been quite content and oblivious of observation.
+But then Ingram was independent of those social circles in which a
+married man must move, and in which his position is often defined for
+him by the disposition and manners of his wife. Ingram did not know
+how women talked. It was for Sheila's own sake, he persuaded himself,
+that he was anxious about the impression she should make, and that he
+had drilled her in all that she should do and say.
+
+"Above all things," he said, "mind you take no notice of me. Another
+man will take you in to dinner, of course, and I shall take in
+somebody else, and we shall not be near each other. But it's after
+dinner, I mean: when the men go into the drawing-room don't you come
+and speak to me or take any notice of me whatever."
+
+"Mayn't I look at you, Frank?"
+
+"If you do you'll have half a dozen people all watching you, saying
+to themselves or to each other, 'Poor thing! she hasn't got over her
+infatuation yet. Isn't it pretty to see how naturally her eyes turn
+toward him?'"
+
+"But I shouldn't mind them saying that," said Sheila with a smile.
+
+"Oh, you mustn't be pitied in that fashion. Let them keep their
+compassion to themselves."
+
+"Do you know, dear," said Sheila very quietly, "that I think you
+exaggerate the interest people will take in me? I don't think I can be
+of such importance to them. I don't think they will be watching me as
+you fancy."
+
+"Oh, you don't know," he said. "I know they fancy I have done
+something romantic, heroic and all that kind of thing, and they are
+curious to see you."
+
+"They cannot hurt me by looking at me," said Sheila simply. "And they
+will soon find out how little there is to discover."
+
+The house being in Holland Park they had not far to go; and just as
+they were driving up to the door a young man, slight, sandy-haired and
+stooping, got out of a hansom and crossed the pavement.
+
+"By Jove!" said Lavender, "there is Redburn, I did not know he knew
+Mrs. Lorraine and her mother. That is Lord Arthur Redburn, Sheila:
+mind, if you should talk to him, not to call him 'my lord.'"
+
+Sheila laughed and said, "How am I to remember all these things?"
+
+They got into the house, and by and by Lavender found himself, with
+Sheila on his arm, entering a drawing-room to present her to certain
+of his friends. It was a large room, with a great deal of gilding and
+color about it, and with a conservatory at the farther end; but the
+blaze of light had not so bewildering an effect on Sheila's eyes as
+the appearance of two ladies to whom she was now introduced. She had
+heard much about them. She was curious to see them. Many a time had
+she thought over the strange story Lavender had told her of the woman
+who heard that her husband was dying in a hospital during the war, and
+started off, herself and her daughter, to find him out; how there was
+in the same hospital another dying man whom they had known some years
+before, and who had gone away because the girl would not listen to
+him; how this man, being very near to death, begged that the girl
+would do him the last favor he would ask of her, of wearing his name
+and inheriting his property; and how, some few hours after the strange
+and sad ceremony had been performed, he breathed his last, happy in
+holding her hand. The father died next day, and the two widows were
+thrown upon the world, almost without friends, but not without means.
+This man Lorraine had been possessed of considerable wealth, and the
+girl who had suddenly become mistress of it found herself able to
+employ all possible means in assuaging her mother's grief. They began
+to travel. The two women went from capital to capital, until at
+last they came to London; and here, having gathered around them
+a considerable number of friends, they proposed to take up their
+residence permanently. Lavender had often talked to Sheila about
+Mrs. Lorraine--about her shrewdness, her sharp sayings, and the odd
+contrast between this clever, keen, frank woman of the world and the
+woman one would have expected to be the heroine of a pathetic tale.
+
+But were there two Mrs. Lorraines? That had been Sheila's first
+question to herself when, after having been introduced to one
+lady under that name, she suddenly saw before her another, who was
+introduced to her as Mrs. Kavanagh. The mother and daughter were
+singularly alike. They had the same slight and graceful figure, which
+made them appear taller than they really were, the same pale, fine
+and rather handsome features, the same large, clear gray eyes, and
+apparently the same abundant mass of soft fair hair, heavily plaited
+in the latest fashion. They were both dressed entirely in black,
+except that the daughter had a band of blue round her slender waist.
+It was soon apparent, too, that the manner of the two women was
+singularly different; Mrs. Kavanagh bearing herself with a certain
+sad reserve that almost approached melancholy at times, while her
+daughter, with more life and spirit in her face, passed rapidly
+through all sorts of varying moods, until one could scarcely tell
+whether the affectation lay in a certain cynical audacity in her
+speech, or whether it lay in her assumption of a certain coyness and
+archness, or whether there was any affectation at all in the matter.
+However that might be, there could be no doubt about the sincerity of
+those gray eyes of hers. There was something almost cruelly frank
+in the clear look of them; and when her face was not lit up by some
+passing smile the pale and fine features seemed to borrow something
+of severity from her unflinching, calm and dispassionate habit of
+regarding those around her.
+
+Sheila was prepared to like Mrs. Lorraine from the first moment she
+had caught sight of her. The honesty of the gray eyes attracted her.
+And, indeed, the young widow seemed very much interested in the young
+wife, and, so far as she could in that awkward period just before
+dinner, strove to make friends with her. Sheila was introduced to
+a number of people, but none of them pleased her so well as Mrs.
+Lorraine. Then dinner was announced, and Sheila found that she was
+being escorted across the passage to the room on the other side by the
+young man whom she had seen get out of the hansom.
+
+This Lord Arthur Redburn was the younger son of a great Tory duke;
+he represented in the House a small country borough which his father
+practically owned; he had a fair amount of ability, an uncommonly high
+opinion of himself, and a certain affectation of being bored by the
+frivolous ways and talk of ordinary society. He gave himself credit
+for being the clever member of the family; and if there was any
+cleverness going, he had it; but there were some who said that his
+reputation in the House and elsewhere as a good speaker was mainly
+based on the fact that he had an abundant assurance and was not easily
+put out. Unfortunately, the public could come to no decision on
+the point, for the reporters were not kind to Lord Arthur, and the
+substance of his speeches was as unknown to the world as his manner of
+delivering them.
+
+Now, Mrs. Lorraine had intended to tell this young man something about
+the girl whom he was to take in to dinner, but she herself had been
+so occupied with Sheila that the opportunity escaped her. Lord Arthur
+accordingly knew only that he was beside a very pretty woman, who was
+a Mrs. Somebody--the exact name he had not caught--and that the few
+words she had spoken were pronounced in a curious way. Probably, he
+thought, she was from Dublin.
+
+He also arrived at the conclusion that she was too pretty to know
+anything about the Deceased Wife's Sister bill, in which he was, for
+family reasons, deeply interested, and considered it more likely that
+she would prefer to talk about theatres and such things.
+
+"Were you at Covent Garden last night?" he said.
+
+"No," answered Sheila. "But I was there two days ago, and it is
+very pretty to see the flowers and the fruit; and then they smell so
+sweetly as you walk through."
+
+"Oh yes, it is delightful," said Lord Arthur. "But I was speaking of
+the theatre."
+
+"Is there a theatre in there?"
+
+He stared at her, and inwardly hoped she was not mad.
+
+"Not in among the shops, no. But don't you know Covent Garden
+Theatre?"
+
+"I have never been in any theatre, not yet," said Sheila.
+
+And then it began to dawn upon him that he must be talking to Frank
+Lavender's wife. Was there not some rumor about the girl having come
+from a remote part of the Highlands? He determined on a bold stroke:
+"You have not been long enough in London to see the theatres, I
+suppose."
+
+And then Sheila, taking it for granted that he knew her husband very
+well, and that he was quite familiar with all the circumstances of the
+case, began to chat to him freely enough. He found that this Highland
+girl of whom he had heard vaguely was not at all shy. He began to feel
+interested. By and by he actually made efforts to assist her frankness
+by becoming equally frank, and by telling her all he knew of the
+things with which they were mutually acquainted. Of course by this
+time they had got up into the Highlands. The young man had himself
+been in the Highlands--frequently, indeed. He had never crossed to
+Lewis, but he had seen the island from the Sutherlandshire coast.
+There were very many deer in Sutherlandshire, were there not? Yes, he
+had been out a great many times, and had had his share of adventures.
+Had he not gone out before daylight, and waited on the top of a hill,
+hidden by some rocks, to watch the mists clear along the hillsides and
+in the valley below? Did not he tremble when he fired his first shot,
+and had not something passed before his eyes so that he could not see
+for a moment whether the stag had fallen or was away like lightning
+down the bed of the stream? Somehow or other, Lord Arthur found
+himself relating all his experiences, as if he were a novice begging
+for the good opinion of a master. She knew all about it, obviously,
+and he would tell her his small adventures if only that she might
+laugh at him. But Sheila did not laugh. She was greatly delighted to
+have this talk about the hills and the deer and the wet mornings.
+She forgot all about the dinner before her. The servants whipped off
+successive plates without her seeing anything of them: they received
+random answers about wine, so that she had three full glasses standing
+by her untouched. She was no more in Holland Park at that moment than
+were the wild animals of which she spoke so proudly and lovingly. If
+the great and frail masses of flowers on the table brought her any
+perfume at all, it was a scent of peat-smoke. Lord Arthur thought that
+his companion was a little too frank and confiding, or rather that she
+would have been had she been talking to any one but himself. He rather
+liked it. He was pleased to have established friendly relations with
+a pretty woman in so short a space; but ought not her husband to give
+her a hint about not admitting all and sundry to the enjoyment of
+these favors? Perhaps, too, Lord Arthur felt bound to admit to himself
+there were some men who more than others inspired confidence in women.
+He laid no claims to being a fascinating person, but he had had his
+share of success, and considered that Sheila showed discrimination
+as well as good-nature in talking so to him. There was, after all,
+no necessity for her husband to warn her. She would know how to guard
+against admitting all men to a like intimacy. In the mean time he
+was very well pleased to be sitting beside this pretty and agreeable
+companion, who had an abundant fund of good spirits, and who showed no
+sort of conscious embarrassment in thanking you with a bright look
+of her eyes or by a smile when you told her something that pleased or
+amused her.
+
+But these flattering little speculations were doomed to receive
+a sudden check. The juvenile M.P. began to remark that a shade
+occasionally crossed the face of his fair companion, and that she
+sometimes looked a little anxiously across the table, where Mr.
+Lavender and Mrs. Lorraine were seated, half hidden from view by a
+heap of silver and flowers in the middle of the board. But though they
+could not easily be seen, except at such moments as they turned to
+address some neighbor, they could be distinctly enough heard when
+there was any lull in the general conversation. And what Sheila heard
+did not please her. She began to like that fair, clear-eyed young
+woman less. Perhaps her husband meant nothing by the fashion in which
+he talked of marriage and the condition of a married man, but she
+would rather have not heard him talk so. Moreover, she was aware that
+in the gentlest possible fashion Mrs. Lorraine was making fun of her
+companion, and exposing him to small and graceful shafts of ridicule;
+while he seemed, on the whole, to enjoy these attacks.
+
+The ingenuous self-love of Lord Arthur Redburn, M.P., was severely
+wounded by the notion that, after all, he had been made a cat's-paw
+of by a jealous wife. He had been flattered by this girl's exceeding
+friendliness; he had given her credit for a genuine impulsiveness
+which seemed to him as pleasing as it was uncommon; and he had, with
+the moderation expected of a man in politics who hoped some day to
+assist in the government of the nation by accepting a junior lordship,
+admired her. But was it all pretence? Was she paying court to him
+merely to annoy her husband? Had her enthusiasm about the shooting of
+red-deer been prompted by a wish to attract a certain pair of eyes at
+the other side of the table? Lord Arthur began to sneer at himself for
+having been duped. He ought to have known. Women were as much women
+in a Hebridean island as in Bayswater. He began to treat Sheila with a
+little more coolness, while she became more and more preoccupied with
+the couple across the table, and sometimes was innocently rude in
+answering his questions somewhat at random.
+
+When the ladies were going into the drawing-room, Mrs. Lorraine
+put her hand within Sheila's arm and led her to the entrance to the
+conservatory. "I hope we shall be friends," she said.
+
+"I hope so," said Sheila, not very warmly.
+
+"Until you get better acquainted with your husband's friends you will
+feel rather lonely at being left as at present, I suppose."
+
+"A little," said Sheila.
+
+"It is a silly thing altogether. If men smoked after dinner I could
+understand it. But they merely sit, looking at wine they don't drink,
+talking a few common-places and yawning."
+
+"Why do they do it, then?" said Sheila.
+
+"They don't do it everywhere. But here we keep to the manners and
+customs of the ancients."
+
+"What do you know about the manners of the ancients?" said Mrs.
+Kavanagh, tapping her daughter's shoulder; as she passed with a sheet
+of music.
+
+"I have studied them frequently, mamma," said the daughter with
+composure, "--in the monkey-house at the Zoological Gardens."
+
+The mamma smiled, and passed on to place the music on the piano.
+Sheila did not understand what her companion had said; and indeed
+Mrs. Lorraine immediately turned, with the same calm, fine face and
+careless eyes, to ask Sheila whether she would not, by and by, sing
+one of those northern songs of which Mr. Lavender had told her.
+
+A tall girl, with her back hair tied in a knot and her costume copied
+from a well-known pre-Raphaelite drawing, sat down to the piano and
+sang a mystic song of the present day, in which the moon, the stars
+and other natural objects behaved strangely, and were somehow mixed up
+with the appeal of a maiden who demanded that her dead lover should be
+reclaimed from the sea.
+
+"Do you ever go down to your husband's studio?" said Mrs. Lorraine.
+
+Sheila glanced toward the lady at the piano.
+
+"Oh, you may talk," said Mrs. Lorraine, with the least expression of
+contempt in the gray eyes. "She is singing to gratify herself, not
+us."
+
+"Yes, I sometimes go down," said Sheila in as low a voice as she could
+manage without falling into a whisper, "and it is such a dismal place.
+It is very hard on him to have to work in a big bare room like that,
+with the windows half blinded. But sometimes I think Frank would
+rather have me out of the way."
+
+"And what would he do if both of us were to pay him a visit?" said
+Mrs. Lorraine. "I should so like to see the studio! Won't you call for
+me some day and take me with you?"
+
+Take her with her, indeed! Sheila began to wonder that she did not
+propose to go alone. Fortunately, there was no need to answer the
+question, for at this moment the song came to an end, and there was a
+general movement and murmur of gratitude.
+
+"Thank you," said Mrs. Lorraine to the lady who had sung, and who was
+now returning to the photographs she had left--"thank you very much.
+I knew some one would instantly ask you to sing that song: it is the
+most charming of all your songs, I think, and how well it suits your
+voice, too!"
+
+Then she turned to Sheila again: "How did you like Lord Arthur
+Redburn?"
+
+"I think he is a very good young man."
+
+"Young men are never good, but they may be very amiable," said
+Mrs. Lorraine, not perceiving that Sheila had blundered on a wrong
+adjective, and that she had really meant that she thought him honest
+and pleasant.
+
+"You did not speak at all, I think, to your neighbor on the right:
+that was wise of you. He is a most insufferable person, but mamma
+bears with him for the sake of his daughter, who sang just now. He is
+too rich. And he smiles blandly, and takes a sort of after-dinner view
+of things, as if he coincided with the arrangements of Providence.
+Don't you take coffee? Tea, then. I have met your aunt--I mean, Mr.
+Lavender's aunt: such a dear old lady she is!"
+
+"I don't like her," said Sheila.
+
+"Oh, don't you, really?"
+
+"Not at present, but I shall try to like her."
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Lorraine calmly, "you know she has her
+peculiarities. I wish she wouldn't talk so much about Marcus Antoninus
+and doses of medicine. I fancy I smell calomel when she comes near.
+I suppose if she were in a pantomime, they'd dress her up as a phial,
+tie a string round her neck and label her 'POISON.' Dear me, how
+languid one gets in this climate! Let us sit down. I wish I was as
+strong as mamma."
+
+They sat down together, and Mrs. Lorraine evidently expected to be
+petted and made much of by her new companion. She gave herself pretty
+little airs and graces, and said no more cutting things about anybody.
+And Sheila somehow found herself being drawn to the girl, so that she
+could scarcely help taking her hand, and saying how sorry she was to
+see her so pale and fine and delicate. The hand, too, was so small
+that the tiny white fingers seemed scarcely bigger than the claws of
+a bird. Was not that slender waist, to which some little attention was
+called by a belt of bold blue, just a little too slender for
+health, although the bust and shoulders were exquisitely and finely
+proportioned?
+
+"We were at the Academy all the morning, and mamma is not a bit tired.
+Why has not Mr. Lavender anything in the Academy? Oh, I forgot" she
+added, with a smile. "Of course, he has been very much engaged. But
+now I suppose he will settle down to work."
+
+Sheila wished that this fragile-looking girl would not so continually
+refer to her husband; but how was any one to find fault with her when
+she put a little air of plaintiveness into the ordinarily cold gray
+eyes, and looked at her small hand as much as to say, "The fingers
+there are very small, and even whiter than the glove that covers them.
+They are the fingers of a child, who ought to be petted."
+
+Then the men came in from the dining-room. Lavender looked round to
+see where Sheila was--perhaps with a trifle of disappointment that she
+was not the most prominent figure there. Had he expected to find all
+the women surrounding her and admiring her, and all the men going up
+to pay court to her? Sheila was seated near a small table, and Mrs.
+Lorraine was showing her something. She was just like anybody else. If
+she was a wonderful sea-princess who had come into a new world, no one
+seemed to observe her. The only thing that distinguished her from
+the women around her was her freshness of color and the unusual
+combination of black eyelashes and dark blue eyes. Lavender had
+arranged that Sheila's first appearance in public should be at a very
+quiet little dinner-party, but even here she failed to create any
+profound impression. She was, as he had to confess to himself again,
+just like anybody else.
+
+He went over to where Mrs. Lorraine was, and sat down beside her.
+Sheila, remembering his injunctions, felt bound to leave him there;
+and as she rose to speak to Mrs. Kavanagh, who was standing by,
+that lady came and begged her to sing a Highland song. By this time
+Lavender had succeeded in interesting his companion about something or
+other, and neither of them noticed that Sheila had gone to the piano,
+attended by the young politician who had taken her in to dinner. Nor
+did they interrupt their talk merely because some one played a few
+bars of prelude. But what was this that suddenly startled Lavender to
+the heart, causing him to look up with surprise? He had not heard the
+air since he was in Borva, and when Sheila sang
+
+  Hark, hark! the horn
+  On mountain-breezes borne!
+  Awake, it is morn,
+      Awake, Monaltrie!--
+
+all sorts of reminiscences came rushing in upon him. How often had
+he heard that wild story of Monaltrie's flight sung out in the small
+chamber over the sea, with a sound of the waves outside and a scent of
+sea-weed coming in at the door and the windows! It was from the shores
+of Borva that young Monaltrie must have fled. It must have been in
+Borva that his sweetheart sat in her bower and sang, the burden of all
+her singing being "Return, Monaltrie!" And then, as Sheila sang now,
+making the monotonous and plaintive air wild and strange--
+
+  What cries of wild despair
+  Awake the sultry air?
+  Frenzied with anxious care,
+      She seeks Monaltrie--
+
+he heard no more of the song. He was thinking of bygone days in Borva,
+and of old Mackenzie living in his lonely house there. When Sheila had
+finished singing he looked at her, and it seemed to him that she was
+still that wonderful princess whom he had wooed on the shores of the
+Atlantic. And if those people did not see her as he saw her, ought he
+to be disappointed because of their blindness?
+
+But if they saw nothing mystic or wonderful about Sheila, they at all
+events were considerably surprised by the strange sort of music she
+sang. It was not of a sort commonly heard in a London drawing-room.
+The pathos of its minor chords, its abrupt intervals, startling
+and wild in their effect, and the slowly subsiding wail in which it
+closed, did not much resemble the ordinary drawing-room "piece." Here,
+at least, Sheila had produced an impression; and presently there was
+a heap of people round the piano, expressing their admiration, asking
+questions and begging her to continue. But she rose. She would rather
+not sing just then. Whereupon Lavender came out to her and said,
+"Sheila, won't you sing that wild one about the farewell--that has the
+sound of the pipes in it, you know?"
+
+"Oh yes," she said directly.
+
+Lavender went back to his companion.
+
+"She is very obedient to you," said Mrs. Lorraine with a smile.
+
+"Yes, at present," he said; and he thought meanly of himself for
+saying it the moment the words were uttered.
+
+  Oh, soft be thy slumbers, by Tigh-na-linne's waters;
+  Thy late-wake was sung by Macdiarmid's fair daughters;
+  But far in Lochaber the true heart was weeping
+  Whose hopes are entombed in the grave where thou'rt sleeping.
+
+So Sheila sang; and it seemed to the people that this ballad was even
+more strange than its predecessor. When the song was over, Sheila
+seemed rather anxious to get out of the crowd, and indeed walked away
+into the conservatory to have a look at the flowers.
+
+Yes, Lavender had to confess to himself, Sheila was just like anybody
+else in this drawing-room. His sea-princess had produced no startling
+impression. He forgot that he had just been teaching her the necessity
+of observing the ways and customs of the people around her, so that
+she might avoid singularity.
+
+On one point, at least, she was resolved she would attend to his
+counsels: she would not make him ridiculous by any show of affection
+before the eyes of strangers. She did not go near him the whole
+evening. She remained for the most part in that half conservatory,
+half ante-room at the end of the drawing-room; and when any one talked
+to her she answered, and when she was left alone she turned to the
+flowers. All this time, however, she could observe that Lavender and
+Mrs. Lorraine were very much engrossed in their conversation; that
+she seemed very much amused, and he at times a trifle embarrassed;
+and that both of them had apparently forgotten her existence. Mrs.
+Kavanagh was continually coming to Sheila and trying to coax her back
+into the larger room, but in vain. She would rather not sing any more
+that night. She liked to look at flowers. She was not tired at all,
+and she had already seen those wonderful photographs about which
+everybody was talking.
+
+"Well, Sheila, how did you enjoy yourself?" said her husband as they
+were driving home.
+
+"I wish Mr. Ingram had been there," said Sheila.
+
+"Ingram! He would not have stopped in the place five minutes, unless
+he could play the part of Diogenes and say rude things to everybody
+all round. Were you at all dull?"
+
+"A little."
+
+"Didn't somebody look after you?"
+
+"Oh yes, many persons were very kind. But--but--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Nobody seemed to be better off than myself. They all seemed to be
+wanting something to do; and I am sure they were all very glad to come
+away."
+
+"No, no, no, Sheila. That is only your fancy. You were not much
+interested, that is evident; but you will get on better when you know
+more of the people. You were a stranger--that is what disappointed
+you--but you will not always be a stranger."
+
+Sheila did not answer. Perhaps she contemplated with no great hope or
+longing the possibility of her coming to like such a method of getting
+through an evening. At all events, she looked forward with no great
+pleasure to the chance of her having to become friends with Mrs.
+Lorraine. All the way home Sheila was examining her own heart to try
+to discover why such bitter feelings should be there. Surely that girl
+was honest: there was honesty in her eyes. She had been most kind to
+Sheila herself. And was there not at times, when she abandoned the
+ways and speech of a woman of the world, a singular coy fascination
+about her, that any man might be excused for yielding to, even as any
+woman might yield to it? Sheila fought with herself, and resolved that
+she would cast forth from her heart those harsh fancies and indignant
+feelings that seemed to have established themselves there. She would
+_not_ hate Mrs. Lorraine.
+
+As for Lavender, what was he thinking of, now that he and his young
+wife were driving home from their first experiment in society? He
+had to confess to a certain sense of failure. His dreams had not been
+realized. Every one who had spoken to him had conveyed to him, as
+freely as good manners would admit, their congratulations and their
+praises of his wife. But the impressive scenes he had been forecasting
+were out of the question. There was a little curiosity about her on
+the part of those who knew her story, and that was all. Sheila bore
+herself very well. She made no blunders. She had a good presence, she
+sang well, and every one could see that she was handsome, gentle and
+honest. Surely, he argued with himself, that ought to content the most
+exacting. But, in spite of all argument, he was not content. He did
+not regret that he had sacrificed his liberty in a freak of romance;
+he did not even regard the fact of a man in his position having dared
+to marry a penniless girl as anything very meritorious or heroic; but
+he had hoped that the dramatic circumstances of the case would be
+duly recognized by his friends, and that Sheila would be an object of
+interest and wonder and talk in a whole series of social circles. But
+the result of his adventure was different. There was only one married
+man the more in London, and London was not disposed to pay any
+particular heed to that circumstance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON.
+
+
+If Frank Lavender had been told that his love for his wife was in
+danger of waning, he would have laughed the suggestion to scorn. He
+was as fond of her and as proud of her as ever. Who knew as well as
+himself the tenderness of her heart, the delicate sensitiveness of her
+conscience, the generosity of self-sacrifice she was always ready to
+bestow? and was he likely to become blind, so that he should fail to
+see how fair and frank and handsome she was? He had been disappointed,
+it is true, in his fancies about the impression she would produce on
+his friends; but what a trifle was that! The folly of those fancies
+was his own. For the rest, he was glad that Sheila was not so
+different from the other women whom he knew. He hit upon the profound
+reflection, as he sat alone in his studio, that a man's wife, like
+his costume, should not be so remarkable as to attract attention.
+The perfection of dress was that you should be unconscious of its
+presence: might that not be so with marriage? After all, it was better
+that he had not bound himself to lug about a lion whenever he visited
+people's houses.
+
+Still, there was something. He found himself a good deal alone. Sheila
+did not seem to care much for going into society; and although he did
+not much like the notion of going by himself, nevertheless one had
+certain duties toward one's friends to perform. She did not even
+care to go down to the Park of a forenoon. She always professed her
+readiness to go, but he fancied it was a trifle tiresome for her; and
+so, when there was nothing particular going on in the studio, he would
+walk down through Kensington Gardens himself, and have a chat with
+some friends, followed generally by luncheon with this or the other
+party of them. Sheila had been taught that she ought not to come so
+frequently to that studio. Bras would not lie quiet. Moreover, if
+dealers or other strangers should come in, would they not take her
+for a model? So Sheila stayed at home; and Mr. Lavender, after having
+dressed with care in the morning--with very singular care, indeed,
+considering that he was going to his work--used to go down to his
+studio to smoke a cigarette. The chances were that he was not in a
+humor for working. He would sit down in an easy-chair and kick his
+heels on the floor for a time, watching perhaps the sunlight come in
+through the upper part of the windows and paint yellow squares on
+the opposite wall. Then he would go out and lock the door behind him,
+leaving no message whatever for those crowds of importunate dealers
+who, as Sheila fancied, were besieging him with offers in one hand and
+purses of gold in the other.
+
+One morning, after she had been indoors for two or three days, and had
+grown hopelessly tired of the monotony of watching that sunlit square,
+she was filled with an unconquerable longing to go away, for however
+brief a space, from the sight of houses. The morning was sweet and
+clear and bright, white clouds were slowly crossing a fair blue sky,
+and a fresh and cool breeze was blowing in at the open French windows.
+
+"Bras," she said, going down stairs and out into the small garden, "we
+are going into the country."
+
+The great deer-hound seemed to know, and rose and came to her with
+great gravity, while she clasped on the leash. He was no frisky animal
+to show his delight by yelping and gamboling, but he laid his long
+nose in her hand, and slowly wagged the down-drooping curve of his
+shaggy tail; and then he placidly walked by her side up into the hall,
+where he stood awaiting her.
+
+She would go along and beg of her husband to leave his work for a day
+and go with her for a walk down to Richmond Park. She had often heard
+Mr. Ingram speak of walking down, and she remembered that much of the
+road was pretty. Why should not her husband have one holiday?
+
+"It is such a shame," she had said to him that morning as he left,
+"that you will be going into that gloomy place, with its bare walls
+and chairs, and the windows so that you cannot see out of them!"
+
+"I must get some work done somehow, Sheila," he said, although he did
+not tell her that he had not finished a picture since his marriage.
+
+"I wish I could do some of it for you," she said.
+
+"You! All the work you're good for is catching fish and feeding ducks
+and planting things in gardens. Why don't you come down and feed the
+ducks in the Serpentine?"
+
+"I should like to do that," she answered. "I will go any day with
+you."
+
+"Well," he said, "you see, I don't know until I get along to the
+studio whether I can get away for the fore-noon; and then if I were to
+come back here, you would have little or no time to dress. Good-bye,
+Sheila."
+
+"Good-bye," she had said to him, giving up the Serpentine without much
+regret.
+
+But the forenoon had turned out so delightful that she thought she
+would go along to the studio, and hale him out of that gaunt and dingy
+apartment. She should take him away from town: therefore she might put
+on that rough blue dress in which she used to go boating in Loch Roag.
+She had lately smartened it up a bit with some white braid, and she
+hoped he would approve.
+
+Did the big hound know the dress? He rubbed his head against her
+arm and hand when she came down, and looked up and whined almost
+inaudibly.
+
+"You are going out, Bras, and you must be a good dog and not try to
+go after the deer. Then I will send a very good story of you to Mairi;
+and when she comes to London after the harvest is over, she will bring
+you a present from the Lewis, and you will be very proud."
+
+She went out into the square, and was perhaps a little glad to get
+away from it, as she was not sure of the blue dress and the small hat
+with its sea-gull's feather being precisely the costume she ought to
+wear. When she got into the Uxbridge road she breathed more freely,
+and in the lightness of her heart she continued her conversation
+with Bras, giving that attentive animal a vast amount of information,
+partly in English, partly in Gaelic, which he answered only by a low
+whine or a shake of his shaggy head.
+
+But these confidences were suddenly interrupted. She had got down to
+Addison Terrace, and was contentedly looking at the trees and chatting
+to the dog, when by accident her eye happened to light on a brougham
+that was driving past. In it--she beheld them both clearly for a brief
+second--were her husband and Mrs. Lorraine, so engaged in conversation
+that neither of them saw her. Sheila stood on the pavement for a
+couple of minutes absolutely bewildered. All sorts of wild fancies and
+recollections came crowding in upon her--reasons why her husband was
+unwilling that she should visit his studio, why Mrs. Lorraine never
+called on her, and so forth and so forth. She did not know what to
+think for a time; but presently all this tumult was stilled, and she
+had resolved her doubts and made up her mind as to what she should do.
+She would not suspect her husband--that was the one sweet security
+to which she clung. He had made use of no duplicity: if there were
+duplicity in the case at all, he could not be the author of it. The
+reasons for his having of late left her so much alone were the true
+reasons. And if this Mrs. Lorraine should amuse him and interest him,
+who ought to grudge him this break in the monotony of his work? Sheila
+knew that she herself disliked going to those fashionable gatherings
+to which Mrs. Lorraine went, and to which Lavender had been accustomed
+to go before he was married. How could she expect him to give up all
+his old habits and pleasures for her sake? She would be more generous.
+It was her own fault that she was not a better companion for him; and
+was it for her, then, to think hardly of him because he went to the
+Park with a friend instead of going alone?
+
+Yet there was a great bitterness and grief in her heart as she turned
+and walked on. She spoke no more to the deer-hound by her side. There
+seemed to be less sunlight in the air, and the people and carriages
+passing were hardly so busy and cheerful and interesting as they had
+been. But all the same, she would go to Richmond Park, and by herself;
+for what was the use in calling in at the studio? and how could she go
+back home and sit in the house, knowing that her husband was away at
+some flower-show or morning concert, or some such thing, with that
+young American lady?
+
+She knew no other road to Richmond than that by which they had driven
+shortly after her arrival in London; and so it was that she went down
+and over Hammersmith Bridge, and round by Mortlake, and so on by East
+Sheen. The road seemed terribly long. She was an excellent walker,
+and in ordinary circumstances would have done the distance without
+fatigue; but when at length she saw the gates of the Park before her,
+she was at once exceedingly tired and almost faint from hunger. Here
+was the hotel in which they had dined: should she enter? The place
+seemed very grand and forbidding: she had scarcely even looked at it
+as she went up the steps with her husband by her side. However, she
+would venture, and accordingly she went up and into the vestibule,
+looking rather timidly about. A young gentleman, apparently not a
+waiter, approached her and seemed to wait for her to speak. It was a
+terrible moment. What was she to ask for? and could she ask it of this
+young man? Fortunately, he spoke first, and asked her if she wished to
+go into the coffee-room, and if she expected any one.
+
+"No, I do not expect any one," she said; and she knew that he would
+perceive the peculiarity of her accent; "but if you will be kind
+enough to tell me where I may have a biscuit--"
+
+It occurred to her that to go into the Star and Garter for a biscuit
+was absurd; and she added wildly, "--or anything to eat."
+
+The young man obviously regarded her with some surprise; but he was
+very courteous, and showed her into the coffee-room and called a
+waiter to her. Moreover, he gave permission for Bras to be admitted
+into the room, Sheila promising that he would lie under the table
+and not budge an inch. Then she looked round. There were only three
+persons in the room--one, an old lady seated by herself in a far
+corner, the other two being a couple of young folks too much engrossed
+with each other to mind any one else. She began to feel more at home.
+The waiter suggested various things for lunch, and she made her choice
+of something cold. Then she mustered up courage to ask for a glass of
+sherry. How she would have enjoyed all this as a story to tell to her
+husband but for that incident of the morning! She would have gloried
+in her outward bravery, and made him smile with a description of
+her inward terror. She would have written about it to the old man in
+Borva, and bid him consider how she had been transformed, and what
+strange scenes Bras was now witnessing. But all that was over. She
+felt as if she could no longer ask her husband to be amused by her
+childish experiences; and as for writing to her father, she dared
+not write to him in her present mood. Perhaps some happier time would
+come. Sheila paid her bill. She had heard her husband and Mr. Ingram
+talk about tipping waiters, and knew that she ought to give something
+to the man who had attended on her. But how much? He was a very
+august-looking person, with formally-cut whiskers and a severe
+expression of face. When he had brought back the change to her she
+timidly selected a half crown and offered it to him. There was a
+little glance of surprise: she feared she had not given him enough.
+Then he said "Thank you!" in a vague and distant fashion, and she
+knew that she had not given him enough. But it was too late. Bras was
+summoned from under the table, and again she went out into the fresh
+air.
+
+"Oh, my good dog!" she said to him as they together walked up to the
+gates and into the Park, "this is a very extravagant country. You have
+to pay half a crown to a servant for bringing you a piece of cold pie,
+and then he looks as if he was not paid enough. And Duncan, who will
+do everything about the house, and will give us all our dinners, it
+is only a pound a week he will get, and Scarlett has to be kept out of
+that. And wouldn't you like to see poor old Scarlett again?"
+
+Bras whined as if he understood every word.
+
+"I suppose now she is hanging out the washing on the gooseberry
+bushes, and you know the song she always used to sing then? Don't you
+know that Scarlett carried me about long before you were born, for you
+are a mere infant compared with me? and she used to sing to me--
+
+  Ged' bheirte mi' bho'n bhas so,
+      Mho Sheila bheag òg!
+
+And that is what she is singing just now in the garden; and Mairi
+she is bringing the things out of the washing-house. Papa is over in
+Stornoway this morning, arranging his accounts with the people there;
+and perhaps he is down at the quay, looking at the Clansman, and
+wondering when she is to bring me into the harbor. The castle is all
+shut up, you know, with cloths over all the wonderful things, and the
+curtains all down, and most of the shutters shut. Do you think papa
+has got my letter in his pocket, and does he read it over and over
+again, as I read all his letters to me over and over again? Ah--h! You
+bad dog!"
+
+Bras had forgotten to listen to his mistress in the excitement of
+seeing in the distance a large herd of deer under certain trees.
+She felt by the leash that he was trembling in every limb with
+expectation, and straining hard on the collar. Again and again she
+admonished him in vain, until she had at last to drag him away down
+the hill, putting a small plantation between him and the herd. Here
+she found a large, umbrageous chestnut tree, with a wooden seat round
+its trunk, and so she sat down in the green twilight of the leaves,
+while Bras came and put his head in her lap. Out beyond the shadow
+of the tree all the world lay bathed in sunlight, and a great silence
+brooded over the long undulations of the Park, where not a human
+being was within sight. How strange it was, she fell to thinking, that
+within a short distance there were millions of men and women, while
+here she was absolutely alone! Did they not care, then, for the
+sunlight and the trees and the sweet air? Were they so wrapped up in
+those social observances that seemed to her so barren of interest?
+
+"They have a beautiful country here," she said, talking in a rambling
+and wistful way to Bras, and scarcely noticing the eager light in his
+eyes, as if he were trying to understand. "They have no rain and no
+fog; almost always blue skies, and the clouds high up and far away.
+And the beautiful trees they have too! you never saw anything like
+that in the Lewis, not even at Stornoway. And the people are so rich
+and beautiful in their dress, and all the day they have only to think
+how to enjoy themselves and what new amusement is for the morrow. But
+I think they are tired of having nothing to do; or perhaps, you know,
+they are tired because they have nothing to fight against--no hard
+weather and hunger and poverty. They do not care for each other as
+they would if they were working on the same farm, and trying to save
+up for the winter; or if they were going out to the fishing, and very
+glad to come home again from Caithness to find all the old people very
+well and the young ones ready for a dance and a dram, and much joy and
+laughing and telling of stories. It is a very great difference there
+will be in the people--very great."
+
+Bras whined: perhaps he understood her better now that she had
+involuntarily fallen into something of her old accent and habit of
+speech.
+
+"Wouldn't you like, Bras, to be up in Borva again--only for this
+afternoon? All the people would come running out; and it is little
+Ailasa, she would put her arms round your neck; and old Peter
+McTavish, he would hear who it was, and come out of his house groping
+by the wall, and he would say, 'Pless me! iss it you, Miss Sheila,
+indeed and mir-over? It iss a long time since you hef left the Lewis.'
+Yes, it is a long time--a long time; and I will be almost forgetting
+what it is like sometimes when I try to think of it. Here it is always
+the same--the same houses, the same soft air, the same still sunlight,
+the same things to do and places to see--no storms shaking the windows
+or ships running into the harbor, and you cannot go down to the
+shore to see what has happened, or up the hill to look how the sea
+is raging. But it is one day we will go back to the Lewis--oh yes, we
+will go back to the Lewis!"
+
+She rose and looked wistfully around her, and then turned with a sigh
+to make her way to the gates. It was with no especial sort of gladness
+that she thought of returning home. Here, in the great stillness, she
+had been able to dream of the far island which she knew, and to fancy
+herself for a few minutes there: now she was going back to the dreary
+monotony of her life in that square, and to the doubts and anxieties
+which had been suggested to her in the morning. The world she was
+about to enter once more seemed so much less homely, so much less full
+of interest and purpose, than that other and distant world she had
+been wistfully regarding for a time. The people around her had neither
+the joys nor the sorrows with which she had been taught to sympathize.
+Their cares seemed to her to be exaggerations of trifles--she could
+feel no pity for them: their satisfaction was derived from sources
+unintelligible to her. And the social atmosphere around her seemed
+still and close and suffocating; so that she was like to cry out at
+times for one breath of God's clear wind--for a shaft of lightning
+even--to cut through the sultry and drowsy sameness of her life.
+
+She had almost forgotten the dog by her side. While sitting under the
+chestnut she had carelessly and loosely wound the leash round his neck
+in the semblance of a collar, and when she rose and came away she let
+the dog walk by her side without undoing the leash and taking proper
+charge of him. She was thinking of far other things, indeed, when she
+was startled by some one calling to her, "Look out, miss, or you'll
+have your dog shot!"
+
+She turned and caught a glimpse of what sent a thrill of terror to her
+heart. Bras had sneaked off from her side--had trotted lightly over
+the breckans, and was now in full chase of a herd of deer which were
+flying down the slope on the other side of the plantation. He rushed
+now at one, now at another: the very number of chances presented to
+him proving the safety of the whole herd. But as Sheila, with a swift
+flight that would have astonished most town-bred girls, followed the
+wild chase and came to the crest of the slope, she could see that the
+hound had at length singled out a particular deer--a fine buck with
+handsome horns that was making straight for the foot of the valley.
+The herd, that had been much scattered, were now drawing together
+again, though checking nothing of their speed; but this single buck
+had been driven from his companions, and was doing his utmost to
+escape from the fangs of the powerful animal behind him.
+
+What could she do but run wildly and breathlessly on? The dog was now
+far beyond the reach of her voice. She had no whistle. All sorts of
+fearful anticipations rushed in on her mind, the most prominent of all
+being the anger of her father if Bras were shot. How could she go back
+to Borva with such a tale? and how could she live in London without
+this companion who had come with her from the far North? Then what
+terrible things were connected with the killing of deer in a royal
+park! She remembered vaguely what Mr. Ingram and her husband had been
+saying; and while these things were crowding in upon her, she felt
+her strength beginning to fail, while both the dog and the deer had
+disappeared altogether from sight.
+
+Strange, too, that in the midst of her fatigue and fright, while she
+still managed to struggle on with a sharp pain at her heart and a
+sort of mist before her eyes, she had a vague consciousness that her
+husband would be deeply vexed, not by the conduct or the fate of Bras,
+but by her being the heroine of so mad an adventure. She knew that he
+wished her to be serious and subdued and proper, like the ladies
+whom she met, while an evil destiny seemed to dog her footsteps
+and precipitate her into all sorts of erratic mishaps and "scenes."
+However, this adventure was likely soon to have an end. She could go
+no farther. Whatever had become of Bras, it was in vain for her to
+think of pursuing him. When she at length reached a broad and smooth
+road leading through the pasture, she could only stand still and press
+her two hands over her heart, while her head seemed giddy, and she did
+not see two men who had been standing on the road close by until they
+came up and addressed her.
+
+Then she started and looked round, finding before her two men who were
+apparently laborers of some sort, one of them having a shovel over his
+shoulder.
+
+"Beg your pardon, miss, but wur that your dawg?"
+
+"Yes," she said eagerly. "Could you get him? Did you see him go by? Do
+you know where he is?"
+
+"Me and my mate saw him go by, sure enough; but as for getting
+him--why the keepers'll have shot him by this time."
+
+"Oh no!" cried Sheila, almost in tears, "they must not shoot him. It
+was my fault. I will pay them for all the harm he has done. Can't you
+tell me which way he will go past?"
+
+"I don't think, miss," said the spokesman quite respectfully, "as you
+can go much furder. If you would sit down and rest yourself, and keep
+an eye on this 'ere shovel, me and my mate will have a hunt arter the
+dawg."
+
+Sheila not only accepted the offer gratefully, but promised to give
+them all the money she had if only they would bring back the dog
+unharmed. She made this offer in consequence of some talk between her
+husband and her father which she had overheard. Lavender was speaking
+of the civility he had frequently experienced at the hands of Scotch
+shepherds, and of the independence with which they refused to accept
+any compensation even for services which cost them a good deal of
+time and trouble. Perhaps it was to please Sheila's father, but at any
+rate, the picture the young man drew of the venality and the cupidity
+of folks in the South was a desperately dark one. Ask the name of a
+village, have your stick picked up for you from the pavement, get into
+a cab or get out of it, and directly there was a touch of the cap and
+an unspoken request for coppers. Then, as the services rendered
+rose in importance, so did the fees--to waiters, to coachmen, to
+game-keepers. These things and many more sank into Sheila's heart. She
+heard and believed, and came down to the South with the notion that
+every man and woman who did you the least service expected to be paid
+handsomely for it. What, therefore, could she give those two men if
+they brought back her deer-hound but all the money she had?
+
+It was a hard thing to wait here in the greatest doubt and uncertainty
+while the afternoon was visibly waning. She began to grow afraid.
+Perhaps the men had stolen the dog, and left her with this shovel as
+a blind. Her husband must have come home, and would be astonished and
+perplexed by her absence. Surely, he would have the sense to dine
+by himself, instead of waiting for her; and she reflected with some
+glimpse of satisfaction that she had left everything connected with
+dinner properly arranged, so that he should have nothing to grumble
+at.
+
+"Surely," she said to herself as she sat there, watching the light
+on the grass and the trees getting more and more yellow--"surely I am
+very wicked or very wretched to think of his grumbling in any case.
+If he grumbles, it is because I will attend too much to the affairs of
+the house, and not amuse myself enough. He is very good to me, and I
+have no right to think of his grumbling. And I wish I cared to amuse
+myself more--to be more of a companion to him; but it is so difficult
+among all those people."
+
+The reverie was interrupted by the sound of footsteps on the grass
+behind, and she turned quickly to find the two men approaching her,
+one of them leading the captive Bras by the leash. Sheila sprang to
+her feet with a great gladness. She did not care even to accuse the
+culprit, whose consciousness of guilt was evident in his look and
+in the droop of his tail. Bras did not once turn his eyes to his
+mistress. He hung down his head, while he panted rapidly, and she
+fancied she saw some smearing of blood on his tongue and on the side
+of his jaw. Her fears on this head were speedily confirmed.
+
+"I think, miss, as you'd better take him out o' the Park as soon as
+may be, for he's got a deer killed close by the Robin Hood Gate, in
+the trees there; and if the keepers happen on it afore you leave the
+Park, you'll get into trouble."
+
+"Oh, thank you!" said Sheila, retaining her composure bravely, but
+with a terrible sinking of the heart; "and how can I get to the
+nearest railway station?"
+
+"You're going to London, miss?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, I suppose the nearest is Richmond; but it would be quieter for
+you--don't you see, miss?--if you was to go along to the Roehampton
+Gate and go to Barnes."
+
+"Will you show me the gate?" said Sheila, choosing the quieter route
+at once.
+
+But the men themselves did not at all like the look of accompanying
+her and this dog through the Park. Had they not already condoned a
+felony, or done something equally dreadful, in handing to her a dog
+that had been found keeping watch and ward over a slain buck? They
+showed her the road to the Roehampton Gate, and then they paused
+before continuing on their journey.
+
+The pause meant money. Sheila took out her purse. There were three
+sovereigns and some silver in it, and the entire sum, in fulfillment
+of her promise, she held out to him who had so far conducted the
+negotiations.
+
+Both men looked frightened. It was quite clear that either good
+feeling or some indefinite fear of being implicated in the killing of
+the deer caused them to regard this big bribe as something they could
+not meddle with; and at length, after a pause of a second or two, the
+spokesman said with great hesitation, "Well, miss, you've kep' your
+word; but me and my mate--well, if so be as it's the same to you--'d
+rather have summut to drink your health."
+
+"Do you think it is too much?"
+
+The man looked at his neighbor, who nodded.
+
+"It was only for ketchin' of a dawg, miss, don't you see?" he remarked
+slowly, as if to impress upon her that they had had nothing to do with
+the deer.
+
+"Will you take this, then?" and she offered them half a crown each.
+
+Their faces lightened considerably: they took the money, and with a
+formal expression of thanks moved off, but not before they had taken a
+glance round to see that no one had been a witness of this interview.
+
+And so Sheila had to walk away by herself, knowing that she had been
+guilty of a dreadful offence, and that at any moment she might be
+arrested by the officers of the law. What would the old King of Borva
+say if he saw his only daughter in the hands of two policemen? and
+would not all Mr. Lavender's fastidious and talkative and wondering
+friends pass about the newspaper report of her trial and conviction?
+A man was approaching her. As he drew near her heart failed her, for
+might not this be the mysterious George Ranger himself, about whom her
+husband and Mr. Ingram had been talking? Should she drop on her knees
+at once and confess her sins, and beg him to let her off? If Duncan
+were with her or Mairi, or even old Scarlett Macdonald, she would not
+have cared so much, but it seemed so terrible to meet this man alone.
+
+However, as he drew near he did not seem a fierce person. He was an
+old gentleman with voluminous white hair, who was dressed all in black
+and carried an umbrella on this warm and bright afternoon. He regarded
+her and the dog in a distant and contemplative fashion, as though he
+would probably try to remember some time after that he had really
+seen them; and then he passed on. Sheila began to breathe more freely.
+Moreover, here was the gate, and once she was in the high road, who
+could say anything to her? Tired as she was, she still walked rapidly
+on; and in due time, having had to ask the way once or twice, she
+found herself at Barnes Station.
+
+By and by the train came in: Bras was committed to the care of the
+guard, and she found herself alone in a railway-carriage for the first
+time in her life. Her husband had told her that whenever she felt
+uncertain of her where-abouts, if in the country, she was to ask for
+the nearest station and get a train to London; if in town, she was to
+get into a cab and give the driver her address. And, indeed, Sheila
+had been so much agitated and perplexed during this afternoon that
+she acted in a sort of mechanical fashion, and really escaped the
+nervousness which otherwise would have attended the novel experience
+of purchasing a ticket and of arranging about the carriage of a dog in
+the break-van. Even now, when she found herself traveling alone, and
+shortly to arrive at a part of London she had never seen, her crowding
+thoughts and fancies were not about her own situation, but about the
+reception she should receive from her husband. Would he be vexed
+with her? Or pity her? Had he called with Mrs. Lorraine to take her
+somewhere, and found her gone? Had he brought home some bachelor
+friends to dinner, and been chagrined to find her not in the house?
+
+It was getting dusk when the slow four-wheeler approached Sheila's
+home. The hour for dinner had long gone by. Perhaps her husband had
+gone away somewhere looking for her, and she would find the house
+empty.
+
+But Frank Lavender came to meet his wife in the hall, and said, "Where
+have you been?"
+
+She could not tell whether there was anger or kindness in his voice,
+and she could not well see his face. She took his hand and went into
+the dining-room, which was also dusk, and standing there told him all
+her story.
+
+"This is too bad, Sheila!" he said in a tone of deep vexation. "By
+Jove! I'll go and thrash that dog within an inch of his life."
+
+"No," she said, drawing herself up; and for one brief second--could he
+but have seen her face--there was a touch of old Mackenzie's pride and
+firmness about the ordinarily gentle lips. It was but for a second.
+She cast down her eyes and said meekly, "I hope you won't do that,
+Frank. The dog is not to blame. It was my fault."
+
+"Well, really, Sheila," he said, "you are very thoughtless. I wish you
+would take some little trouble to act as other women act, instead of
+constantly putting yourself and me into the most awkward positions.
+Suppose I had brought any one home to dinner, now? And what am I to
+say to Ingram? for of course I went direct to his lodgings when I
+discovered you were nowhere to be found. I fancied some mad freak had
+taken you there; and I should not have been surprised. Indeed, I don't
+think I should be surprised at anything you do. Do you know who was in
+the hall when I came in this afternoon?"
+
+"No," said Sheila.
+
+"Why that wretched old hag who keeps the fruit-stall. And it seems you
+gave her and all her family tea and cake in the kitchen last night."
+
+"She is a poor old woman," said Sheila humbly.
+
+"A poor old woman!" he said impatiently. "I have no doubt she is a
+lying old thief, who would take an umbrella or a coat if only she
+could get the chance. It is really too bad, Sheila, your having all
+those persons about you, and demeaning yourself by amending on them.
+What must the servants think of you?"
+
+"I do not heed what any servants think of me," she said.
+
+She was now standing erect, with her face quite calm.
+
+"Apparently not," he said, "or you would not go and make yourself
+ridiculous before them."
+
+Sheila hesitated for a moment, as if she did not understand; and then
+she said, as calmly as before, but with a touch of indignation about
+the proud and beautiful lips, "And if I make myself ridiculous by
+attending to poor people, it is not my husband who should tell me so."
+
+She turned and walked out, and he was too surprised to follow her. She
+went up stairs to her own room, locked herself in and threw herself on
+the bed. And then all the bitterness of her heart rose up as if in a
+flood--not against him, but against the country in which he lived, and
+the society which had contaminated him, and the ways and habits that
+seemed to create a barrier between herself and him, so that she was
+a stranger to him, and incapable of becoming anything else. It was a
+crime that she should interest herself in the unfortunate creatures
+round about her--that she should talk to them as if they were human
+beings like herself, and have a great sympathy with their small hopes
+and aims; but she would not have been led into such a crime if she
+had cultivated from her infancy upward a consistent self-indulgence,
+making herself the centre of a world of mean desires and petty
+gratifications. And then she thought of the old and beautiful days up
+in the Lewis, where the young English stranger seemed to approve of
+her simple ways and her charitable work, and where she was taught to
+believe that in order to please him she had only to continue to be
+what she was then. There was no great gulf of time between that period
+and this; but what had not happened in the interval? She had not
+changed--at least she hoped she had not changed. She loved her husband
+with her whole heart and soul: her devotion was as true and constant
+as she herself could have wished it to be when she dreamed of the
+duties of a wife in the days of her maidenhood. But all around her was
+changed. She had no longer the old freedom--the old delight in living
+from day to day--the active work, and the enjoyment of seeing where
+she could help and how she could help the people around her. When,
+as if by the same sort of instinct that makes a wild animal retain
+in captivity the habits which were necessary to its existence when
+it lived in freedom, she began to find out the circumstances of such
+unfortunate people as were in her neighborhood, some little solace was
+given to her; but these people were not friends to her, as the poor
+folk of Borvabost had been. She knew, too, that her husband would be
+displeased if he found her talking with a washerwoman over her family
+matters, or even advising one of her own servants about the disposal
+of her wages; so that, while she concealed nothing from him, these
+things nevertheless had to be done exclusively in his absence. And was
+she in so doing really making herself ridiculous? Did he consider her
+ridiculous? Or was it not merely the false and enervating influences
+of the indolent society in which he lived that had poisoned his mind,
+and drawn him away from her as though into another world?
+
+Alas! if he were in this other world, was not she quite alone? What
+companionship was there possible between her and the people in this
+new and strange land into which she had ventured? As she lay on the
+bed, with her head hidden down in the darkness, the pathetic wail of
+the captive Jews seemed to come and go through the bitterness of her
+thoughts, like some mournful refrain: "By the rivers of Babylon, there
+we sat down; yea we wept when we remembered Zion." She almost heard
+the words, and the reply that rose up in her heart was a great
+yearning to go back to her own land, so that her eyes were filled with
+tears in thinking of it, and she lay and sobbed there in the dusk.
+Would not the old man living all by himself in that lonely island be
+glad to see his little girl back again in the old house? And she would
+sing to him as she used to sing, not as she had been singing to those
+people whom her husband knew. "For there they that carried us away
+captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us
+mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion." And she had sung in
+the strange land, among the strange people, with her heart breaking
+with thoughts of the sea and the hills and the rude and sweet and
+simple ways of the old bygone life she had left behind her.
+
+"Sheila!"
+
+She thought it was her father calling to her, and she rose with a
+cry of joy. For one wild moment she fancied that outside were all the
+people she knew--Duncan and Scarlett and Mairi--and that she was once
+more at home, with the sea all around her, and the salt, cold air.
+
+"Sheila, I want to speak to you."
+
+It was her husband. She went to the door, opened it, and stood there
+penitent and with downcast face.
+
+"Come, you must not be silly," he said with some kindness in his
+voice. "You have had no dinner. You must be hungry."
+
+"I do not care for any: there is no use troubling the servants when I
+would rather lie down," she said.
+
+"The servants! You surely don't take so seriously what I said about
+them, Sheila? Of course you don't need to care what the servants
+think. And in any case they have to bring up dinner for me, so you may
+as well come and try."
+
+"Have you not had dinner?" she said timidly.
+
+"Do you think I could sit down and eat with the notion that you might
+have tumbled into the Thames or been kidnapped, or something?"
+
+"I am very sorry," she said in a low voice, and in the gloom he felt
+his hand taken and carried to her lips. Then they went down stairs
+into the dining-room, which was now lit up by a blaze of gas and
+candles.
+
+During dinner of course no very confidential talking was possible,
+and indeed Sheila had plenty to tell of her adventures at Richmond.
+Lavender was now in a more amiable mood, and was disposed to look
+on the killing of the roebuck as rather a good joke. He complimented
+Sheila on her good sense in having gone in at the Star and Garter for
+lunch; and altogether something like better relations was established
+between them.
+
+But when dinner was finally over and the servants dismissed, Lavender
+placed Sheila's easy-chair for her as usual, drew his own near hers,
+and lit a cigarette.
+
+"Now, tell me, Sheila," he said, "were you really vexed with me when
+you went up stairs and locked yourself in your room? Did you think I
+meant to displease you or say anything harsh to you?"
+
+"No, not any of those things," she said calmly: "I wished to be
+alone--to think over what had happened. And I was grieved by what you
+said, for I think you cannot help looking at many things not as I
+will look at them. That is all. It is my bringing up in the Highlands,
+perhaps."
+
+"Do you know, Sheila, it sometimes occurs to me that you are not quite
+comfortable here? And I can't make out what is the matter. I think you
+have a perverse fancy that you are different from the people you meet,
+and that you cannot be like them, and all that sort of thing. Now,
+dear, that is only a fancy. There need be no difference if only you
+will take a little trouble."
+
+"Oh, Frank!" she said, going over and putting her hand on his
+shoulder, "I cannot take that trouble. I cannot try to be like those
+people. And I see a great difference in you since you have come back
+to London, and you are getting to be like them and say the things they
+say. If I could only see you, my own darling, up in the Lewis again,
+with rough clothes on and a gun in your hand, I should be happy. You
+were yourself up there, when you were helping us in the boat, or when
+you were bringing home the salmon, or when we were all together at
+night in the little parlor, you know--"
+
+"My dear, don't get so excited. Now sit down, and I will tell you all
+about it. You seem to have the notion that people lose all their finer
+sentiments simply because they don't, in society, burst into raptures
+over them. You mustn't imagine all those people are selfish and
+callous merely because they preserve a decent reticence. To tell you
+the truth, that constant profession of noble feelings you would like
+to see would have something of ostentation about it."
+
+Sheila only sighed. "I do not wish them to be altered," she said by
+and by, with her eyes grown pensive: "all I know is, that I could
+not live the same life. And you--you seemed to be happier up in the
+Highlands than you have ever been since."
+
+"Well, you see, a man ought to be happy when he is enjoying a holiday
+in the country along with the girl he is engaged to. But if I had
+lived all my life killing salmon and shooting wild-duck, I should have
+grown up an ignorant boor, with no more sense of--"
+
+He stopped, for he saw that the girl was thinking of her father.
+
+"Well, look here, Sheila. You see how you are placed--how we are
+placed, rather. Wouldn't it be more sensible to get to understand
+those people you look askance at, and establish better relations with
+them, since you have got to live among them? I can't help thinking
+you are too much alone, and you can't expect me to stay in the house
+always with you. A husband and wife cannot be continually in each
+other's company, unless they want to grow heartily tired of each
+other. Now, if you would only lay aside those suspicions of yours, you
+would find the people just as honest and generous and friendly as any
+other sort of people you ever met, although they don't happen to be
+fond of expressing their goodness in their talk."
+
+"I have tried, dear--I will try again," said Sheila.
+
+She resolved that she would go down and visit Mrs. Lavender next day,
+and try to be interested in the talk of such people as might be there.
+She would bring away some story about this or the other fashionable
+woman or noble lord, just to show her husband that she was doing her
+best to learn. She would drive patiently round the Park in that close
+little brougham, and listen attentively to the moralities of Marcus
+Aurelius. She would make an appointment to go with Mrs. Lavender to
+a morning concert; and she would endeavor to muster up courage to ask
+any ladies who might be there to lunch with her on that day, and go
+afterward to this same entertainment. All these things and many more
+Sheila silently vowed to herself she would do, while her husband sat
+and expounded to her his theories of the obligations which society
+demanded of its members.
+
+But her plans were suddenly broken asunder.
+
+"I met Mrs. Lorraine accidentally to-day," he said.
+
+It was his first mention of the young American lady. Sheila sat in
+mute expectation.
+
+"She always asks very kindly after you."
+
+"She is very kind."
+
+He did not say, however, that Mrs. Lorraine had more than once made
+distinct propositions, when in his company, that they should call in
+for Sheila and take her out for a drive or to a flower-show, or some
+such place, while Lavender had always some excuse ready.
+
+"She is going to Brighton to-morrow, and she was wondering whether you
+would care to run down for a day or two."
+
+"With her?" said Sheila, recoiling from such a proposal instinctively.
+
+"Of course not. I should go. And then at last, you know, you would see
+the sea, about which you have been dreaming for ever so long."
+
+The sea! There was a magic in the very word that could, almost at
+any moment, summon tears into her eyes. Of course she accepted
+right gladly. If her husband's duties were so pressing that the
+long-talked-of journey to Lewis and Borva had to be repeatedly and
+indefinitely postponed, here at least would be a chance of looking
+again at the sea--of drinking in the freshness and light and color of
+it--of renewing her old and intimate friendship with it that had been
+broken off for so long by her stay in this city of perpetual houses
+and still sunshine.
+
+"You can tell her you will go when you see her to-night at Lady
+Mary's. By the way, isn't it time for you to begin to dress?"
+
+"Oh, Lady Mary's!" repeated Sheila mechanically, who had quite
+forgotten about her engagement for that evening.
+
+"Perhaps you are too tired to go," said her husband.
+
+She was a little tired, in truth. But surely, just after her promises,
+spoken and unspoken, some little effort was demanded of her; so she
+bravely went to dress, and in about three-quarters of an hour was
+ready to drive down to Curzon street. Her husband had never seen her
+look so pleased before in going out to any party. He flattered himself
+that his lecture had done her good. There was fair common sense in
+what he had said, and although, doubtless, a girl's romanticism was
+a pretty thing, it would have to yield to the actual requirements of
+society. In time he should educate Sheila.
+
+But he did not know what brightened the girl's face all that night,
+and put a new life into the beautiful eyes, so that even those who
+knew her best were struck by her singular beauty. It was the sea that
+was coloring Sheila's eyes. The people around her, the glare of the
+candles, the hum of talking, and the motion of certain groups dancing
+over there in the middle of the throng,--all were faint and visionary,
+for she was busily wondering what the sea would be like the next
+morning, and what strange fancies would strike her when once more
+she walked on sand and heard the roar of waves. That, indeed, was
+the sound that was present in her ears while the music played and
+the people murmured around her. Mrs. Lorraine talked to her, and was
+surprised and amused to notice the eager fashion in which the girl
+spoke of their journey of the next day. The gentleman who took her in
+to supper found himself catechised about Brighton in a manner which
+afforded him more occupation than enjoyment. And when Sheila drove
+away from the house at two in the morning she declared to her husband
+that she had enjoyed herself extremely, and he was glad to hear it;
+and she was particularly kind to himself in getting him his slippers,
+and fetching him that final cigarette which he always had on reaching
+home; and then she went off to bed to dream of ships and flying clouds
+and cold winds, and a great and beautiful blue plain of waves.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+GOLD.
+
+
+  A day of bright reflections on the pond,
+  And wavering shadows over moss and frond:
+  A wayward breeze, the summer's latest born,
+  Teased the stiff grain and bent the stately corn,
+  Or rocked the bird-nests in the prickly thorn.
+
+  Above, the lavish sun filled air with gold;
+  Again, below, on mimic waves it rolled,
+  And hid in lily cups. Her netted hair
+  Gleamed in the splendor, bright beyond compare,
+  Forming about her head a nimbus rare.
+
+  The velvet mullen raised its yellow head,
+  The buttercups like precious ore were spread:
+  Like golden shuttles flung by spirit hands,
+  Weaving invisible their magic strands,
+  Darted quick orioles in joyous bands.
+
+  Fond helianthus turned her fervent face,
+  Meek antirrhinum paled and grew apace;
+  Late dandelions, robed in cloth of gold,
+  With golden-rod, upsprung from out the mould,
+  And pensive, gold-eyed daisies pranked the wold.
+
+  As snowy, gold-rimmed cloudlets hide the sky,
+  So hid her eyelid's golden fringe her eye:
+  As every growing beauty of the earth
+  But figures forth great Nature's hidden worth,
+  So my love's charms from her pure heart had birth.
+
+  Pure heart of gold to me that day was given,
+  And promise true as gold made earth a heaven;
+  Then far away fled every doubt forlorn;
+  We felt for us the Golden Age reborn,
+  And envied none their gold from labor torn.
+
+ITA ANIOL PROKOP.
+
+
+
+
+GLIMPSES OF GHOST-LAND.
+
+
+It is no longer the fashion to scoff at tales of the supernatural.
+On the contrary, there is a growing tendency to investigate subjects
+which were formerly pooh-poohed by most persons claiming to be well
+informed and capable of reasoning. It is, however, without propounding
+any theory or advancing any opinion that I record a few instances of
+apparently supernatural, or at least inexplicable, occurrences. I can
+vouch for the truth of nearly all the stories I am about to relate,
+one of them only not being either my personal experience or narrated
+to me by some one of the actors in the scene.
+
+My first story shall be one that was told to me by an aged lady who
+was one of the friends of my youth, and who often mentioned this
+strange incident of her placid, yet busy life. She was a sensible,
+practical woman, the last person in the world likely to be led astray
+by an overheated imagination or deceived by hallucinations. Her early
+youth had been passed in the country, her father being a wealthy
+farmer. She had formed a close intimacy with the daughter of a
+gentleman living at some distance from her father's farm, and the two
+were seldom apart. An invitation given to my friend (whom I shall call
+Mrs. L----) to visit some relatives in a neighboring city caused a
+brief separation between the two girls, and they parted with many
+protestations of enduring affection. On the day appointed for Mrs.
+L----'s return she set out at the prescribed hour. The latter part
+of her journey was to be performed on horseback. On a bright sunny
+afternoon in June she found herself, about five o'clock, drawing
+near her father's house. Suddenly in the broad road before her she
+perceived a female form walking rapidly toward her, and, to her
+delight, recognized her friend coming, as she thought, to meet her.
+
+"I will make her go back with me and take tea," was Mrs. L----'s
+thought as she whipped up her horse in her haste to greet the dear
+one, who was all the more beloved on account of their temporary
+separation. But as she approached the figure, and before she had had
+time to speak, or indeed to do more than notice that her friend looked
+very pale and ill, her horse, an unusually quiet, steady animal,
+seemed struck with sudden terror, reared, shied, and finally plunged
+into a hollow by the roadside, from which she had some difficulty
+in extricating him. When she did succeed in bringing him back to the
+level road she found, to her astonishment, that the young girl had
+disappeared. Around her lay the open fields, before her and behind
+her the road--all in the bright lustre of the summer afternoon--but no
+trace of the figure could she see. Completely mystified, she hastened
+home, there to learn that her friend had died suddenly that very
+morning.
+
+The next incident I shall narrate was told me by a German gentleman
+whose mother was the heroine of the tale. His father had been
+appointed to some public office in a small German town, and among
+the emoluments of the place was the privilege of residing in a large,
+old-fashioned, but very handsome mansion. The husband and wife set off
+in high spirits to inspect their new abode, to which some portion of
+their furniture had already been transferred. They went from room
+to room, inspecting and planning, till they came to an apartment
+the ceiling of which was elaborately decorated with plaster Cupids,
+baskets of flowers, etc., modeled in high relief, and with a
+centre-piece of unusual size and magnificence. A small table, the only
+article of furniture the room contained, was placed directly under
+this centre-piece. The young wife, rather weary of her researches, was
+standing beside this table, and was leaning on it while she went on
+talking with her husband, when suddenly a loud, imploring voice called
+from down stairs, "Caroline! Caroline! come down to me--come!"
+
+"Who can that be?" asked the husband in amazement. "I fastened all the
+doors and windows before we left the lower rooms."
+
+Again came the loud call, this time with an accent of agonized
+entreaty: "Caroline! oh, Caroline! come down--_do_ come!"
+
+The young couple hesitated no longer, but hastened down stairs. There
+was no one there. Doors and windows were securely fastened, and the
+old house looked as solitary as when they had first entered it.
+
+"Very strange!" said the gentleman. "But now that we _are_ down here,
+Caroline, suppose we take a look at the garden?" So they sallied forth
+to examine that portion of their new domain, but scarcely had they
+entered it when they were startled by a loud crash within the house.
+Looking up, they saw volumes of what appeared to be smoke issuing from
+the window of the room they had just quitted, and fearing that the
+room was on fire, they quickly returned to it. There was no fire: what
+had appeared to be smoke was only a cloud of dust, for the massive and
+elaborately ornamented ceiling had fallen, and the heavy centre-piece
+had crushed to fragments the table against which the young wife had so
+lately been leaning. But for the warning voice her destruction would
+have been inevitable. My informant went on to state that the pieces
+of the shattered table were preserved as sacred relics by his parents,
+and that his mother always declared that she had recognized in the
+mysterious voice that of a dear relative long before deceased.
+
+It was once my fortune to pass some weeks in a "haunted house." I was
+quite young then, a mere school-girl in fact, and the friend whom I
+came to visit was also very young; and both of us were too gay and
+frolicsome to care much for whatever was strange or startling in our
+surroundings. Not that we ever saw anything--my friend herself, the
+daughter of the house, had never done so--but the sounds we heard were
+sufficiently odd and inexplicable to fill us with astonishment, if not
+with terror. Twice during my visit I was roused from a sound slumber
+by a loud, heavy crash, resembling that which might be caused by
+the overthrow of a marble-topped washstand or bureau, or some other
+equally ponderous piece of furniture. The room actually vibrated, and
+yet a close scrutiny of that and the adjoining apartments failed to
+reveal any cause for the peculiar noise. It was a sound which could
+not possibly have been produced by cracking furniture, falling bricks,
+scampering rats, or any other of the numerous causes of supposed
+ghostly sounds. The room overhead was used as a linen-room, and was
+always kept locked; and besides, the noise (which I afterward heard
+on another occasion in broad daylight, when I was wide awake) was
+unmistakably _in_ the room where we found ourselves. My friend told me
+that she had heard it very often--so often, in fact, that she had
+got quite used to it, and no longer felt any emotion save that of
+curiosity.
+
+There was another room in which (also in broad daylight) I heard a
+strange crackling sound like the rustling of a large sheet of stiff
+paper or parchment turned slowly in the reader's hands. This noise
+also was one of frequent occurrence. Among the things seen by other
+members of the family was a light that glided over walls and ceiling
+in points inaccessible to outside light or reflection. Then there was
+a lady in black silk who had more than once been seen gliding about
+the house, but who always disappeared when accosted or followed. Three
+slow, solemn raps sometimes sounded at dead of night at the door of
+one member of the family, a skeptical and irascible old gentleman.
+
+But, strange to say, all these uncanny sights and sounds portended
+nothing, and seemed to be utterly without a purpose or a cause. The
+house was a cheerful modern one, and the father of my friend was
+its first occupant; so there was nothing in the past to which these
+unearthly occurrences could refer. Nor were they warnings of coming
+misfortune. Neither death nor disaster ever followed in their train,
+and in due course of time the family ceased to trouble their heads
+about them--were not at all frightened, and scarcely even annoyed.
+There were other sounds which I did not myself hear, but of which I
+was told--stealthy footsteps that paced a certain corridor at dead
+of night; a sharp, rattling noise like hail dashing against the
+window-panes, and one or two other trifling yet equally unaccountable
+occurrences. Once, too, a young lady visiting the house heard in the
+next room to that in which she was loud and lamentable sounds, as of
+a woman weeping bitterly and in sore distress. She listened in
+considerable perplexity for some time, fearing to intrude on the
+sorrows of some member of the family; but at last she resolved to go
+and proffer aid, if not consolation. As he approached the door between
+the two rooms the sound suddenly ceased, and, to her amazement, she
+found the adjoining apartment not only empty, but with the door locked
+and bolted on the inside.
+
+I once knew a young lady who, on going to pay a visit to a friend who
+had recently moved into a new house, was asked to walk up stairs,
+and on complying saw an old woman preceding her up the staircase.
+Supposing her to be one of the servants, she took but little notice
+of her, though struck by the peculiarity of her gait, a sort of jerky
+limp, as though one leg was shorter than the other. In the course of
+conversation with her friend she mentioned the old woman, and asked if
+she was the housekeeper. "Housekeeper? no," said the lady: "we have no
+such person about our house. You must have been mistaken." The visitor
+then described the person she had seen, and when she mentioned the
+peculiar limp her hostess seemed startled. After a pause she said:
+"No such person lives here _now_, but the woman who took care of this
+house before we rented it was exactly such a person as you describe,
+and was lame in just such a manner. But she died here about six weeks
+ago--I think in this very room--so your eyes must certainly have
+deceived you." The lady still persisted that she had seen the old
+woman; so the servants were called and the house thoroughly searched,
+but no intruder was discovered.
+
+I have known several instances of persons who have seen the "fetch" or
+apparition of a living person, called in Germany the "Doppelgänger;"
+yet, though such appearances are usually supposed to portend the death
+or illness of the person thus strangely "doubled," I have never
+yet heard of a case where any unpleasant consequences followed. For
+instance, an old friend of mine, a gentleman of undoubted veracity,
+once told me that on one occasion he entered his house about
+five o'clock in the afternoon, and ran up stairs to his mother's
+bed-chamber, where he saw her standing near the centre of the room,
+clad in a loose white gown and engaged in combing out her long black
+hair. He remained looking at her for some moments, expecting that
+she would speak to him, but she did not take notice in any way of his
+presence, and neither spoke nor looked at him. He then addressed her,
+but, receiving no reply, became indignant and went down stairs, where,
+to his amazement, he found his mother seated by the parlor window,
+dressed and _coiffée_ as usual. It was some years before he would
+trust himself to tell her of what he had seen, fearing that she might
+consider it an omen of approaching death, and indeed, though not a
+superstitious man, he was inclined so to view it himself; but his
+mother lived for many years after the appearance of her wraith. I also
+knew a young gentleman to whom the unpleasant experience of beholding
+his own double was once vouchsafed. He had been spending a quiet
+evening with some young ladies, and returned home about eleven
+o'clock, let himself into the house with his latch-key and proceeded
+to his own room, where he found the gas already lighted, though turned
+down to a mere blue spark. He turned it up, and the full light of the
+jet shone on his bed, which stood just beside the burner, and there,
+extended at full length, lay--himself. His first idea was of a
+burglar or some such intruder. But his second glance dispelled that
+impression. He stood for some moments gazing at the prostrate figure
+with feelings which must have been anything but agreeable: he noticed
+little peculiarities of his own dress and features, and marked the
+closed eyelids and easy respiration of slumber. At length, plucking up
+courage, he attempted to pass his hand under the pillow to draw out a
+small revolver which he usually kept there, and as he did so he felt
+the pressure of the pillow as though weighed down by a reclining head.
+This completely unnerved him. He went out of the room, locking the
+door on the outside, and spent the remainder of the night on a sofa in
+the parlor. He did not re-enter his chamber till broad daylight, when,
+to his delight, he found that his ghostly visitor had vanished.
+
+The next story on my list was narrated to me by one of the most
+sensible and intelligent women I ever met--a lady of great strength
+of character, joined to a fine and highly cultivated mind. During
+her childhood my friend (whom I shall call Mrs. X----) dwelt with her
+parents in a large, roomy house in the vicinity of one of our inland
+cities. The house was a double one, a solid, substantial structure
+built of stone, and had been purchased by her father a short time
+before the occurrences which I am about to relate. A wide lawn at the
+back of the mansion sloped down to the bank of a small stream,
+along the verge of which, without intervening bank or path, ran the
+terminating wall of the grounds. The stables were also situated at the
+foot of this lawn, and the back windows of these stables looked out on
+the water. Mrs. X---- had several brothers and sisters, all of whom,
+as well as herself, were still children at the period of which she
+spoke.
+
+One summer evening her parents accepted an invitation to take tea with
+a friend, and went out, leaving the children at play in the library, a
+room which opened on the main hall on the ground floor. The front
+door was open, and as it grew dark a large hanging lamp which fully
+illuminated the hall was lighted, so that every part of it, as well as
+the staircase, was fully illuminated. Late in the evening the children
+were disturbed at their play in the library by the sound of heavy
+footsteps ascending the outer steps and then pacing along the hall.
+Imagining that it was their parents who had returned earlier than
+they expected, they rushed to the door to greet them, but to their
+astonishment they could see no one, though the heavy steps were
+still heard traversing the hall, ascending the staircase, and finally
+resounding on the floor of a room overhead. The children summoned the
+servants, who merely laughed at their story, till one of the maids,
+who had been busy up stairs, came down and said that her master and
+mistress must surely have returned, as she had heard them walking
+along the entry and afterward entering one of the rooms. Upon this,
+one of the men-servants went up stairs and made a careful search, but
+without rinding any one. In the midst of the excitement the lady and
+gentleman of the house returned home, and upon hearing the story the
+gentleman himself instituted a second and more vigorous search, which,
+like the first, was wholly without result.
+
+Some time after this the children were playing under their nurse's
+care on the lawn at the back of the house one gray, dismal afternoon
+in the early autumn. The attention of the whole party was suddenly
+attracted by the figure of a man passing slowly outside of the
+stone wall that stretched along the foot of the lawn, and finally
+disappearing behind the stable. As he did so a tremendous uproar arose
+among the horses in the stable, and on examination one of them, a
+remarkably fine and docile animal, whose stall happened to be next the
+window that opened on the water, was found to be in a perfect ecstasy
+of terror, plunging, rearing and struggling to get loose in a manner
+that rendered the task of releasing and removing him anything but an
+easy or even a safe one. After the horse was got out of the stable and
+led away, the question arose, What had frightened him? Could the man
+they had seen passing behind the stable have done anything to terrify
+him? Then, for the first time, it dawned on the minds of the whole
+party that no human being could have walked where they had seen the
+passing figure, as the wall rose straight from the verge of the water,
+and there was no pathway between the wall and the stream, which in
+that spot was deep, though not very wide. Strange to say, the horse
+could never be induced to re-enter that stable, but always manifested
+signs of wild alarm and excitement when brought even to the door,
+though in all other respects he was perfectly gentle and tractable.
+
+Owing to the size of the family, one of the large garret-rooms
+had been fitted up as a bed-room for one of the younger boys, who
+preferred having a chamber of his own to sharing the apartment of
+one of his brothers. He had not occupied it long before he began to
+complain of frightful dreams, and more than once he came trembling
+down stairs and took refuge in his mother's room, terrified by
+something horrible--_what_, he could not define, but something that
+came into his room at night and roused him from his slumbers. Thinking
+that the child was merely nervous and excitable, she changed the
+arrangements, put him to sleep in the bed-room of one of his brothers,
+and gave up the apartment in the garret to one of the servants. But
+in a very short time the complaints were renewed: the girl could not
+sleep on account of that vague, strange horror, which often drove her
+shrieking and half awakened from her bed. So the lady had the room
+dismantled, and used it as a lumber-room, and during the remaining
+years of her occupancy of the house was troubled no more.
+
+As time passed on, the increasing exigencies of his growing family
+induced Mrs. X----'s father to purchase a house in town, and he
+accordingly rented his country-mansion to a childless pair, a
+clergyman and his wife. The new residents had not been long installed
+when a series of ghostly disturbances began in real earnest. I believe
+that nothing more was ever _seen_, but the kitchen at night, when all
+the family had retired, would at times become the seat of an appalling
+uproar of inarticulate voices and clashing dishes and dragging
+furniture. If any one was bold enough to venture down stairs, the
+noise would suddenly cease, and the kitchen itself never showed any
+trace of these unearthly revels, every plate, dish, cup and chair
+remaining in its accustomed place. Then, too, the footsteps of the
+invisible intruder were heard again, and often while the minister was
+writing in his study the steps would be heard coming through the door
+and across the room, and the unseen visitor would seat himself in
+the chair that usually stood opposite to that of the clergyman at the
+writing-table, when a sound as of the pages of a large book with stiff
+paper leaves being slowly turned would usually ensue. The minister
+often addressed his invisible companion, but never received any reply
+to his questions or his appeals.
+
+On hearing these strange stories, Mrs. X----'s father determined upon
+trying to trace out the history of the house before it came into his
+possession. He learned that it had originally been occupied by the
+person who built it, a man of low origin, who, being looked upon as
+a pillar of the Church by the congregation to which he belonged,
+had been entrusted with the task of collecting certain sums due to
+it--whether actual income or subscriptions I do not now recollect. At
+all events, he never paid over the money, but launched out into sundry
+extravagances rather unusual for a man in his station of life, amongst
+which was the erection of this large and handsome house. But from the
+time the house was finished a blight seemed to fall upon his life. He
+gave up all his religious and regular habits, frequented evil company,
+took to drinking, and finally, in a fit of delirium tremens, hanged
+himself in the very garret room of which I have before spoken. The
+scenes at his funeral were said to baffle description. The corpse
+was laid out in the kitchen, and thither all his late boon-companions
+repaired and turned the sad ceremonial into a hideous orgy. Among
+other horrible deeds, they took the corpse from the coffin, propped it
+up in a chair and poured whisky down its throat.
+
+The incidents which I have related happened when Mrs. X---- was a
+child, and she is now in the prime of womanhood. When she finished
+her story I recollected that scarce a year ago I had read in a
+Philadelphia paper an extract from one of the journals of the town
+near which this house stood, giving an account of an investigation
+which was then taking place of the cause of sundry strange
+disturbances occurring in this very house. The extract closed with the
+history of its builder and first occupant, tallying exactly with what
+she related to me, though with fewer details. So, after all these
+years, the perturbed spirit still refuses to rest.
+
+The narrative with which I shall conclude this chapter of ghostly
+experiences is one for the truth of which I am not prepared to vouch,
+as I was neither an actor in its scenes nor was it related to me by
+one who was. Yet were the incidents of any other than a supernatural
+nature I should consider the authority from which I learned them as
+unquestionable.
+
+A few years ago a lady in quest of summer lodgings for herself, her
+sister and her children (her husband being absent) was offered a
+large, old-fashioned house in the vicinity of one of our seashore
+resorts on highly advantageous terms. Having inspected the house and
+found it, though old, in good repair, she engaged it joyfully, and
+a few weeks after the date of her first negotiations she was settled
+there with her family. For some time nothing occurred to mar the peace
+of the household. The children enjoyed the fresh sea-breezes, their
+pleasant sports on the beach and the large airy rooms, while the
+ladies sewed and read and looked after household matters and took long
+walks after the fashion of most people during the summer season by the
+seaside. One night, when the mother was about to retire to rest, one
+of her younger children, a bright little boy, called to her from his
+sleeping-room. Fearing that he was ill, she hastened to him.
+
+"Mamma," he said very earnestly, "I wish you would tell that strange
+woman to keep out of my room."
+
+"What woman, dear?" asked his mother, convinced that he had been
+dreaming.
+
+"I don't know her name, and I can't see her face because she wears a
+big sun-bonnet, but she comes and stands at the foot of my bed, and
+she frightens me."
+
+"Well, never mind, dear. Go to sleep, and if ever she troubles you
+again, come into my room and sleep with me," answered the mother,
+still thinking that the child had been wakened by an uneasy dream. The
+little fellow, thus soothed and consoled, soon fell asleep, and
+slept soundly till morning. But a few nights afterward the child
+came running into his mother's room at dead of night, panting and
+terrified, and exclaiming, "Mamma! mamma! she has come again!" His
+mother took him into her arms, and soon caressed away his fears, but
+thinking that the child's uneasiness was caused by his sleeping alone,
+she had his bed moved into her own chamber, and fitted up the vacant
+apartment as a guest-chamber. Soon after this the servants began
+to complain of strange sights and sounds for which they could not
+account, and one burning July day the sister, who was seated by the
+parlor window, happened to say, "Oh, I am so warm!" when a voice,
+seemingly from the cellar, made answer, "And _I_ am so cold!" Struck
+with amazement, she called, but no one replied, and subsequent
+investigation proved that there was no one in the cellar at that
+moment, nor could there have been, as its only door was always kept
+locked.
+
+I cannot now recall the details of various strange occurrences which
+afterward took place, but will pass on to the final one, which may be
+considered as the dénoûment of the whole story. The lady of the house,
+a strong-minded, practical woman, had always sternly rejected the
+theory that the odd incidents that annoyed her had any supernatural
+origin; so, disregarding them wholly, she sent an invitation to an
+old friend of hers, a clergyman, to pay her a visit of some weeks'
+duration. Her invitation was accepted, and in due time her guest
+arrived and was put in possession of the spare bed-room. Night coming
+on, the whole household retired to rest. Early in the morning the
+active hostess rose to see that all was in order for the further
+entertainment of her guest, when, on going into the parlor to unfasten
+the shutters, what was her amazement to find him there extended on the
+sofa, and looking very ill, as though he had passed a wretched night!
+In answer to her anxious questioning he stated that on retiring to
+rest he had fallen into a profound slumber, from which he suddenly
+woke, and saw a woman wearing a large sun-bonnet, which completely
+concealed her face, standing beside his bed, the moonlight which shone
+into the room rendering every detail of her figure distinctly visible.
+Supposing that she was one of the servants who had come to his room to
+see that he was perfectly comfortable and wanted nothing, he spoke to
+her. What she replied, or how he first became convinced that the Thing
+before him was no form of flesh and blood, I cannot now remember; but
+I recollect two particulars of the interview: one was, that she told
+him to look for her in the cellar; the other, that he asked her why
+she wore a sun-bonnet, and she answered, "Because the lime has
+spoilt my face." At this his failing senses forsook him, and when
+consciousness returned his ghostly visitor had disappeared.
+
+His hostess heard him in silence. As soon as breakfast was over she
+requested him to accompany her to the cellar. Careful examination soon
+revealed a spot where some of the stones with which it was paved had
+been removed and afterward replaced. Assistants with proper tools were
+procured, the stones were lifted, and after a few minutes of vigorous
+digging a mass of lime was disclosed, in which was found imbedded
+a quantity of calcined fragments of bone, which medical authority
+afterward pronounced to be portions of a human skeleton. These poor
+remains were carefully removed, placed in a box and interred in a
+neighboring cemetery, and the "woman in a sun-bonnet" was seen no
+more.
+
+Subsequent investigation into the history of the old house revealed
+the following facts. It had originally been occupied by a retired
+sea-captain and his only son, the latter a wild, reckless youth of
+evil character and confirmed bad habits. A young girl went to live
+there as a servant, and for some months seemed well contented with her
+place, but afterward she became gloomy and unhappy, and was frequently
+seen in tears by the neighbors. At last she disappeared, and it was
+given out by her employers that she had gone to visit some friends at
+a distance, but she did not return, and suspicion was already directed
+toward the old man and his son, when one morning the house was found
+to be shut up, its inhabitants having found it expedient to remove
+as silently and secretly as possible. The girl was never heard of
+afterward. The discovery of the bones led to the supposition that the
+younger man had seduced her, had afterward murdered her to conceal his
+original crime, and that he had then buried the body in the cellar,
+taking the precaution to cover it with quicklime.
+
+As I said at the beginning of this article, I neither wish to propound
+any theories nor to deduce any conclusions from the relations I have
+given. I can only reiterate my statement that they came to me from
+sources the reliability of which I cannot question. I have carefully
+excluded everything relating to the supernatural which I ever heard
+from the lips of ignorant and superstitious persons, and have only
+recorded such incidents as bore an added weight of evidence in the
+shape of the sense, intelligence and unquestionable veracity of their
+relators.
+
+LUCY H. HOOPER.
+
+
+
+
+AFTERNOON.
+
+
+        Small, shapeless drifts of cloud
+  Sail slowly northward in the soft-hued sky,
+    With blue half-tints and rolling summits bright,
+  By the late sun caressed; slight hazes shroud
+    All things afar; shineth each leaf anigh
+        With its own warmth and light.
+
+        O'erblown by Southland airs,
+  The summer landscape basks in utter peace:
+    In lazy streams the lazy clouds are seen;
+  Low hills, broad meadows, and large, clear-cut squares
+    Of ripening corn-fields, rippled by the breeze,
+        With shifting shade and sheen.
+
+        Hark! and you may not hear
+  A sound less soothing than the rustle cool
+    Of swaying leaves, the steady wiry drone
+  Of unseen crickets, sudden chirpings clear
+    Of happy birds, the tinkle of the pool,
+        Chafed by a single stone.
+
+        What vague, delicious dreams,
+  Born of this golden hour of afternoon,
+    And air balm-freighted, fill the soul with bliss,
+  Transpierced like yonder clouds with lustrous gleams,
+    Fantastic, brief as they, and, like them, spun
+        Of gilded nothingness!
+
+        All things are well with her.
+  'Tis good to be alive, to see the light
+    That plays upon the grass, to feel (and sigh
+  With perfect pleasure) the mild breezes stir
+    Among the garden roses, red and white,
+        With whiffs of fragrancy.
+
+        There is no troublous thought,
+  No painful memory, no grave regret,
+    To mar the sweet suggestions of the hour:
+  The soul, at peace, reflects the peace without,
+    Forgetting grief as sunset skies forget
+        The morning's transient shower.
+
+EMMA LAZARUS.
+
+
+
+
+OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
+
+WASHINGTON'S BIRTHPLACE IN 1873.
+
+
+Was George Washington born in Great Britain or America? Absurd as
+this question must sound to an American, it has been gravely discussed
+within the last few months by a writer in the London _Notes and
+Queries_, who has the effrontery to say that Washington's own brief
+assertion in a letter to the effect that he was born in Virginia
+cannot be conclusive. "No man's unsupported testimony," he adds, "as
+to the place of his birth would be taken in evidence in a court of
+justice, for his knowledge of the event must necessarily be from
+hearsay or from records." This is silly enough. I did not see the
+whole article, or learn by what arguments the writer endeavored
+to substantiate his doubts, if he really had any, as to the true
+birthplace of the _Pater Patriae_, but, feeling some interest in the
+matter, I cut out the slip containing the quotation just given,
+and enclosed it in a letter to a prominent gentleman living in
+Westmoreland not far from Wakefield, the estate on which the
+birthplace--or rather the site of it--is situated, with a request that
+he would reply to it. He did so promptly and almost indignantly.
+
+"I am amazed," says he, "at the contents of the printed slip you send
+me. That any man of ordinary intelligence, living within the bounds
+of civilization, could be ignorant of or doubt the fact that General
+Washington was born in America, I did not for a moment suppose." He
+goes on to say that if Washington's biography, written by so many
+competent hands, and founded upon sources the most authentic, and
+particularly the Lives of Marshall, Sparks and Irving, were not
+sufficient to convince incredulity itself, he is at a loss to know
+what would. Certainly, he would not attempt the task himself. In
+addition to the well-known biographies, traditions and memoranda
+attest the fact beyond the possibility of enlightened doubt.
+Other credible and corroborative records are not wanting. "Had the
+question," he concludes, "been asked of Dr. Livingstone by some
+savage in the depths of the African jungles, it would not have been
+surprising; but to come from a writer in _London_, it is inexpressibly
+marvelous, and looks like a relapse into barbarism."
+
+Among the memoranda alluded to is a fac-simile of the entry of the
+birth of Washington in the Bible of his mother, which is given in
+Howe's _Historical Collections of Virginia_, as follows:
+
+"_George Washington son to Augustine and Mary his Wife was Born 11'th
+Day of February_ 173-1/2 _about_ 10 _in the Morning and was Baptized
+the_ 3'th (sic) _of April following M'r Beverley Whiting and Cap'n
+Christopher Brooks godfathers and M'rs Mildred Gregory God-mother."_
+
+There are no marks of punctuation, and Howe states that the original
+entry is supposed to have been made by Washington's mother. If so, the
+handwriting, not very unlike Washington's own, is unusually masculine,
+compact, even and clear for a woman's. Howe's book was published in
+1836. At that time the old family Bible, a much dilapidated quarto
+with the title-page missing, and covered with the striped Virginia
+cloth so common in old days, was in the possession of George
+W. Bassett, Esq., of Farmington, Hanover county, who married a
+grand-niece of Washington. At that time, too, the birthplace, which
+had been destroyed previous to the Revolution, was much more plainly
+marked than it is now. From its associations, and from its natural
+beauties as well, the place was doubly interesting. Standing half
+a mile from the junction of Pope's Creek with the Potomac River,
+it commanded a view of the Maryland shore and of the course of the
+Potomac for many miles. The house was a low-pitched, single-storied
+frame dwelling, with four rooms on the first floor, and a huge chimney
+at each end on the outside--the style of the better class of houses of
+those days. A stone, placed there to mark its site by G.W.P. Custis,
+bore the simple inscription:
+
+"HERE, ON THE 11TH OF FEBRUARY (O.S.), 1732, GEORGE WASHINGTON WAS
+BORN."
+
+Such was its appearance in 1834 or '35, when Howe visited it. Its
+present condition may be gathered from what the writer of the letter
+in response to the London querist has to say about the site itself,
+that being all that is left of a place so memorable and so deserving
+of perpetuation:
+
+"I have had no opportunity to obtain the sketch I promised you.
+Indeed, there is virtually no material to make a sketch of. The
+birthplace is now simply an old field lying waste, with indistinct
+vestiges of a human habitation. An old chimney stands which belonged
+to an outhouse (kitchen or laundry), some remains of a cellar, and the
+foundations of a house in which tradition states Washington was born.
+There was a stone slab, with a simple inscription, placed on the spot
+some sixty years ago by G. W: P. Custis, to denote the place, but it
+was long ago removed from its original position, mutilated and broken,
+so that only a fragment remains."
+
+That a place of such interest--one might call it sacred--should be
+left to decay and obliteration is no new thing in Virginia. Enemies
+might well declare that neglect of her mighty dead is characteristic
+of the old commonwealth. The truth is, she has a great many dead to
+care for, and of late years all her time has been absorbed in the care
+of her living. But something has been done, or attempted to be done,
+to rescue Washington's birthplace from oblivion. As far back as 1858
+an act was passed by the General Assembly of Virginia, accepting from
+Lewis Washington a grant of the "site of the birthplace of George
+Washington, and the home and graves of his progenitors in America,"
+and appropriating five thousand dollars "to enclose the same in an
+iron fence," etc. Hon. Henry A. Wise, governor of Virginia at the time
+this act was passed, entered with zeal and alacrity upon the work, the
+execution of which was entrusted to him by the Legislature--went in
+person to Westmoreland, examined carefully the sites, negotiated with
+the owner of the adjacent farm for right of way, adopted a plan for
+the enclosures and tablets, and began a correspondence with mechanics
+and artisans at the North with a view to the speedy completion of the
+work, and--just then his term expired, the war soon followed, and the
+matter was of course dropped.
+
+The money appropriated, together with the accrued interest, is now
+in the treasury of Virginia, and although Governor Walker in his late
+message did not bring the subject to the attention of the Legislature,
+the long-delayed work will be consummated sooner or later, and "a neat
+iron fence" with a few plain slabs will be erected on the hallowed
+spot. But it strikes the present writer that five thousand dollars, or
+even ten thousand dollars, form rather a small sum for such an object,
+and that "a neat iron fence" is not exactly the thing that the place
+and its memories demand. But not a dollar more may be expected of
+Virginia at this time. She owes too much, and has too little. If one
+of the many Northern gentlemen who are lavishing their hundreds of
+thousands on colleges and other charities would come to Westmoreland
+and put something a little better than a "neat iron fence" around the
+birthplace of Washington, he would do a noble deed for himself and for
+both sections of his lately estranged country.
+
+R.B.E.
+
+
+
+
+VICISSITUDES IN HIGH LIFE.
+
+
+The London papers lately recorded the death of a lady who was the
+representative and last descendant, save one sister, of a house famous
+in English history. This was Lady Langdale, widow of Bickersteth,
+first and last Lord Langdale, and sister of Harley, last earl of
+Oxford. Lady Langdale had but one child, who married Count Teleki, a
+Hungarian nobleman, and pre-deceased her mother, dying childless. Lord
+Langdale was the son of Mr. Bickersteth, surgeon, of Kirby-Lonsdale,
+Westmoreland. He was brought up to his father's vocation, and
+traveled, as physician, with the earl of Oxford.
+
+Impressed, no doubt, with Mr. Bickersteth's extraordinary abilities,
+Lord Oxford advised him to go to college and read for the law, which
+offered greater prizes than the medical profession. Accordingly,
+he entered at Cambridge, and in 1808 graduated as senior wrangler.
+Twenty-seven years later, in 1835, he married the daughter and heiress
+of his friend and patron, and the year following was created a peer.
+
+His brother Edward was the celebrated evangelical leader in the Church
+of England. Bred to the law, he abandoned that profession for holy
+orders. Their nephew, son of their brother John, is the present bishop
+of Ripon.
+
+The Harleys have been seated for six or seven centuries in
+Herefordshire, at Brampton-Bryan and Egwood, properties which in part
+remained in Lady Langdale's possession. By marriage! with the heiress
+of the Vaughans in the fifteenth century, they became possessed of
+Wigmore Castle, the ancient heritage of the extinct earls of Mortimer,
+and great estates which added to their consequence.
+
+When Charles II. made a batch of peers on his restoration, the
+Harley of that day displayed a rare modesty. The king offered him a
+viscounty, but he declined the honor, "lest his zeal and services
+for the restoration of the ancient government should be reproached as
+proceeding from ambition, and not conscience;" and so scrupulous was
+he that his being made a knight of the Bath even was done without his
+knowledge, he being then at Dunkirk, and Charles inserting with his
+own hand his name in the list. But his son was destined for a higher
+dignity, for he it was who became in the tenth year of the reign of
+Charles II.'s niece, Queen Anne, earl of Oxford and Mortimer, being
+the famous Harley of that reign, linked in our memories with St. John
+Lord Bolingbroke, the Mashams, Marlboroughs, Swift, Addison, Pope, and
+the host of brilliant men which makes the reign of one of the feeblest
+women who ever sat on a throne a period of almost pre-eminent interest
+in English annals to men of cultivated mind subject to the influence
+of association. By Elizabeth Foley, daughter of the first Lord Foley,
+of Witley Court (sold, about thirty-five years ago, with the bulk
+of the Foley estates, for £990,000 to Lord Dudley, who married Lady
+Mordaunt's sister), the famous lord treasurer, Oxford, had one
+son, the second earl. He was the friend of Swift, to whom the dean
+addressed so many letters. A man of literary tastes, he spent a
+portion of his immense fortune in forming the finest library of the
+period, and it is to him the student is indebted for the magnificent
+collection known as the "Harleian," which subsequently became, by
+purchase, the property of the nation, and is deposited in the British
+Museum. He married the greatest heiress of the day, Lady Henrietta
+Cavendish-Holies, only daughter and heir of the duke of Newcastle (of
+the Holies creation--the present duke, a Pelham-Clinton, derives from
+a different descent). He left but one daughter. She married the second
+duke of Portland, grandson of Dutch William's pet page Bentinck, whom
+he imported into England, and loaded with honors and emolument until
+even the House of Commons of _that_ day cried out loudly, "Enough!
+stop!" Through this lady the Bentincks got Welbeck, the duke of
+Portland's chief seat to-day.
+
+Meanwhile, the Oxford honors and patrimonial estates in Herefordshire
+passed to the second earl's first cousin, and so on, in regular
+succession, until the earldom became extinct by the death of Lady
+Langdale's brother a few years ago. One of Lady Langdale's sisters
+married a General Bacon. At the time of the marriage he was but a poor
+captain, and his wealth did not much increase, whilst his family did,
+and his wife, the once beautiful Lady Charlotte, Byron's "Ianthe"--to
+whom he addressed the famous lines which form the prelude of _Childe
+Harold_, beginning,
+
+  Not in those climes where I have late been straying--
+
+had to see her daughter a governess in the family of a Cornishman,
+once a common miner! One of her daughters is now married to the son
+of Lord Mount Edgecumbe's agent. It seems that the sisters could not
+forgive the mesalliance, as they deemed it, for Lady Langdale's will
+shows no bequest to the Bacons.
+
+Lady Langdale had another sister, who married a son of Doctor
+Vernon-Harcourt, long archbishop of York, grandfather of "Historicus,"
+the well-known political letter-writer of the London _Times_. This
+lady died about the same time as Lady Langdale. One sister only, the
+wife of a foreign nobleman, survives. She is the last of the Harleys
+of the great minister's line.
+
+
+
+
+A GLASS OF OLD MADEIRA.
+
+
+We had met in Europe some dozen years ago--I from Massachusetts,
+he from Carolina. We both looked grave for an instant as a friend
+presented us to each other, naming our respective residences, and then
+both laughed cheerily, and were good friends ever after. We enjoyed
+_Tartuffe_ and the _Mariage de Figaro_ in company with each other at
+the Theatre Francois, heard Mario, Grisi, Gratiano and Borghi Mamo in
+Verdi's _Trovatore_ at the Opéra Italien, danced with _les filles
+de l'Opéra_ at Cellarius's saloons, and had many a midnight
+carouse afterward at the Maison Doré. Nor had our time always been
+unprofitably spent. Toward Easter we journeyed together to Rome, and
+stood side by side before the masterpieces of Raphael and Domenichino
+in the Vatican, strolled by moonlight amid the ruins of the Coliseum,
+and drank out of the same cup from the Fountain of Trevi; often
+visited Crawford's studio, where then stood the famous group which
+now adorns the frieze of the Capitol at Washington, and by actual
+observation agreed in thinking his Indian not unworthy of comparison
+with the famous statue of the Dying Gladiator. We stood together on
+the Tarpeian Rock, and, looking down upon the mutilated Column of
+Trajan and all the ruins of ancient Rome, read out of the same copy of
+Horace the famous ode beginning, "Exegi monumentum aere perennius."
+We were both passionately fond of sculpture and of painting, and often
+sat for hours before the glorious Descent from the Cross of Daniel da
+Volterra in the Chiesa della Trinità dei Monti, the principal figure
+in which is said to have been sketched by Michael Angelo, and which,
+although less widely known, appeared to our minds equal in execution
+and superior in grandeur to any other painting in the world.
+
+After our return to this country I happened to go South one winter,
+and spent a month with my friend on his plantation in the low country
+of Carolina. It seemed to be our fate to meet amid the ruins of
+the past. But the war had not then occurred, and we had many a hunt
+together, in which, after a glorious burst of the hounds through the
+open savannas, I brought down more than one noble buck. On other days
+we would drive with the ladies along the broad beach upon which stood
+the summer residences of the neighboring planters. And sometimes we
+would stroll lazily about the lanes of his estate, basking in the
+mellow sunshine in the midst of February, and chatting of Capri and
+Sorrento in a climate equal to that of Italy.
+
+And we met again the other day in the streets of a Northern city. He
+looked older certainly, and very careworn, but his eye was as bright
+as ever and his voice as cheery.
+
+"Come and dine with me," he said after we had given each other a
+hurried account of our present abodes and occupations. "You will find
+me in rather modest and decidedly airy lodgings, and I cannot offer
+you either wild-ducks or venison. A rasher of bacon and a glass of
+madeira as we chat over old times: what say you to the bill-of fare?
+You remember the old French adage, 'Quand on n'a pas ce que l'on aime,
+faut bien aimer ce que l'on a.'"
+
+"A quelle heure, mon ami?"
+
+"Four o'clock."
+
+And at five that afternoon we were seated together, the remnants
+of our frugal repast removed, and on the scrupulously polished old
+mahogany table which separated us stood a cut-glass decanter of
+old Carolina madeira, the bouquet of which filled the room with its
+fragrance.
+
+"Fill your glass, Harry: 'tis not the fragrance of the wine, but the
+sentiment connected with it, which prevents me from offering you a
+pipe. The odor of the best Virginia would seem to me a desecration.
+There are only a dozen bottles left in that cupboard. I never uncork
+one except for a near friend. 'Tis out of fashion now: hock and
+champagne have taken its place; but, do you know, I like it the better
+on that account. It reminds me of the past, and, though still a young
+man, it is one of my greatest pleasures to dwell on the picture which
+a glass of it never fails to recall to my imagination. You remember
+Woodlawn? For five-and-twenty years, during the whole of a long
+minority and subsequent travels abroad, those old bottles stood
+wreathed with cobwebs in the garret of the old mansion. You drank one
+with me in 1859. The rest were buried at the commencement of the war,
+and this is one of the few which survived it. There are not many of
+your compatriots to whom I would tell the story of its preservation,
+for it illustrates a feature of feudal attachment which they
+persistently refuse to believe possible.
+
+"You remember the stately old negro who occupied the porter's lodge at
+Woodlawn, and who told you with such pride that he and his ancestors
+had always occupied a favored post near the great house? You remember,
+too, his grand air, fashioned after the gentlemen of the olden time,
+the contemporaries of Washington, Rutledge and Pinckney? And in what
+awe and reverence his fellow-servants stood of him! Well, when the war
+fairly began, and all hope of amicable adjustment was exhausted, I did
+what every true man on either side was bound to do--raised a company
+for the service, removed my family to an up-country farm, and left Old
+John in charge of my residence and interests in the low country. The
+Federal gunboats soon appeared upon the coast, entered the bay and
+ran up the rivers. Many of the younger people went off with them, but
+during the long and dreary four years which ensued Old John remained
+staunch at his post, cultivating the land as best he might, and
+sending constantly supplies of money and provisions to his mistress.
+At last the whole thing broke down: Lee surrendered, Johnston
+surrendered. Troops as well as gunboats swarmed in all directions. Not
+only regular soldiers, but raw negro levies, occupied the towns and
+were posted through the country. Stories were circulated that I was
+killed, that I was captured; and the latter statement was true. There
+were rumors that the land was to be divided among the negroes, and one
+dark night in the early summer of 1865 some drunken sailors, escaped
+from the gunboats lying in the bay, raised a mob of negroes from the
+various plantations and gutted nearly every house in the parish. Among
+others they came to mine eager for wine, and John was pointed out by
+some of the neighboring negroes as knowing where it was concealed. The
+sailors threatened his life: he refused to tell. They held a pistol to
+his head, but the old man remained staunch in his refusal. Provoked by
+his fidelity, at length they brutally beat him with the butts of their
+pistols until his gray hairs were dabbled in gore, and went off to
+other plunder, telling their followers to take what they wanted from
+my residence. But, bruised, bleeding and crippled though he was, Old
+John still defended his master's property, and sitting on the front
+steps of the house kept the whole crowd at bay by the firmness and
+dignity of his attitude. I heard of the affair first from a white man
+who lived in the neighborhood, and it was not until I asked him about
+it that he told me himself. The next day he gave to my own people
+the furniture remaining in the house to keep until I came back, but
+positively refused to allow them to take of the crops that had been
+gathered any more than was required for their subsistence, and this
+he regularly shared out to them at stated intervals. And when, after
+a long imprisonment and much enfeebled myself, I landed one evening at
+the wharf which leads up to the house, the first figure which met my
+sight was the old man faithfully guarding the barns. His eyesight was
+too dim for him to see me, but as soon as he heard my voice he seized
+my hand with passionate fervor, pressing it repeatedly to his lips and
+bedewing it with tears. Can you wonder if he has shared my fortunes
+ever since? But not at Woodlawn. The negroes generally were wild with
+the notion of freedom, and utterly ignorant of the practical meaning
+of the term. To me they were always civil and affectionate, but I
+preferred that some other than myself should teach them its rugged
+lesson, and immediately leased the place for a term of years to one
+better fitted than I to derive profit from it under the new system.
+The gentlemen and the negroes are the two classes upon whom the first
+results of the fearful revolution in society caused by the war fell
+with heaviest weight. Both were totally unprepared for it, and both
+have so far suffered cruelly. A year ago Old John died, faithful
+and cared for to the last. A few months ago the lease I had executed
+expired, and I visited the estate again. All the glamour of the past
+had disappeared. The home of my fathers knew me no more, and I have
+sold it. Cuffee, whom you remember as my body-servant, who followed
+me through the war, and bore me on his back from the battlefield upon
+which I was severely wounded, and who would have come with me here
+had circumstances permitted of my retaining his services,--Cuffee has
+taken to politics, and now represents the county in the Legislature
+of the State; and the last figure that I remember seeing as I left
+the place was that of old Sary, the sick nurse, her long black hair
+streaming in the wind (you remember she was an Indian half-breed), her
+feet bare, her petticoat ragged and limp, standing in the lane
+which leads from the house--her arms akimbo, a sort of miniature Meg
+Merrilies--screaming out to me, 'You left you own plantashun.' Yes,
+I have left my own plantation, and am grubbing out a modest and
+sometimes a rather precarious existence elsewhere. But for all that,
+it is more wholesome than mouldering among the ruins of a past that
+can never return. The fight has been fairly fought, and New England
+has won the day. Germany is up, France is down; Italy united, the pope
+existing on sufferance in the palace where erstwhile emperors did him
+homage. I don't quarrel with Fortune. Nay, in many things I dare say
+the world has benefited by the change. And so, when I take my children
+sometimes to look at Crawford's famous group, I even enjoy the spirit
+of pride with which they look upon the figure of America, and the zest
+with which they enjoy the vigorous onslaught of the pioneer on the
+forest tree; but my own eyes seek the Indian chieftain reclining in
+mute despair on the right of the group, and I have a strange sympathy
+with the fortune which his very attitude so forcibly indicates. Our
+battle of Dorking has been fought, and, whatever may be the fate of
+the next generation, all that is left to me of home or of country are
+the golden drops which sparkle in this tiny glass."
+
+RAMBLER.
+
+
+
+
+AT A MATINÉE: A MONOLOGUE.
+
+
+Oh Dear! I meant to be very early, people do look so cross when you
+squeeze by them. I don't think it is exactly proper, either, when
+they are men. Here is my seat, No. 10: that girl has piled all her
+waterproofs on it. Why don't she take them away quicker? and I wish
+she wouldn't grope about my feet for her overshoes.
+
+I never sat right next to the orchestra before. What a convenient
+railing to hang my umbrella on! Provoking it should rain so to-day.
+There now! my waterproof is all disposed of, and I know my dress is
+all right, so I shall enjoy myself.
+
+What a ridiculous girl beside me! _Such_ a bunch of curls! The two
+young men on the other side look like gentlemen: the one this way
+especially nice--lovely eyes and moustache. I'll look round the house
+as far as I can without moving. Can't see much, though, for I'm so
+near the front. Why on earth didn't brother Bob put me where I could
+see the people?
+
+Why, there's Lucy Morris! I can't bear that girl: her hair is almost
+the color of mine. A vacant seat beside her, too; so she came with
+some one. Wonder who it is? I hope she won't see me.
+
+Oh, how funny! The musicians come up out of a hole just like the tame
+rats at the Museum, nasty things!--the rats, I mean. The man right
+in front of me has a trombone. I know what it is, because the name
+is written on his music. I'm so glad, for I never knew exactly what a
+trombone was until now. And what a funny instrument! He doesn't blow
+at all for ever so long, and then suddenly comes in with two or three
+toots.
+
+But, good gracious! there's Dick Livingstone! I saw him come in at
+that door. I'm so glad I came! He asked me night before last at Mrs.
+Harris's if I was coming to the matinée, and of course I said "Yes,"
+though I didn't have the slightest idea of doing so until he spoke.
+But what--! He has taken the seat by that Lucy Morris, and has given
+her a programme. I hate that girl!
+
+There goes the curtain. What a stupid play! Why did I come? The damp
+will ruin my dress. Oh, that horrid girl! Well, of all the ridiculous
+acting I ever saw, this is the worst! I should think they would be
+ashamed to put such people on the stage. He is opening her fan. A fan
+to-day! absurd! I _won't_ look again. How that man rants! I'm sure I
+don't know why I came: I might have known how poor it would be.
+Even _I_ can see that Leicester and Mortimer have dresses at least
+a hundred years apart. I wonder if their legs are stuffed? Oh dear!
+that's hardly proper. What Dick can see to admire in that girl is
+beyond my comprehension. Such airs and graces!--all put on; and how
+she makes eyes at him! I can feel it behind my back.
+
+How absurdly Queen Elizabeth is dressed! and what a fright she is! And
+I wore my new hat, too: he said he liked blue so much. I could just
+cry, I am so provoked. It's all her fault, I know. Oh! the play! Yes,
+Dudley is making love. Ridiculous! There, the curtain's down at
+last, and--what--! Dick is getting up: he looks as if he were saying
+good-bye. There's Lucy's uncle: he sits down beside her--he must have
+brought her. Oh, what a relief! After all, it was very natural for
+Dick to take the vacant seat, he is so thoughtful always. Lucy can
+talk pretty well sometimes, too. If she only had some idea of dress!
+There! I'm sure Dick saw me, but of course I shall take no notice.
+
+Upon my word, the young man next me is admiring the girl's hair on the
+other side of me. It's hideous--red as a carrot, and stuck on at that.
+Thank Goodness! my hair hasn't a tinge of red in it--pure _blonde
+cendré_--but I have to pay awfully to match it. Wish I could tell that
+young fellow her hair is all stuck on. Hark! the nice one says,
+
+"Why, it is all her own--I see it growing" "S-s-s-h!" says the other:
+"she'll hear you." "Loveliest hair I ever saw," continues No. 1: "pure
+gold, not a tinge of red--" It's _my_ hair they are discussing. What a
+nice fellow he is! I'll just turn a little away, so he can study
+that curl which really does grow out of my head. It is worth all
+the trouble it gives me, for it makes the others seem so natural. I
+declare, he is looking right at me: suppose he should speak? I should
+_die_! Nonsense! he is bowing to a lady in the dress-circle. I know
+he'd like to do something for me. Brother Bob says girls can't be too
+careful. I might drop something. Not my handkerchief--that _would_ be
+improper--but my opera-glass case: nothing could be said against that.
+Oh my! I haven't used my glasses yet, I'm so near the stage. I'll
+look round the house; so here goes. "Thank you, sir," with my sweetest
+smile and such a nice flutter. I saw him nudge his friend.
+
+There goes the curtain again. Mary queen of Scots: I thought she was
+prettier. Oh, the act is really over; I actually forgot everything but
+the stage. My eyes are all wet. But it won't do to cry: they would be
+red. I don't quite like some of the words they use, though--they make
+one feel queer. Now, why couldn't they say "illegitimate child"? It
+means just the same; besides, it's longer.
+
+I wonder how Dick Livingstone liked it? _Mr_. Livingstone, I should
+say. Brother Bob doesn't think it nice for girls to speak of young men
+by their first names. But then brothers are so particular about their
+own sisters, though, Goodness knows, they flirt enough with other
+people's. Bob and Kate Harris, for example, and yet he preaches at
+_me_!
+
+Oh, the young men are going out. They push by as well as they can,
+but still they crowd unpleasantly. I am sure I've seen that nice one
+somewhere. They are going to stay away, too, I think, for they have
+taken their over-coats. If only Dick--Mr. Livingstone, I mean--
+
+Oh, there's the curtain again. It's really quite interesting. I was
+mistaken about the actors: they do very well indeed. Queen Elizabeth
+is excellent, and so are they all. It shows how careful one ought to
+be not to judge too hastily. That's what mother always says. I won't
+do so again.
+
+Well, that play is over--now for the comedy. Some one says it is still
+raining. I hate a waterproof, my figure looks so well in this suit.
+I might carry my cloak over my arm, but then I'm afraid the rain will
+ruin my dress. I _must_ wear the waterproof and be a dowdy. I don't
+believe, after all, that it would hurt the underskirt, and then, with
+the umbrella up, I should have to take his arm. I shouldn't like
+to get this dress spoiled, either. I know mother wouldn't give me
+another. Brother Bob says men don't care so much about women's dress:
+they like to see a sensible girl. I don't believe that; besides, I
+have thick boots, and I'm sure that's sensible. I don't care: I won't
+wear the waterproof unless it is a perfect deluge. My goodness! I
+don't see Dick anywhere! Suppose, after all, he didn't come to meet
+me? and I gave him that flower at Mrs. Leslie's, too! I wish the thing
+was over.
+
+But oh, what a pretty dress! and how sweet she is! I had no idea she
+could be so cunning, after being such a tragedy queen. The man on the
+stage actually kissed her. Bob says they don't really kiss, though.
+
+I'm sorry it's over. Oh dear! I don't like being alone in such a
+crowd. Brother Bob wouldn't have let me come, I know, only he thought
+I should meet the Davidsons. No matter: I'll never tell him. I do
+believe Dick hasn't stayed, after all. I'll just put on my waterproof
+and thick veil, and go home and have a good cry.
+
+Oh, Mr. Livingstone, how you startled me! I had no idea you were here.
+Yes, I am by myself: certainly you may escort me home. Take a walk in
+this pouring rain? Why, it's all sunshine!
+
+C.A.D.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES.
+
+
+Wellnigh half a century has elapsed since the discovery of the
+beautiful Venus of Milo (the exact year was 1825), and yet now, for
+the first time, the endless discussions regarding two doubtful and
+interesting points in its history have been set at rest. These two
+points are--first, the original pose of the statue; and, secondly, the
+reason of its being armless. After so many years of dispute over
+these questions, it occurred at length to M. Jules Ferry to do what of
+course ought to have been done long ago--namely, go to the very spot
+whence the statue was exhumed, and there talk with all the surviving
+witnesses of the exhumation. M. Ferry not long since put his idea into
+execution, went to Milo, took into consultation with him M. Brest,
+son of the consul who procured the statue for France, and found and
+cross-questioned two Greeks who were present at the unearthing of
+the statue. M. Ferry has collected the details of his labors in an
+elaborate communication to the Académie des Beaux Arts, but a brief
+indication of the results obtained may be made as follows:
+
+First, then, the Venus was found in 1825 at the foot of a little hill,
+where it had been covered up by successive crumblings of the earth
+above. The proprietor of the ground, wishing to clear a little more
+of the soil for his planting, chanced to strike the statue with his
+shovel. "It was on its base, erect," said the two Greek peasants to
+the French minister. "With one hand she held together her draperies,
+and in the other an apple"--the same, doubtless, that Paris had just
+given her. Such, very briefly, is the clear, short, definite, decisive
+story which puts an end to ten thousand disquisitions and hypotheses
+about the pose. The evidence thus given is that of people who actually
+saw what they describe. But, secondly, what of those "long-lost arms"?
+and how came they to be lost? The body of the Venus was formed of
+two blocks, and the arms were afterward fastened upon the trunk. When
+discovered, it was intact. M. Brest, the French consul, instantly
+bought the Venus for five hundred dollars, while the Turkish
+government on its part hurried off a small vessel to bring it away,
+offering the owner of the farm fivefold the French price, or something
+like two thousand five hundred dollars. A French _aviso_, sent by M.
+de Rivière, the ambassador at Constantinople, arrived on the scene at
+the very moment when the Turks had got possession of the statue, and
+were embarking it on their vessel. A dispute arose at once, and in the
+material as well as legal confusion the arms of the Venus, which had
+been detached for safer transportation, were missed. The people of
+the neighborhood got up a story that the arms were carried off by the
+Turkish vessel out of chagrin and spite, but this seems to be mere
+surmise where all else is clear.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The story of Demosthenes and the pebbles is familiar. Less familiar,
+we venture to say, is the theory that declamation is sometimes the
+cause of stammering; or, rather, that stuttering impels a man to
+talkativeness, and the yielding to this tendency fixes the habit of
+stammering and makes it worse. Hence it might plausibly be argued that
+it is the rostrum, or the very emotion of speaking in public, which
+makes some orators become stammerers. At all events, in Paris an
+institution has been founded expressly to remedy stuttering; and M.
+Chervin, its director, not long ago presented before a meeting of the
+learned societies at the Sorbonne some interesting statistics on his
+specialty. These statistics seem to show that stuttering is in direct
+proportion with the habit of speaking, and that the more one speaks
+the more one stutters. This is certainly an unexpected result of the
+restoration of freedom of speech in France. M. Chervin mentions a
+village of eighteen hundred souls where everybody, without exception,
+undeniably stutters. What strange dialogues, says Jules Claretie (who
+cites these points in _l'Indépendance Belge_), must take place there!
+A very curious fact is, that stammering is less frequent in the north
+of France than in the south. In the north-east it is least known, and
+most in the south-east. For example, all things being equal, for six
+stammerers in Paris there would be twenty-five in Lyons and seventy in
+Marseilles. The admitted garrulity or fluency of southern speaking
+is often the cause or the preface to stammering. Thus, comically
+concludes M. Claretie, oratorical habits threaten to make stammering
+become the order of the day, and for one Vergniaud there will be ten
+stutterers, and ten more stutterers for one General Foy. Nevertheless,
+in earlier days, Camille Desmoulins stammered, and yet spoke but
+little at the Convention. It does not appear that Charles Lamb was
+a garrulous person, and in the familiar experience of daily life we
+rarely find stutterers to be rapid talkers. Still, this latter
+fact really helps M. Chervin's theory, since we may conclude it
+is precisely because stammerers find that a very rapid utterance
+increases their defect that they force themselves to speak
+deliberately, and also not to tire the vocal muscles. Hence, apart
+from the jesting inference which M. Claretie, in French journalist's
+fashion, is bent son twisting out of the scientific statistics, there
+would appear to be a mutual influence, perfectly comprehensible,
+of rapidity in utterance and a tendency to stammering. We could not
+safely go on to generalize that only voluble people become stutterers,
+or that all stutterers are unusually garrulous and unusually eager in
+enunciation; but we may conclude that if they are thus careless and
+rattling in delivery, their peculiarity will be likely to grow more
+marked, and that accordingly a natural tendency to the same defect is
+developed by the same habits or necessities of much and rapid talking.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two illustrations of nineteenth-century precocity, rather superior
+to the generality of anecdotes regarding the wisdom of the rising
+generation, we find in recent French papers. One of them is originated
+by the _Moulin-à-Parole_. Madame de B. was visiting, with her baby,
+her friend Madame X. After chattering three-quarters of an hour,
+without giving anybody else a chance to put in a word, Madame X.
+pauses, when Baby immediately takes up the burden of conversation.
+Madame X., getting tired at last, says, "Why do you talk so much,
+mignonne? It isn't nice for a little girl like you to do so." "Oh,"
+replies Baby very graciously, "it is only so that mamma may rest!" A
+little lad furnishes the other instance of the premature sagacity of
+modern childhood. A famous merchant has four children, three daughters
+and a boy named Arthur. Two of the former die successively of
+consumption, and at the funeral of the second a friend of the family
+comes to offer his compliments of condolence, and, patting little
+Arthur's head, tells the poor lad the house must seem lonely to him
+now. "Yes," briskly replies Arthur, whom his father has brought up
+to accurate ideas, "here we children are reduced _fifty per cent_."
+Worthy to take charge of these children would have been the prudent
+bonne of whom _Charivari_ speaks. The morning after engaging herself
+to Madame R. she hastened to that lady with her finger wrapped in a
+handkerchief, and in an agitated voice asked if the _converts_ were
+real silver. "Why so, Nannette?" "Because, I just pricked my finger
+with a fork, and I know that if it is plated copper I ought to take
+the precaution of having the place bled." "Don't be alarmed," replies
+the lady, smiling despite herself at the young girl's innocence, "my
+plate is all solid." "Ah," says the bonne with a sigh of relief, "I
+am so glad!" The day after, the simple young lady disappeared with all
+the silver. It is not every bonne that would take such precautions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Paris has always been famous among modern cities for its genius and
+industry in adding variety to its cuisine, either by the audacious
+invention of new dishes or the felicitous combination of old
+ones--either by discovering new sources of food or new methods of
+preparing it. It was a curious incident in the late history of
+the city that what had been a fashionable whim became a hard
+necessity--that after Saint-Hilaire and the hippophagists had
+struggled to introduce horseflesh as regular provender, the siege of
+Paris made horseflesh a prized rarity. But the zest resulting from
+the enforced diet of dogs, cats, rats and monkeys in bombardment days
+appears to have been so great that we now hear of an enterprise worthy
+to have a Brillat-Savarin to celebrate it--namely, the formation of
+a society under the presidency of the naturalist Lespars, designed to
+bring into vogue as eatable a great class of living creatures whose
+presence now inspires ordinary persons only with disgust. A naturalist
+who devotes himself to eating such creatures with a motive so
+philanthropic deserves our praise, though we may not be able to
+personally imitate his heroic example. Among the choice dishes
+mentioned by one paper as selected to figure at the first public
+banquet of M. Lespars are a plate of white worms, a bushel of
+grasshoppers, and a broil of magpies seasoned with the slugs that
+infest certain green berries. One regards this announcement with more
+or less incredulity; but little doubt seems to hang over the assertion
+that the dormouse has just been introduced into the list of French
+game-dishes. The puzzle for the cooks seems to be with regard to the
+proper sauce for the new delicacy; but this matter does not trouble
+the little chimney-sweeps, who find the animal so long associated in
+poetry and in fact chiefly with their own humble career, now rising
+to the dignity of game, and commanding a price for the table. Piedmont
+has thus far furnished the larger part of the displays of _marmottes_
+in Paris stalls. The chief trouble in making rats, magpies and other
+delicacies of that sort really popular amongst the poorer classes is
+that the latter do not possess adroit cooks to disguise the original
+flavor under aromatic adjuncts, nor yet the money to buy the necessary
+spices and side-dishes, nor the high grade of champagne wines with
+which the wealthy and noble patrons of "food reform" commonly wash
+down unpalatable viands.
+
+
+
+
+LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
+
+
+Rousseau. By John Morley. 2 vols. London: Chapman & Hall.
+
+It was in the natural course of things that modern criticism,
+ever aiming at a wider comprehension, a keener analysis, a greater
+independence of judgment and expression, should test itself anew on a
+subject affording so full a scope and so sure a touchstone as the life
+and writings of Rousseau. The character of Rousseau, with its strange
+blending of delicate beauty and repulsive infirmity, requires to be
+handled with the firm but tender and sympathetic touch which the nurse
+or the physician lays upon a child afflicted with sores. His career,
+with its alternations of obscurity and conspicuousness, of tumult and
+torpidity, of wretchedness and rapture, must be followed with an
+eye keen to detect the springs and alive to the subtle play of
+circumstance and impulse. His influence, if not more profound, more
+varied, extensive and direct than that of any thinker and writer since
+Luther, is to be traced in the whole history of his own and of later
+times, under manifold aspects and amid momentous changes of spirit and
+of form. In the case of most men who have helped to mould the
+ideas and direct the tendencies of an age, it would be difficult to
+determine what each has contributed to the general result, or to say
+with certainty that the work performed by one would not, if he had
+been wanting, have been equally accomplished by others. On the other
+hand, there are a few master-spirits--men not of an age but for
+all time--whose power has been so deeply infused, so generally
+and silently absorbed, that it would be vain to inquire how it has
+operated in detail. We cannot indicate the course or fix the limits
+of its action: we perceive only that without it our intellectual life
+must have been dormant or extinct. Rousseau belongs to neither of
+these classes. His power was not general but specific, not creative
+but stimulative, not a source of perennial light but the torch of
+a conflagration; yet it was original and independent, it did not
+co-operate but clashed with that of his contemporaries, and while it
+acted upon minds far higher and broader than his own, it received no
+aid except from disciples and imitators. Of the French Revolution
+we may say with precision and confidence that it owed primarily its
+peculiar character--its austere ideals and wild distortions, its
+illimitable aspirations and chaotic endeavors--to the extent to which
+the nation had become imbued with his spirit and theories. In regard
+to literature, it is not sufficient to point to a long list of
+celebrated writers, from Chateaubriand and De Staël to Lamartine and
+George Sand, whose works have reflected the characteristic hues of
+his sentiment and style; or to adduce particular instances of his
+influence upon writers of higher and more contrasted genius, such
+as Goethe and Byron, Schiller and Richter: what is to be noted, as
+underlying all such examples and illustrations, is the fact that a
+literature distinguished from that which had immediately preceded
+it by earnestness, simplicity and depth, by spontaneous and vivid
+conceptions and freedom from conventional restraints, had its
+beginning with him, appealing to emotions and ideas which he was the
+first to call into renewed and general activity. In education, in art,
+in modifications of religious opinion and of social life, the same
+force, if less measurable and distinct, is everywhere apparent either
+as an active participant or a strong original impulse.
+
+It need hardly be said that, as productions of genius, the writings of
+Rousseau cannot hold any rank proportionate to the effect which they
+thus produced. They are not among the treasures that constitute our
+intellectual capital, the possessions which we could not lose without
+becoming bankrupt. They are rather among the instruments which,
+having served their purpose, may be laid aside, however interesting as
+mementoes or admirable as curiosities. Their highest qualities--their
+fervor, simplicity and grace--do not of themselves disclose the secret
+of their power. From the point of view of mere literary criticism we
+are apt to be more observant of their defects than their beauties. By
+the side of earlier and later models they are seen to be deficient in
+the very qualities--force of passion and depth of thought--by which
+they startled or enthralled contemporary readers.
+
+If we turn to the man himself, we might imagine at the first glance
+that none could have been less fitted for the position of a leader of
+thought, a founder of systems and schools, the apostle of a new era.
+The career for which Nature seemed to have destined him, and which, in
+truth, he may almost be said to have followed, was that of a vagabond,
+or at the best a recluse. Of all the advantages we desire and
+anxiously seek for our children, Rousseau enjoyed none. Poverty,
+degradation and neglect weighed upon him from his birth. The evil
+in him was unchecked, the good unfostered, by any training hand. The
+opportunity and the faculty of acquiring any substantial nutriment
+from books seemed alike denied him. His intercourse with mankind
+through all his earlier and the greater part of his later life was
+confined to the ignorant, and with these alone was he ever able
+to hold any harmonious relations or any grateful interchange of
+sentiment. Physically, mentally and morally diseased, weak yet stern,
+sensitive but unpliant, equally devoid of courage and of tact, he
+could not come in contact with the world without suffering a shock
+and swift recoil that drove him back to the refuge of solitude--to the
+mute companionship of external Nature or the brooding contemplation of
+himself. Even the ideals which, despite his practical aberrations
+from them, he yet intensely worshiped, had, in his conception of them,
+little connection with the activities of life: truth, simplicity,
+order, purity and peace were ideas that occupied his soul only to fill
+it with a horror of reality, with yearnings for an idyllic repose,
+with dreams of a state which he persuaded himself had been the
+original condition of the race, in which virtue and right must prevail
+through the mere absence of occasion for wrong or temptation to evil.
+
+Yet it is not in some radiance breaking through this cloudy
+environment, it is not in this or that faculty overcoming all
+obstacles, it is in the entirety of his nature as originally formed,
+and as moulded or marred by circumstance and fate, that we shall find
+the secret of that spell which he exercised over men of all classes
+and characters. The culture which might have sweetened and perhaps
+ennobled his life would have unfitted him for his mission. It would
+have brought him more or less into harmony with his age; and it was by
+his utter and vehement opposition to its habits and opinions that
+he turned the stream into a different channel. Not only his finer
+intuitions and purer tastes, but his unsatisfied desires, his errors,
+his remorse, urged him to make war upon it, as the step-mother that
+had sought to enervate or brutalize his mind while defrauding him of
+his inheritance. He held up the image of its corruption, shallowness
+and false refinement, and that of a life of simple manners and
+unperverted instincts. That he depicted this as the real life of
+a primitive epoch only gave greater pungency to the contrast.
+The eighteenth century, aroused to the consciousness of its own
+degeneracy, its false and artificial existence, readily accepted an
+idealized Geneva, an idealized Sparta, as the type of a primitive
+community, the model on which society was to be refashioned. What the
+"pure word of God" had been to the Reformers, that "Nature" became to
+the revolutionists in all departments of thought and action, in poetry
+and music as in philosophy and politics--a shibboleth to rally and
+unite all the elements of discontent and aspirations for change, a
+universal test by which to try all doctrines and systems. In either
+case, as was soon discovered, the test would itself admit of diverse
+interpretations; but in the mean while the solvent had taken effect,
+the authority of custom and tradition had been overthrown, old
+organizations had crumbled into dust.
+
+That the agitation thus evoked should have produced many grotesque,
+many frightful results, cannot seem strange. Long before the lower
+strata had been reached the surface was in a state of ebullition.
+Polite society was delightfully thrilled with a feeling of its own
+depravity, and found in the novel sensation the zest that had been
+wanting to its jaded powers of enjoyment. Nor was it awakened from its
+illusions by the first eruption from below. In a transport of delirium
+it threw away, as if they had been idle gems, of use only when cast
+into the public treasury, the privileges and prerogatives that had
+formed the basis of the monarchy. Thenceforth the only effort was to
+secure a _tabula rasa_ on which to rear that new and perfect state
+of which the model was at hand, if only the proper materials could be
+found and the foundations be laid. Of the men who acquired a temporary
+mastery, three only, by the massive force of practical genius, were
+able to free themselves from the fascination of the common ideal. But
+Mirabeau and Danton were overborne by the full tide, and Napoleon,
+when he arrested it in its languor, turned it into depths from
+which it emerged the other day to sweep away his column in the Place
+Vendôme.
+
+In thus glancing at the vast proportions of the subject, we have
+wandered far from the range of Mr. Morley's work, which has a special
+purpose with well-defined limits. It is not a complete biography of
+Rousseau, much less a history of his times. It gives no full or vivid
+portraiture of character, no adequate narrative of events, no summary
+even of results. It is an analytical study, an examination of the life
+and works of Rousseau with a view to determine their precise nature
+and quality, rather than their relative value or bearings. Within
+these limits it exhibits ample knowledge and skill, combined with
+a searching but tolerant judgment. Without labored discussion or
+passionate apology, it clears away entangling prejudices and current
+misconceptions, to assume a position from which undistorted views may
+be obtained. At times, indeed, Mr. Morley carries his impartiality
+to the verge of indifference. His certificate of Grimm's "integrity"
+rests on very slender grounds, and the Memoirs of Madame d'Épinay
+are subjected to no such scrutiny as the circumstances of their
+composition and preservation call for, before their statements can be
+accepted as authority. But whatever minor defects may be found in the
+book, the general spirit and execution are admirable. It is full of
+interest and suggestiveness both for readers to whom the subject may
+not be unfamiliar, and for those who may hitherto have neglected to
+explore it. Above all, it is valuable as marking the line to which
+English criticism has advanced, its capacity for treating complicated
+and delicate questions with clearness, frankness and entire fairness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pascarel: Only a Story. By "Ouida," author of "Tricotrin,"
+"Folle-Farine," "Under Two Flags," etc. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott
+& Co.
+
+The genius of "Ouida" is _sui generis_, and must in part create the
+standards by which it is to be judged. Her works are so different from
+the common type of modern novels that they demand to be looked at from
+a different point of view. The present standard of excellence in prose
+fiction seems to be the conformity of character and incident to what
+is actually seen in life. It is a good test for all mere stories, but
+is manifestly _not_ the test by which to gauge the recent works of
+"Ouida." She does not aim at this pre-Raphaelite delineation of men
+and things as they are. Her characters are idealizations: her later
+books are prose-poems, not only in the affluence and rhythm of their
+style, but in the allegoric form and purpose which, pervade them. This
+characteristic is plain enough in _Tricotrin_ and _Folle-Farine_, but
+finds its most marked expression in _Pascarel_. "Only an Allegory"
+would be a more expressive sub-title for the book than "Only a Story,"
+for the story is the mere thread which sustains and binds together a
+series of parables and crystallized truths. Most of these, indeed,
+she has embodied in former works, but nowhere as in _Pascarel_ is the
+author's design to teach them made so manifest.
+
+The book is almost wholly free from that extravagance of expression
+and recklessness of all established codes of taste which have diverted
+attention from her purpose, and led to a false estimate of the
+character and tendency of her writings. It has none of the hindrances,
+for instance, which prevent many from seeing the magnificence of the
+conception in _Folle-Farine_. Its object is to enforce the lesson that
+the only true greatness is that which loses sight of self--that Love,
+and Love alone, is, both in its insight and its purpose, divine.
+"Love sees as God sees, and with infinite wisdom has infinite pardon."
+"Laughter and love are all that are really worth having in the world,"
+but to gain them "one must seek them first for others, with a wish
+pure from the greed of self." "The world owes nothing to so personal
+a passion as ambition." "The first fruits of a man's genius are always
+pure of greed." What makes a great artist is the "vital, absolute
+absorption of personality in his love of art." The experience of the
+donzella (which constitutes what there is of the story), a nobler,
+and, we think, a _truer_, type of womanhood than Viva, yet with a like
+over-estimate of the advantages of wealth and position, brings her
+to the conviction that Pascarel is right. These truths, however, find
+their most effective illustration in the wealth of Italian tradition
+and history with which the pages abound. "Here is the secret of
+Florence, sublime aspiration--the aspiration which gave her citizens
+force to live in poverty and clothe themselves in simplicity, so as
+to give up their millions of florins to bequeath miracles in stone
+and metal and color to the future." "In her throes of agony she kept
+always within her that love of the ideal, impersonal, consecrate, void
+of greed, which is the purification of the individual life and
+the regeneration of the body politic." "Her great men drew their
+inspiration from the very air they breathed, and the men who knew they
+were not great had the patience and unselfishness to do their minor
+work for her zealously and perfectly." The workmen who chiseled the
+stones and the boys who ground the colors "did their part mightily
+and with reverence." The unrivaled works of art which are the true
+greatness of Italy owe their existence to the self-forgetfulness of
+their makers. So the love of Italy is in its essence a love for that
+which is best and noblest in human nature--"the consecration of self
+to an object higher than self." This love, however, to be true, must
+be more than perception or sentiment--it must bear fruit in _likeness_
+to that which it admires. "Each gift which men receive imposes a
+corresponding duty." "We are Italians," says Pascarel after recounting
+the glories of Italian achievement: "great as the heritage is, so
+great the duty likewise." As a companion-book of Italian travel,
+_Pascarel_ has a special value, suffused as it is throughout with
+the blended charm of picturesque beauty and magical associations that
+belongs to the country and the people.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Books Received_.
+
+The Great Events of History, from the Creation of Man till the Present
+Time. By William Francis Collier, LL.D., Trinity College, Dublin.
+Edited by an experienced American Teacher, New York: J.W. Schermerhorn
+& Co.
+
+Words and their Uses, Past and Present: A Study of the English
+Language. By Richard Grant White. New edition, revised and corrected.
+New York: Sheldon & Co.
+
+Manual of Land Surveying, with Tables. By David Murray, A.M.,
+Ph.D., Professor of Mathematics in Rutgers College. New York: J.W.
+Schermerhorn & Co.
+
+The Greatest Plague of Life; or, The Adventures of a Lady in Search of
+a Good Servant. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers.
+
+Snatches of Song. By Jeanie Morison (Mrs. Campbell of Ballochyle).
+London: Longmans, Green & Co.
+
+The Life and Times of Philip Schuyler. By Benson J. Lossing, LL.D. New
+York: Sheldon & Co.
+
+Lewis Arundel: A Novel. By Frank E. Smedley. Philadelphia: T.B.
+Peterson & Brothers.
+
+Our Forest Home. By the author of "Robert Joy's Victory." Illustrated.
+Boston: Henry Hoyt.
+
+Philip Earnscliffe: A Novel. By Mrs. Annie Edwards. New York: Sheldon
+& Co.
+
+Heart's Delight. By Mrs. Caroline E.K. Davis. Illustrated. Boston:
+Henry Hoyt.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular
+Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873., by Various
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13828 ***
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13828 ***</div>
+
+  <h1>LIPPINCOTT&#39;S MAGAZINE</h1>
+
+  <h3>OF</h3>
+
+  <h2><i>POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.</i></h2>
+  <hr class="short" />
+
+  <h4>AUGUST, 1873.<br />
+  Vol XII, No. 29.</h4>
+  <hr class="short" />
+  <br />
+  <br />
+
+  <h3>TABLE OF CONTENTS</h3>
+
+  <div class="toc">
+    <a href="#illustrations">ILLUSTRATIONS.</a>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#hyperion">THE NEW HYPERION</a>
+    [Illustrated] By EDWARD STRAHAN.</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#twochickens">II.&#8212;The Two Chickens.</a>
+    (129)</p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#tyrol">OUR HOME IN THE TYROL</a>
+    [Illustrated] By MARGARET HOWITT.</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#tyrolchvii">CHAPTER VII.</a> (146)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#tyrolchviii">CHAPTER VIII.</a> (152)</p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#churchsteps">ON THE CHURCH STEPS</a> By
+    SARAH C. HALLOWELL.</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#churchstepschi">CHAPTER I.</a> (161)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#churchstepschii">CHAPTER II.</a> (163)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#churchstepschiii">CHAPTER III.</a>
+    (166)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#churchstepschiv">CHAPTER IV.</a> (168)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#churchstepschv">CHAPTER V.</a> (170)</p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#insidejapan">INSIDE JAPAN</a> By W.E.
+    GRIFFIS. (174)</p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#jason">JASON&#39;S QUEST</a> By CHARLES
+    WARREN STODDARD.</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#jasoni">I.</a> (182)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#jasonii">II.</a> (184)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#jasoniii">III.</a> (185)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#jasoniv">IV.</a> (186)</p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#forebodings">FOREBODINGS.</a> (188)</p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#deerparks">DEER-PARKS</a> By REGINALD
+    WYNFORD. (189)</p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#rambles">RAMBLES AMONG THE FRUITS AND
+    FLOWERS OF THE TROPICS</a> By FANNIE R. FEUDGE.</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#2H_4_0036">TWO PAPERS.&#8212;I.</a>
+    (197)</p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#thule">A PRINCESS OF THULE</a> By WILLIAM
+    BLACK.</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#thulechxii">CHAPTER
+    XII.&#8212;Transformation.</a> (206)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#thulechxiii">CHAPTER XIII.&#8212;By The
+    Waters Of Babylon.</a> (214)</p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#gold">GOLD</a> By ITA ANIOL PROKOP.
+    (226)</p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#glimpses">GLIMPSES OF GHOST-LAND</a> By
+    LUCY H. HOOPER. (227)</p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#afternoon">AFTERNOON</a> By EMMA LAZARUS.
+    (234)</p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#gossip">OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#washington">Washington&#39;s Birthplace In
+    1873</a> By R.B.E. (235)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#vicissitudes">Vicissitudes In High
+    Life.</a> (236)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#madeira">A Glass Of Old Madeira.</a>
+    (238)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#matinee">At A Matinée: A Monologue.</a> By
+    C.A.D. (240)</p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#notes">NOTES.</a> (242)</p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#literature">LITERATURE OF THE DAY.</a>
+    (245)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#books">Books Received.</a> (248)</p><br />
+    <hr />
+    <br />
+    <a name="illustrations" id="illustrations"></a>
+
+    <h4>ILLUSTRATIONS</h4>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0001">The Flowers of War.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0002">The Invaders of
+    Romiainville.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0003">Story of an Old Man and An
+    Elder.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0004">Merchandise in the
+    Temple.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0005">Father Joliet.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0006">The Two Chickens.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0007">Love Left Alone.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0008">&quot;Fond of
+    Chicken.&quot;</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0009">The Wife.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0010">The Lone Crusade.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0011">Tender Charity.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0012">Necessity Knowing Law.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0013">The Ferry.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0014">Jove&#39;s Thunder.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0015">School.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0016">On With the Dance!</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0017">Endymion.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0018">How the Modern Dog Treats
+    Lazarus.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0019">The Laughing Lackey.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0020">The Present.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0021">The Convalescent.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0022">The Divided Burden.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0023">Share My Cup.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0024">Breaking Stones.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0025">Sickness and
+    Courtship.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0026">The Wagon.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0027">Dinner-time!</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0028">Fidelity.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0029">A Little Visitor.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0030">Francine.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0031">&quot;Don&#39;t Wring My
+    Heart!&quot;</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0032">View of Taufers
+    Valley.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0033">Schloss Taufers.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0034">Happy Souls in
+    Paradise.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0035">Crossing the Torrent.</a></p>
+    <hr />
+  </div><span class="pagenum">[pg 129]</span> <a name="hyperion" id=
+  "hyperion"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>THE NEW HYPERION.</h2>
+
+  <h3>FROM PARIS TO MARLY BY WAY OF THE RHINE.</h3>
+
+  <h3><a name="twochickens" id="twochickens"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+  II.&#8212;THE TWO CHICKENS.</h3><a name="image-0001" id="image-0001">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0001_1.jpg"><img width="100%" src=
+    "images/0001_1.jpg" alt="THE FLOWERS OF WAR." /></a> THE FLOWERS OF
+    WAR.
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>&quot;Thou art no less a man because thou wearest no hauberk nor
+  mail sark, and goest not on horseback after foolish
+  adventures.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>So I said, reassuring myself, thirty years ago, when, as Paul
+  Flemming the Blond, I was meditating the courageous change of cutting
+  off my soap-locks, burning my edition of Bulwer and giving my satin
+  stocks to my shoemaker: I mean, when I was growing up&#8212;or, in
+  the more beauteous language of that day, when Flemming was passing
+  into the age of bronze, and the flowers of Paradise were turning to a
+  sword in his hands.</p>
+
+  <p>Well, I say it again, and I say it with boldness, you can wear a
+  tin botany-box as bravely as a hauberk, and foolish adventures can be
+  pursued equally well on foot.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg
+  130]</span>
+
+  <p>Stout, grizzled and short winded, I am just as nimble as ever in
+  the pretty exercise of running down an illusion. Yet I must confess,
+  as I passed the abattoirs of La Villette, whence blue-smocked
+  butcher-boys were hauling loads of dirty sheepskins, I could not but
+  compare myself to the honest man mentioned in one of Sardou&#39;s
+  comedies: &quot;The good soul escaped out of a novel of Paul de
+  Kock&#39;s, lost in the throng on the Boulevard Malesherbes, and
+  asking the way to the woods of Romainville.&quot;</p><a name=
+  "image-0002" id="image-0002"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0002_1.jpg"><img width="100%" src=
+    "images/0002_1.jpg" alt="THE INVADERS OF ROMIAINVILLE." /></a> THE
+    INVADERS OF ROMIAINVILLE.
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Romainville! And hereabouts its tufts of chestnuts should be, or
+  were wont to be of old. I am in the grimy quarter of Belleville.
+  Scene of factories, of steam-works and tall bleak mansions as it is
+  to-day, Belleville was once a jolly country village, separated on its
+  hilltop from Paris, which basked at its feet like a city millionaire
+  sprawling before the check apron and leather shoes of a rustic
+  beauty. Inhabited by its little circle of a few thousand souls, it
+  looked around itself on its eminence, seeing the vast diorama of the
+  city on one side, and on the other the Près-Saint-Gervais, and the
+  woods of Romainville waving off to the horizon their diminishing
+  crests of green. A jolly old tavern, the Ile d&#39;Amour, hung out
+  its colored lamps among the trees, and the orchestra sounded, and the
+  feet of gay young lovers, who now are skeletons, beat the floor. The
+  street was a bower of lilacs, and opposite the Ile d&#39;Amour was
+  the village church.</p>
+
+  <p>Then the workmen of the Paris suburbs were invaders: they besieged
+  the village on Sundays in daring swarms, to be beaten back
+  successfully by the duties of every successive Monday. Now they are
+  fixed there. They are the colorless inhabitants of these many-storied
+  houses. The town&#39;s long holiday is over. Where the odorous
+  avenues of lilacs stretched along, affording bouquets for maman and
+  the children and toothpicks for ferocious young warriors from the
+  garrisons, are odious lengths of wall. Everything is changed, and
+  from the gardens the grisettes of Alfred de Musset are with sighing
+  sent. Their haunts are laboratories now, and the Ile d&#39;Amour is a
+  mayor&#39;s office.</p>
+
+  <p>I, to whom the beer-scandals of the Rhine and the students&#39;
+  holidays of the Seine were among the Childe-Harold enormities of a
+  not over-sinful youth, was sadly disappointed. Thinking of the groves
+  of an Eden, I ran against the furnaces of a Pandemonium. For a stroll
+  back toward my adolescence, Belleville was a bad beginning. I
+  determined to console myself with the green meadows of Saint-Gervais
+  and the pretty woods of Romainville. Attaining the latter was half an
+  hour&#39;s affair among long walls and melancholy houses: at
+  Saint-Gervais, a double file of walls and houses&#8212;at
+  Romainville, houses and walls again. In the latter, where formerly
+  there were scarcely three watches distributed amongst the whole
+  village, I was incensed to find the shop of a clockmaker: it was
+  somewhat consoling, <span class="pagenum">[pg 131]</span> though, to
+  find it a clockmaker&#39;s of the most pronounced suburban kind, with
+  pairs of wooden shoes amongst the guard-chains in the window, and
+  pots of golden mustard ranged alternately with the antiquated silver
+  turnips.</p>
+
+  <p>Before the church I found yet standing a knotty little elder tree,
+  a bewitched-looking vegetable. A beadle in a blouse, engaged in
+  washing one of the large altar-candles with soap and water at the
+  public pump, gave me the following history of the elder tree. I am
+  passionately fond of legends, and this is one quite hot and fresh,
+  only a hundred years old. Hear the tale of the elder of
+  Romainville.</p>
+
+  <p>The excellent curé of Romainville in the last century was a man of
+  such a charitable nature that his all was in the hands of the poor.
+  The grocer of the village, a potentate of terrific powers and
+  inexorable temper, finally refused to trust him with the supply of
+  oil necessary for the lamp in the sanctuary. Soon the sacred flame
+  sputtered, palpitated, flapped miserably over the crusted wick: the
+  curé, responsible before Heaven for the life of his lamp, tottered
+  away from the altar with groans of anguish. Arrived in the garden, he
+  threw himself on his knees, crying <i>Meâ culpâ</i>, and beating his
+  bosom. The garden contained only medicinal plants, shaded by a linden
+  and an elder: completely desperate, the unhappy priest fixed his
+  moist eyes on the latter, when lo! the bark opened, the trunk parted,
+  and a jet of clear aromatic liquid spouted forth, quite different
+  from any sap yielded by elder before. It was oil. A miracle!</p>
+
+  <p>The report spread. The grocer came and humbly visited the priest
+  in his garden, his haughty hat, crammed with bills enough to have
+  spread agony through all the cottages of Romainville, humbly carried
+  between his legs. He came proposing a little speculation. In exchange
+  for a single spigot to be inserted in the tree, and the hydraulic
+  rights going with the same, he offered all the bounties dearest to
+  the priestly heart&#8212;unlimited milk and honey, livers of fat
+  geese and pies lined with rabbit. The priest, though
+  hungry&#8212;hungry with the demoniac hunger of a fat and paunchy
+  man&#8212;turned his back on the tempter.</p><a name="image-0003" id=
+  "image-0003"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0003_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0003_1.jpg" alt="STORY OF AN OLD MAN AND AN ELDER." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">STORY OF AN OLD MAN AND AN ELDER.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>One day a salad, the abstemious relish yielded by his garden
+  herbs, was set on the table by Jeanneton. At the first mouthful the
+  good curé made a terrible face&#8212;the salad tasted of lamp-oil.
+  The unhappy girl had filled a cruet with the sacred fluid. From that
+  day the bark closed and the flow ceased.</p>
+
+  <p>There is one of the best oil-stories you ever heard, and one of
+  the most recent of attested miracles. For my part, I am half sorry it
+  is so well attested, and that I have the authority of that beadle in
+  the blouse, who took my little two-franc piece with an expression of
+  much intelligence. I love the Legend.</p><a name="image-0004" id=
+  "image-0004"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0003_2.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0003_2.jpg" alt="MERCHANDISE IN THE TEMPLE." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">MERCHANDISE IN THE TEMPLE.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>The environs of Paris are but chary of Legend. I treasure this
+  specimen, then, <span class="pagenum">[pg 132]</span> as if it had
+  been a rare flower for my botany-box.</p>
+
+  <p>But the botany-box indeed, how heavy it was growing! The umbrella,
+  how awkward! The sun, how vigorous and ardent! Who ever supposed it
+  could become so hot by half-past eight in the morning?</p><a name=
+  "image-0005" id="image-0005"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0004_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0004_1.jpg" alt="FATHER JOLIET." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">FATHER JOLIET.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Certainly the ruthless box, which seemed to have taken root on my
+  back, was heavier than it used to be. Had its rotundity developed,
+  like its master&#39;s? I stopped and gathered a flower, meaning to
+  analyze it at my next resting-place. I opened my box: then indeed I
+  perceived the secret of its weightiness. It revealed three small
+  rolls of oatmeal toasted, a little roast chicken, a bit of ham, some
+  mustard in a cleaned-out inkstand! This now was the treachery of
+  Josephine. Josephine, who never had the least sympathy for my
+  botanical researches, and who had small comprehension of the nobler
+  hungers and thirsts of the scientific soul, had taken it on her to
+  convert my box into a portable meat-safe!</p>
+
+  <p>Bless the old meddler, how I thanked her for her treason! The
+  aspect of the chicken, in its blistered and varnished brown skin,
+  reminded me that I was clamorously hungry. Shade of Apicius! is it
+  lawful for civilized mortals to be so hungry as I was at eight or
+  nine in the morning?</p>
+
+  <p>At last I saw the end of that dusty, featureless street which
+  stretches from the barrier to the extremity of Romainville. I saw
+  spreading before me a broad plain, a kind of desert, where, by
+  carefully keeping my eyes straight ahead, I could avoid the sight of
+  all houses, walls, human constructions whatever.</p>
+
+  <p>My favorite traveler, the celebrated Le Vaillant, to whom I am
+  indebted for so many facts and data toward my great theory of
+  Comparative Geography, says that in first reaching the solitudes of
+  Caffraria he felt himself elated with an unknown joy. No traced road
+  was before him to dictate his pathway&#8212;no city shaded him with
+  its towers: his fortune depended on his own unaided instincts.</p>
+
+  <p>I felt the same delight, the same liberty. Something like the
+  heavy strap of a slave seemed to break behind me as I found myself
+  quite clear of the metropolis. Mad schemes of unanticipated journeys
+  danced through my head; I might amble on to Villemonble, Montfermeil,
+  Raincy, or even to the Forest of Bondy, so dear to the experimental
+  botanist. Had I not two days before me ere my compact with Hohenfels
+  at Marly? And in two days you can go from Paris to Florence.
+  Meantime, from the effects of famine, my ribs were sinking down upon
+  the pelvic basin of my frame.</p>
+
+  <p>The walk, the open air, the sight of the fowl, whose beak now
+  burned into my bosom&#39;s core, had sharpened my appetite beyond
+  bearing. Yet how could I eat without some drop of cider or soft white
+  wine to drink? Besides, slave of convention that I have grown, I no
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 133]</span> longer understand the business
+  of eating without its concomitants&#8212;a shelter and something to
+  sit on.</p>
+
+  <p>The plain became wearisome. There are two things the
+  American-born, however long a resident abroad, never forgives the
+  lack of in Europe. The first I miss when I am in Paris: it is the
+  perpetual street-mending of an American town. Here the boulevards,
+  smeared with asphaltum or bedded with crunched macadam, attain
+  smoothness without life: you travel on scum. But in the dear old
+  American streets the epidermis is vital: what strength and mutual
+  reliance in the cobbles as they stand together in serried ranks, like
+  so many eye-teeth! How they are perpetually sinking into prodigious
+  ruts, along which the ponderous drays are forced to dance on one
+  wheel in a paroxysm of agony and critical equipoise! But the
+  perpetual state of street-mending, that is the crowning interest.
+  What would I not sometimes give to exchange the Swiss sweeping-girls,
+  plying their long brooms desolately in the mud, for the paviors&#39;
+  hammers of America, which play upon the pebbles like a carillon of
+  muffled bells? As for the other lack, it is the want of wooden
+  bridges. Far away in my native meadows gleams the silver Charles: the
+  tramp of horses&#39; hoofs comes to my ear from the timbers of the
+  bridge. <i>Here</i>, with a pelt and a scramble your bridge is
+  crossed: nothing addresses the heart from its stony causeway. But the
+  low, arched tubes of wood that span the streams of my native land are
+  so many bass-viols, sending out mellow thunders with every passing
+  wagon to blend with the rustling stream and the sighing woods. Shall
+  I never hear them again?</p>
+
+  <p>A reminiscence more than ten years old came to give precision to
+  my ramblings in the past. Beyond the rustic pathway I was now
+  following I could perceive the hills of Trou-Vassou. Hereabouts, if
+  memory served me, I might find a welcome, almost a home, and the
+  clasp of cordial if humble hands. Here I might find folks who would
+  laugh when I arrived, and would be glad to share their luncheon with
+  me But&#8212;ten years gone by!</p><a name="image-0006" id=
+  "image-0006"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0005_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0005_1.jpg" alt="THE TWO CHICKENS." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">THE TWO CHICKENS.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>This computation chilled my hopes. What family remains ten years
+  in a spot&#8212;above all, a spot on that fluctuating periphery of
+  Paris, where the mighty capital, year after year, bursts belt after
+  belt? Where might they have gone? Francine!&#8212;Francine must be
+  twenty-two. Married, of course. Her husband, no doubt, has dragged
+  her off to some other department. Her parents have followed. March,
+  volunteer, and disentangle yourself from these profitless
+  speculations!</p>
+
+  <p>Ten minutes farther on, in the shade of the fort at Noisy-le-Sec,
+  I saw a red gable and the sign of a tavern. As a tourist I have a
+  passion for a cabaret: in practice, I find Véfours to unite perhaps a
+  greater number of advantages.</p><a name="image-0007" id=
+  "image-0007"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0005_2.jpg"><img width="30%" src=
+    "images/0005_2.jpg" alt="LOVE LEFT ALONE." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">LOVE LEFT ALONE.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Some soldiers of the Fortieth were drinking and laughing in a
+  corner. I took a table not far off, and drew my cold victuals out of
+  my box of japanned tin, which they doubtless took for a new form of
+  canteen. The red-fisted garçon, without waiting for orders, set up
+  before me, like ten-pins, a castor in wood with two enormous bottles,
+  and a litre of that rinsing of the vats which, under the name
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 134]</span> &quot;wine of the
+  country,&quot; is so distressingly similar in every neighborhood.
+  Resigned to anything, I was about drawing out my slice of ham, the
+  chicken seeming to me just there somewhat too proud a bird and out of
+  harmony with the local color, when my glance met two gray eyes
+  regarding my own in the highest state of expansion. The lashes, the
+  brows, the hair and the necklace of short beard were all very thick
+  and quite gray. The face they garnished was that of the
+  tavern-keeper.</p><a name="image-0008" id="image-0008"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0006_1.jpg"><img width="50%" src=
+    "images/0006_1.jpg" alt="&#39;FOND OF CHICKEN.&#39;" /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">&#39;FOND OF CHICKEN.&#39;</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>&quot;Why, it is you, after all, Father Joliet!&quot; I said,
+  after a rapid inspection of his figure.</p><a name="image-0009" id=
+  "image-0009"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0006_2.jpg"><img width="40%" src=
+    "images/0006_2.jpg" alt="THE WIFE" /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">THE WIFE.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>&quot;Ah, it is Monsieur Flemming, the Américain-flamand!&quot;
+  cried the host, striking one hand into the other at the imminent risk
+  of breaking his pipe. In a trice he trundled off my bottle of
+  rinsings, and replaced it by one of claret with an orange seal, set
+  another glass, and posted himself in front of me.</p>
+
+  <p>I asked the waiter for two plates, and with a slight blush evoked
+  the chicken from my box. The soldiers of the Fortieth opened a
+  battery of staring and hungry eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And how came you here?&quot; asked I of Joliet.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It is I who am at the head of the hotel,&quot; he replied,
+  proudly pointing out the dimensions of the place by spreading his
+  hands. &quot;My old establishment has sunk into the fosses of the
+  fort: it was a transaction between the government and
+  myself.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And was the transaction a good one for you?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Not so bad, not so bad,&quot; said he, winking his honest
+  gray eyes with a world of simple cunning. &quot;It cannot be so very
+  bad, since I owe nothing on the hotel, and the cellar is full, and I
+  am selling wholesale and retail.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The vanity which a minute since had expanded his hands now got
+  into his legs, and set them upright under his body. He stood upon
+  them, his eyes proudly lowered upon the seal of the claret. A pang of
+  envy actually crossed my mind. I, simple <i>rentier</i>, with my two
+  little establishments pressing more <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  135]</span> closely upon my resources with every year&#39;s increase
+  of house-rates, how could I look at this glorious small freeholder
+  without comparisons?</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;So, then, Father Joliet,&quot; said I, &quot;you are
+  rich?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;At least I depend no longer on my horse, and that thanks to
+  you and the government.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;To me! What do you mean?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why, have you forgotten the two chickens?&quot;</p><a name=
+  "image-0010" id="image-0010"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0007_1.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0007_1.jpg" alt="THE LONE CRUSADE." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">THE LONE CRUSADE.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>At the allusion to the chickens we caught each other&#39;s eye,
+  and laughed like a pair of augurs. But the mysterious fowls shall be
+  explained to the reader.</p><a name="image-0011" id="image-0011">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0007_2.jpg"><img width="40%" src=
+    "images/0007_2.jpg" alt="TENDER CHARITY." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">TENDER CHARITY.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0012" id="image-0012"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0007_3.jpg"><img width="40%" src=
+    "images/0007_3.jpg" alt="NECESSITY KNOWING LAW." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">NECESSITY KNOWING LAW.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>I need not explain that I have cast my lot with the Colonial
+  Americans of Paris, and taken their color. It is a sweet and
+  luxurious mode of life. The cooks send round our dinners quite hot,
+  or we have faultless servants, recommended from one colonist to
+  another: these capital creatures sometimes become so thoroughly
+  translated into American that I have known them shift around from
+  flat to flat in colonized households of the second and third stories
+  without ever touching French soil for the best part of a lifetime. At
+  our receptions, dancing-teas and so on we pass our time in not giving
+  offence. Federals and Confederates, rich cotton-spinners from Rhode
+  Island and farmers from thousand-acre granges in the West, are
+  obliged to mingle and please each other. Naturally, we can have no
+  more political opinions than a looking-glass. We entertain just such
+  views as <i>Galignani</i> gives us every morning, harmonized with
+  paste from a dozen newspapers. Our grand national effort, I may say,
+  the common principle that binds us together as a Colony, is to forget
+  that we are Americans. We accordingly give our whole intellects to
+  the task of <span class="pagenum">[pg 136]</span> appearing like
+  Europeans: our women succeed in this particularly well. Miss Yuba
+  Sequoia Smith, whose father made a fortune in water-rights, is now
+  afraid to walk a single block without the attendance of a chambermaid
+  in a white cap, though she came up from California quite alone by the
+  old Panama route. Everybody agrees that our ladies dress well. Shall
+  I soon forget how proud Mrs. Aquila Jones was when a gentleman of the
+  emperor&#39;s body-guard took her for Marguerite Bellanger in the
+  Bois? Our men, not having the culture of costume to attend to, are
+  perhaps a little in want of a stand-point. Still, we can play
+  billiards in the Grand Hôtel and buy fans at the Palais Royal. We go
+  out to Saint-Cloud on horseback, we meet at the minister&#39;s; and I
+  contend that there was something conciliatory and national in a
+  Southern colonel offering to take Bigelow to see Menken at the Gaîté,
+  or when I saw some West Pointers and a nephew of Beauregard&#39;s
+  lighting the pipe of peace at a handsome tobacconist&#39;s in the Rue
+  Saint-Honoré. The consciousness that we have no longer a nationality,
+  and that nobody respects us, adds a singular calm, an elevation, to
+  our views. Composed as our cherished little society is of crumbs from
+  every table under heaven, we have succeeded in forming a way of life
+  where the crusty fortitude and integrity of patriotism is
+  unnecessary. Our circle is like the green palace of the magpies in
+  Musset&#39;s <i>Merle Blanc</i>, and like them we live &quot;de
+  plaisir, d&#39;honneur, de bavardage, de gloire et de
+  chiffons.&quot;</p><a name="image-0013" id="image-0013">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0008_1.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0008_1.jpg" alt="THE FERRY." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">THE FERRY.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0014" id="image-0014"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0008_2.jpg"><img width="40%" src=
+    "images/0008_2.jpg" alt="JOVE&#39;S THUNDER." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">JOVE&#39;S THUNDER.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>I confess that there was a period, between the fresh alacrity of a
+  stranger&#39;s reception in the Colony and the settled habits I have
+  now fallen into, when I was rather uneasy. A society of migrators, a
+  system woven upon shooting particles, like a rainbow on the rain, was
+  odd. Residents of some permanency, like myself, were constantly
+  forming eternal friendships with people who wrote to them in a month
+  or two from Egypt. In this way a quantity of my friendships were
+  miserably lacerated, until I learned by practice just how much
+  friendship to give. At this period I was much occupied with vain
+  conciliations, concessions and the reconciling of inconsistencies. A
+  brave American from the South, an ardent disciple of Calhoun, was a
+  powerful advocate of State Rights, and advocated them so well that I
+  was almost convinced; when it appeared one day that the right of
+  States to individual action was to cease in cases where a living
+  chattel was to escape from the South to the North.</p><a name=
+  "image-0015" id="image-0015"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0009_1.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0009_1.jpg" alt="SCHOOL." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">SCHOOL.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>In this case the State, in violation of its own <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 137]</span> laws unrecognizant of that kind of
+  ownership, was to account for the property and give it back, in
+  obedience to general Congressional order and to the most advanced
+  principles of Centralization. Before I had digested this pill another
+  was administered to me in that small English section of our circle
+  which gave us much pride and an occasional son-in-law. This was by no
+  less a person than my dear old friend Berkley, now grown a ruddy
+  sexagenarian, but still given to eating breakfast in his bath-tub.
+  The wealthy Englishman, who had got rich by exporting china ware, was
+  sound on the subject of free commerce between nations. That any
+  industry, no matter how young might be the nation practicing it, or
+  how peculiar the difficulties of its prosecution, should ever be the
+  subject of home protection, he stamped as a fallacy too absurd to be
+  argued. The journals venturing such an opinion were childish
+  drivelers, putting forth views long since exploded before the whole
+  world. He was still loud in this opinion when his little book of
+  epigrams, <i>The Raven of Zurich and Other Rhymes</i>, came out, and
+  being bright and saucy was reprinted in America. The knowledge that
+  he could not tax on a foreign soil his own ideas, the plastic pottery
+  of his brain, was quite too much for his mental balance, and he took
+  to inveighing against free trade in literary manufactures without the
+  slightest perception of inconsistency, and with all the warmth, if
+  not the eloquence, of Mr. Dickens on the same theme. The gradual
+  accumulation of subjects like these&#8212;subjects <i>taboo</i> in
+  gentle society&#8212;soon made it apparent that in a Colony of such
+  diverse colors, where every man had a sore spot or a grievance, and
+  even the Cinderellas had corns in their little slippers, harmony
+  could only be obtained by keeping to general considerations of honor,
+  nobility, glory, and the politics of Beloochistan; on which points we
+  all could agree, and where Mr. Berkley&#39;s witty eloquence was a
+  wonder.</p><a name="image-0016" id="image-0016"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0009_2.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0009_2.jpg" alt="ON WITH THE DANCE!" /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">ON WITH THE DANCE!</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>It is to my uneasy period, when I was sick with private griefs and
+  giddy with striving to reconcile incompatibilities, that the episode
+  of the Chickens belongs. I was looking dissatisfied out of one of my
+  windows. Hohenfels, disappointed of a promenade by an afternoon
+  shower, was looking dissatisfied out of the other. Two or three
+  people, waiting for four o&#39;clock lunch, were lounging about. I
+  had just remarked, I believe, that I was a melancholy man, for ever
+  drinking &quot;the sweet wormwood of my sorrows.&quot; A dark
+  phantom, like that of Adamastor, stood up between me and the
+  stars.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Nonsense, you ingrate!&quot; responded <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 138]</span> the baron from his niche, &quot;you are
+  only too happy. You are now in the precise position to define my old
+  conception of the Lucky Dog. The Lucky Dog, you know, in my
+  vocabulary, is he who, free from all domestic cares, saunters up and
+  down his room in gown and slippers, drums on the window of a rainy
+  afternoon, and, as he stirs his evening fire, snaps his fingers at
+  the world, saying, &#39;I have no nor children, good or bad, to
+  provide for.&#39;&quot;</p><a name="image-0017" id="image-0017">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0010_1.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0010_1.jpg" alt="ENDYMION." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">ENDYMION.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>I replied that I did not willingly give way to grief, but that the
+  main-spring of my life was broken.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Did you ever try,&quot; spoke up a buxom lady from a
+  sofa&#8212;it was the Frau Kranich, widow of the Frankfort banker,
+  the same who used to give balls while her husband was drugged to
+  sleep with opium, and now for a long time in Paris for some
+  interminable settlement with Nathan Rothschild&#8212;&quot;Did you
+  ever try the tonic of a good action? <i>I</i> never did, but they
+  actually say it rejuvenates one considerably.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>I avowed that I had more faith in the study of Geography.
+  Nevertheless, to oblige her, I would follow any
+  suggestion.</p><a name="image-0018" id="image-0018"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0010_2.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0010_2.jpg" alt="HOW THE MODERN DOG TREATS LAZARUS." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">HOW THE MODERN DOG TREATS LAZARUS.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>&quot;Benefit the next person who applies to you.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Madame, I will obey.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>At this moment a wagon of singular appearance drew up before my
+  windows. I knew it well enough: it was the vehicle of a handy,
+  convenient man who came along every other morning to pick up odd jobs
+  from me and my neighbors. He could tinker, carpenter, mend harness:
+  his wife, seated in the wagon by his side, was good at a button, or
+  could descend and help Josephine with her ironing. A visit at this
+  hour, however, was unprecedented.</p>
+
+  <p>As Charles was beginning a conversation under the hood of the
+  wagon, I opened the window. &quot;Come into the room,&quot; I
+  said.</p>
+
+  <p>Hohenfels maliciously opened his. &quot;Come in,&quot; he added
+  &quot;Monsieur Flemming is especially anxious to do you a
+  benefit.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The man, uncovering, was now standing in the little garden before
+  the house&#8212;a man with a face at once intelligent and candid,
+  which is unfortunately rare among the poor rascals of his grade.
+  Although still young, he was growing gray: his blouse, patched and
+  re-sewed at all the seams, was clean and whole. Poverty had tested
+  him, but had as yet picked no flaws in him. By this time my windows
+  were alive with faces.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 139]</span>
+
+  <p>The man, humble but not awkward, made two or three respectful
+  bows. &quot;Monsieur,&quot; he said to me, &quot;I hope you are fond
+  of chickens. I am desirous to sell you a fine pair.&quot;</p><a name=
+  "image-0019" id="image-0019"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0011_1.jpg"><img width="40%" src=
+    "images/0011_1.jpg" alt="THE LAUGHING LACKEY." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">THE LAUGHING LACKEY.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Chickens for me! and what was it supposed I should do with them?
+  At this point the voice of the Frau Kranich was heard, clear and
+  malicious: &quot;It is a bargain: bring them in.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>At the same time the canvas cover of the wagon puffed outward,
+  giving issue to a heavy sigh.</p>
+
+  <p>The man went to a sort of great cage in lattice-work occupying the
+  back of the vehicle. Then he backed his wagon up to the sidewalk, and
+  we saw, sitting on the cage and framed by the oval of the
+  wagon-cover, a young woman of excellent features, but sadly pale. She
+  now held the two chickens in her lap, caressing them, laying their
+  heads against her cheek, and enwreathing them in the folds of her
+  great shawl. I could only close the bargain with the utmost speed, to
+  be safe from ridicule.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Your price?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Fix it yourself, sir,&quot; said the man, determined to
+  confuse me. &quot;You are doubtless thoroughly acquainted with
+  poultry.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;The nankeen&#8212;colored one,&quot; spoke up again the
+  bell-like and inexorable voice from the other window, &quot;is a
+  yellow Crèvecoeur, very well formed and lively-looking: the
+  slate-colored one is a Cochin-China, with only a few of the white
+  feathers lacking from the head. They are chef-d&#39;oeuvres, and are
+  worth fully forty francs apiece.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Only look, sir, at their claws and bills, see their tongues,
+  and observe under their wings: they are young, wholesome and of fine
+  strain&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He was running on when I stopped him: &quot;Here are a hundred
+  francs for you, brave man.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The patchwork blouse cut a caper, a look of lively joy shot from
+  the man&#39;s eyes, where a tear was gathering, and the wagon, from
+  its bursting cover, gave utterance to a sob.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why sell them,&quot; I asked, touched in spite of myself,
+  &quot;if you are so attached to them? Is the money indispensable to
+  you? I might possibly make an advance.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Ah, you are a real Christian&#8212;you are now,&quot; said
+  the honest Joliet, polishing his eyeball with his coat-cuff.
+  &quot;The good woman holds by them, it is true. Holy Virgin! it&#39;s
+  she that has raised them, and I may say brooded over them in the
+  coop. The eggs were for our salad when we had nothing better than
+  nettles and sorrel. But, day in and night in, we have no other
+  lodging than our wagon, and the wife is promising to give me a dolly;
+  and if we don&#39;t take out the cage, where will the cradle go,
+  sir?&quot;</p><a name="image-0020" id="image-0020"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0011_2.jpg"><img width="40%" src=
+    "images/0011_2.jpg" alt="THE PRESENT." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">THE PRESENT.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 140]</span>
+
+  <p>The calculation appeared reasonable. I received the birds, and
+  they were the heroes, in their boudoir under the piano, of that
+  night&#39;s conversazione.</p><a name="image-0021" id="image-0021">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0012_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0012_1.jpg" alt="THE CONVALESCENT." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">THE CONVALESCENT.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0022" id="image-0022"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0012_2.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0012_2.jpg" alt="THE DIVIDED BURDEN." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">THE DIVIDED BURDEN.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>How hard it is for a life cast upon the crowded shores of the Old
+  World to regain the place once lost is shown by the history of my
+  honest friend Joliet. Born in 1812, of an excellent family living
+  twenty miles from Versailles, the little fellow lost his mother
+  before he could talk to her. When he was ten years old, his father,
+  who had failed after some land speculations, and had turned all he
+  had into money, tossed him up to the lintel of the doorway, kissed
+  him, put a twenty-franc gold-piece into his little pocket, and went
+  away to seek his fortune in Louisiana: the son never heard of him
+  more. The lady-president of a charitable society, Mademoiselle Marx,
+  took pity on the abandoned child: she fed him on bones and
+  occasionally beat him. She was an ingenious and inventive creature,
+  and made her own cat-o&#39;-nine-tails: an inventor is for ever
+  demonstrating the merits of his implement. Soon, discovering that he
+  was thankless and unteachable, she made him enter, as youngest clerk,
+  the law-office of her admirer and attorney, Constabule. This
+  gentleman, not finding enough engrossing work to keep the lad out of
+  mischief, allowed him to sweep his rooms and blacken his boots.
+  Little Joliet, after giving a volatile air to a great many of his
+  employer&#39;s briefs by making paper chickens of them, showed his
+  imperfect sense of the favors done him by absconding. In fact, proud
+  and independent, he was brooding over boyish schemes of an honorable
+  living and a hasty fortune. He soon found that every profession
+  required an apprenticeship, and that an apprenticeship could only be
+  bought for money. He was obliged, then, to seek his grand fortune
+  through somewhat obscure avenues. If I were to follow my poor Joliet
+  through all his transmigrations and metempsychoses, as I have learned
+  them by his hints, allusions and confessions, I should show him by
+  turns working a rope ferry, where the stupid and indolent cattle,
+  whose business it is to draw men, were drawn by him; then
+  letter-carrier; supernumerary and call-boy in a village theatre;
+  road-mender on a vicinal route; then a beadle, a bell-ringer, and a
+  sub-teacher in an infant school, where he distributed his own
+  ignorance impartially amongst his little patrons at the end of a
+  stick; after this, big drum in the New Year&#39;s festivals, and
+  ready at a moment&#39;s opportunity to throw down the drumstick
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 141]</span> and plunge among the dancers,
+  for Joliet was a well-hinged lad, and the blood of nineteen years was
+  tingling in his heels. After fluttering thus from branch to branch,
+  like the poor birdling that cannot take its flight, discouraged by
+  his wretched attempts at life, he plunged straight before him, hoping
+  for nothing but a turn of luck, driving over the roads and fields,
+  lending a hand to the farmers, sleeping in stables and garrets, or
+  oftener in the open air; sometimes charitably sheltered in a kind
+  man&#39;s barn, and perhaps&#8212;oh bliss!&#8212;honestly employed
+  with him for a week or two; at others rudely repulsed as a
+  good-for-nothing and vagabond. Vagabond! That truly was his
+  profession now. He forgot the charms of a fixed abode. He came to
+  like his gypsy freedom, the open air and complete independence. He
+  laughed at his misery, provided it shifted its place
+  occasionally.</p><a name="image-0023" id="image-0023"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0013_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0013_1.jpg" alt="SHARE MY CUP." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">SHARE MY CUP.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0024" id="image-0024"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0013_2.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0013_2.jpg" alt="BREAKING STONES." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">BREAKING STONES.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>One day, when Hazard, his ungenerous guardian, seemed to have
+  quite forgotten him, he walked&#8212;on an empty stomach, as the
+  doctors say&#8212;past the lofty walls of a château. A card was
+  placed at the gate calling for additional hands at a job of digging.
+  Each workman, it was promised, had a right to a plate of soup before
+  beginning. This article tempted him. At the gate a lackey, laughing
+  in his face, told him the notice had been posted there six months:
+  workmen were no longer wanted. &quot;Wait, though,&quot; said the
+  servant, and in another minute gave the applicant a horse!&#8212;a
+  real, live horse in blood and bones, but in bones especially.
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 142]</span> &quot;There,&quot; said the
+  domestic, &quot;set a beggar on horseback and see him ride to the
+  devil!&quot; And, laughing with that unalloyed enjoyment which
+  one&#39;s own wit alone produces, he retired behind his
+  wicket.</p><a name="image-0025" id="image-0025"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0013_3.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0013_3.jpg" alt="SICKNESS AND COURTSHIP." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">SICKNESS AND COURTSHIP.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>The horse thus vicariously fulfilling the functions of a plate of
+  soup was a wretched glandered beast&#8212;not old, but shunned on
+  account of the contagious nature of his disease. Having received the
+  order to take him to be killed at the abattoir, monsieur the valet,
+  having better things to do, gave the commission to Joliet, with all
+  its perquisites.</p>
+
+  <p>Joliet did not kill the steed: he cured it. He tended it, he
+  drenched it, he saved it. By what remedy? I cannot tell. I have never
+  been a farrier, though Joliet himself made me perforce a poulterer.
+  Many a bit of knowledge is picked up by those who travel the great
+  roads. The sharp Bohemian, by playing at all trades, brushing against
+  gentry of all sorts and scouring all neighborhoods, becomes at length
+  a living cyclopaedia.</p><a name="image-0026" id="image-0026">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0014_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0014_1.jpg" alt="THE WAGON." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">THE WAGON.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Joliet, like Democritus and Plato, saw everything with his own
+  eyes, learned everything at first hand. He was a keen observer, and
+  in our interviews subsequent to the affair of the chickens I was more
+  than once surprised by the extent of his information and the subtlety
+  of his insight. His wits were tacked on to a number of remote
+  supports. In our day, when each science has become so complicated, so
+  obese, that a man&#39;s lifetime may be spent in exercising round one
+  of them, there are hardly any generalizers or observers fit to
+  estimate their relativity, except among the two classes called by the
+  world idlers and ignorants&#8212;the poets and the Bohemians.</p>
+
+  <p>Joliet, now having joined the ranks of the cavalry, found his
+  account in his new dignity. He became an orderly, a messenger. He
+  carried parcels, he transported straw and hay. If the burden was too
+  heavy for the poor convalescent, the man took his own portion with a
+  good grace, and the two mutually aided each other on the errand.
+  Thanks to his horse, the void left by his failure to learn a trade
+  was filled up by a daily and regular task: what was better, an
+  affection had crept into his heart. He loved his charge, and his
+  charge loved him.</p>
+
+  <p>This great hotel, the world, seemed to be promising entertainment
+  then for both man and beast, when an epoch of disaster came
+  along&#8212;a season of cholera. In the villages where Joliet&#39;s
+  business lay the doors just beginning to be <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  143]</span> hospitable were promptly shut against him. Where the good
+  townsmen had recognized Assistance in his person, they now saw
+  Contagion.</p><a name="image-0027" id="image-0027"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0015_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0015_1.jpg" alt="DINNER-TIME!" /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">DINNER-TIME!</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>If he had been a single man, he could have lain back and waited
+  for better times. But he now had two mouths to feed. He kissed his
+  horse and took a resolution.</p>
+
+  <p>He had never been a mendicant. &quot;Beggars don&#39;t go as
+  hungry as I have gone,&quot; said he. &quot;But what will you have?
+  Nobility obliges. My father was a gentleman. I have broken stones,
+  but never the <i>devoirs</i> of my order.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He left the groups of villages among which his new industry had
+  lain. The cholera was behind him: trouble, beggary perhaps, was
+  before him. As night was coming on, Joliet, listlessly leading his
+  horse, which he was too considerate to ride, saw upon the road a
+  woman whom he took in the obscurity for a farmer&#39;s wife of the
+  better class or a decent villager. For an introduction the
+  opportunity was favorable enough. On her side, the <i>quasi</i>
+  farmer&#39;s wife, seeing in the dusk an honest fellow dragging a
+  horse, took him for a &quot;gentleman&#39;s gentleman&quot; at the
+  least, and the two accosted each other with that easy facility of
+  which the French people have the secret. Each presented the other
+  with a hand and a frank smile.</p><a name="image-0028" id=
+  "image-0028"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0015_2.jpg"><img width="40%" src=
+    "images/0015_2.jpg" alt="FIDELITY." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">FIDELITY.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Joliet, whom I have erred perhaps in comparing to Democritus, was
+  nevertheless a laugher and a philosopher. But his grand ha-ha!
+  usually infectious, was not shared on this occasion. The wanderer
+  could not show much merriment. A sewing-woman with a capacity for
+  embroidery, her needle had given <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  144]</span> her support, but now a sudden warning of paralysis, and
+  symptoms of cholera added to that, had driven her almost to despair.
+  She was without home, friend or profession.</p><a name="image-0029"
+  id="image-0029"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0016_1.jpg"><img width="40%" src=
+    "images/0016_1.jpg" alt="A LITTLE VISITOR." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">A LITTLE VISITOR.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Joliet set her incontinently on horseback, and walked by her side
+  to a good village curé&#39;s two miles off&#8212;the same who had
+  assisted him to his first communion, and for whom he subsequently
+  became a beadle. The kind priest opened his arms to the man, his
+  heart to the woman, his stable to the horse. For his second patient
+  my Bohemian set in motion all his stock of curative ideas. In a month
+  she was well, and the curé no longer had three pensioners, for of two
+  of them he made one.</p>
+
+  <p>Two poverties added may make a competence. Monsieur and Madame
+  Joliet were good and willing. The man began to wear a strange not
+  unbecoming air of solidity and good morals. The girls now saluted him
+  respectfully when he passed through a village.</p>
+
+  <p>One thing, however, in the midst of his proud honeymoon perplexed
+  him much. Hardly married, and over head and ears in love, he knew not
+  how to invite his bride to some wretched garret, himself deserting
+  her to resume his former life in the open air. To give up the latter
+  seemed like losing existence itself.</p>
+
+  <p>One morning, as he asked himself the difficult question, a pair of
+  old wheels at the door of a cartwright seemed of their own accord to
+  resolve his perplexity. He bought them, the payment to be made in
+  labor: for a week he blew the wheelwright&#39;s bellows. The wheels
+  were his own: to make a wagon was now the affair of a few old boards
+  and a gypsy&#39;s inventiveness.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus was conceived that famous establishment where, for several
+  years, lived the independent monarch and his spouse, rolling over the
+  roads, circulating through the whole belt of villages around Paris,
+  and carrying in their ambulant home, like the Cossacks, their
+  utensils, their bed, their oven, their all.</p>
+
+  <p>From town to town they carried packages, boxes and articles of
+  barter. At dinner-time the van was rolled under a tree. The lady of
+  the house kindled a fire in the portable stove behind a hedge or in a
+  ditch. The hen-coop was opened, and the sage seraglio with their
+  sultan prudently pecked about for food. At the first appeal they
+  re-entered their cage.</p><a name="image-0030" id="image-0030">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0016_2.jpg"><img width="40%" src=
+    "images/0016_2.jpg" alt="FRANCINE." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">FRANCINE.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>At the same appeal came flying up the dog of the establishment, a
+  most <span class="pagenum">[pg 145]</span> piteous-looking griffin,
+  disheveled, moulted, staring out of one eye, lame and wild. For
+  devotion and good sense his match could be found nowhere. Like his
+  horse, his wife, his house and the pins in his sleeve, Joliet had
+  picked the collie up on the road.</p>
+
+  <p>The arrival of a tiny visitor to the Bohemian&#39;s address made a
+  change necessary. Little Francine&#39;s dowry was provided by my
+  humorous acquisition of the yellow and slate-colored chickens.</p>
+
+  <p>With his savings and my banknote Joliet determined to have a fixed
+  residence. He succeeded of course. The walls, the windows, the doors,
+  everything but the garden-patch, he picked up along the
+  roads.</p><a name="image-0031" id="image-0031"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0017_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0017_1.jpg" alt=
+    "&#39;DON&#39;T WRING MY HEART!&#39;" /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">&#39;DON&#39;T WRING MY HEART!&#39;</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Buried in eglantine and honeysuckle, soon no one would suspect the
+  home-made character of Joliet&#39;s château. It became the centre of
+  my botanizing excursions. Francine grew into a fair, slim girl, like
+  the sweetest and most innocent of Gavarni&#39;s sketches, and sold
+  flowers to the passers-by.</p>
+  <hr />
+
+  <p>Such were the souvenirs I had of this brave tavern-keeper in his
+  old capacity of roadster and tramp. Now, after an hiatus of years, I
+  found him before me in a different character at the beginning of my
+  roundabout trips to Marly.</p>
+
+  <p>But what had become of my favorite little rose-merchant?</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Francine?&quot; asked Joliet briskly, as if he was wondering
+  whom I could mean by such a name. &quot;You mean my wife? Poor thing!
+  She is dead.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am speaking of your daughter, Father Joliet.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, my daughter, my girl Francine? She went to live with her
+  godmother. It was ten years ago.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And you have not seen her since?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes&#8212;yes&#8212;two years back. She has gone
+  again.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;To her godmother?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why so?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Her godmother would not receive her. Don&#39;t wring my
+  heart so, sir!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p class="author">EDWARD STRAHAN.</p>
+
+  <p class="center">[TO BE CONTINUED.]</p><a name="tyrol" id="tyrol">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>OUR HOME IN THE TYROL.</h2><span class="pagenum">[pg 146]</span>
+  <a name="image-0032" id="image-0032"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0018_1.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0018_1.jpg" alt="VIEW OF TAUFERS VALLEY." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">VIEW OF TAUFERS VALLEY.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="tyrolchvii" id="tyrolchvii"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER VII.</h3>
+
+  <p>We left the Hof one August Friday&#8212;we were not
+  superstitious&#8212;a goodly company, sufficient to freight the
+  rumbling old stage-wagon which jolted daily between Bruneck and
+  Taufers, a distance of nine miles. At this village the sedater
+  portion of the party were to settle down with books, pencils and
+  drawing-paper until the Alpine visit should have been paid.</p>
+
+  <p>The valley of Taufers, running northward with a grand vista to the
+  north-west of the vast Zillerthal snow-fields, suggests at a distance
+  the idea of a stern, joyless district. When in the broader Pusterthal
+  the sunshine floods upland plain and slope, this important but narrow
+  tributary valley lies steeped in its gloomy shade, the dark sides of
+  the Sambock frowning grimly on the opposite shadowy Tesselberg.
+  Great, therefore, was the surprise of some of the party to find, as
+  we drove along, instead of melancholy solitude, prosperous villages
+  basking in sunshine, whilst little children skipped merrily, and men
+  and women worked amongst the golden stooks as if enjoying the labor
+  of their hands. Yes, strange to say, effulgent sunshine everywhere on
+  acre and meadow, and slanting down upon a wayside cottage garden,
+  where a freshly-painted Christ lay drying between tall sunflowers.
+  This cottage seemed the only shadow in this unexpectedly bright
+  picture, for, occupied by a religious image-maker, crucifixes and
+  wooden saints peeped wholesale out of the windows. Is it a want of
+  sensibility in these poor Tyrolese peasants which causes them to
+  cling tenaciously to such frightful material forms of religion,
+  making them give prominence to every conceivable sign of sacred
+  sorrow and suffering? But the jolting stage-wagon allowed us no time
+  to analyze this painful, ever-recurring feature of the Tyrol. When we
+  next looked up we saw above us, on a wooded crag, a square gray
+  tower, which, once a stronghold, appears, as if exhausted with old
+  age, to be tottering into the midst of lesser ruins.</p>
+
+  <p>It was Neuhaus, once a fortress of the rigid old barons of Tuvers.
+  Hugo, the sixth lord, died there in 1309, and in the chapel, which
+  still stands, mass is said at stated periods for the salvation of his
+  soul and the souls of his relations. The whole place would
+  undoubtedly have been given over to the owls and the bats had not two
+  adjacent springs&#8212;one of iron, the other of chalk and
+  alum&#8212;been considered, a quarter of a century since, either as
+  preventives or as cures for the cholera, then raging. A chalet was
+  therefore planted on the rocks between the chapel and the castle, and
+  a bath-house opened, which would probably be still much frequented on
+  account of the beauty of the situation were the bath-owner only a
+  little more attentive to the comfort of his humble guests.</p>
+
+  <p>The valley, apparently so gloomy, proved not only cheerful, but
+  full of romance and old-world memories. Other castles there were,
+  perched gracefully on their crags; and thus, much sooner than we had
+  anticipated, we found ourselves stopping at the Post in Taufers.
+  Rather Sand in Taufers, the single appellation being used chiefly for
+  the parent church, which, with a mortuary chapel and a house for the
+  &quot;young and sick,&quot; stands apart. Sand and Moritz, two
+  prosperous villages, cluster with this group of buildings at the head
+  of the valley, gathering like fiefs at the foot of the fine old
+  castle, still one of the grandest feudal remains in ruin-bestrewn
+  Tyrol. A third village, Müklen, though quite distinct, lies
+  sufficiently near to deserve being included in the circle.</p>
+
+  <p>The Post, in prospect of the increase of custom occasioned by the
+  Pusterthal railway, had enlarged its borders during the past winter.
+  Nor had it been deceived in the speculation, for, although only one
+  up-and-down train in the day crawls along the valley, the news of the
+  comfortable inn in the midst of beautiful scenery had already brought
+  custom enough. Thus all our powers of persuasion were lost upon the
+  handsome sister of the young wirth, a noted beauty of the
+  neighborhood. &quot;Their house was full already. Nine guests, who
+  had never sent word beforehand, were quite out of the question, but
+  the Herrschaft could be accommodated at the <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  147]</span> Elephant opposite, which was related to the
+  Post.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>So, crossing over to the Elephant, the house being entirely empty,
+  we found space and cleanliness, and might have found perfect comfort
+  withal, had not the landlord and landlady proved in a perpetual state
+  of somnolency, their few waking intervals being barely sufficient for
+  the supply of the simplest wants. In spite of these and other
+  unsatisfactory auspices, such as the tea being served in a
+  soup-tureen, the stayers voted to remain at the Elephant in our
+  absence, making up for all inward deficiencies by outdoor
+  enjoyment.</p>
+
+  <p>A country clown with an honest face, Ignaz by name, agreed for a
+  trifle to carry our bundles and ample provision of food to the Olm.
+  He made a serious matter of it, however, when he pertinaciously
+  insisted on four in the morning being the hour for starting. The
+  dispute finally ended by the agreement to allow Ignaz to carry our
+  belongings at the hour he chose, seeing that all the village was
+  ready to take an affidavit as to his honesty, and we being allowed
+  the same freedom of choice for ourselves. All having thus been
+  comfortably arranged, we sallied forth for an evening stroll.</p>
+
+  <p>A turn in the quiet village street soon revealed the great massive
+  castle on its plateau of rock&#8212;shattered towers, broken
+  battlements, oriel and bay windows jutting out here and there, its
+  bulwarks running down the precipice, but not, as formerly, shutting
+  in the narrow gorge leading into the Ahrnthal, a busy, populous
+  valley, closed in its turn by the snow-clad bulk of the Tauern, down
+  which, on the farther side, the noted Kriml waterfall plunges.
+  Remembering, from a visit paid to the castle in the former year, that
+  an easy winding road, shaded by trees and commanding splendid
+  mountain-views, led through the fortifications by the back of the
+  castle to the great gateway, we chose it in preference to the steep,
+  perpendicular path, which, always taken by the natives, led equally
+  to the drawbridge and main entrance. To our extreme regret, however,
+  we soon found <span class="pagenum">[pg 148]</span> our course
+  impeded by the huge trunks of mighty pine trees lying in a perfect
+  pell-mell above and on both sides of us. A glance up the hillside
+  showed scores more of these slain giants. To proceed was almost
+  hopeless, and we were forced to rest upon some timber and mark our
+  future course between piles oozing with turpentine.</p>
+
+  <p>Whilst we were engaged in our calculations, an old crone, who had
+  been groping about in the crevices for chips and sticks, stopped, and
+  seeing us thus penned in by tree boles, eyed us with a compassionate
+  look. &quot;Ja, ja!&quot; said she, &quot;with fallen trees all
+  jumbled together it is hard for the Herrschaft to move on; but
+  it&#39;s harder for us poor folks, who have seen the trees growing
+  here ever since we were born, to hear day and night the axe going
+  hack, hack, and the trees come thudding down. Sixteen strong
+  Welschers from a distance do the work: they knew well enough a
+  Taufern would have looked long at the sixers (ten-kreuzer pieces)
+  before he would have shorn the mighty forests. Look you!&quot; and
+  she pointed to the sky. &quot;As far as you can see they are
+  felling.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>We looked, and sure enough the vast woods that clothed the lofty
+  mountainsides were being ruthlessly cleared away. We suggested that a
+  protest should be made.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, na, na! The woods are none of ours. The graf de Ferraris
+  too has sold the estate to a gesellschaft from Vienna. They care
+  nothing for the castle, but are hungry for timber. The count lives a
+  long way off, and does not feel it, but it must eat the heart of his
+  aged lady mother to the fibres&#8212;she lives in the
+  village&#8212;to know that foreigners are sweeping down masses of
+  trees by wholesale&#8212;trees that have always kept the poor
+  man&#39;s noodles boiling. And where are the planks to come from for
+  our houses, our barns, our stables? And how can the cattle be kept
+  from straying without fences of wood? Then, too, avalanches of snow
+  and of stones will fall, and maybe overwhelm the village. Thanks to
+  the Mother of God! they will drop on my grave, but, Lord Jesus, the
+  children and the children&#39;s children!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Having given us these sad scraps of information, and heaving a big
+  sigh, the poor old soul lifted up her bundle of chips and went
+  fumbling forward over her stumbling-blocks.</p>
+
+  <p>Sad and true was the picture which she had drawn. Nor does it,
+  alas! belong exclusively to Taufers, but to the whole Tyrol. In many
+  instances the people are themselves eager for this reckless clearing.
+  They hope thereby to secure more pasturage, the feeding and rearing
+  of cattle being the great idea of wealth to the Tyroler. So they make
+  ready money of their timber, which now in the form of masts floats on
+  the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal. The Venetians, requiring
+  timber, have turned the once beautiful, richly-wooded Dalmatia into a
+  dreary, barren land. In the Tyrol it is not generally foreigners, but
+  the natives, who unhesitatingly sweep away woods, which, causing
+  grass and plants to grow, have enabled human habitations to be
+  erected on spots that would otherwise be but dreary wildernesses, the
+  battle-fields of chilling winds and scorching sunshine. The precious
+  timber, which like refuse they cart into the clumsy yawning craters
+  called stoves, or else sell out of the country for economy so called,
+  might not only supply the land for centuries with a proper amount of
+  fuel, either as wood or charcoal, but bring prosperity to many a
+  sequestered village if turned into tools and kitchen utensils, whilst
+  still leaving thousands of trees for export. &quot;The supply has
+  never failed yet,&quot; say the Tyrolese: &quot;why should we replant
+  forests to have to cut them down again, when the ground, too, is good
+  for grass or corn?&quot; So the axe lies ruthlessly at the root of
+  every tree, for a heavy reckoning hereafter to the Tyroler.</p>
+
+  <p>With a weighing and balancing over every step which we took worthy
+  of a diplomatist, we finally stood upon the drawbridge of the castle.
+  Here the savage customs of the rude days in which it was built
+  immediately impress the beholder. Traces remain of the ponderous iron
+  portcullis, heavy wooden bars, arrow-holes, and slits in the masonry
+  for the pouring of boiling water or oil upon adverse knight or lordly
+  freebooter. A steep path leads through two great entrance-gates into
+  the large inner court, which is erected upon the virgin rock. A roof
+  of old wooden shingles shelters the well, and ancient rotting timber
+  mingles everywhere with the impervious stone in the massive buildings
+  of the castle, conveying a sense of weakness and decay in the midst
+  of the strongest durability.</p>
+
+  <p>Not only was the old castle dismantled, but apparently entirely
+  abandoned this summer evening. We were preparing to return without
+  seeing the interior when a little maiden arrived from the village,
+  who with flushed face and timid mien drew the castle key from under a
+  big stone, stood on tiptoe and turned the heavy lock, and the door
+  creaking on its hinges we were left to wander at our will through old
+  wainscoted rooms in the dreamy twilight. No spirit of modern
+  restoration had ever reached them: they were allowed to remain just
+  as inconvenient, but also just as quaint, as on the day of their
+  erection. There were gloomy recesses enough, but there were likewise
+  graceful carvings, mottoes, rare tracery and wood-work; while,
+  strange to say, in several chambers grotesque wooden birds were
+  suspended from the ceiling like malformed ducks, conveying at first
+  no idea of the Holy Dove which the old lords had desired to
+  symbolize, yet probably in those unquiet days their best conception
+  of this emblem of peace.</p>
+
+  <p>The barons not only fought, squabbled and feasted, but prayed too
+  in their fashion; so we came upon the chapel, disfigured by barbaric
+  effigies, tawdry ornamentation and flimsy modern artificial flowers.
+  It is still used for the weekly mass which, as at Neuhaus, is read
+  here for the peace of the turbulent lords of Tuvers. Still, within
+  the memory of man a hermit occupied some narrow chambers adjoining
+  the chapel. He had retired amongst these ruins of transitory
+  greatness to warn his fellow-creatures against carnal passions,
+  prayed <span class="pagenum">[pg 149]</span> for the dead and shrived
+  the living. The old anchorite has passed, we hope, into heavenly
+  repose, but cinders, which may almost be called holy ashes, still lie
+  scattered on his deserted little hearth.</p>
+
+  <p>The banqueting-hall, a fine though low room, supported on solid
+  rounded arches, contains innumerable flour-and corn-bins, which,
+  though dating from the Middle Ages, are still in perfect condition.
+  Here knight and baron caroused, here mummers have played and bears
+  have danced, whilst sword and spur clanked upon the rude stone floor.
+  In the ladies&#39; bower above many a minne-singer has struck his
+  lyre. Nay, Oswald von Wolkenstein, a prince amongst troubadours,
+  wearing his golden chain and brilliant orders, has brought tears from
+  many a gentle eye as he sang to his harp his pathetic elegies, the
+  cruelty of Sabina his lady, and his adventures in England, Spain and
+  Persia. He was a noble, courtly knight, conversing in French,
+  Moorish, Catalonian, Castilian, German, Latin, Wendisch, Lombardic
+  and Russian; and his bones lie in the great cloister of Neustift, not
+  half a day&#39;s journey from Taufers.</p>
+
+  <p>How often, too, has the shrill sound of the bugle called to feats
+  of arms in the court, to hawking and hunting in valley and
+  mountain-forest! How many a crusader against Turk, infidel,
+  <i>Prussian</i> and <i>Hussite</i> has crossed the wooden drawbridge
+  upon his war-horse! Yes, and what an excitement in the noble Catholic
+  household when in the adjoining Ahrnthal the peasants, becoming
+  enamored of Lutheranism, rose in the peasant war of 1525! How darkly,
+  too, must they have painted the fanatical bauer Barthlmä Duregger of
+  St. Peter&#39;s in the Ahrnthal, who, after being taken prisoner,
+  escaped near their postern gate to circulate threats of fire and
+  murder throughout the neighborhood, vowing to reduce Bruneck to
+  ashes! Reappearing with a band of twelve poachers and twenty-six
+  laborers, and accompanied by Peter Baszler of Antholz, he robbed and
+  plundered the clergy, stripping the worthy priest Andreas Spaat of
+  all his worldly goods, so that <span class="pagenum">[pg 150]</span>
+  he died in the utmost poverty. Although much blood was shed in their
+  pursuit, this lawless, misguided man and his band were never taken.
+  Great as their sin would naturally seem to the noble family at the
+  castle, no less lamentable and equally worthy of torture and death
+  would the heretics of Bruneck appear. About the same time the
+  sacrilegious books, as they were called, of Zwingli and Luther were
+  sold there openly, conventicle hymns were sung in the streets, and
+  the priest Stephan Gobi preached against the holy doctrine of
+  confession and the invocation of saints; whilst the schoolmaster
+  Bartholomew Huber, though he could not find time to teach the
+  children the catechism, puzzled their innocent minds with
+  Virgil&#39;s <i>Georgics</i> and Cicero&#39;s <i>Letters</i>. Toward
+  the end of the sixteenth century the heresy was suppressed, when the
+  lords and ladies of Taufers Castle sang no doubt a triumphant Te Deum
+  in their chapel. The inmates were not then barons of Tuvers proper,
+  for the title having early become extinct the castle passed into many
+  noble hands, sometimes reaching those of royalty. Such a booty never
+  remained unoccupied, until, coming into the possession of Hieronymus,
+  count of Ferraris, in 1685, his descendants gradually permitted it to
+  fall into ruin, its evil days culminating under the present count,
+  who sold the estate a few years since to a speculating company, who
+  merely value it for the timber. The rooms which still remain
+  habitable are tenanted by peasants and by the sixteen pitiless
+  wood-cutters.</p>
+
+  <p>Seven o&#39;clock the next morning found Frau Anna,
+  E&#8212;&#8212;, the two Margarets and our good Moidel bound full of
+  life and spirits for the Eder Olm. We had soon left the village of
+  Moritz behind us, and were climbing a shady wood-path, when we met a
+  peasant-woman with her daughter, and she exclaimed, &quot;What!
+  Herrschaft going to Rein! What big eyes they will make over the
+  stones!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Sure enough, very big eyes were made by some of the Herrschaft.
+  After ascending to a meadow amphitheatre, then resting in a sunny
+  wood, redolent of pine odors, near the foundations of a ruined
+  stronghold, the Burgkofel, we came upon a realm of gigantic boulders.
+  Some, in the shape of huge granite slabs, formed a rude, continuous
+  broadway; others, scarred and furrowed, but softened and beautified
+  by golden and silver lichen, torn by storms and snow from the
+  cyclopean mountain-walls, were scattered topsy-turvy on either hand;
+  many had become lodged in the river, where they carried on a steady
+  defence against the tumultuous Giessbach, which, having its rise in
+  mountains ten thousand feet high, leapt, foaming milky white, over
+  and between them, forming a long series of bold cascades for a
+  distance of half a dozen miles. The road continued by the boisterous
+  rapids, hemmed in on the other hand by woods and threatening
+  mountain-walls. The thunder of the waters prevented continuous
+  conversation: we therefore admired in silence the grandeur of the
+  scene and the magnificent glimpses which slight curves in the road
+  afforded ever and anon of neighboring mountain-peaks and wooded
+  valleys below.</p>
+
+  <p>No carriage of any kind can ascend this road. It would be
+  difficult indeed for horses; nevertheless, the herds of cattle
+  traverse it in the journey to and from the Olm, their hoofs being
+  able to find foothold on the rock. Moidel said that the cattle were
+  so delighted to go to the Alps for the summer after the winter&#39;s
+  confinement in the stall that they made the journey with a kind of
+  joyful impatience, going on still more eagerly as they approached the
+  end. &quot;Not so, however,&quot; added Moidel, &quot;with the pigs.
+  I have often sat and cried on these rocks at their perverse ways when
+  I have had to bring them up. They would only stand still and grunt
+  while I begged and prayed and pushed. When they reached the top a new
+  spirit soon seized them: they were here, there and
+  everywhere&#8212;in a week&#39;s time leaping like goats, as if they
+  had taken to wine.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>We made the climb slowly, and noon was long passed when we
+  reached the saw-mills, the first houses in the mountain parish of St.
+  Wolfgang or Rein. The busy, purring mills stood on the edge of the
+  Sarine at the extremity of a flat mountain-valley intersected by
+  innumerable brooks, which, continually overflowing, turn it
+  constantly into a lake. The grass had been under water a week
+  previously, but was now sufficiently dry for us to sit and rest.
+  Whilst we were so doing, Ignaz, our <i>träger</i>, stood before us,
+  his empty basket on his back.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;The barn is swept and garnished in readiness for the
+  Herrschaft, and their bundles and parcels are arranged there in
+  beautiful order&#8212;many bundles, and far heavier than they looked
+  last night.&quot; Ignaz, however, was of opinion that though the pay
+  was small the gentry meant well by him, and therefore he had not
+  scrupled to take the food the worthy farmer&#39;s wife had offered
+  him, leaving the Christian soul to be repaid by the gentlefolks when
+  they came. And, moreover, he had advised the landlord at Rein that
+  the gentry were passing through, so that they should not fail to find
+  eatables ready, seeing hunger and weariness were best consoled by
+  food.</p>
+
+  <p>After which communication we regarded Ignaz as much less a clown
+  than he looked. Pushing forward, we soon saw the little inn shining
+  forth a mile farther up the valley&#8212;a small white chalet, with
+  the pink-checked feather beds hanging to air in the upper
+  gallery.</p>
+
+  <p>Moidel looked grave over the dinner which the interposition of
+  Ignaz had prepared for us. &quot;The place is called Rein
+  (clean),&quot; she said, &quot;but it is none of the cleanest. A Graf
+  once reached Rein, and he thought it so pastoral that he asked at the
+  inn for a drink of new milk, but the landlord shook his head and
+  asked for other orders, seeing there was none in the house. Then the
+  Graf said he would take cream, but the landlord shook his head and
+  asked for other orders. Fresh eggs? Yes, the landlord said there were
+  eggs, and begged him to step into the zechstube until they were
+  boiled. When they came they made the very room smell, and the Graf in
+  disgust ordered wine. This was speedily forthcoming, but with so
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 151]</span> dirty a glass that the Graf,
+  making a long face, angrily called for the reckoning and
+  departed.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>After Moidel&#39;s tale, and certain recollections of our own
+  concerning the little hostel last year, we all approached the house
+  with very humble expectations. The wirth, already on the lookout,
+  received Moidel and two of the party as old friends, and hearing no
+  nay he marshaled us up stairs, and flinging open a bed-room door,
+  looked proudly triumphant as even Moidel uttered an exclamation of
+  surprise.</p>
+
+  <p>Whether constant reminders from his neighbors of the Graf&#39;s
+  unfortunate visit, or a wave of civilization from the Pusterthal had
+  reached this secluded mountain-inn, certain it is that twelve months
+  had wrought a marvelous change here. Whilst the rest of the house
+  remained rough, dirty and primitive, the landlord had devoted all his
+  powers of taste and judgment upon this upper chamber. Leaning
+  complacently against the door, he received our congratulations on the
+  pretty ceiling and walls of carved deal wainscot, on the grand new
+  bed, and the bouquet of fresh Edelweiss in a wash-basin, but showed
+  surprise that the fiery tigers and gliding serpents which in a couple
+  of gilt frames adorned the walls received no flattering comments from
+  our lips. He next displayed a visitors&#39; book, containing already
+  some half dozen names, watching closely the astonishment it should
+  produce in us as he prepared the table for our meal. But even the
+  study of the names had to be interrupted, for he had purchased some
+  steel knives and forks, which were, he considered, to bring him great
+  credit and reputation; nor could he complete his work without hinting
+  at the superiority of his table-cloth and napkins. Fortunately, a
+  call from below that the pancakes were ready enabled us to have a
+  little laugh to ourselves. Linen being used in all peasant houses, he
+  had discarded it as vulgar, wearing himself an unbleached cotton
+  shirt with an incipient frill, and supplying his guests with a
+  table-cloth and napkins of the same material from an empty
+  wash-basin.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 152]</span>
+
+  <p>We had already discussed two dishes of hot pancakes&#8212;really
+  worthy of commendation&#8212;enjoyed an hour&#39;s rest, taken
+  coffee, and were rising to depart, when the landlady appeared with a
+  hop, skip and jump. She was a lively, voluble little woman, who,
+  though she had attired herself for us in two enormous cloth
+  petticoats, a stuff bodice and yards of Bohemian lace in frills and
+  ruffles, by way of displaying the wealth of her wardrobe, bobbed and
+  curtseyed as if set on wires. Great was the difficulty, between the
+  amusing, friendly wife and the husband proud of her and his inn,
+  either to pay our bill or get away. They declared there was no hurry
+  about the reckoning, and pressed us still to stay. Seeing our
+  resolution, the wirth with a sigh produced a brown painted board from
+  under his arm, a piece of chalk from his pocket, made the bill, gave
+  us change out of a tea-cup, and amidst reiterated invitations to
+  return if not satisfied with the barn, we tore ourselves away, their
+  friendly good-byes and good wishes floating after us.</p><a name=
+  "tyrolchviii" id="tyrolchviii"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER VIII.</h3>
+
+  <p>We now left the Reinthal and turned into the side-valley of
+  Bachernthal. It was the 17th of August, but the little plots of corn
+  still waved long and green, giving a feeling of early summer. We were
+  in a perfect paradise of an Alpine valley. Before us the great
+  near-lying mountains, the princely Hoch Gall and the Gross Lengstein
+  Glacier, shone like molten silver against the intense blue sky,
+  whilst the Schnebige Nock rose pure and isolated across the narrow
+  valley, suggesting to one of the party the simile of the
+  swan-breasted maiden of Northern mythology.</p>
+
+  <p>After passing several chalets we came to that of the Eder Olm. It
+  belonged to the Hofbauer, and was occupied by his <i>pächter</i> or
+  bailiff the year round. Here, too, was the barn which we were to use
+  as our night-quarters during our stay. It was a great wooden
+  building, divided into three compartments, one being two-thirds
+  filled with hay, on which we were intended to sleep. It was true that
+  Josef the pächter had succeeded by means of sweeping and a little
+  arrangement in making the barn really attractive; but, alas! alas! we
+  had hardly begun preparing our beds when the horrible discovery was
+  made that under the surface the hay was soaking wet. Josef could
+  hardly be blamed for not telling us, as in the Tyrol the people
+  regard lying on wet or dewy grass as a natural system of
+  hydropathy.</p>
+
+  <p>We had not shawls and cloaks enough to construct beds upon the
+  barn floor, and the pächter&#39;s house, though substantial, was but
+  a dark den, already stuffed full with wife and children. Must we,
+  then, really return to the inn at Rein with its ornamental snakes and
+  lions?</p>
+
+  <p>It was dusk out of doors, but pitch dark within, save for the dim,
+  uncertain light of a horn lantern, and, all regularly worn out with
+  our ten miles&#39; climb, we sighed for bed. It was futile, however,
+  simply to exchange expressions of dismay; so, groping about, to our
+  joy we alighted suddenly upon several bundles of clean, fresh straw
+  stowed away in the farthest recess of the opposite division. In a
+  trice a dangerous corn-chopping machine had been removed, the straw
+  loosened and spread out, and, covered with shawls and water-proof, it
+  formed as comfortable a great bed of Ware as ever weary bones could
+  desire. Forming a row, the tired wanderers were soon sleeping the
+  sleep of five just persons, the sound of several neighboring
+  waterfalls soothing rather than disturbing slumber.</p>
+
+  <p>In the early morning it was put to the vote and carried that eider
+  down and spring mattresses were useless innovations after luxurious
+  straw, and that whilst some benighted people might regard us as
+  having been in purgatory, we had been in paradise, and hoped to be
+  there again within twenty-four hours. And the barn, too! How poor in
+  comparison seemed a conventional house on this sweet Sunday morning!
+  We had prudently filled all the large apertures in the eaves and
+  wooden sides the night before <span class="pagenum">[pg 153]</span>
+  with hay, but there were plenty of crevices for the sun to peep in
+  by, whilst with wafts of mountain-air it entered freely by the
+  folding barn door as Moidel gently passed in and out, on breakfast
+  matters intent. Corn- and grain-bins, sieves, flails and ladders
+  pleased us better for the nonce than formal furniture, although none
+  the less convenient did we find the great square wooden table and the
+  benches which the pächter had thoughtfully placed on the
+  threshing-floor which formed the central division.</p><a name=
+  "image-0033" id="image-0033"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0031_1.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0031_1.jpg" alt="SCHLOSS TAUFERS." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">SCHLOSS TAUFERS.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>On one side of the barn a small room had been boarded off. It
+  contained empty milk-pans, ox-bells, old ropes and cords, together
+  with two chests and two pairs of men&#39;s strong leather boots.
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 154]</span> This, Moidel suggested, should
+  be used as joint store-room and dressing-room. Fortunately, however,
+  we had applied it to neither requirement, when a singular occurrence
+  took place which might be classed as a ghost-story at night or an
+  optical delusion by day. The great barn-door quietly opened, Moidel
+  having gone out and shut it, and two figures&#8212;one in soiled
+  homespun shirt and <i>loden</i> trousers, wooden clogs, with a little
+  black leather skull-cap on his head and a pipe in his mouth; the
+  other older, in leather breeches, brown knitted worsted jacket, and
+  an old black silk handkerchief tied round his neck&#8212;glided in.
+  We could have sworn that they were Jakob and the old senner Franz,
+  but no response came to our exclamation of recognition, and in a
+  second they had vanished into the said little room, where all
+  remained, however, as silent as before. Two of us now began even to
+  doubt, but the other two were positive, that figures had floated in.
+  Ten minutes later the mystery was solved by the identical Jakob,
+  attended by Franz, reappearing from the chamber, not, however, in the
+  hard-working dress in which they had entered, but in full Sunday
+  array, the leather boots upon their feet and broad-brimmed,
+  flower-bedecked beavers in their hands. Poor Jakob! sore must have
+  been his perplexity when, in the hope of slinking into his
+  wardrobe-room unobserved, we had come open-eyed upon him in his
+  soiled array. At the cost of apparent rudeness, arising chiefly from
+  shyness, he had silently disappeared, the old servant following his
+  example. Now, however, they could both freely welcome us to the Olm,
+  expressing the pleasure it would give them to accompany us to the
+  senner huts on their return with Moidel at ten o&#39;clock from
+  church.</p>
+
+  <p>This was Jakob&#39;s first introduction to Frau Anna and
+  E&#8212;&#8212;. He eyed them closely and silently for some minutes;
+  then said, &quot;I like them: they look good!&quot; and so they went
+  to mass.</p>
+
+  <p>The barn and chalet called Eder formed part of the Hofbauer&#39;s
+  lower Alp, where a little later in the season the cattle were brought
+  down for several weeks of pasturage before they descended to their
+  winter home. We were now bound in company with the returning
+  church-goers for the group of senner huts belonging to the larger
+  still more elevated tract, which the Hofbauer rented in company with
+  five other bauers. Leaving the meadows very shortly after quitting
+  our night-quarters, where we seemed already in the very bosom of the
+  snow-mountains, we began again to ascend through a wood of primeval
+  pines and fir trees, long gray moss hanging from their hoary branches
+  like patriarchs&#39; beards, whilst round their stems, amidst a chaos
+  of rocks, were spread the softest carpets of moss and lichen. In the
+  centre of the wood, where an opening covered with the finest turf
+  afforded an agreeable resting-place, as usual a cross&#8212;that most
+  familiar object in a Tyrolese landscape&#8212;had been erected. In
+  this instance, more striking and melancholy than ever, for this
+  general point of attraction to peasants seemed here, in the very
+  heart of the mountains, to be forgotten and despised. Small in size,
+  as if wood had been grudged in this land of wood, the writing on the
+  cross erased by storms, the dissevered arms and limbs were painfully
+  scattered on the sward below&#8212;type indeed as of a powerless
+  Saviour unable to save or to bless. Indeed, so offensive and
+  discordant did this pitiable emblem appear, and in such mocking
+  contrast to the sublimity of the scene, that we spoke of it to
+  Moidel, as, laden with our eatables, she came slowly up behind.
+  &quot;Ah,&quot; she replied, &quot;it is not that the cross is left
+  unregarded, nor is it age which has thus damaged it, but the wild
+  storms and lasting snows. A new cross is often erected, but it has
+  not long been exposed before it is again utterly defaced. The
+  herdsmen and senners, however, see the meaning under it, and it keeps
+  them straight, Fräulein.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Well-intentioned but slow of apprehension, these poor peasants
+  cling to a carved Christ, and feel a horrible alarm, as if you were
+  offering them a vacant creed, when you touch upon anything
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 155]</span> higher. Thus Moidel, though
+  very intelligent, looked somewhat grave and quiet until the woods
+  opened and she had to point out the senner huts. These were rude but
+  very picturesque log cabins, built in a clearing amongst a steep
+  chaos of rocks, with the glaciers and the majestic peak of the Hoch
+  Gall shining above all. Five were dwelling-houses, the rest
+  cattle-sheds and barns: our people&#39;s hut was the highest of the
+  group, and we had a long climb over the boulders before we reached
+  it.</p>
+
+  <p>Seeing us approaching, good old Franz, who had gone forward in
+  advance, fastened on his apron and fried marvelous monograms and
+  circles of cream batter, of which we, the guests, were soon partaking
+  in the best room, otherwise the store-room and dairy. The hut was
+  divided into two compartments, both entered by adjoining doors from
+  the outside. Seated on milking-stools in somewhat dangerous proximity
+  to pans of rich cream, balls of butter and cheeses, the salt and
+  meal-bin served as our dining table. In the kitchen, Franz, resting
+  from his successful culinary labors, sat with Moidel and Jakob by the
+  hearth, where huge blocks of stone kept the fire in compass, the
+  smoke curling out of the door, and enjoyed in return some of our ham,
+  wine and almond cake.</p><a name="image-0034" id="image-0034">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0034_1.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0034_1.jpg" alt="HAPPY SOULS IN PARADISE." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">HAPPY SOULS IN PARADISE.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>The hut was close quarters, even for the two ordinary inmates:
+  there were, however, innumerable contrivances for stowing away all
+  kinds of useful things, besides notches in the thick wooden partition
+  for hands and feet when at night they crept to their burrow of hay
+  under the low eaves. Everything with the exception of the old stone
+  floor was scrupulously clean: without, the pigs dabbled in the mire
+  between the rugged rocks, and nettles grew, but beyond, mountains,
+  woods and illimitable space were spread in uninterrupted
+  fullness.</p>
+
+  <p>Resting after dinner at a little distance from the huts, we
+  learned from Jakob, who was full of excitement on the subject, that
+  shortly after we left the inn at Rein the preceding evening a
+  gentleman from Bohemia arrived. He immediately communicated to the
+  wirth his intention of ascending one of the three great mountains
+  rising from the Bachernthal, either the Hoch Gall (11,283 feet high),
+  the Wild Gall or the Schnebige Nock, both some thousand feet lower,
+  but perhaps even more attractive, as still possessing the charm of
+  untrodden summits. The wirth consequently sent for a fine, clever
+  young fellow, Johann Ausserkofer, <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  156]</span> a friend of Jakob&#39;s, and whose home we had passed on
+  the previous night before reaching the Eder Olm. He had ascended the
+  Hoch Gall with two gentlemen in the August of the former year, and
+  now recommended an attempt at the still virgin Wild Gall. The
+  arrangement being speedily made, for extra help and security Johann
+  fetched his younger brother, Josef, as a companion, and the little
+  party started by torchlight at two o&#39;clock in the morning.</p>
+
+  <p>Jakob now produced a telescope, through which he hoped we might
+  detect moving figures amongst the snow of the Wild Gall. In vain we
+  strained our eyes through the greasy old telescope, for neither
+  moving figures nor stationary black dots were visible. Even Jakob
+  with his eagle eye confessed to seeing no trace of man either amongst
+  the irregular ash-colored rocks or upon the snowy curves of the Wild
+  Gall, which, like a huge white-crested breaker at sea, upheaved
+  itself in the air as in the very act of turning. Quite as solitary
+  and untrodden did it look as its still more stately sister, the Hoch
+  Gall, a mountain deservedly the especial pride of the district, its
+  lofty pinnacle piercing the sky, whilst a vast sheet of thick, pure
+  snow hung straight and smooth down its concave sides, a huge
+  mountain-buttress linking the lower portion of this snow pyramid to
+  the white, glittering expanse of the Gross Lengstein Glacier&#8212;a
+  buttress of many thousand feet, standing prominently forth like an
+  antediluvian monster, on whose gigantic pachydermatous flanks the
+  shattered, blasted stems of dead uniform fir trees shone out a
+  silvery gray, mingling in color with the loose, glittering débris
+  which had slidden into the upland valley just below. Two silver
+  threads descending from the glaciers of the Hoch Gall wound through
+  these fallen stones into the green turf of the Bachernthal, but
+  whether formed of snow or water it would have been difficult to
+  decide, had not ever and anon a sound as of a distant train been
+  borne upon the breeze, proving them to be brooks, which helped to
+  swell the roaring, tumbling Giessbach, whose boisterous acquaintance
+  we had already made.</p>
+
+  <p>The Hoch Gall, which has been twice ascended, was first attempted
+  in 1869 by a very adventurous, clever young Alpine climber, Karl
+  Hofmann, the only son of a well-known physician of Munich&#8212;a
+  youth of whom it is said that no study was too difficult, no danger
+  too great, no peak too high for him. Innumerable were the mountains
+  which he scaled between 1866 and 1870, and of which he wrote
+  excellent, accurate descriptions: then laying down his young
+  life&#8212;he was but twenty-three&#8212;on September 2, 1870, in the
+  fierce battle of Sedan, his spirit passed away to mightier slopes, to
+  more delectable mountains.</p>
+
+  <p>Again, in the August of 1871, after our first visit to the Olm,
+  the ascent was repeated by two other members of the Tyrolese Alpine
+  Club, Herr Richter and Herr Strüdl. They brought with them two
+  experienced men&#8212;one the chief guide of the Gross Glockner, the
+  other of the Venediger Spitze&#8212;and, except for Hofmann&#39;s
+  written description, had to plan and calculate for themselves, there
+  being no local knowledge of the mountain attainable, as the two
+  guides who accompanied the young explorer were also dead.</p>
+
+  <p>Although well provided with their own guides, they thought it
+  right to take some active young man of the neighborhood with them, in
+  order that he in his turn might help future climbers. At the
+  recommendation of the landlord of Rein&#8212;who on this important
+  occasion commenced his visitors&#39; book&#8212;they chose for the
+  purpose Jakob&#39;s friend, Johann Ausserkofer. They started by
+  torchlight one Monday morning, and after a steep climb through a wild
+  mountain-forest on the opposite side of the Bachernthal, crossing a
+  vast glacier and the crevasse between the Hoch Gall and the Wild
+  Gall, began the real ascent, which proved so perpendicular as to be
+  achieved principally with the aid of ropes. After a toilsome nine
+  hours and a quarter they had the good fortune to reach the summit in
+  safety. The weather was favorable, and the view, in Richter&#39;s
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 157]</span> opinion, far surpassed the
+  much-vaunted panorama from the Kriml Tauern. A long rest, and raising
+  a cromlech in memory of their bold achievement, and then the steep
+  descent over snow and glaciers was effected, and St. Wolfgang reached
+  after fourteen hours of toil and great danger.</p><a name=
+  "image-0035" id="image-0035"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0037_1.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0037_1.jpg" alt="CROSSING THE TORRENT." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">CROSSING THE TORRENT.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>At half-past four, Jakob, having crossed the valley in search of
+  his oxen, came upon the Bohemian gentleman&#8212;whose name afterward
+  proved to be Dr. Hecht&#8212;with the two Ausserkofers, and learned
+  their adventures in the ascent of the Wild Gall. After clambering
+  over steep, slippery glaciers they had begun the climb proper at five
+  o&#39;clock in the morning, Dr. Hecht pushing forward in order to be
+  the first human being who had ever placed his foot upon the summit of
+  the mountain. He had indeed almost reached the highest point when a
+  dark, terrific chasm suddenly yawned beneath him, entirely cutting
+  off all farther progress. The three explorers, although considerably
+  dejected by the disagreeable check and the waste of labor and time
+  which it had involved, determining not to be baffled, resolved to
+  make a considerable détour. After having, with much trouble, reached
+  a lower plateau, they attacked the precipitous, almost invincible
+  mountain from another side, the still early hour of the day alone
+  permitting the renewal of the attempt. Leaving their telescope and
+  provisions to await their return, they boldly scrambled, crept and
+  worked their way up the scaly side, and finally reached the summit in
+  safety. The view thence they declared to be magnificent. They too
+  raised a cromlech, and then a giddy descent followed. However, all
+  three were full of spirits when Jakob met them, and the Ausserkofers
+  declared that they were ready henceforth to pilot any other tourist
+  to the summit for a moderate four or five gulden apiece.</p>
+
+  <p>Jakob, as herdsman, had left us at three o&#39;clock to look after
+  the cattle, we strolling with him as far as a wild old wood which
+  formed a strange contrast to this Sunday afternoon, as lovely an
+  August day as ever rejoiced the earth. The near yet unattainable Hoch
+  Gall glittered coldly white between the stems and branches of
+  gigantic pines, which, scathed and bleached by lightning and storm,
+  rose in the form of ruined towers or lay tumbled about in the
+  wildest, dreariest confusion amongst the rugged enormous rocks, fit
+  emblems of the forest in the Inferno inhabited by the souls of the
+  lost. Nor was this stern, <span class="pagenum">[pg 158]</span>
+  forbidding scene enlivened when a melancholy man, carrying the dead
+  body of a goat across his shoulders, crossed the torrent on a fallen
+  tree and advanced slowly up the craggy path, followed by a little boy
+  timidly picking his way behind.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Ach, Mathies, in God&#39;s name, another goat!&quot; said
+  Moidel, lifting her eyes from a little book, the life of the odd,
+  humane Joseph II., which, bought for a few kreuzers at a fair, was
+  worth as many guldens in the pleasure which it gave her.</p>
+
+  <p>The man glanced from under his eyebrows, and answered with a sigh,
+  &quot;<i>Gott hat&#39;s so wölln, Diendl</i>&quot; (&quot;God would
+  have it so, maiden&quot;); and then he added in dialect, &quot;It was
+  a beautiful creature. I missed it in the reckoning last night. After
+  mass I strode far and wide searching it, until an hour since I found
+  the body hanging by a hind hoof from a cleft in the Auvogl Nock. See,
+  it has broken its leg in its struggles. Ah, poor beast! A solitary,
+  cruel death, <i>und hast ma g&#39;nomma mei Ruah</i>&quot; (&quot;and
+  it has taken my rest from me&quot;).</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Poor Mathies! his half dozen goats are all that he has in
+  the world. He rents one of father&#39;s huts, but since he has
+  brought them to the Olm two or three are already dead.&quot; This
+  Moidel explained to us as he moved dejectedly forward. &quot;Father,
+  however, told him that our Olm was bad for goats. They not only slip
+  from the rocks, but grow thin and weakly. Just the reverse of the
+  cattle. Onkel Johann&#8212;there is no one so deep as he in
+  cattle&#8212;says that every blade of grass on our Olm is worth half
+  a pint of milk. And it&#39;s not the air, nor the water, nor the
+  winds that make it wholesome, but some law that he cannot understand.
+  Who can? There is Jagdhaus, a wonderfully fertile <i>sennerei</i> an
+  hour beyond Rein. It is far finer than our Olm, which is so
+  mountainous that timid new-comers amongst the cattle must first teach
+  themselves to walk about; but at Jagdhaus, which is as large as a
+  village, all the land is smooth, fat pasturage for miles. Yet a curse
+  rests on the place for which neither priests nor farmers can account.
+  Some seasons, it is true, all goes well, but in others the cattle are
+  suddenly bitten, fall dead, and their flesh then turns black and
+  rustles like paper. Some say that it is an insect or animal that
+  attacks them; others, that it is caused by the grass which they eat;
+  and there are again others who are sure that it is a phantom which,
+  touching them, blasts them. And there seems reason in the idea,
+  because when the priest of Taufers, who has an Olm there, goes and
+  says mass and prays for the cattle, or when the <i>Sterniwitz</i>
+  (landlord of the Stern), who has acres of pasturage and many heads of
+  cattle at Jagdhaus, pays a Capuchin to go thither and pray, the
+  murrain ceases.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>In Moidel&#39;s tale we had almost forgotten our long walk back to
+  the barn and the arrangement for supper previously at the huts. Now,
+  it curiously happened that whilst waiting for the
+  tea-pan&#8212;rather than tea-kettle&#8212;to boil, I accidentally
+  alighted upon a people&#39;s calendar, published at Brixen for the
+  current year, protruding its somewhat greasy pages from behind a
+  churn; and after turning over long black-and red-lettered lists of
+  fasts and feasts, came upon some pertinent advice to the Tyrolese
+  farmers by Adolph Trientl, concerning <i>Milzbrand</i>. He described
+  it as a dreadful pestilence, the scourge of many a mountain-pasture.
+  Hundreds of cattle, he tells them, are sacrificed to it yearly. Even
+  the deer and lesser game die from the contagion, as well as human
+  beings; death in the latter case being occasioned either by eating
+  the meat of diseased animals or by having cuts or wounds which have
+  come in contact with the victims. Even the bite of a fly which has
+  fed on the contaminated meat will propagate the malady. Hides or
+  reins made of the skins are known years after to reproduce Milzbrand.
+  Where the body of an affected animal has been buried the ground
+  becomes contagious for a long run of years, the cattle pasturing
+  there being attacked. The only remedy consists in burning the
+  contaminated body, and then keeping the live-stock from the place
+  where the victim fell. When Milzbrand appears the farmer feels he has
+  no option between sacrificing his cattle and abandoning for a season
+  his rich pastures. And yet a little attention might soon cause a
+  remedy, the evil often arising from the water of a particular pool or
+  brook, which if carefully guarded against makes the rest of the Alp
+  perfectly secure.</p>
+
+  <p>When I ventured to quote from the calendar to Moidel, suggesting
+  that at Jagdhaus it might certainly be the water, she remained
+  impervious to any new views on the subject. &quot;There was
+  Milzbrand, and that might arise from the water, for all she knew, but
+  at Jagdhaus it was a rod of God, which only prayer averted.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Adolf Trientl appears to be a Tyrolese priest, who travels
+  annually through his native land watching closely the agriculture and
+  domestic economy, and trying, countenanced by government, to help his
+  country people to an easier working life, healthier houses and more
+  profitable land. To the credit of the clergy of Brixen, his practical
+  often pithy remarks are published in their church calendar. He and
+  his colleagues must, however, use almost supernatural patience and
+  energy before they can move a Tyroler one jot from the beaten path
+  which his ancestors have taken for a thousand years before him. The
+  people are perfectly content, it is pleaded, with the existing state
+  of things: why should they change their sowing or ploughing any more
+  than the sun his course or the mountains their position? Changes,
+  like bad weather, breed discontent.</p>
+
+  <p>We had brought no books with us for our five days at the Olm, and
+  in the pauses of our out-door enjoyment the calendar, greasy rather
+  from contact with butter and milk than with fingers, afforded
+  amusing, profitable reading: a lecture may often be pleasant to hear
+  when not addressed to one&#39;s self.</p>
+
+  <p>Moidel, Jakob and Franz, though they had looked with blind eyes on
+  the print, did not turn deaf ears when we spoke; only we had to
+  manage that all we said and thought did not come as a quoted
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 159]</span> sermon, but as suggestions and
+  inquiries from us, who did not know half as much about a dairy and
+  farm-life as they did. First of all, we tried to make them believe
+  that the staff of life need not of necessity be rye bread of so hard
+  and flinty a nature as to require in every house a square wooden
+  board and iron chopper to cut it.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said Moidel, &quot;it is very hard for old
+  people, who must needs sop it, but while one&#39;s teeth are good the
+  crunching is a pleasure. And then it must needs be dry, because the
+  oven can only be heated once in three months. I wish it could come
+  round oftener, for there is no going to bed on baking nights, with
+  some three hundred loaves to pop into the oven.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;How could the poor bake often,&quot; suggested Jakob,
+  &quot;when there is only one oven amongst them in the
+  village?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why,&quot; said we, looking very learned, &quot;you have a
+  common schoolmaster, and a common swineherd, and a common goose-boy:
+  why not have a common baker, who knew how to make good, light dough,
+  and could bake a good batch of bread for each family
+  weekly?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>To Franz, eating good bread only a few days old appeared woeful
+  extravagance. &quot;Bread,&quot; he said, &quot;should be like rocks
+  to last, not like snow to melt away. The rye meal would fly before
+  the wind at that rate, and where would the poor man then
+  be?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Butter and cheese-making, however, involved hours of deep
+  discussion. You would indeed have thought that man merely came into
+  the world to make butter and cheese. Personal experience after two
+  summers in the Tyrol had made us reflect very much upon the butter
+  and cheese question. Whether regarded as a luxury or a necessity, the
+  Swiss Gruyère and Emmenthal cheese and the fresh dainty pats of
+  butter made the contrast striking in the Tyrol. The milk and cream
+  were rich and delicious, but became simply loathsome when transformed
+  into butter or cheese. We wondered how and why it was that we could
+  never obtain perfectly palatable butter, until we discovered the
+  universal <span class="pagenum">[pg 160]</span> practice of churning
+  it, without salt, into huge oblong balls, large as the nave of a
+  wheel, which naturally soon turn rancid. It does not on this account
+  lose its value to the natives, who use very little butter, melting it
+  down into a clarified dripping called Schmalz for their endless
+  fryings and frizzlings. This badly made butter is, however, often
+  adorned with the emblems of the Passion, such as the cross, ladder,
+  crown of thorns and nails. It was so at the Hofbauer&#39;s Olm. It is
+  considered to enhance the value of the butter <i>Kugel</i> or ball,
+  especially when given to the priest in payment for masses said for
+  dead relations. The Ursuline Sisters were paid for Moidel&#39;s
+  education in butter.</p>
+
+  <p>And the native cheese!&#8212;meagre cheese, as it is justly
+  called&#8212;a poor, insipid, not overclean curd cheese. The curds
+  are often merely squeezed in a cloth, then turned out and placed upon
+  an upper shelf to dry, where they look like the back portions of
+  gigantic skulls until damp and mould somewhat destroy the
+  resemblance. The kind called fat cheese is not much better. It is,
+  however, made with greater care, and dried in bands of pine bark in
+  the Alpine kitchen. This distasteful butter and cheese, the sole
+  result of gallons of rich milk and cream and many a long summer week
+  upon the lofty Alp, becomes still more distasteful when the milk and
+  cream are kept in the one hot, over-crowded sleeping-room, or in a
+  dairy where the goatherd sleeps amongst the milk-dishes. The mountain
+  dwellings are dark and badly constructed, and if furnished with a
+  proper dairy, the prejudiced housewife often refuses to use it,
+  believing that cream will not set unless the milk is warm; thus, much
+  becomes sour, and is either thrown away or turned into a still more
+  inferior cheese. Or she purposely lets the cream become rancid before
+  she churns, that the children may not take too great a fancy to the
+  Schmalz, and thus it may last longer!</p>
+
+  <p>We had tasted already too much of this milky tree of knowledge not
+  to learn with pleasure from the Brixen calendar that in different
+  parts of the Tyrol co-operative <i>sennereien</i> had been started
+  with the greatest success. A manager was employed in each who
+  understood perfectly the Swiss mode of cheese-making and the best
+  manner of churning. Thus, the most excellent produce was gained from
+  the same, or rather from a smaller, quantity of milk, when the
+  reckless waste was deducted. Each shareholder had the right of
+  skimming the milk from his own cows, taking what he required for his
+  personal use, or he might send his entire share of butter, cheese,
+  whey and goats&#39; milk with the common stock to market, where such
+  co-operative wares already brought the highest price. Thus, the
+  farmer gained both ways, not only receiving more money, but saving in
+  dairy utensils, house room and fuel, and his wife in labor.</p>
+
+  <p>Great was our glee over these enlightened and successful efforts;
+  but a friendly dispute immediately arose when one amongst us
+  expressed a surprise that the half dozen bauers who shared the Olm in
+  common did not manage matters on this improved principle. They would
+  find themselves richer, more care-free men. Moidel declared her
+  inability to form an opinion. Old Franz, however, had much to say. He
+  thought it would be foolish. Why need the Hofbauer mix himself up
+  with others, when he only wanted to make meagre cheese for family
+  use, while if there were any over it always brought its worth in
+  kreuzers at the market? And then the pounds and pounds of butter were
+  all wanted for Schmalz. It might be sweeter, it is true, if they
+  could melt it down at the hut, but then there was the fear of setting
+  the place on fire, and the home-melted Schmalz went fast enough, as
+  Moidel knew. And as for the artificial Schmalz which was being sold
+  in the towns now, it was made of palm-oil, fresh suet and butter, and
+  colored with the yellow dye called Orleans; and people praised this
+  machine-made Schmalz and talked of progress! But he hoped, so long as
+  he handled a frying-pan, to stick to good old Schmalz and good old
+  ways.</p>
+
+  <p class="author">MARGARET HOWITT.</p>
+
+  <p class="center">[TO BE CONTINUED.]</p><a name="churchsteps" id=
+  "churchsteps"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>ON THE CHURCH STEPS.</h2><a name="churchstepschi" id=
+  "churchstepschi"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  161]</span>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER I.</h3>
+
+  <p>What a picture she was as she sat there, my own Bessie! and what a
+  strange place it was to rest on, those church steps! Behind us lay
+  the Woolsey woods, with their wooing fragrance of pine and soft
+  rushes of scented air; and the lakes were in the distance, lying very
+  calm in the cloud-shadows and seeming to wait for us to come. But
+  to-day Bessie would nothing of lakes or ledges: she would sit on the
+  church steps.</p>
+
+  <p>In front of us, straight to the gate, ran a stiff little walk of
+  white pebbles, hard and harsh as some bygone creed.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Think of little bare feet coming up here, Bessie!&quot; I
+  said with a shiver. &quot;It is too hard. And every carriage that
+  comes up the hill sees us.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And why shouldn&#39;t they see us?&quot; said my lady,
+  turning full upon me. &quot;I am not ashamed to be here.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Churches should always have soft walks of turf; and
+  lovers,&quot; I would fain have added, &quot;should have naught but
+  whispering leaves about them.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>But Bessie cut me short in her imperious way: &quot;But we are not
+  lovers this morning: at least,&quot; with a half-relenting look at my
+  rueful face, &quot;we are very good friends, and I choose to sit here
+  to show people that we are.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What do you care for <i>people</i>&#8212;the Bartons or the
+  Meyricks?&quot; as I noticed a familiar family carriage toiling up
+  the hill, followed by a lighter phaeton. I recognized already in the
+  latter vehicle the crimson feather of Fanny Meyrick, and &quot;the
+  whip that was a parasol.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Shall I step out into the road this minute, and stop those
+  ladies like a peaceable highwayman, and tell them you have promised
+  to marry me, and that their anxiety as to our intimacy may be at
+  rest? Give me but leave and I will do it. It will make Mrs. Barton
+  comfortable. Then you and I can walk away into those beckoning woods,
+  and I can have you all to myself.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Indeed she was worth having. With the witchery that some girls
+  know, she had made a very picture of herself that morning, as I have
+  said. Some soft blue muslin stuff was caught up around her in airy
+  draperies&#8212;nothing stiff or frilled about her: all was soft and
+  flowing, from the falling sleeve that showed the fair curve of her
+  arm to the fold of her dress, the ruffle under which her little foot
+  was tapping, impatiently now. A little white hat with a curling blue
+  feather shaded her face&#8212;a face I won&#39;t trust myself to
+  describe, save by saying that it was the brightest and truest, as I
+  then thought, in all the world.</p>
+
+  <p>She said something rapidly in Italian&#8212;she is always
+  artificial when she uses a foreign tongue&#8212;and this I caught but
+  imperfectly, but it had a proverbial air about it of the error of too
+  hasty assumptions.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, now I&#39;ll tell you something,&quot; she said as the
+  carriages disappeared over the top of the hill. &quot;Fanny Meyrick
+  is going abroad in October, and we shall not see her for ever so
+  long.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Going abroad? Good gracious! That was the very thing I had to tell
+  her that morning&#8212;that I too was ordered abroad. An estate to be
+  settled&#8212;some bothering old claim that had been handed down from
+  generation to generation, and now springing into life again by the
+  lapsing of two lives on the other side. But how to tell her as she
+  looked up into my face with the half-pleading, half-imperious smile
+  that I knew so well? How to tell her <i>now</i>?</p>
+
+  <p>So I said nothing, but foolishly pushed the little pebbles aside
+  with my stick, fatuously waiting for the subject to pass. Of course
+  my silence brought an instant criticism: &quot;Why, Charlie, what
+  ails you?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Nothing. And really, Bessie, what <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  162]</span> is it to us whether Fanny Meyrick go or stay?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I shouldn&#39;t have thought it <i>was</i> anything. But
+  your silence, your confusion&#8212;Charlie, you do care a little for
+  her, after all.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Two years ago, before Bessie and I had ever met, I had fluttered
+  around Fanny Meyrick for a season, attracted by her bright brown eyes
+  and the gypsy flush on her cheek. But there were other moths
+  fluttering around that adamantine candle too; and I was not long in
+  discovering that the brown eyes were bright for each and all, and
+  that the gypsy flush was never stirred by feeling or by thought. It
+  was merely a fixed ensign of health and good spirits. Consequently
+  the charm had waned, for me at least; and in my confessions to Bessie
+  since our near intimacy it was she, not I, who had magnified it into
+  the shadow even of a serious thought.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Care for her? Nonsense, Bessie! Do you want me to call her a
+  mere doll, a hard, waxen&#8212;no, for wax will melt&#8212;a Parian
+  creature, such as you may see by the dozens in Schwartz&#39;s window
+  any day? It doesn&#39;t gratify you, surely, to hear me say that of
+  any woman.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>And then&#8212;what possessed me?&#8212;I was so angry at myself
+  that I took a mental <i>résumé</i> of all the good that could be said
+  of Fanny Meyrick&#8212;her generosity, her constant cheerfulness; and
+  in somewhat headlong fashion I expressed myself: &quot;I won&#39;t
+  call her a dolt and an idiot, even to please you. I have seen her do
+  generous things, and she is never out of temper.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Thanks!&quot; said Bessie, nodding her head till the blue
+  feather trembled. &quot;It is as well, as Aunt Sloman says, to keep
+  my shortcomings before you.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;When did Aunt Sloman say that?&quot; I interrupted, hoping
+  for a diversion of the subject.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;This morning only. I was late at breakfast. You know,
+  Charlie, I was <i>so</i> tired with that long horseback ride, and of
+  course everything waited. Dear aunty never <i>will</i> begin until I
+  come down, but sits beside the urn like the forlornest of martyrs,
+  and reads last night&#39;s papers over and over again.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well? And was she sorry that she had not invited me to wait
+  with her?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said Bessie. &quot;She said all sorts of things,
+  and,&quot; flushing slightly, &quot;that it was a pity you
+  shouldn&#39;t know beforehand what you were to expect.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I wish devoutly that I had been there,&quot; seizing the
+  little hand that was mournfully tapping the weatherbeaten stone, and
+  forcing the downcast eyes to look at me. &quot;I think, both
+  together, we could have pacified Aunt Sloman.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>It <i>was</i> a diversion, and after a little while Bessie
+  professed she had had enough of the church steps.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;How those people do stare! Is it the W&#8212;&#8212;s, do
+  you think, Charlie? I heard yesterday they were coming.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>From our lofty position on the hillside we commanded the road
+  leading out of the village&#8212;the road that was all alive with
+  carriages on this beautiful September morning. The W&#8212;&#8212;
+  carriage had half halted to reconnoitre, and had only not hailed us
+  because we had sedulously looked another way.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Let&#39;s get away,&quot; I said, &quot;for the next carnage
+  will not only stop, but come over;&quot; and Bessie suffered herself
+  to be led through the little tangle of brier and fern, past the gray
+  old gravestones with &quot;Miss Faith&quot; and &quot;Miss
+  Mehitable&quot; carved upon them, and into the leafy shadow of the
+  waiting woods.</p>
+
+  <p>Other lovers have been there before us, but the trees whisper no
+  secrets save their own. The subject of our previous discussion was
+  not resumed, nor was Fanny Meyrick mentioned, until on our homeward
+  road we paused a moment on the hilltop, as we always did.</p>
+
+  <p>It is indeed a hill of vision, that church hill at Lenox.
+  Sparkling far to the south, the blue Dome lay, softened and shining
+  in the September sun. There was ineffable peace in the faint blue
+  sky, and, stealing up from the valley, a shimmering haze that seemed
+  to veil the bustling village and soften all the rural sounds.</p>
+
+  <p>Bessie drew nearer to me, shading her eyes as she looked down into
+  the valley: &quot;Charlie dear, let us stay here always. We shall be
+  happier, better here than to go back to New York.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And the law-business?&quot; I asked like a brutal bear,
+  bringing the realities of life into my darling&#39;s girlish
+  dream.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Can&#39;t you practice law in Foxcroft, and drive over there
+  every morning? People do.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And because they do, and there are enough of them, I must
+  plod along in the ways that are made for me already. We can make
+  pilgrimages here, you know.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I suppose so,&quot; said Bessie with a sigh.</p>
+
+  <p>Just then Fanny Kemble&#39;s clock in the tower above us struck
+  the hour&#8212;one, two, three.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Bless me! so late? And there&#39;s that phaeton coming back
+  over the hill again. Hurry, Charlie! don&#39;t let them see us.
+  They&#39;ll think that we&#39;ve been here all the time.&quot; And
+  Bessie plunged madly down the hill, and struck off into the side-path
+  that leads into the Lebanon road. The last vibrations of the bell
+  were still trembling on the air as I caught up with her again.</p>
+
+  <p>But again the teasing mood of the morning had come over her. Quite
+  out of breath with the run, as we sat down to rest on the little
+  porch of Mrs. Sloman&#39;s cottage she said, very earnestly,
+  &quot;But you haven&#39;t once said it.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Said what, my darling?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;That you are glad that Fanny is going abroad.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Nonsense! Why should I be glad?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Are you sorry, then?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>If I had but followed my impulse then, and said frankly that I
+  was, and why I was! But Mrs. Sloman was coming through the little
+  hall: I heard her step. Small time for explanation, no time for
+  reproaches. And I could not leave Bessie, on that morning of all
+  others, hurt or angry, or only half convinced.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, I am not sorry,&quot; I said, pulling down a branch of
+  honeysuckle, and making a loop of it to draw around her neck.
+  &quot;It is nothing, either way.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Then say after me if it is nothing&#8212;feel as I feel for
+  one minute, won&#39;t you?&quot;</p><span class="pagenum">[pg
+  163]</span>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes, indeed.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Say, after me, then, word for word, &#39;I am glad,
+  <i>very</i> glad, that Fanny Meyrick is to sail in October. I would
+  not have her stay on this side for <i>worlds</i>!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>And like a fool, a baby, I said it, word for word, from those
+  sweet smiling lips: &quot;I am glad, <i>very</i> glad, that Fanny
+  Meyrick is to sail in October. I would not have her stay on this side
+  for <i>worlds</i>!&quot;</p><a name="churchstepschii" id=
+  "churchstepschii"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER II.</h3>
+
+  <p>The next day was Sunday, and I was on duty at an early hour,
+  prepared to walk with Bessie to church. My darling was peculiar among
+  women in this: her church-going dress was sober-suited; like a little
+  gray nun, almost, she came down to me that morning. Her dress, of
+  some soft gray stuff, fell around her in the simplest folds, a knot
+  of brown ribbon at her throat, and in her hat a gray gull&#39;s
+  wing.</p>
+
+  <p>I had praised the Italian women for the simplicity of their
+  church-attire: their black dresses and lace veils make a picturesque
+  contrast with the gorgeous ceremonials of the high altar. But there
+  was something in this quiet toilet, so fresh and simple and
+  girl-like, that struck me as the one touch of grace that the American
+  woman can give to the best even of foreign taste. Not the dramatic
+  abnegation indicated by the black dress, but the quiet harmony of a
+  life atune.</p>
+
+  <p>Mrs. Sloman was ready even before Bessie came down. She was a
+  great invalid, although her prim and rigid countenance forbore any
+  expression save of severity. She had no pathos about her, not a
+  touch. Whatever her bodily sufferings may have been&#8212;and Bessie
+  dimly hinted that they were severe to agony at times&#8212;they were
+  resolutely shut within her chamber door; and when she came out in the
+  early morning, her cold brown hair drawn smoothly over those
+  impassive cheeks, she looked like a lady abbess&#8212;as cold, as
+  unyielding and as hard.</p>
+
+  <p>There was small sympathy between the aunt and niece, but a great
+  deal of <span class="pagenum">[pg 164]</span> painstaking duty on the
+  one side, and on the other the habit of affection which young girls
+  have for the faces they have always known.</p>
+
+  <p>Mrs. Sloman had been at pains to tell me, when my frequent visits
+  to her cottage made it necessary that I should in some fashion
+  explain to her as to what I wanted there, that her niece, Bessie
+  Stewart, was in nowise dependent on her, not even for a home.
+  &quot;This cottage we rent in common. It was her father&#39;s desire
+  that her property should not accumulate, and that she should have
+  nothing at my hands but companionship, and&quot;&#8212;with a set and
+  sickly smile&#8212;&quot;advice when it was called for. We are
+  partners in our expenses, and the arrangement can be broken up at any
+  moment.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Was this all? No word of love or praise for the fair young thing
+  that had brightened all her household in these two years that Bessie
+  had been fatherless?</p>
+
+  <p>I believe there was love and appreciation, but it was not Mrs.
+  Sloman&#39;s method to be demonstrative or expansive. She approved of
+  the engagement, and in her grim way had opened an immediate battery
+  of household ledgers and ways and means. Some idea, too, of making me
+  feel easy about taking Bessie away from her, I think, inclined her to
+  this business-like manner. I tried to show her, by my own manner,
+  that I understood her without words, and I think she was very
+  grateful to be spared the expression of feeling. Poor soul!
+  repression had become such a necessity to her!</p>
+
+  <p>So we talked on gravely of the weather, and of the celebrated
+  Doctor McQ&#8212;&#8212;, who was expected to give us an
+  argumentative sermon that morning, until <i>my</i> argument came
+  floating in at the door like a calm little bit of thistledown, to
+  which our previous conversation had been as the thistle&#39;s
+  self.</p>
+
+  <p>The plain little church was gay that morning. Carriage after
+  carriage drove up with much prancing and champing, and group after
+  group of city folk came rustling along the aisles. It was a bit of
+  Fifth Avenue let into Lenox calm. The World and the Flesh were there,
+  at least.</p>
+
+  <p>In the hush of expectancy that preceded the minister&#39;s arrival
+  there was much waving of scented fans, while the well-bred city
+  glances took in everything without seeming to see. I felt that Bessie
+  and I were being mentally discussed and ticketed. And as it was our
+  first appearance at church since&#8212;well,
+  <i>since</i>&#8212;perhaps there was just a little consciousness of
+  our relations that made Bessie seem to retire absolutely within
+  herself, and be no more a part of the silken crowd than was the
+  grave, plain man who rose up in the pulpit.</p>
+
+  <p>I hope the sermon was satisfactory. I am sure it was convincing to
+  a brown-handed farmer who sat beside us, and who could with
+  difficulty restrain his applauding comment. But I was lost in a dream
+  of a near heaven, and could not follow the spoken word. It was just a
+  quiet little opportunity to contemplate my darling, to tell over her
+  sweetness and her charm, and to say over and again, like a blundering
+  school-boy, &quot;It&#39;s all mine! mine!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The congregation might have been dismissed for aught I knew, and
+  left me sitting there with her beside me. But I was startled into the
+  proprieties as we stood up to sing the concluding hymn. I was
+  standing stock-still beside her, not listening to the words at all,
+  but with a pleasant sense of everything being very comfortable, and
+  an old-fashioned swell of harmony on the air, when suddenly the book
+  dropped from Bessie&#39;s hand and fell heavily to the floor. I
+  should have said she flung it down had it been on any other occasion,
+  so rapid and vehement was the action.</p>
+
+  <p>I stooped to pick it up, when with a decided gesture she stopped
+  me. I looked at her surprised. Her face was flushed, indignant, I
+  thought, and instantly my conscience was on the rack. What had I
+  done, for my lady was evidently angry?</p>
+
+  <p>Glancing down once more toward the book, I saw that she had set
+  her foot upon it, and indeed her whole attitude was one of
+  excitement, defiance. Why did she look so hot and scornful? I was
+  disturbed and anxious: what was there in the book or in me to anger
+  her?</p>
+
+  <p>As quickly as possible I drew her away from the bustling crowd
+  when the service was concluded. Fortunately, there was a side-door
+  through which we could pass out into the quiet churchyard, and we
+  vanished through it, leaving Mrs. Sloman far behind. Over into the
+  Lebanon road was but a step, and the little porch was waiting with
+  its cool honeysuckle shade. But Bessie did not stop at the gate: she
+  was in no mood for home. And yet she would not answer my outpouring
+  questions as to whether she was ill, or what <i>was</i> the
+  matter.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I&#39;ll tell you in a minute. Come, hurry!&quot; she said,
+  hastening along up the hill through all the dust and heat.</p>
+
+  <p>At last we reached that rustic bit of ruin known popularly as the
+  &quot;Shed.&quot; It was a hard bit of climbing, but I rejoiced that
+  Bessie, so flushed and excited at the start, grew calmer as we went;
+  and when, the summit reached, she sat down to rest on a broken board,
+  her color was natural and she seemed to breathe freely again.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Are they all hypocrites, do you think, Charlie?&quot; she
+  said suddenly, looking up into my face.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;They? who? Bessie, what have I done to make you
+  angry?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You? Nothing, dear goose! I am angry at myself and at
+  everybody else. Did it flash upon you, Charlie, what we were
+  singing?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Then she quoted the lines, which I will not repeat here, but they
+  expressed, as the sole aspiration of the singer, a desire to pass
+  eternity in singing hymns of joy and praise&#8212;an impatience for
+  the time to come, a disregard of earth, a turning away from temporal
+  things, and again the desire for an eternity of sacred song.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Suppose I confess to you,&quot; said I, astonished at her
+  earnestness, &quot;that I did not at all know what I was
+  singing?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;That&#39;s just it! just what makes it so dreadful!
+  <i>Nobody</i> was thinking about it&#8212;nobody! Nobody there wanted
+  to give up earth and go straight to heaven <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  165]</span> and sing. I looked round at all the people, with their
+  new bonnets, and the diamonds, and the footmen in the pews up stairs,
+  and I thought, What lies they are all saying! Nobody wants to go to
+  heaven at all until they are a hundred years old, and too deaf and
+  blind and tired out to do anything on earth. My heaven is here and
+  now in my own happiness, and so is yours, Charlie; and I felt so
+  convicted of being a story-teller that I couldn&#39;t hold the book
+  in my hand.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, then,&quot; said I, &quot;shall we have one set of
+  hymns for happy people, and another for poor, tired-out folks like
+  that little dressmaker that leaned against the wall?&quot; For Bessie
+  herself had called my attention to the pale little body who had come
+  to the church door at the same moment with us.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, not two sets. Do you suppose that she, either, wants to
+  <i>sing</i> on for ever? And all those girls! Sorry enough they would
+  be to have to die, and leave their dancing and flirtations and the
+  establishments they hope to have! It wouldn&#39;t be much comfort to
+  them to promise them they should <i>sing</i>. Charlie, I want a hymn
+  that shall give thanks that I am alive, that I have
+  <i>you</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Could the dressmaker sing that?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No;&quot; and Bessie&#39;s eyes sought the shining blue sky
+  with a wistful, beseeching tenderness. &quot;Oh, it&#39;s all wrong,
+  Charlie dear. She ought to tell us in a chant how tired and hopeless
+  she is for this world; and we ought to sing to her something that
+  would cheer her, help her, even in this world. Why must she wait for
+  all her brightness till she dies? So perfectly heartless to stand up
+  along side of her and sing <i>that</i>!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well,&quot; I said, &quot;you needn&#39;t wait till next
+  Sunday to bring her your words of cheer.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>In a minute my darling was crying on my shoulder. I could
+  understand the outburst, and was glad of it.</p>
+
+  <p>All athrill with new emotions, new purposes, an eternity of love,
+  she had come to church to be reminded that earth was naught, that the
+  trials and tempests here would come to an end some day, and after, to
+  the patiently victorious, <span class="pagenum">[pg 166]</span> would
+  come the hymns of praise. <i>Earth</i> was very full that morning to
+  her and me; <i>earth</i> was a place for worshipful harmonies; and
+  yet the strong contrast with the poor patient sufferer who had passed
+  into church with us was too much for Bessie: she craved an expression
+  that should comprehend alike her sorrow and our abundant joy.</p>
+
+  <p>The tempest of tears passed by, and we had bright skies again.
+  Poor Mrs. Sloman&#39;s dinner waited long that day; and it was with a
+  guilty sense that she was waiting too that we went down the hill at a
+  quickened pace when the church clock, sounding up the hillside, came
+  like a chiding voice.</p>
+
+  <p>And a double sense of guiltiness was creeping over me. I must
+  return to New York to-morrow, and I had not told Bessie yet of the
+  longer journey I must make so soon. I put it by again and again in
+  the short flying hours of that afternoon; and it was not until dusk
+  had fallen in the little porch, as we sat there after tea, and I had
+  watched the light from Mrs. Sloman&#39;s chamber shine down upon the
+  honeysuckles and then go out, that I took my resolution.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Bessie,&quot; I said, leaning over her and taking her face
+  in both my hands, &quot;I have something to tell
+  you.&quot;</p><a name="churchstepschiii" id="churchstepschiii">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER III.</h3>
+
+  <p>&quot;I have something to tell you;&quot; and without an
+  instant&#39;s pause I went on: &quot;Mr. D&#8212;&#8212; has business
+  in England which cannot be attended to by letter. One of us must go,
+  and they send me. I must sail in two weeks.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>It was a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, and Bessie gave a little
+  gasp of surprise: &quot;So soon! Oh, Charlie, take me with you!&quot;
+  Realizing in the next instant the purport of the suggestion, she
+  flung away from my hands and rushed into the parlor, where a dim,
+  soft lamp was burning on the table. She sat down on a low chair
+  beside it and hid her face on the table in her hands.</p>
+
+  <p>Like a flash of lightning all the possibilities of our marriage
+  before many days&#8212;arranging it with Mrs. Sloman, and satisfying
+  my partners, who would expect me to travel fast and work hard in the
+  short time they had allotted for the journey,&#8212;all came surging
+  and throbbing through my brain, while my first answer was not given
+  in words.</p>
+
+  <p>When I had persuaded Bessie to look at me and to answer me in
+  turn, I hoped we should be able to talk about it with the calm
+  judgment it needed.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;To leave my wife&#8212;my wife!&quot;&#8212;how I lingered
+  on the word!&#8212;&quot;in some poky lodgings in London, while I am
+  spending my day among dusty boxes and files of deeds in a dark old
+  office, isn&#39;t just my ideal of our wedding-journey; but, Bessie,
+  if <i>you</i> wish it so&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>What was there in my tone that jarred her? I had meant to be
+  magnanimous, to think of her comfort alone, of the hurry and business
+  of such a journey&#8212;tried to shut myself out and think only of
+  her in the picture. But I failed, of course, and went on stupidly,
+  answering the quick look of question in her eyes: &quot;If you prefer
+  it&#8212;that is, you know, I must think of you and not of
+  myself.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Still the keen questioning glance. What new look was this in her
+  eyes, what dawning thought?</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No,&quot; she answered after a pause, slowly withdrawing her
+  hand from mine, &quot;think of yourself.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>I had expected that she would overwhelm me in her girlish way with
+  saucy protestations that she would be happy even in the dull London
+  lodgings, and that she would defy the law-files to keep me long from
+  her. This sudden change of manner chilled me with a nameless
+  fear.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;If <i>I</i> prefer it! If <i>I</i> wish it! I see that I
+  should be quite in your way, an encumbrance. Don&#39;t talk about it
+  any more.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She was very near crying, and I wish to heaven she had cried. But
+  she conquered herself resolutely, and held herself cold and musing
+  before me. I might take her hand, might kiss her unresisting cheek,
+  but she seemed frozen into sudden thoughtfulness that it was
+  impossible to meet or to dispel.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Bessie, you know you are a little goose! What could I wish
+  for in life but to carry you off this minute to New York? Come, get
+  your hat and let&#39;s walk over to the parsonage now. We&#39;ll get
+  Doctor Wilder to marry us, and astonish your aunt in the
+  morning.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Nonsense!&quot; said Bessie with a slight quiver of her
+  pretty, pouting mouth. &quot;Do be rational, Charlie!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>I believe I was rational in my own fashion for a little while, but
+  when I ventured to say in a very unnecessary whisper, &quot;Then you
+  will go abroad with me?&quot; Bessie flushed to her temples and rose
+  from the sofa. She had a way, when she was very much in earnest, or
+  very much stirred with some passionate thought, of pacing the parlor
+  with her hands clasped tightly before her, and her arms tense and
+  straining at the clasping hands. With her head bent slightly forward,
+  and her brown hair hanging in one long tress over her shoulder, she
+  went swiftly up and down, while I lay back on the sofa and watched
+  her. She would speak it out presently, the thought that was hurting
+  her. So I felt secure and waited, following every movement with a
+  lover&#39;s eye. But I ought not to have waited. I should have drawn
+  her to me and shared that rapid, nervous walk&#8212;should have
+  compelled her with sweet force to render an account of that emotion.
+  But I was so secure, so entirely one with her in thought, that I
+  could conceive of nothing but a passing tempest at my blundering,
+  stupid thoughtfulness for her.</p>
+
+  <p>Suddenly at the door she stopped, and with her hand upon it said,
+  &quot;Good-night, Charlie;&quot; and was out of the room in a
+  twinkling.</p>
+
+  <p>I sprang from the sofa and to the foot of the stairs, but I saw
+  only a glimpse of her vanishing dress; and though I called after her
+  in low, beseeching tones, &quot;Bessie! Bessie!&quot; a door shut in
+  the distant corridor for only answer.</p>
+
+  <p>What to do? In that decorous mansion I could not follow her; and
+  my impulse to dash after her and knock at her door till she answered
+  me, I was forced to put aside after a moment&#39;s
+  consideration.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 167]</span>
+
+  <p>I stood there in the quiet hall, the old clock ticking away a
+  solemn &quot;I-told-you-so!&quot; in the corner. I made one step
+  toward the kitchen to send a message by one of the maids, but
+  recoiled at the suggestion that this would publish a lovers&#39;
+  quarrel. So I retreated along the hall, my footsteps making no noise
+  on the India matting, and entered the parlor again like a thief. I
+  sat down by the table: &quot;Bessie will certainly come back: she
+  will get over her little petulance, and know I am here
+  waiting.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>All about the parlor were the traces of my darling. A soft little
+  coil of rose-colored Berlin wool, with its ivory needle sheathed
+  among the stitches, lay in a tiny basket. I lifted it up: the basket
+  was made of scented grass, and there was a delicious sweet and pure
+  fragrance about the knitting-work. I took possession of it and thrust
+  it into my breast-pocket. A magazine she had been reading, with the
+  palest slip of a paper-knife&#8212;a bit of delicate Swiss
+  wood&#8212;in it, next came in my way. I tried to settle down and
+  read where she had left off, but the words danced before my eyes, and
+  a strange tune was repeating in my ears, &quot;Good-night,
+  Charlie&#8212;good-night and good-bye!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>One mad impulse seized me to go out under her window and call to
+  her, asking her to come down. But Lenox nights were very still, and
+  the near neighbors on either side doubtless wide awake to all that
+  was going on around the Sloman cottage.</p>
+
+  <p>So I sat still like an idiot, and counted the clock-strokes, and
+  nervously calculated the possibility of her reappearance, until I
+  heard, at last, footsteps coming along the hall in rapid tread. I
+  darted up: &quot;Oh, Bessie, I knew you would come back!&quot; as
+  through the open door walked in&#8212;Mary, Mrs. Sloman&#39;s
+  maid!</p>
+
+  <p>She started at seeing me: &quot;Excuse me, sir. The parlor was
+  so&#8212;I thought there was no one here.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What is it, Mary?&quot; I asked with assumed indifference.
+  &quot;Do you want Miss Bessie? She went up stairs a few moments
+  ago.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, sir. I thought&#8212;that is&#8212;&quot; glancing
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 168]</span> down in awkward confusion at
+  the key she held in her hand. She was retiring again softly when I
+  saw in the key the reason of her discomposure.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Did you come in to lock up, Mary?&quot; I asked with a
+  laugh.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes, sir. But it is of no consequence. I thought you had
+  gone, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Time I was, I suppose. Well, Mary, you shall lock me out,
+  and then carry this note to Miss Bessie. It is so late that I will
+  not wait for her. Perhaps she is busy with Mrs. Sloman.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Something in Mary&#39;s face made me suspect that she knew Mrs.
+  Sloman to be sound asleep at this moment; but she said nothing, and
+  waited respectfully until I had scribbled a hasty note, rifling
+  Bessie&#39;s writing-desk for the envelope in which to put my card.
+  Dear child! there lay my photograph, the first thing I saw as I
+  raised the dainty lid.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Bessie,&quot; I wrote, &quot;I have waited until Mary has
+  come in with her keys, and I suppose I must go. My train starts at
+  nine to-morrow morning, but you will be ready&#8212;will you
+  not?&#8212;at six to take a morning walk with me. I will be here at
+  that hour. You don&#39;t know how disturbed and anxious I shall be
+  till then.&quot;</p><a name="churchstepschiv" id="churchstepschiv">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER IV.</h3>
+
+  <p>Morning came&#8212;or rather the long night came to an end at
+  last&#8212;and at twenty minutes before six I opened the gate at the
+  Sloman cottage. It was so late in September that the morning was a
+  little hazy and uncertain. And yet the air was warm and soft&#8212;a
+  perfect reflex, I thought, of Bessie last night&#8212;an electric
+  softness under a brooding cloud.</p>
+
+  <p>The little house lay wrapped in slumber. I hesitated to pull the
+  bell: no, it would startle Mrs. Sloman. Bessie was coming: she would
+  surely not make me wait. Was not that her muslin curtain stirring? I
+  would wait in the porch&#8212;she would certainly come down soon.</p>
+
+  <p>So I waited, whistling softly to myself as I pushed the withered
+  leaves about with my stick and drew strange patterns among them. Half
+  an hour passed.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I will give her a gentle reminder;&quot; so I gathered a
+  spray from the honeysuckle, a late bloom among the fast-falling
+  leaves, and aimed it right at the muslin curtain. The folds parted
+  and it fell into the room, but instead of the answering face that I
+  looked to see, all was still again.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It&#39;s very strange,&quot; thought I. &quot;Bessie&#39;s
+  pique is not apt to last so long. She must indeed be angry.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>And I went over each detail of our last night&#39;s talk, from her
+  first burst of &quot;Take me with you!&quot; to my boggling answers,
+  my fears, so stupidly expressed, that it would be anything but a
+  picturesque bridal-trip, and the necessity that there was for rapid
+  traveling and much musty, old research.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What a fool I was not to take her then and there! She
+  <i>is</i> myself: why shouldn&#39;t I, then, be selfish? When I do
+  what of all things I want to, why can&#39;t I take it for granted
+  that she will be happy too?&quot; And a hot flush of shame went over
+  me to think that I had been about to propose to her, to my own
+  darling girl, that we should be married as soon as possible
+  <i>after</i> I returned from Europe.</p>
+
+  <p>Her love, clearer-sighted, had striven to forestall our
+  separation: why should we be parted all those weary weeks? why put
+  the sea between us?</p>
+
+  <p>I had accepted all these obstacles as a dreary necessity, never
+  thinking for the moment that conventional objections might be
+  overcome, aunts and guardians talked over, and the whole matter
+  arranged by two people determined on their own sweet will.</p>
+
+  <p>What a lumbering, masculine plan was mine! <i>After I returned
+  from Europe!</i> I grew red and bit my lips with vexation. And now my
+  dear girl was shy and hurt. How should I win back again that sweet
+  impulse of confidence?</p>
+
+  <p>Presently the household began to stir. I heard unbarring and
+  unbolting, and craftily retreated to the gate, that I might seem to
+  be just coming in, to the servant who should open the door.</p>
+
+  <p>It was opened by a housemaid&#8212;not the Mary of the night
+  before&#8212;who stared a moment at seeing me, but on my asking if
+  Miss Bessie was ready yet to walk, promised smilingly to go and see.
+  She returned in a moment, saying that Miss Bessie begged that I would
+  wait: she was hurrying to come down.</p>
+
+  <p>The child! She has slept too soundly. I shall tell her how
+  insensate she must have been, how serenely unconscious when the
+  flower came in at the window.</p>
+
+  <p>The clock on the mantel struck seven and the half hour before
+  Bessie appeared. She was very pale, and her eyes looked away at my
+  greeting. Passively she suffered herself to be placed in a chair, and
+  then, with something of her own manner, she said hurriedly,
+  &quot;Don&#39;t think I got your note, Charlie, last night, or I
+  wouldn&#39;t, indeed I wouldn&#39;t, have kept you waiting so long
+  this morning.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Didn&#39;t Mary bring it to you?&quot; I asked,
+  surprised.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes: that is, she brought it up to my room, but, Charlie
+  dear, I wasn&#39;t there: I wasn&#39;t there all night. I did shut my
+  door, though I heard you calling, and after a little while I crept
+  out into the entry and looked over the stairs, hoping you were there
+  still, and that I could come back to you. But you were not there, and
+  everything was so still that I was sure you had gone&#8212;gone
+  without a word. I listened and listened, but I was too proud to go
+  down into the parlor and see. And yet I could not go back to my room,
+  next Aunt Sloman&#39;s. I went right up stairs to the blue room, and
+  stayed there. Mary must have put your note on my table when she came
+  up stairs. I found it there this morning when I went down.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Poor darling! And what did you do all night in the blue
+  room? I am afraid,&quot; looking at her downcast eyes, &quot;that you
+  did not sleep&#8212;that you were angry at me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;At you? No, at myself,&quot; she said very low.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Bessie, you know that my first and only thought was of the
+  hurry and worry this journey would cost you. You know <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 169]</span> that to have you with me was something that
+  I had scarce dared to dream.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And therefore,&quot; with a flash of blue eyes, &quot;for me
+  to dare to dream it was&#8212;&quot; and again she hid her face.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But, my precious, don&#39;t you know that it was for
+  <i>you</i> to suggest what I wanted all the time, but thought it
+  would be too much to ask?&quot; For I had discovered, of course, in
+  my morning&#39;s work among the dead leaves on the porch, that I had
+  desired it from the moment I had known of my journey&#8212;desired it
+  without acknowledging it to myself or presuming to plan upon it.</p>
+
+  <p>At this juncture breakfast was announced, and the folding doors
+  thrown open that led into the breakfast-parlor, disclosing Mrs.
+  Sloman seated by the silver urn, and a neat little table spread for
+  three, so quick had been the housemaid&#39;s intuitions.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Good-morning, Charles: come get some breakfast. You will
+  hardly be in time for your train,&quot; suggested Aunt Sloman in a
+  voice that had in it all the gloom of the morning. Indeed, the clouds
+  had gathered heavily during the parlor scene, and some large drops
+  were rattling against the window.</p>
+
+  <p>I looked at my watch. After eight! Pshaw! I will let this train
+  go, and will telegraph to the office. I can take the night train, and
+  thus lose only a few hours. So I stayed.</p>
+
+  <p>What rare power had Bessie in the very depths of her trouble, and
+  with her face pale and eyes so heavy with her last night&#39;s
+  vigil&#8212;what gift that helped her to be gay? Apparently not with
+  an effort, not forced, she was as joyous and frank as her sunniest
+  self. No exaggeration of laughter or fun, but the brightness of her
+  every-day manner, teasing and sparkling round Aunt Sloman, coquetting
+  very naturally with me. It was a swift change from the gloomy
+  atmosphere we had left behind in the parlor, and I basked in it
+  delighted, and feeling, poor fool! that the storm was cleared away,
+  and that the time for the singing of birds was come.</p>
+
+  <p>I was the more deceived. I did not know all of Bessie yet. Her
+  horror of a <span class="pagenum">[pg 170]</span> scene, of any
+  suspicion that there was discord between us, and her rare
+  self-control, that for the moment put aside all trouble, folded it
+  out of sight and took up the serene old life again for a little
+  space.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Aunt Maria,&quot; said Bessie, pushing aside her chair,
+  &quot;won&#39;t you take care of Mr. Munro for a little while? I have
+  a letter to write that I want him to take to New York.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Aunt Maria would be happy to entertain me, or rather to have me
+  entertain her. If I would read to her, now, would I be so kind, while
+  she washed up her breakfast cups?</p>
+
+  <p>How people can do two things at once I am sure I cannot
+  understand; and while the maid brought in the large wooden bowl, the
+  steam of whose household incense rose high in the air, I watched
+  impatient for the signal to begin. When the tea-cups were all
+  collected, and Aunt Sloman held one by the handle daintily over the
+  &quot;boiling flood,&quot; &quot;Now,&quot; she said with a serene
+  inclination of her head, &quot;if you please.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>And off I started at a foot-pace through the magazine that had
+  been put into my hands. Whether it was anything about the
+  &quot;Skelligs,&quot; or &quot;Miss Sedgwick&#39;s Letters,&quot; or
+  &quot;Stanley-Livingstone,&quot; I have not the remotest idea. I was
+  fascinated by the gentle dip of each tea-cup, and watched from the
+  corner of my eye the process of polishing each glittering spoon on a
+  comfortable crash towel.</p>
+
+  <p>Then my thoughts darted off to Bessie. Was she indeed writing to
+  her old trustee? Judge Hubbard was a friend of my father&#39;s, and
+  would approve of me, I thought, if he did not agree at once to the
+  hurried marriage and ocean journey.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What an unconscionable time it takes her! Don&#39;t you
+  think so, Mrs. Sloman?&quot; I said at last, after I had gone through
+  three several papers on subjects unknown.</p>
+
+  <p>I suppose it was scarcely a courteous speech. But Mrs. Sloman
+  smiled a white-lipped smile of sympathy, and said, &quot;Yes; I will
+  go and send her to you.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, don&#39;t hurry her,&quot; I said falsely, hoping,
+  however, that she would.</p>
+
+  <p>Did I say before that Bessie was tall? Though so slight that you
+  always wanted to speak of her with some endearing diminutive, she
+  looked taller than ever that morning; and as she stood before me,
+  coming up to the fireplace where I was standing, her eyes looked
+  nearly level into mine. I did not understand their veiled expression,
+  and before I had time to study it she dropped them and said hastily,
+  &quot;Young man, I am pining for a walk.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;In the rain?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Pshaw! This is nothing, after all, but a Scotch mist. See, I
+  am dressed for it;&quot; and she threw a tartan cloak over her
+  shoulder&#8212;a blue-and-green tartan that I had never seen
+  before.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;The very thing for shipboard,&quot; I whispered as I looked
+  at her admiringly.</p>
+
+  <p>Her face was flushed enough now, but she made no answer save to
+  stoop down and pat the silly little terrier that had come trotting
+  into the room with her.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Fidget shall go&#8212;yes, he shall go walking;&quot; and
+  Fidget made a gray ball of himself in his joy at the permission.</p>
+
+  <p>Up the hill again we walked, with the little Skye terrier
+  cantering in advance or madly chasing the chickens across the
+  road.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Did you finish your letter satisfactorily?&quot; I asked,
+  for I was fretting with impatience to know its contents.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes. I will give it to you when you leave
+  to-night.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Shall we say next Saturday, Bessie?&quot; said I, resolving
+  to plunge at once into the sea of our late argument.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;For what? For you to come again? Don&#39;t you always come
+  on Saturday?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes, but this time I mean to carry you away.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>A dead pause, which I improved by drawing her hand under my arm
+  and imprisoning her little gray glove with my other hand. As she did
+  not speak, I went on fatuously: &quot;You don&#39;t need any
+  preparation of gowns and shawls; you can buy your <i>trousseau</i> in
+  London, if need be; and we&#39;ll settle on the ship, coming over,
+  how and where we are to live in New York.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You think, then, that I am all ready to be
+  married?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I think that my darling is superior to the nonsense of other
+  girls&#8212;that she will be herself always, and doesn&#39;t need any
+  masquerade of wedding finery.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You think, then,&quot; coldly and drawing her hand away,
+  &quot;that I am different from other girls?&quot; and the scarlet
+  deepened on her cheek. &quot;You think I say and do things other
+  girls would not?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;My darling, what nonsense! You say and do things that other
+  girls <i>cannot</i>, nor could if they tried a thousand
+  years.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Thanks for the compliment! It has at least the merit of
+  dubiousness. Now, Charlie, if you mention Europe once in this walk I
+  shall be seriously offended. Do let us have a little peace and a
+  quiet talk.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why, what on earth can we talk about until this is settled?
+  I can&#39;t go back to New York, and engage our passage, and go to
+  see Judge Hubbard&#8212;I suppose you were writing to him this
+  morning?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She did not answer, but seemed bent on making the dainty print of
+  her foot in the moist earth of the road, taking each step carefully,
+  as though it were the one important and engrossing thing in life.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;&#8212;Unless,&quot; I went on, &quot;you tell me you will
+  be ready to go back with me this day week. You see, Bessie dear, I
+  <i>must</i> sail on the fixed day. And if we talk it over now and
+  settle it all, it will save no end of writing to and fro.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Good-morning!&quot; said a gay voice behind us&#8212;Fanny
+  Meyrick&#39;s voice. She was just coming out of one of the small
+  houses on the roadside. &quot;Don&#39;t you want some company?
+  I&#39;ve been to call on my washerwoman, and I&#39;m so glad I&#39;ve
+  met you. Such an English morning! Shall I walk with
+  you?&quot;</p><a name="churchstepschv" id="churchstepschv">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER V</h3>
+
+  <p>If I could have changed places with Fidget, I could scarce have
+  expressed <span class="pagenum">[pg 171]</span> my disapproval of the
+  new-comer more vehemently than he. Miss Meyrick seemed quite annoyed
+  at the little dog&#39;s uncalled-for snapping and barking, and shook
+  her umbrella at him in vain. I was obliged to take him in hand myself
+  at last, and to stand in the road and order him to &quot;Go
+  home!&quot; while the two young ladies walked on, apparently the best
+  of friends.</p>
+
+  <p>When I rejoined them Fanny Meyrick was talking fast and
+  unconnectedly, as was her habit: &quot;Yes, lodgings in
+  London&#8212;the dearest old house in Clarges street. Such a butler!
+  He looks like a member of Parliament. We stayed there once before for
+  three days. I am just going to settle into an English girl. Had
+  enough of the Continent. Never do see England now-a-days, nobody. All
+  rush off. So papa is going to have a comfortable time. Embassy? Oh, I
+  know the general well.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>I looked beseechingly at Bessie. Why wouldn&#39;t she say that we
+  too would be there in London lodgings? Perhaps, then, Fanny Meyrick
+  might take the hint and leave us soon.</p>
+
+  <p>But Bessie gave no sign, and I relapsed into a somewhat impatient
+  <i>résumé</i> of my own affairs. Yes: married quietly on Saturday;
+  leave here on Monday morning train; take, yes, Wednesday&#39;s
+  steamer. I could arrange it with my law-partners to be absent a
+  little longer perhaps, that there might be some little rest and
+  romance about the wedding-journey.</p>
+
+  <p>Two or three times in the course of that morning&#8212;for she
+  stayed with us all the morning&#8212;Fanny Meyrick rallied me on my
+  preoccupation and silence: &quot;He didn&#39;t use to be so, Bessie,
+  years ago, I assure you. It&#39;s very disagreeable, sir&#8212;not an
+  improvement by any means.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Then&#8212;I think without any malice prepense, simply the
+  unreasoning rattle of a belle of two seasons&#8212;she plunged into a
+  description of a certain fête at Blankkill on the Hudson, the
+  occasion of our first acquaintance: &quot;He was so young, Bessie,
+  you can&#39;t imagine, and blushed so beautifully that all the girls
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 172]</span> were jealous as could be. We
+  were very good friends&#8212;weren&#39;t we?&#8212;all that
+  summer?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And are still, I hope,&quot; said I with my most sweeping
+  bow. &quot;What have I done to forfeit Miss Meyrick&#39;s
+  esteem?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Nothing, except that you used to find your way oftener to
+  Meyrick Place than you do now. Well, I won&#39;t scold you for that:
+  I shall make up for that on the other side.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>What did she mean? She had no other meaning than that she would
+  have such compensation in English society that her American admirers
+  would not be missed. She did not know of my going abroad.</p>
+
+  <p>But Bessie darted a quick glance from her to me, and back again to
+  her, as though some dawning suspicion had come to her. &quot;I
+  hope,&quot; she said quietly, &quot;that you may have a pleasant
+  winter. It will be delightful, won&#39;t it, Charlie?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, very!&quot; I answered, but half noting the
+  under-meaning of her words, my mind running on deck state-rooms and
+  the like.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Charlie,&quot; said Miss Meyrick suddenly, &quot;do you
+  remember what happened two years ago to-day?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, I think not.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Taking out a little book bound in Russia leather and tipped with
+  gold, she handed it to Bessie, who ran her eye down the page: it was
+  open at September 28th.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Read it,&quot; said Fanny, settling herself composedly in
+  her shawl, and leaning back against a tree with half-shut eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;&#39;<i>September 28th</i>&#39;&quot; Bessie read, in clear
+  tones which had a strange constraint in them, &quot;&#39;Charlie
+  Munro saved my life. I shall love him for ever and ever. We were out
+  in a boat, we two, on the Hudson&#8212;moonlight&#8212;I was rowing.
+  Dropt my oar into the water. Leaned out after it and upset the boat.
+  Charlie caught me and swam with me to shore.&#39;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>A dead silence as Bessie closed the book and held it in her
+  hand.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh,&quot; said I lightly, &quot;that isn&#39;t worth
+  chronicling&#8212;that! It was no question of saving lives. The New
+  York boat was coming up, if I remember.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes, it was in trying to steer away from it that I dropped
+  my oar.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;So you see it would have picked us up, any how. There was
+  nothing but the ducking to remember.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Such a figure, Bessie! Imagine us running along the road to
+  the gate! I could scarcely move for my dripping skirts; and we
+  frightened papa so when we stepped up on the piazza out of the
+  moonlight!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>To stop this torrent of reminiscences, which, though of nothings,
+  I could see was bringing the red spot to Bessie&#39;s cheek, I put
+  out my hand for the book: &quot;Let me write something down
+  to-day;&quot; and I hastily scribbled: &quot;<i>September</i> 28.
+  Charles Munro and Bessie Stewart, to sail for Europe in ten days, ask
+  of their friend Fanny Meyrick her warm congratulations.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Will that do?&quot; I whispered as I handed the book to
+  Bessie.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Not at all,&quot; said Bessie scornfully and coldly, tearing
+  out the leaf as she spoke and crumpling it in her
+  hand.&#8212;&quot;Sorry to spoil your book, Fanny dear, but the
+  sentiment would have spoiled it more. Let us go home.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>As we passed the hotel on that dreary walk home, Fanny would have
+  left us, but Bessie clung to her and whispered something in a
+  pleading voice, begging her, evidently, to come home with us.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;If Mr. Munro will take word to papa,&quot; she said,
+  indicating that worthy, who sat on the upper piazza smoking his
+  pipe.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;We will walk on,&quot; said Bessie coldly. &quot;Come, Fanny
+  dear.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Strange, thought I as I turned on my heel, this sudden fond
+  intimacy! Bessie is angry. Why did I never tell her of the ducking?
+  And yet when I remembered how Fanny had clung to me, how after we had
+  reached the shore I had been forced to remind her that it was no time
+  for sentimental gratitude when we both were shivering, I could see
+  why I had refrained from mentioning it to Bessie until our closer
+  confidences would allow of it.</p>
+
+  <p>No man, unless he be a downright coxcomb, will ever admit to one
+  woman that another woman has loved him. To his wife&#8212;perhaps.
+  But how much Fanny Meyrick cared for me I had never sought to know.
+  After the dismal ending of that moonlight boat-row&#8212;I had been
+  already disenchanted for some time before&#8212;I had scarce called
+  at Meyrick Place more than civility required. The young lady was so
+  inclined to exaggerate the circumstance, to hail me as her deliverer,
+  that I felt like the hero of a melodrama whenever we met. And after I
+  had met Bessie there were pleasanter things to think about&#8212;much
+  pleasanter.</p>
+
+  <p>How exasperating girls can be when they try! I had had my
+  <i>congé</i> for the walk home, I knew, and I was vexed enough to
+  accept it and stay at the hotel to dinner.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I will not be played upon in this way. Bessie knows that I
+  stayed over the morning train just to be with her, and piled up for
+  to-morrow no end of work, as well as sarcastic remarks from D. &amp;
+  Co. If she chooses to show off her affection for Fanny Meyrick in
+  these few hours that we have together&#8212;Fanny Meyrick whom she
+  <i>hated</i> yesterday&#8212;she may enjoy her friendship undisturbed
+  by me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>So I loitered with my cigar after dinner, and took a nap on the
+  sofa in my room. I was piqued, and did not care to conceal it. As the
+  clock struck five I bethought me it was time to betake me to the
+  Sloman cottage. A sound of wheels and a carriage turning brought me
+  to the window. The two young ladies were driving off in Fanny
+  Meyrick&#39;s phaeton, having evidently come to the hotel and waited
+  while it was being made ready.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Pique for pique! Serves me right, I suppose.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Evening found me at the Sloman cottage, waiting with Mrs. Sloman
+  by the <span class="pagenum">[pg 173]</span> tea-table. Why do I
+  always remember her, sitting monumental by the silver urn?</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;The girls are very late to-night.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes.&quot; I was beginning to be uneasy. It was nearing
+  train-time again.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Such lovely moonlight, I suppose, has tempted them, or they
+  may be staying at Foxcroft to tea.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Indeed? I looked at my watch: I had ten minutes.</p>
+
+  <p>A sound of wheels: the phaeton drove up.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, Charlie,&quot; said Bessie as she sprang out, &quot;you
+  bad boy! you&#39;ll miss your train again. Fanny here will drive you
+  to the hotel. Jump in, quick!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>And as the moonlight shone full on her face I looked inquiringly
+  into her eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;The letter,&quot; I said, &quot;for Judge Hubbard?&quot;
+  hoping that she would go to the house for it, and then I could follow
+  her for a word.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh! I had almost forgotten. Here it is;&quot; and she drew
+  it from her pocket and held it out to me in her gloved hand. I
+  pressed the hand to my lips, riding-glove and all, and sprang in
+  beside Fanny, who was with some difficulty making her horse stand
+  still.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Good-bye!&quot; from the little figure at the gate.
+  &quot;Don&#39;t forget, Fanny, to-morrow at ten;&quot; and we were
+  off.</p>
+
+  <p>By the wretched kerosene lamp of the car, going down, I read my
+  letter, for it was for me: &quot;I will not go to Europe, and I
+  forbid you to mention it again. I shall never, never forget that
+  <i>I</i> proposed it, and that you&#8212;<i>accepted</i> it. Come up
+  to Lenox once more before you go.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>This was written in ink, and was sealed. It was the morning&#39;s
+  note. But across the envelope these words were written in pencil:
+  &quot;Go to Europe with Fanny Meyrick, and come up to Lenox, both of
+  you, when you return.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p class="author">SARAH C. HALLOWELL.</p>
+
+  <p class="center">[TO BE CONTINUED.]</p><a name="insidejapan" id=
+  "insidejapan"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>INSIDE JAPAN.</h2><span class="pagenum">[pg 174]</span>
+
+  <p>A double pleasure rewards the pioneer who is the first to
+  penetrate into the midst of a new people. Besides the rare
+  exhilaration felt in treading soil virgin to alien feet, it acts like
+  mental oxygen to look upon and breathe in a unique civilization like
+  that of Japan. To feel that for ages millions of one&#39;s own race
+  have lived and loved, enjoyed and suffered and died, living the
+  fullness of life, yet without the religion, laws, customs, food,
+  dress and culture which seem to us to be the vitals of our social
+  existence, is like walking through a living Pompeii.</p>
+
+  <p>I confess to a chronic desire to explore the Island Empire in
+  which I dwell. Having already, in the central provinces of Japan,
+  trodden many a path never before touched by foreign foot, I yearned
+  to explore the twin provinces of Kadzusa and Awa, which form the
+  peninsula lying between the Gulf of Yeddo and the Pacific Ocean. A
+  timely holiday and a passport from the Japanese foreign office
+  enabled me to start toward the end of March, the time when all Japan
+  is glorious with blossoming plum trees, and the camellia trees in
+  forests of bloom are marshaled by thousands on the
+  mountain-slopes.</p>
+
+  <p>I was glad to get away from Yeddo: I had a fit of
+  anti-Caucasianism, and wished to dwell a while amidst things purely
+  Japanese. There were too many foreigners in Yeddo. In that city of
+  only eight hundred thousand Japanese there are now full two hundred
+  foreigners of all nationalities; and of these, fifty or more are
+  Americans. It was too much like home and too little like Japan.
+  Should I go to Yokohama, the case was worse. Nearly twelve hundred of
+  the sons of Japheth dwelt there, and to reach that upstart European
+  city one must travel on a railway and see telegraph-poles all along
+  the line. What <i>was</i> the use of living in Japan? Every young
+  Japanese, too, in the capital is brainful of
+  &quot;civilization,&quot; &quot;progress,&quot; &quot;reform,&quot;
+  etc. I half suspect a few cracks in the craniums belonging to some of
+  the youths who wish to introduce law, religion, steam, language,
+  frock-coats and tight boots by edict and ordinance. There was too
+  much civilization. I yearned for something more primitive, something
+  more purely Japanese; and tramping into the country I should find it.
+  I should eat Japanese food&#8212;profanely dubbed
+  &quot;chow-chow;&quot; sleep in Japanese beds&#8212;on the floor;
+  talk Japanese&#8212;as musical as Italian; and live so much like an
+  old-time native that I should feel as one born on the soil. By that
+  time, returning to Yeddo as a Japanese of the period, I should of
+  course burn to adopt railways, telegraphs and balloons, codify the
+  laws, improve upon United States postage, coinage and dress-coats,
+  and finish off by annexing the English language after I had cut out
+  all irregularities and made all the crooked spelling straight.</p>
+
+  <p>So, resolving to be a heathen for a week at least, I left Yeddo
+  one afternoon, though it took several hours to do so: the big city is
+  one of distances more magnificent than those of Washington. I started
+  in a <i>jin-riki-sha</i>, which baby-carriage on adult wheels has
+  already been described, so as to be tolerably familiar to all
+  American readers. The &quot;team&quot; of this &quot;man-power
+  carriage&quot; consists of two men, pulling tandem&#8212;one in the
+  shafts, the other running ahead with a rope over his shoulder, and,
+  until the recent passage of a law commanding decency, attired only in
+  his cuticle and a loin-cloth two inches wide. You take three coolies
+  when you wish to be stylish, while four are not an unknown sensation
+  in Yeddo. With these and fresh relays you can travel sixty, or even
+  eighty, miles a day; and I have known one man to run thirty miles on
+  the stretch.</p>
+
+  <p>Of all the modes of traveling in Japan, the jin-riki-sha is the
+  most pleasant. The <i>kago</i> is excruciating. It is a flat basket,
+  swung on a pole and carried on the shoulders of two men. If your neck
+  does not break, your feet go hopelessly to sleep. Headaches seem to
+  lodge somewhere in the bamboos, to afflict every victim entrapped in
+  it. To ride in a kago is as pleasant as riding in a washtub or a
+  coffin slung on a pole. In some mountain-passes stout native porters
+  carry you pickapack. Crossing the shallow rivers, you may sit upon a
+  platform borne on men&#39;s shoulders as they wade. Saddle-horses are
+  not to be publicly hired, but pack-horses are pleasant means of
+  locomotion. These animals and their leaders deserve a whole chapter
+  of description for themselves. Fancy a brass-bound peaked pack-saddle
+  rising a foot above the animal&#39;s back, with a crupper-strap
+  slanting down to clasp the tail. The oft-bandied slur, that in Japan
+  everything goes by contraries, has a varnish of truth on it when we
+  notice that the most gorgeous piece of Japanese saddlery is the
+  crupper, which, even on a pack-horse, is painted crimson and gilded
+  gloriously. The man who leads the horse is an animal that by long
+  contact and companionship with the quadruped has grown to resemble
+  him in disposition and ejaculation: at least, the equine and the
+  human seem to harmonize well together. This man is called in Japanese
+  &quot;horse side.&quot; He is dressed in straw sandals and the
+  universally worn <i>kimono</i>, or blue cotton wrapper-like dress,
+  which is totally unfitted for work of any kind, and which makes the
+  slovens of Japan&#8212;a rather numerous class&#8212;always look as
+  if they had just got out of bed. At his waist is the usual girdle,
+  from which hangs the inevitable bamboo-and-brass pipe, the bowl of
+  which holds but a pellet of the mild fine-cut tobacco of the country.
+  The pipe-case is connected with a tobacco-pouch, in which are also
+  flint, steel and tinder. All these are suspended by a cord, fastened
+  to a wooden or ivory button, which is tucked up through the belt. On
+  his head, covering his shaven mid-scalp and right-angled top-knot,
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 175]</span> is a blue cotton rag&#8212;not
+  handkerchief, since such an article in Japan is always made of paper.
+  This head-gear is usually fastened over the head by twisting the ends
+  under the nose. With a rope six feet long he leads his horse, which
+  trusts so implicitly to its master&#39;s guidance that we suspect the
+  prevalence of blindness among the Japanese pack-horses arises from
+  sheer lack of the exercise of their eyesight. These unkempt brutes
+  are strangers to curry-combs and brushes, though a semi-monthly
+  scrubbing in hot water keeps them tolerably clean. Their shoes are a
+  curiosity: the hoofs are not shod with iron, but with straw sandals,
+  tied on thrice or oftener daily. Grass is scarce in Japan, and oats
+  are unknown. The nags live on beans, barley, and the stalks, leaves
+  and tops of succulent plants, with only an occasional wisp of hay or
+  grass.</p>
+
+  <p>In certain districts horses of one or the other sex, as the law
+  determines, are kept exclusively. Horses of the gentler sex in Japan
+  are usually led by women. During part of my journey to the place
+  which I am about to describe the leader of the mare I bestrode was a
+  maiden of some forty summers&#8212;a neat, spare, vinegar-faced
+  sylph, who had evidently long since left the matrimonial market, and
+  had devoted herself to making one horse happy for the rest of her
+  pilgrimage. That she was neither wife nor widow I discovered, not by
+  asking questions, but by the manner in which her hair was dressed.
+  Japanese virgins and wives have each distinct coiffures, by which,
+  apart from the shaven eyebrows and the teeth dyed black of the
+  married women, the <i>musume</i> or young maiden may be known. The
+  widow who has resolved never to marry again (always too old or ugly)
+  is distinguished by her smooth skull, every hair of which is shaved
+  off. A lady of rank may also be known by her coiffure; and many other
+  distinctions are thus noted.</p>
+
+  <p>I waited three-quarters of an hour for my horse and its leader to
+  appear at the post-relay at which I sat down, and was stared at
+  during that time by about three hundred pairs of eyes. The
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 176]</span> populace of each village turned
+  out <i>en masse</i> to see the foreigner, and they diligently
+  improved their time in examining him from crown to boot-sole. Like
+  everything else in the rural districts of Japan, my guide was not in
+  a hurry, and could not understand why a foreigner should be. But
+  finally arriving, she bowed very low and invited me to climb up on
+  the saddle, and off we started for a mountain ride of eight
+  miles.</p>
+
+  <p>A Japanese pack-horse, at his best, seems always swaying between
+  two opinions: his affection for the bestower of his beans and that
+  for the repose of the stable mutually attract him. On this occasion
+  the little woman gently led the horse over the rough places and down
+  the steep paths with the ejaculation, <i>Mite yo! Mite yo!</i> but
+  when the beast stopped too long to meditate or to chew the bit, as if
+  vainly trying to pick its teeth, a lively jerk of the rope and a
+  &quot;You old beast! come on,&quot; started the animal on its
+  travels. Finally, when the creature stopped to deliberate upon the
+  propriety of going forward at all, the vials of the wrath of the
+  Japanese spinster exploded, and I was tempted to believe her
+  affections had been blighted. But when we met any of her friends on
+  the road, or passed the wayside shops or farm-houses, the scolder of
+  horses was the lady who wished all <i>Ohaio</i>
+  (&quot;Good-morning&quot;), or remarked that the weather was very
+  fine; and when joked for carrying a foreigner, replied, &quot;Yes, it
+  is the first time I have had the honor.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>I need not trouble the reader with many details of geography. My
+  trip lasted eight days, during which I passed over two hundred miles,
+  two-thirds of the way on foot. I made the entire circuit of the lower
+  half of the peninsula, but shall dwell only on my visit to Kanozan
+  (Deer Mountain), famous for its lovely scenery, temple and Booddhist
+  monastery. From the top of the mountain there are visible innumerable
+  valleys, nearly the whole of the Gulf of Yeddo, and the white-throned
+  Foosiyama, called the highest mountain in Japan and the most
+  beautiful in the world. We spent the night previous in Kisaradzu, the
+  capital of the now united provinces, and a neat little city, just
+  beginning to introduce foreign civilization. Its streets were lighted
+  with Yankee lamps and Pennsylvania petroleum. Postal boxes after the
+  Yankee custom were erected and in use. Gingham umbrellas were
+  replacing those made of oiled paper. Barbers&#39; poles, painted
+  white with the spiral red band, were set up, and within the shops
+  Young Japan had his queue cut off and his hair dressed in foreign
+  style. Ignorant of the significance of the symbolic relic of the old
+  days, when the barber was doctor and dentist also, and made his pole
+  represent a bandage wound around a broken limb, the Japanese barber
+  has, in many cases, added a green or blue band. Not being an adept in
+  the use of that refractory language which Young Japan would so like
+  to flatten out and plane down for vernacular use, the Japanese barber
+  is not always happy in executing the English legend for his
+  sign-board. The following are specimens:</p>
+
+  <p class="center">&quot;A HAIR-DRESSING SALOON FOR<br />
+  JAPANES AND FOREIGNER.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p class="center">&quot;SHOP OF HAIR.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p class="center">&quot;HAIRS CUT IN THE ENGLISH<br />
+  AND FRENCH FASHION.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Passing out of Kisaradzu, and winding up to Kanozan over the
+  narrow bridle-path, we pass the usual terraced rice-fields watered by
+  descending rivulets, and the usual thatched and mud-walled cottages,
+  which characterize every landscape in Japan, besides long rows of
+  tall <i>tsubaki</i> (camellia) trees, forty feet high and laden with
+  their crimson and white splendors. Along the road are the little
+  wayside shrines and sacred portals of red wood which tell where the
+  worshipers of the Shintoo faith adore their gods and offer their
+  prayers without image, idol or picture. The far more numerous images
+  and shrines of Booddha the sage, Amida the queen of heaven, and
+  hundred-armed Kuannon, tell of the popular faith of the masses of
+  Japan in the gentle doctrines of the Indian sage. The student of
+  comparative religions is interested in noticing how a code of morals
+  founded upon atheistic humanitarianism, in its origin utterly
+  destitute of theology, has developed into a colossal system of
+  demonology, dogmatics, eschatology, myths and legends, with a
+  pantheon more populous than that of old Rome. Many of the images by
+  the wayside are headless, cloven by frost, overturned by earthquakes,
+  and so pitted by time as to resemble petrified smallpox patients
+  rather than divinities. Nature neither respects dogma nor worships
+  the gods made by men, and the moss and the lichens have muffled up
+  the idols and eaten the substance of the sacred stone. Here Booddha
+  wears a robe of choicest green, and there the little saxafrage waves
+  its white blossoms from the shoulder of Amida, rending asunder her
+  stone body. Even the little stone columns which contain a guiding
+  hand pointing out the road to Kanozan are dedicated to Great Shaka
+  (Booddha). Passing one of the larger temples, we meet a company of
+  pilgrims. Actual sight and reasoning from experience in other lands
+  agree in telling me that they are women, and most of them old women.
+  They return my salute, politely striving to conceal their wonder at
+  the first <i>to-jin</i> they have ever looked upon.</p>
+
+  <p>I would wager that these people, like most of the rustics in
+  Japan, have always believed the foreigners from Europe and America to
+  be certainly ruffians, and most probably beasts. Many of them,
+  without having heard; of Darwin or Monboddo, believe all the
+  &quot;hairy foreigners&quot; to be descendants of dogs. Their first
+  meeting with a foreigner sweeps away the cobwebs of prejudice, and
+  they are ashamed of their former ignorance. In extorting from
+  Japanese friends their first ideas about foreigners, I have been
+  forcibly reminded of some popular ideas concerning the people of
+  China and Japan which are still entertained at home, especially by
+  the queens of the kitchen and the lords of the hod.</p>
+
+  <p>After the fashion in Japan, I inquire of the pilgrims whence they
+  came and whither they are going. Leaning upon their staves and
+  unslinging their huge <span class="pagenum">[pg 177]</span> round,
+  conical hats, they give me to know that they have come on foot from
+  Muja, nearly one hundred and fifty miles distant, and that they will
+  finish their pilgrimage at Kominato&#8212;where the great founder of
+  the Nichiren sect (one of the last developments of Booddhism in
+  Japan) was born&#8212;twenty-seven miles beyond the point at which we
+  met. I inform them that I have come over seven thousand miles, and
+  will also visit Nichiren&#39;s birthplace. &quot;<i>Sayo de
+  gozarimos! Naru hodo?</i>&quot; (&quot;Indeed, is it
+  possible?&quot;)</p>
+
+  <p>I have reached their hearts through the gates of surprise. A
+  foreigner visiting Nichiren&#39;s birthplace! And coming seven
+  thousand miles too! The old ladies become loquacious. They pour out
+  their questions by dozens. Do you have Booddhist temples in America?
+  Of course the Nichiren sect flourishes there? When I politely answer
+  No to both questions, a look of disappointed surprise and pity steals
+  over both the ruddy and the wrinkled faces. &quot;Then he is a
+  heathen!&quot; says the expression on their faces. How strange that
+  no Booddhist temples exist in the foreigner&#39;s country! Ah,
+  perhaps, then, the Shintoo religion is the religion of the
+  foreigner&#39;s country? &quot;No? <i>Naru hodo!</i> Then what
+  <i>do</i> you believe in?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>It did not take long to answer that question. There is no country
+  in the world in which Christianity has been more publicly and
+  universally advertised. For three centuries, in every city, village
+  and hamlet and on every highway, the names of Christianity and its
+  Founder have been proclaimed on the edict-boards and in the public
+  law-books of the empire as belonging to a corrupt and hateful
+  doctrine; which should a man believe, he would be punished on earth
+  by fines, imprisonment, perhaps death, and in <i>jigoku</i> (hell) by
+  torments eternal. &quot;Whosoever believeth in Christ shall be
+  damned&#8212;whosoever believeth not shall be saved,&quot; was the
+  formula taught by the priests for centuries. I pointed to the board
+  on which hung the edicts prohibiting Christianity, and told them I
+  believed in that doctrine, and that <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  178]</span> Christ was the One adored and loved by us. A volley of
+  <i>naru hodos</i>, spoken with bated breath, greeted this
+  announcement, and I could only understand the whispered &quot;Why,
+  that is the sect whose followers will go to hell!&quot; The old
+  ladies could not walk fast, and we soon parted, after many a strange
+  question concerning morals, customs and the details of civilization
+  in the land of the foreigner. Be it said, in passing, that the
+  present liberal and enlightened government of Japan, in spite of
+  priestly intolerance and the bigotry of ignorance, resisting even to
+  blood, has decided upon the recission of the slanderous falsehoods
+  against the faith of Christendom; and Japan, though an Asiatic
+  nation, will soon grant toleration to all creeds.</p>
+
+  <p>The path wound up through higher valleys, revealing bolder
+  scenery. Afar off, in the sheen of glorified distance, the water
+  slanted to the sky. The white bosoms of the square-sailed junks
+  heaved with breezy pulses, the mountains were thrones of stainless
+  blue, the floods of sunny splendor and the intense fullness of light,
+  for which the cloudless sky of Japan is remarkable, told the reason
+  for the naming of Niphon, of which &quot;Japan&quot; is but the
+  foreigner&#39;s corruption, &quot;Great Land of the Fountain of
+  Light.&quot; Anon we entered the groves of mountain-pines anchored in
+  the rocks, and with girths upon which succeeding centuries had
+  clasped their zones. They seemed like Nature&#39;s senators in
+  council as they whispered together and murmured in the breeze that
+  reached us laden with music and freighted with resinous aroma.
+  Reaching a hamlet called Mute (&quot;six hands&quot;), I sit outside
+  an inn on one of the benches which are ever ready for the traveler,
+  and shaded overhead by a screen of boughs. A young girl brings me
+  water, the ever-ready cup of tea, and fire for the pipe which I am
+  supposed to smoke. A short rest, another hour&#39;s climb and walk,
+  and we are in the village of Kanozan, which is scarcely more than a
+  street of hotels. Situated on the ridge of the mountain, it rises
+  like an island in a sea of pines.</p>
+
+  <p>In imagining a Japanese hotel, good reader, please dismiss all
+  architectural ideas derived from the Continental or the Fifth Avenue.
+  Our hotels in Japan, outwardly at least, are wooden structures, two
+  stories high, often but one. Their roofs are usually thatched, though
+  the city caravansaries are tiled. They are entirely open on the front
+  <i>ground</i> floor, and about six feet from the sill or threshold
+  rises a platform about a foot and a half high, upon which the
+  proprietor may be seen seated on his heels behind a tiny railing ten
+  inches high, busy with his account-books. If it is winter he is
+  engaged in the absorbing occupation of all Japanese tradesmen at that
+  time of year&#8212;warming his hands over a charcoal fire in a low
+  brazier. The kitchen is usually just next to this front room, often
+  separated from the street only by a latticed partition. In evolving a
+  Japanese kitchen out of his or her imagination, the reader must cast
+  away the rising conception of Bridget&#39;s realm. Blissful, indeed,
+  is the thought as I enter the Japanese hotel that neither the typical
+  servant-girl nor the American hotel-clerk is to be found here. The
+  landlord comes to meet me, and, falling on his hands and knees, bows
+  his head to the floor. One or two of the pretty girls out of the bevy
+  usually seen in Japanese hotels comes to assist me and take my traps.
+  Welcomes, invitations and plenty of fun greet me as I sit down to
+  take off my shoes, as all good Japanese do, and as those filthy
+  foreigners don&#39;t who tramp on the clean mats with muddy boots. I
+  stand up unshod, and am led by the laughing girls along the smooth
+  corridors, across an arched bridge which spans an open space in which
+  is a rookery, garden, and pond stocked with goldfish, turtles and
+  marine plants. The room which my fair guides choose for me is at the
+  rear end of the house, overlooking the grand scenery for which
+  Kanozan is justly famous all over the empire. Ninety-nine valleys are
+  said to be visible from the mountain-top on which the hotel is
+  situated, and I suspect that multiplication by ten would scarcely be
+  an exaggeration. A world of blue water and pines, and the detailed
+  loveliness of the rolling land, form a picture which I lack power to
+  paint with words. The water seemed the type of repose, the earth of
+  motion.</p>
+
+  <p>Enjoying to the full that rapture of first vision which one never
+  feels twice, I turned and entered the room, which made up in neatness
+  what it lacked in luxury. Furniture in a Japanese house there is
+  none. Like all the others, the floor of my room was covered with soft
+  matting two inches thick, made into sections six feet long and three
+  feet wide, and bound with a black border. The dimensions of a room
+  may always be expressed by the number of mats. The inside of the mats
+  is of rice straw, the outside is of the finest and smoothest matting.
+  There are no chairs, stools, sofas or anything to sit down upon,
+  though, having long since forgotten the fact, we find a ready seat on
+  the floor. On one side of the room, occupying one-half of its space,
+  is the <i>tokonoma</i>, a little platform anciently used for the bed,
+  two feet wide and five or six inches high. In one corner is a large
+  vase containing four or five boughs broken from a plum tree crowded
+  with blossoms, and a large bunch of white, crimson and dappled
+  camellias, both single and double. In the centre is the sword-rack,
+  found in every samurai&#39;s house, yet now obsolete, since
+  Japan&#39;s chivalry have laid aside their two swords. On the other
+  half of the room, occupying the same side as the tokonoma, is a
+  series of peculiar shelves like those of an open Japanese cabinet,
+  though larger; and at the top of these is a little closet closed by
+  sliding doors. The other three sides of the room are of sliding
+  partitions six feet high, made of fine white wood, latticed in small
+  squares and covered with paper, through which mellow, softened light
+  fills the room. On the plastered wall above the latticed sliding
+  doors hangs a framed tablet on which are written Chinese characters,
+  which, having the Japanese letters at the side, tell in terse and
+  poetical phrase that &quot;This room is the chamber of peaceful
+  meditation, into which the moonlight streams.&quot; Some of the
+  lattice and other work is <span class="pagenum">[pg 179]</span>
+  handsomely carved and wrought, and a paper screen along the wall
+  which separates this room from the next is covered with verses of
+  Japanese poetry. Were it cold weather, a brazier, with some live
+  coals in it, would be brought for us to toast our hands and feet and
+  to shiver over, as stoves and hard coal are not Japanese
+  institutions. First of all, however, at present, one of the
+  <i>musumes</i> brings me a <i>tobacco-bon</i> or tray, in which is
+  fire to light my pipe, the Japanese scarcely having a conception of a
+  man who does not smoke.</p>
+
+  <p>My description of a Japanese room will answer, in the main, for
+  any in Japan <i>as it was</i>&#8212;from the artisan&#39;s to the
+  emperor&#39;s. Even the palaces of the mikado in Kioto never
+  contained tables, chairs, bedsteads or any such inconvenient and
+  space-robbing thing. The tables upon which they ate, played chess or
+  wrote were six inches or a foot high. A Japanese of the old style
+  thinks the cumbrous furniture in our Western dwellings impertinent
+  and unnecessary. In the eye of aesthetic Japanese a room crowded with
+  luxurious upholstery is a specimen of barbaric pomp, delighting the
+  savage and unrefined eye of the hairy foreigners, but shocking to the
+  purged vision and the refined taste of one born in great Niphon. No
+  such tradesman as an upholsterer or furniture-dealer exists in Japan.
+  The country is a paradise for young betrothed couples who would wed
+  with light purses. One sees love in a cottage on a national scale
+  here. That terrible lion of expense, the furnishing of a house, that
+  stands ever in the way of so many loving pairs desirous of marriage
+  and a home of their own, is a bugbear not known in Japan. A chest of
+  drawers for clothing, a few mats, two or three quilts for a bed on
+  the floor, some simple kitchen utensils, and the house is furnished.
+  Why should we litter these neatly matted rooms, why cover with paint
+  and gilding virgin wood of faultless grain, or mar the sweet
+  simplicity and airy roominess of our (Japanese) chambers by loading
+  them with all kinds of unnecessary luxuries?</p><span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 180]</span>
+
+  <p>These reflections are broken in upon by Miss Cherry-blossom, one
+  of the maids, who glides in, kneels upon the floor, and sets down a
+  tiny round tray with a baby tea-pot and a cup the size of an egg.
+  Pouring out some tea, enough to half fill one of these porcelain
+  thimbles, she sets it in the socket of another yet tinier tray, and
+  bowing her head coquettishly, begs me to drink. Having long since
+  learned to quaff Japan&#39;s fragrant beverage guiltless of milk or
+  sugar, I drain the cup. Miss Cherry-blossom, sitting upright upon her
+  heels, folds her dress neatly under her knees, gives her loose robe a
+  twitch, revealing to advantage her white-powdered neck, the prized
+  point of beauty in a Japanese maiden, and then asks the usual
+  questions as to whence I came, whither I am going, and to what
+  country I belong. These, according to the Japanese code of etiquette,
+  are all polite questions; and in return, violating no dictum which
+  the purists of Kioto or Yeddo have laid down, I inquire her age
+  (&quot;Your honorable years, how many?&quot;). The answer,
+  &quot;<i>Ju-hachi</i>,&quot; makes known that she is eighteen years
+  of age. Chatting further, I learn what things there are to be seen in
+  the neighborhood, whether foreigners have been there before, the
+  distance to the next village, the history of the old temple near by,
+  etc. All this is told with many a laugh and a little
+  pantomime&#8212;she naturally committing the mistake of speaking
+  louder and faster to the foreigner who cannot fully understand her
+  dialect or allusions&#8212;when a new character appears upon the
+  scene.</p>
+
+  <p>A very jolly, matronly-looking woman, evidently the landlady,
+  pulls aside one of the sliding paper doors, and bowing low on her
+  hands and knees, smiles cavernously with her jet-black teeth, which,
+  like all correct and cleanly women in Japan, she dyes on alternate
+  days. She asks concerning dinner, and whether it is the honorable
+  wish of the visitor to eat Japanese food. The answer being
+  affirmative, both matron and maiden disappear to prepare the meal,
+  evidently thinking it a fine joke. No such thing as a common
+  dining-room exists in Japanese hotels. Caste has hitherto been too
+  strictly observed to allow of such an idea. Every guest eats in his
+  own room, sitting on his calves and heels. The preparations are
+  simple, though of course I speak now of every-day life.</p>
+
+  <p>Miss Peach-blossom appears, bearing in her hand a table four
+  inches high, one foot square, and handsomely lacquered red and black.
+  Behind her comes a young girl carrying a rice-box and plate of fish.
+  Most gracefully she sets it down with the apology, &quot;I have kept
+  you long waiting,&quot; and the invitation, &quot;Please take
+  up.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>On the table are four covered bowls, two very small dishes
+  containing pickles and soy, and a little paper bag in which is a pair
+  of chopsticks. The place of each article is foreordained by
+  gastronomic etiquette, and rigidly observed. In the first bowl is
+  soup, in the second a boiled mixture consisting of leeks, mushrooms,
+  lotus-root and a kind of sea-weed. In a third are boiled buckwheat
+  cakes or dumplings, and <i>tofu</i> or bean-curd. In the porcelain
+  cup is rice. In an oblong dish, brought in during the meal, is a
+  broiled fish in soy. Lifting off the covers and adjusting my
+  chopsticks deftly, I begin. The bowl of rice is first attacked, and
+  quickly finished. The attendant damsel proffers her lacquered waiter,
+  and uncovering the steaming tub of rice paddles out another cupful.
+  It is etiquette to dispose of unlimited cups of rice and soup, but a
+  deadly breach of good manners to ask to have the other two bowls
+  replenished. Of course at the hotels whatever the larder affords can
+  be ordered. Boiled eggs, cracked and peeled before you by the
+  tapering fingers of the damsels, are considered choice articles of
+  food. Raw fish, thinly sliced and eaten with radish, sauce, ginger
+  sprouts, etc., is highly enjoyed by the Japanese, who are surprised
+  to find the dish disliked by their foreign guests. A member of one of
+  the embassies sent to Europe confessed that amid the luxuries of
+  continental tables, he longed for the raw fish and grated radish of
+  his native land. Some articles of our own diet, especially cheese and
+  butter, are as heartily detested by the Japanese as their raw fish is
+  by us. The popular idea at home, that the Japanese live chiefly on
+  mice and crawfish, and that the foreigners are in chronic danger of
+  starvation, is matched by that of some Japanese, who, finding that
+  the &quot;hairy foreigners&quot; do not eat the food of human
+  beings&#8212;<i>i.e.</i> Japanese&#8212;wonder what they do eat. A
+  member of the present embassy in Europe, when first leaving his
+  native land, was thus addressed by his anxious mother: &quot;Now,
+  Yazirobe, you are going to those strange countries, where I am afraid
+  you will get very little to eat: do take some rice with you.&quot; I
+  confess that on first landing in Japan I could not relish Japanese
+  diet and cookery. Barring eggs and rice, everything tasted like
+  starch or sawdust. The flavors seemed raw and earthy, or suggested
+  dishcloths not too well scalded. I suspect that a good deal of
+  Philadelphia and Caucasian pride lined the alimentary canal of the
+  writer. Now, after a ten-mile tramp, a Japanese meal tastes very much
+  as it does to one native and to the diet born.</p>
+
+  <p>Besides the young damsel who presides, there is another, less
+  neatly dressed. Her apron is suggestive of the kitchen, and
+  altogether she seems a Cinderella by the fireplace. This damsel is
+  evidently a supe or scullion. She is not so self-possessed as her
+  superior companion, and while observing the foreigner with a mild
+  stare, unskillfully concealing her mirth, she finally explodes when
+  he makes a <i>faux pas</i> with the chopsticks and drops a bit of
+  fish on the clean matting. Thereupon she is dispatched to the kitchen
+  for a floor-cloth, and severely lectured for laughing aloud, and is
+  told to stay among the pots and pans till she learns better
+  manners.</p>
+
+  <p>Dinner over, a siesta on the soft mats is next in order. These
+  mats seem made for sleep and indolence. No booted foot ever defiles
+  them. Every one leaves his clogs on the ground outside, and glides
+  about in his mitten-like socks, which have each a special compartment
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 181]</span> for the great toe. My waiting
+  damsel having gone out, and there being no such things as bells, I do
+  as the natives and clap my hands. A far-off answer of
+  <i>Hei&#8212;i&#8212;i</i> is returned, and soon the shuffling of
+  feet is heard again. The housewife appears with the usual low bow,
+  and, smiling so as to again display what resembles a mouthful of
+  coal, she listens to the request for a pillow. Opening the little
+  closet before spoken of, she produces the desired article. It is not
+  a ticking bag of baked feathers enclosed in a dainty, spotless case
+  of white linen, but a little upright piece of wood, six inches high
+  and long, and one wide, rounded at the bottom like the rockers of a
+  cradle. On the top, lying in a groove, is a tiny rounded bag of
+  calico filled with rice-chaff, about the size of a sausage. The
+  pillow-case is a piece of white paper wrapped around the top, and
+  renewed in good hotels daily for each guest. One can rest about four
+  or six inches of the side of his <i>os occipitis</i> on a Japanese
+  pillow, and if he wishes may rock himself to sleep, though the words
+  suggest more than the facts warrant. By sleeping on civilized
+  feathers one gets out of training, and the Japanese pillows feel very
+  hard and very much in one place. The dreams which one has on these
+  pillows are characteristic. In my first some imps were boring
+  gimlet-holes in the side of my skull, until they had honeycombed it
+  and removed so much brain that I felt too light-headed to preserve my
+  equilibrium. On the present occasion, after falling asleep, I thought
+  that the pillow on which I lay pressed its shape into my head, and
+  the skull, to be repaired, was being trepanned. My head actually
+  tumbling off the pillow was the cause of the fancied operation being
+  suddenly arrested. A short experience in traveling among the Japanese
+  has satisfied me that they are one of the most polite, good-natured
+  and happy nations in the world. By introducing foreign civilization
+  into their beautiful land they may become richer: they need not
+  expect to be happier.</p>
+
+  <p class="author">W.E. GRIFFIS.</p><a name="jason" id="jason">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a> <span class="pagenum">[pg 182]</span>
+
+  <h2>JASON&#39;S QUEST.</h2>
+
+  <h3><a name="jasoni" id="jasoni"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> I.</h3>
+
+  <p>This is a story of love for love, and how it came to naught. In it
+  there shall be no marrying from mercenary motives; the manoeuvering
+  mother-in-law is suppressed; Nature takes her course; and in the
+  climax I strive to prove how sad a thing it is that men are modest
+  and women weak.</p>
+
+  <p>Still, I do not lose faith in humanity, but hope for better things
+  in the broad, bright future. I would respectfully call attention to
+  the moral of this tale, and, as for the heroes and heroines of the
+  hereafter, I cheerfully leave them to regulate their affairs upon a
+  different basis; which basis, I devoutly believe, will be one of the
+  inevitable results of time.</p>
+
+  <p>But, lo! the heroine approaches and the story begins!</p>
+  <hr />
+
+  <p>Life with some of us is but the grouping of a few brilliant or
+  sombre tableaux, which are like the famous lines in an epic that
+  immortalize the whole. Maud&#39;s life was such a one, and her years
+  had been rather unpicturesque until now, when the shadows began to
+  deepen and the lights to grow more intense. In fact, she seemed to be
+  approaching some sort of a climax, and she began to grow nervous
+  about it, being just woman enough to dwell somewhat anxiously upon
+  her anticipated <i>début</i>, and to hope for at least a decent
+  appearance in her extremity.</p>
+
+  <p>The good-hearted, commonplace people of a pleasant country down
+  the coast&#8212;which I will call Dreamland for convenience&#39;
+  sake&#8212;thought of Maud only as a gentle and humane little lady,
+  with a comfortable income and a character above reproach. So Maud
+  abode in peace with her maids at the seaside cottage, spending the
+  still hours of Dreamland between her rose-garden on the sunny slope
+  to the southward and the conservatory of lily-like nuns on the hill
+  toward the sea.</p>
+
+  <p>Maud was unhappy in a world which had treated her very kindly
+  indeed, and it was simply because she had a dove&#39;s heart, that
+  was always fluttering in a strange place, and the face of a nun, that
+  was for ever getting looked at by all sorts of people, much as it
+  disliked that kind of treatment from the best of them.</p>
+
+  <p>The only reason why Maud preferred such a dull place as Dreamland
+  to the splendid metropolis up the coast was that she might have a
+  quiet time of it, and not be annoyed by the impudent metropolitans.
+  In fact, she was tired of her lovers&#8212;all save one, a fine young
+  fellow named Jason, but better known in Dreamland as John. I have
+  mentioned, I believe, that Maud was in very good circumstances: I am
+  sorry to add that Jason wasn&#39;t. He was rich only in his untried
+  youth and the promises of a glorious manhood.</p>
+
+  <p>Jason loved Maud, and she knew it as well as she ever knew
+  anything in her life&#8212;she knew it without his having told her.
+  Had she not divined it by the infallible intuition of the heart, she
+  might have lived believing herself unloved, for Jason hadn&#39;t the
+  remotest idea of mentioning the fact. He could barely live
+  comfortably by himself, frugal as he was; and he would not go to her
+  empty-handed, though Heaven knows she had enough for two, and was
+  dying to share it with him. He went his way, and the way was tedious
+  enough in those days. Like a mirage, happiness glimmered before him,
+  but his upright and patient steps brought him no nearer to its
+  alluring vista.</p>
+
+  <p>Youth is impatient and sanguine, and Jason, in his impetuous and
+  hopeful youth, besought the oracle, whose prophetic utterances seemed
+  to imply that his future and his fortune lay in some distant land,
+  and that it would be wise for him to seek it at once. Jason, like his
+  illustrious predecessor, resolved to go over the sea in search of the
+  golden fleece. It was the most adventurous thing he ever did, and
+  Maud thought it a hopeless and a willful act; yet she could do
+  nothing but hold her peace, while her poor heart was as near to
+  breaking as possible&#8212;much nearer to breaking than it is usually
+  safe for a maiden&#39;s heart to be.</p>
+
+  <p>So Jason gathered his mates&#8212;a reckless lot they were,
+  too&#8212;and, having laden his barque and swung into the stream, his
+  men said their final adieux, receiving quantities of pincushions and
+  bookmarks, so indispensable to Argonauts, as testimonials of eternal
+  fidelity from the maids of Dreamland.</p>
+
+  <p>Jason strode to the cottage and kissed the hand of Maud as if it
+  were the hand of a princess; after which, with much embarrassment, he
+  plucked a rose from her garden, while a pang pierced his heart till
+  it ached again, and a thorn probed his finger till a drop of blood
+  fell upon a myrtle leaf; which leaf Maud coveted, and keeps to this
+  day&#8212;hugged to her in her grave-clothes.</p>
+
+  <p>It is of course best that this life should not be perfect, for the
+  life to come might suffer by comparison; yet it is one of the
+  cruelest decrees of Nature&#8212;if Nature has really decreed what
+  seems so wholly against her&#8212;that a woman&#39;s heart must bide
+  its time and be silent in the presence of its natural mate while
+  every attribute of her being implores his recognition; and that the
+  truest men are too honorable or too proud to yield themselves, having
+  no offering but their honest love to lay at the feet of their
+  mistresses. If it were not so, the princess would not have mourned in
+  her garden for her flown mate, and there would have been much
+  happiness on short notice.</p>
+
+  <p>Driven forth by the propitious winds, the barque fled from the
+  shore, while Maud, seated among her roses, with weeping and wringing
+  of hands, poured out upon the winds the burden of her love.</p>
+
+  <p>Why didn&#39;t Jason catch a syllable of that fervent prayer,
+  reef, and come home to her? Then I need not have written this
+  history, and all would have <span class="pagenum">[pg 183]</span>
+  been well in Dreamland. But he didn&#39;t. He heard nothing but the
+  sibilant waters as they rushed under his keel: he thought of nothing
+  but the rose that was withering in the secret locker of his cabin,
+  and of the wound in his heart that was gaping and as fresh as ever.
+  So the night-winds hurried him onward, and the darkness absorbed the
+  outlines of the dear Dreamland coast.</p>
+
+  <p>Maud watched the barque while it lessened and lessened in the
+  distance, and the clouds blew over her, and it grew chilly and damp
+  in the rose-garden&#8212;as chilly and damp as though it were not the
+  abode of a princess who was beloved of the noblest of men. She
+  watched the sail till it faded suddenly beyond the headland, and
+  between it and her loomed the dark towers of the convent. Out on that
+  troubled sea, seeking the golden fleece in some remote kingdom,
+  tossed on the treacherous waves for her sake, in her white and
+  radiant dreams she beheld Jason. Yet ever between him and her, hiding
+  the lessening barque from the slope of the rose-garden, loomed the
+  dark towers of the convent.</p><a name="jasonii" id="jasonii">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>II.</h3>
+
+  <p>Jason and his fellows coursed the seas, scanning with eager eyes
+  the cloudy belt of the horizon, hopefully seeking some signs of the
+  Fortunate Islands, of whose indescribable beauty and untold wealth
+  they had heard many surmises. Day after day they pressed on between
+  the same blank sky and the same blank sea, but there was no token to
+  gladden the eyes of the watchers. Jason grew impatient at last: he
+  had called upon nearly all the saints in the calendar, and was
+  growing to be a very poor sort of a Catholic, inasmuch as he doubted
+  the efficacy of his prayers and the ability of saints to answer them.
+  He didn&#39;t realize that there might be good reasons for their not
+  being answered under the existing circumstances; which is a matter
+  worthy of the consideration of all of us.</p>
+
+  <p>The fact was, the Fortunate Islands were not one-half so wonderful
+  as had been represented; and the saints knew <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 184]</span> it well enough. Had Jason invested there,
+  as he purposed doing at the time of his embarkment, he might have
+  sunk all that he possessed&#8212;which was little enough to float, as
+  one would think&#8212;and then Maud might have tended her rose-garden
+  and carried fruit-offerings to the sweet-faced nuns till she was gray
+  and limping, for all Jason&#39;s fine notions of
+  independence&#8212;namely, a good income from the rise of stocks in
+  the Fortunate Islands, and two souls and two hearts doing the same
+  sort of thing at the same time, with complete and unqualified
+  success, in that sweet rose-garden on the sunny slope to the
+  southward.</p>
+
+  <p>That was the way life went with Captain Jason of the Argonauts,
+  called John, for short, in Dreamland, while the crew growled a good
+  deal at their ill-luck, and began to fear that if things went on in
+  that way much longer they would have more fasts than Fridays in the
+  week. Those were trying times for all of them, and when land was made
+  at last, and it proved to be a temptation and a snare, Jason ordered
+  a special fast and a mass for the salvation of the souls in imminent
+  peril. Out in the world at last, thousands of miles from the
+  unsophisticated people of Dreamland, Jason beheld the dread
+  Symplegades rocking their enormous bulks upon the waves, and liable
+  at any moment to swing together with a terrific and deadly crash.
+  Probably they were whales at play: it may have been two currents of
+  the sea rushing into each other&#39;s arms: at all events, it was
+  something deluding, though temporary, and perhaps the selfsame
+  difficulty experienced by the original J. when he went after the
+  original fleece.</p>
+
+  <p>My hero was young and unschooled in the world&#39;s wickedness,
+  but he knew that where two opposing elements come together with much
+  force, whatever happens to lie between them must suffer. What should
+  be done was a question of no little importance to the Argonauts. Most
+  of them were in favor of running the risk of a collision and letting
+  the vessel drive straight through. Jason thought this a judgment
+  worthy of young men whose lady-loves give expression to their most
+  sacred sentiments by gifts of pincushions and bookmarks. But he had
+  something to consider more than they&#8212;yea, more than any other
+  living man&#8212;in exemplification of the pleasing fallacy that
+  besets all lovers in all ages. Blessed be God that it is so!</p>
+
+  <p>The original Jason in the fable let loose a dove upon the waters,
+  and the dove lost only a tail-feather or two when the clashing
+  islands clashed their worst, and in the moment of the rebound the
+  Argo swept through in safety. The modern J. thought of this in his
+  predicament, and having turned it in his mind, he concluded that
+  whereas the pioneer Argonaut did not meet his princess till after his
+  encounter with the elements, he was not worthy of consideration; for
+  had he known her and loved her as some one knew and loved some one
+  else at that moment, most likely he would not have valued his life so
+  slightly. He clewed up his canvas like a wise mariner, and lay to
+  while the Symplegades butted one another with their foreheads of
+  adamant, and the sea was white with terror all about them. Jason was
+  no coward: he would have braved the passage had he alone been
+  concerned in the result; but for Maud in her rose-garden and for the
+  future, dear to him as his hope of heaven, he paused and
+  trembled.</p>
+
+  <p>It is a pity there should be so little pausing and trembling among
+  the clashing islands when life hangs in the balance and the odds are
+  against it. But there always has been and always will be this little,
+  because we believe that nothing but experience is capable of teaching
+  us, and experience invariably teaches it all wrong end to, so that we
+  begin our lesson with a disaster and conclude it with a slow
+  recovery.</p>
+
+  <p>During Jason&#39;s hour of deliberation his guardian angel, who
+  was the only one having his interests really at heart, and who loved
+  him unselfishly,&#8212;this angel advised him in the similitude of a
+  dream to &quot;luff a little and go round the obstacles.&quot; Jason
+  luffed, and passed on with colors flying; which was doubtless much
+  better than trying to squeeze through the floating islands in the
+  midst of an exceedingly disagreeable sea.</p>
+
+  <p>Then came the land beyond, the long-sought kingdom, full of arts
+  and wiles. Jason was beset with ten thousand temptations, and was
+  more than once upon the point of falling into a snare, when, however,
+  he seemed to behold the apparition of his withered rose, which
+  bloomed and blushed again at such times, and gave out a faint
+  fragrance, so like a breath from that Eden on the sunny slope that he
+  paused and grew strong, and was saved.</p>
+
+  <p>His troubles were not yet over. There was the bargaining for the
+  golden fleece, and the tempting offer of the dragons&#39; teeth which
+  he was to sow. They were the lusts of the body, that, once planted,
+  spring up an armed force of bloody and persistent accusers. But that
+  precious rose! How it blossomed over and over for his especial
+  benefit, a perpetual warning and an unfailing talisman&#8212;a very
+  profitable sort of blossom to wear in one&#39;s button-hole in these
+  times! But such blossoms are scarce indeed.</p>
+
+  <p>In due course of time that potent charm got him the golden fleece
+  in a very natural and business-like way, and, rejoicing in his
+  possessions, Jason returned to his vessel and trimmed his sails for
+  home.</p>
+
+  <p>Merry the hearts that sailed with him, and fresh the winds that
+  wafted them onward, while, as is usual at sea, nothing occurred
+  during the voyage worth mentioning an hour after its occurrence.
+  Jason in his new joy had almost forgotten that withered token. In
+  deep remorse at his thoughtlessness, he sought his treasure, and,
+  horror of horrors! every leaf had fallen from the stem, the blossom
+  was annihilated for ever. He dwelt upon this episode morbidly, as
+  upon a presentiment: he pictured in his mind the hill-slope cottage
+  deserted, the rose-garden wasted and full of tares, and the bleak
+  wind blowing whither it listed through those avenues of beauty, for
+  desolation possessed them all. He groaned in spirit and wrestled with
+  his new and invisible adversary, beseeching the Most Merciful, from
+  the bitterness <span class="pagenum">[pg 185]</span> of his suspense,
+  a speedy deliverance or a happy death.</p><a name="jasoniii" id=
+  "jasoniii"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>III.</h3>
+
+  <p>There were thistles and tares in the unkept rose-garden, and the
+  cottage was abandoned to a sisterhood of doves, who mourned
+  perpetually for their lost princess. The place was desolate, yet
+  there had been no sudden desertion of it. For many months no news had
+  been heard of the Argonauts. They were considerably overdue: the
+  sages of Dreamland shook their grizzly heads. They were just as sage
+  and shaky in those days as in these degenerate times. The maids of
+  the hamlet wept for a season, then turned from sorrowing, dried their
+  tears, took unto themselves new lovers, and the world wagged well in
+  Dreamland.</p>
+
+  <p>But Maud was a truer soul than any amongst them: she prayed hourly
+  for Jason&#39;s prosperity, and was trusting and hopeful until it
+  seemed almost that something had whispered to her the fate of the
+  voyagers. Then she mourned night and day: she went into retirement
+  with the sweet-faced nuns at the headland, whose secluded life had
+  ever been very grateful to her. She gave out of her bounty to all who
+  asked, and rested not then, but sought the sick and the suffering,
+  and they were comforted, and blessed her who had blessed them. They
+  began to think her half an angel in Dreamland, and it seemed as
+  though she were not made for this world at all. The same thing
+  happens now occasionally, and in this way we acknowledge our
+  shortcomings before our fellow-men and women when we find some one
+  considerably above the average who shames us into confessing it. I
+  hope the Recording Angel is within hearing at these precious
+  moments.</p>
+
+  <p>The world certainly possessed no charms for one of Maud&#39;s
+  temperament: it never did possess any for her. She was as out of
+  place in it as a mourning dove in a city mob. Her spirit sought
+  tranquillity, and she found it in the serene and changless convent
+  life. You and I might seek in vain for anything like peace of spirit
+  in such a place: we <span class="pagenum">[pg 186]</span> might find
+  it a stale and profitless imprisonment; and perhaps it speaks badly
+  for both of us that it is so. The violet finds its silent cell in the
+  earth-crevice by the hidden spring a sufficient refuge, and rejoices
+  in it, but the sea-grass that has all its life tossed in the surges
+  would think that a very dull sort of existence. There are human
+  violets in the world, and human sunflowers and poppies, and doves
+  also, and apes and alligators; and some of them come within one of
+  being inhuman; and sometimes that <i>one</i> drops out, and the
+  inhuman swallows up the human.</p>
+
+  <p>Maud was the mourning dove seeking its bower of shade: she used to
+  fancy herself a nun, and followed the prescribed duties of the house
+  as faithfully as Sister Grace herself. She knelt in the little chapel
+  of the convent till her back ached and her knees were lame, but it
+  was a never-failing joy in time of trouble, and her time of tremble
+  had come. Maud said many prayers before an altar of exceeding
+  loveliness, where fresh flowers seemed to breathe forth an unusual
+  fragrance. There was a statue of the Virgin, said to possess some
+  miraculous qualities: tradition whispered that on two or three
+  occasions the expression on the face of the statue had been seen to
+  change visibly. Maud heard of this, and was very eager to witness the
+  miracle, for it was thought to be nothing less than miraculous by the
+  good Sisters. She bowed before the altar for hours, and dreamed of
+  the marble face till she seemed to see its features smiling upon her
+  and its small, slim hand beckoning her back to prayer. She grew
+  nervous and pale and almost ill with watching and waiting, and at
+  last was found prostrate and insensible at the foot of the statue,
+  overcome with excitement and exhaustion. When she grew better she
+  vowed she had seen the head bowing to her, and the hands spread over
+  her in benediction: no one could deny it, for she was alone in the
+  chapel. After that there was a feast of lilies at the convent, and
+  Maud became Sister Somebody or other, and never again set foot beyond
+  the great gates of the convent wall.</p>
+
+  <p>The consecration was doubtless a blessing to her, for she was
+  happy in her new home, and found a sphere of usefulness that employed
+  her hours to the best advantage. Moreover, she grew to be a sensible
+  nun, and ceased to look for supernatural demonstrations in the
+  neighborhood of the chapel. She grew hearty, and was cheerful, and
+  sang at her work, and prayed with more honesty and less sentiment.
+  Her life was as placid as a river whose waters are untroubled by
+  tempestuous winds, and upon her bosom light cares, like passing
+  barges, left but a momentary wake.</p>
+
+  <p>As Maud mused in her cell one day, through the narrow barred
+  window she caught a glimpse of the burnished sea bearing upon its
+  waves a weather-beaten barque inward bound. There was danger that her
+  mind might wander off, piloted by her dreamy and worshipful eyes. She
+  arose, drew across the opening a leathern curtain, and returned with
+  undisturbed complacence to her prayers.</p><a name="jasoniv" id=
+  "jasoniv"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>IV.</h3>
+
+  <p>Jason, having among his freights the veritable golden fleece,
+  still coursed the seas, but beheld with rapture the fair outlines of
+  the Dreamland coast traced in the far blue and mysterious horizon.
+  The wind freshened: hour after hour they were nearing port, and as
+  the whole familiar picture grew more and more distinct, Jason saw the
+  convent towers looming like a great shadow, and afterward the sunny
+  slope whereon the rose-garden grew.</p>
+
+  <p>The manner of his quitting the barque before she was fairly within
+  communication with the shore was hardly worthy of his calling. I
+  forbear to dwell upon this exhibition of human weakness, for almost
+  any one in Jason&#39;s shoes would have been equally regardless of
+  the regulations, and in consequence proportionally unseamanlike.</p>
+
+  <p>With soiled garments and unshorn beard Jason ran to the hill. No
+  one of the idlers in port recognized the returned wanderer, and he
+  assured himself of the fact before venturing upon his visit to the
+  dove-cot where Maud dwelt, for he wished to gaze upon her from afar,
+  and in silence to worship her, unknown and unregarded. When he
+  reached the wicket, breathless with haste and excitement, he at once
+  beheld the ruin of his hopes&#8212;the thistles in the paths, the
+  roses overgrown and choked with weeds, the sad and general decay.
+  Jason smote his breast in a paroxysm of despair, while the doves
+  fluttered out from the porch of the cottage in amazement at the
+  approach of a human foot to their domains.</p>
+
+  <p>What could it mean? he asked himself again and again, while
+  suspicions taunted him almost to madness. Up and down that disordered
+  garden he paced like a ghostly sentinel; the doves fluttered to and
+  fro, and were dismayed; the night-winds came in from the chilly sea,
+  and the dews gathered in his beard. Through the deepening dusk he
+  beheld the lights of the little town below him: across the solemn
+  silence floated the clear notes of the vesper-bell. Jason turned
+  toward the tower on the headland. A single ray of light stealing from
+  one of the high, narrow windows shot through the mist toward heaven.
+  &quot;The ladder of Jacob&#39;s dream,&quot; said Jason: &quot;on it
+  the angels are ascending and descending in their visitations. Oh that
+  I, like Jacob, might receive intelligence from these!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>With the heaviest heart that ever burdened man he returned to the
+  town and entered the open doors of the church, seeking a few moments
+  of repose. An alien in his own land and unwelcomed of any, Jason
+  sought the good priest and learned the fate of Maud. She was dead to
+  the world and to him. It was but the realization of his fears, and he
+  was in some measure prepared for it; yet the best part of the man was
+  killed with the force of that blow. His only hope was gone. He set
+  his house in order, like one about to leave it, never to return: his
+  golden fleece was made over to enrich the convent, and, as the
+  magnanimous offering of a homelesss and nameless voyager, it delights
+  the happy creatures within those walls, and the shrine of the Virgin
+  was made more <span class="pagenum">[pg 187]</span> wonderfully
+  beautiful than it is possible to conceive.</p>
+
+  <p>That night Jason walked in the shadow of the lofty walls and
+  poured out his sorrowful prayers upon the winds that swept about
+  them. Once in his agony he beat at the massive gates, demanding in
+  the name of God and of mercy admittance for a lost soul that had no
+  shelter save under that roof, and no salvation away from it; but his
+  bleeding hands made no impression upon the ponderous doors, and the
+  silent inmates at prayer heard nothing save their own whispers, or
+  dreamed in their cells of heaven and of peace.</p>
+
+  <p>So the cry of that hopeless soul rang up to the stars unanswered,
+  and the night frowned down upon him with impenetrable darkness.</p>
+
+  <p>End of the tragedy of Jason&#39;s Quest, which might easily have
+  been a pleasant comedy if Maud had only spoken her mind in the right
+  place. Will women never learn&#8212;since God has given them the same
+  instincts with man, to love, to trust, to doubt, to hate and to make
+  themselves at times disagreeable, even with a more complete success
+  than men in each of these lines of dramatic business&#8212;that God
+  must have intended also that they should have the equal right to
+  choose the particular object upon which they may exercise those
+  various offices of love, trust, etc., etc.? I shall never cease to
+  wonder why they are persistently and stupidly silent through six
+  thousand years, content to let their hearts wither and die within
+  them, or surrender at last to the wretched apology for a lover who
+  offers himself as a substitute, and is surprised at rinding himself
+  accepted.</p>
+
+  <p>To be sure, it is less dramatic. Jason might have come back and
+  married Maud: there would have been a pretty wedding and some
+  delightful hours before things grew dull and commonplace, as they
+  must have done ultimately. That rose-garden would have come to grief
+  when once the children got to playing in it; Jason, on some tedious
+  afternoon, when overhauling old letters <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  188]</span> and the like, would have thrown out that withered rose
+  (of precious memory), quite forgetful of its significance; Maud would
+  have lost her myrtle leaf in house-cleaning. Yet what were the odds?
+  A withered rose and a myrtle leaf are scarcely worth the keeping.</p>
+
+  <p>You will remember how it turned out in the days of the gods: Jason
+  wearied of Medea and the children; Medea was disgusted with such
+  conduct, and behaved like a savage; there was general unhappiness in
+  the family; and I blush for my sex&#8212;which is
+  Jason&#39;s&#8212;whenever I think of it. Now, if my Jason had
+  married his Maud, it would have scarcely been worth noticing beyond
+  the simple register in the <i>Daily Dreamlander</i>, after having
+  been thrice published from the pulpit between the Gospel and the
+  Creed&#8212;&quot;Jason to Maud.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>As Jason was not heard of after the windy night under the wall of
+  the convent, there were many surmises concerning his disappearance.
+  It was thought that he had again embarked upon some voyage of
+  discovery. I believe he had, and it was a desperate one for him. The
+  other Argonauts married such maids as were left unmarried, and they
+  did well to do so. Some of the old sweethearts regretted their haste,
+  and looked enviously upon the new brides of Dreamland; but most of
+  them were satisfied with their children, and contented with such
+  husbands as Heaven had sent them.</p>
+
+  <p>Life grew slow in the little drowsy seaport; the old tales of the
+  Symplegades were stale and tedious; the Argonauts had become
+  spiritless and corpulent and lazy. One night a great gale swept in
+  from the sea: the earth fairly trembled under the repeated shocks of
+  the breakers. Old people looked troubled and young people looked
+  scared, and on the worst night of all the convent bell was heard to
+  toll, and then everybody feared something dreadful was happening to
+  the nuns, and everybody lay still and hoped it would soon be over.
+  The nuns wondered who rang the bell; and when every one had denied
+  all knowledge of it, it was known that most likely the devil had rung
+  it, for it was a dreadful night, and such a one as he best likes to
+  be out in.</p>
+
+  <p>In the morning, when the wind and the sea had gone down somewhat,
+  the wreckers found a stark corpse among the rocks under the headland,
+  lying with its face to the tower. It was dreadfully mangled: no one
+  could identify it as being any one in particular, and it was
+  impossible to know whether death had occurred by accident or
+  intentionally; so it was shrouded and put away out of Christian
+  burial in the common field of the unfortunate. The nuns sang a
+  <i>requiem</i>, as was their custom, and Maud prayed earnestly for
+  all followers of the sea; and the echo of her <i>miserere</i> is the
+  saddest line in the story of Jason&#39;s Quest.</p>
+
+  <p class="author">CHARLES WARREN STODDARD.</p><a name="forebodings"
+  id="forebodings"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>FOREBODINGS.</h2>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">What weight is this which presses on my soul?</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Powerless to rise, I sink amidst the dust:</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">The days in solemn cycle o&#39;er me roll,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">While, praying, I can only wait and trust.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">&#8212;Trust the dear Hand that all my life has
+      led</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Through pastures green, by waters pure and
+      still:</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">If now He leads me through dark ways and dread,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Shall I dare murmur, whatsoe&#39;er His will?</p>
+    </div>
+  </div><a name="deerparks" id="deerparks"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>DEER-PARKS.</h2><span class="pagenum">[pg 189]</span>
+
+  <p>There is nothing in England at the present day much more
+  distinctly an institution of that country than its deer-parks.
+  Although it seems probable that the Saxons had some sort of enclosed
+  or partially enclosed chases where deer were hunted or taken in the
+  toils, the regular and systematic enclosure of parks would appear to
+  have come in with the Normans. According to the old Norman law, no
+  subject could form a park without a grant from the Crown, or
+  immemorial prescription, which was held presumptive evidence of such
+  a grant.</p>
+
+  <p>On the Continent there would appear to have been much more
+  strictness in this respect than in England. &quot;In April,
+  1656,&quot; says Reresby in his travels, &quot;I returned to Saumur,
+  where I stayed two months: then I went to Thouars in Brittany, where
+  the duke of Trémouille hath his best house. Thouars is looked upon as
+  one of the best manors in all France, not so much for profit (a great
+  extent of land there sometimes affording not much rent), but for
+  greatness of tenure; five hundred gentlemen, it is said, holding
+  their lands from it. Going to wait on the duke, I found him very kind
+  when I told him my country, the late earl of Derby having married his
+  sister.<a id="footnotetag1" name="footnotetag1"></a><a href=
+  "#footnote1"><sup>1</sup></a> He commanded me to dine with him, and
+  the next time mounted me upon one of his horses to wait on him
+  a-hunting in his park, which, not being two miles about, I thought of
+  little compass to belong to so great a person, till I found that few
+  are allowed to have any there save the princes of the blood. So true
+  is it that there are more parks in England than in all Europe
+  besides.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>A large park would appear to have been among the many luxuries of
+  the princely Medici, for Reresby says: &quot;Ten miles from Florence
+  the duke hath another country-house, nothing so considerable in
+  itself as in its situation, standing betwixt several hills on one
+  side, covered with vines and olive trees, and a valley divided into
+  many walks by rows of trees leading different ways: one leads to a
+  park where the great duke hath made a paddock course by the direction
+  of Signior Bernard Gascoigne, an Italian, who, having served our late
+  king in his wars, carried the pattern from England. Near to this
+  house, Poggio-Achaiano, is another park, the largest in Italy, or
+  rather chase, said to be thirty miles in compass.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Foremost amongst English parks is Windsor. The immense tracts by
+  which Windsor was formerly surrounded consisted of park and forest.
+  Windsor Forest has gradually diminished in size. In the time of
+  Charles I. it contained twelve parishes, and probably covered not
+  less than 100,000 acres. According to a survey in 1789-92, it
+  amounted to 59,600 acres, of which the enclosed property of the Crown
+  amounted to 5454. Like all the other forests in England, it has been
+  much encroached on, and now consists of only some 1450 acres
+  adjoining Windsor Great Park. The rest of the land formerly composing
+  it has been sold or leased. Enough of the forest remains, in
+  conjunction with the park, to enable the visitor to make many
+  delightful excursions. The most agreeable way of seeing this sylvan
+  country is on horseback. Perhaps nowhere in the world can one get a
+  more delicious canter. By a little management it is easy to take a
+  ride of twenty-five miles without more than a couple of miles off the
+  turf. In 1607 the Great Park was stated at 3650 acres: it consists
+  now of about one thousand acres less.</p>
+
+  <p>The principal royal park in modern days, next to Windsor, is
+  Richmond. <span class="pagenum">[pg 190]</span> This covers more than
+  two thousand acres, and, thanks to the railway, may almost be
+  regarded as a lung of London, being only eight miles distant from the
+  city. Richmond Park is as replete as Windsor with historical
+  association, and came into especial importance in the reign of
+  Charles I. That king, who was excessively addicted to the sports of
+  the field, had a strong desire to make a great park, for red as well
+  as fallow deer, between Richmond and Hampton Court, where he had
+  large wastes of his own, and great parcels of wood, which made it
+  very fit for the use he designed it for; but as some parishes had
+  rights of commonage in the wastes, and many gentlemen and farmers had
+  good houses and farms intermingled with them which they had inherited
+  or held on lease, and as, without including all these, the park would
+  not be large enough for Charles&#39;s satisfaction, the king, who was
+  willing to pay a very high price, expected people to gratify him by
+  parting with their property. Many did so, but&#8212;like the
+  blacksmith of Brighton who utterly refused to be bought out when
+  George IV. was building his hideous pavilion, and the famous miller
+  of Potsdam, that Mordecai at the gate of Sans Souci&#8212;&quot;a
+  gentleman who had the best estate, with a convenient house and
+  gardens, would by no means part with it, and made a great noise as if
+  the king would take away men&#39;s estates at his own pleasure.&quot;
+  The case of this gentleman and his many minor adherents soon caused a
+  regular row. The lord treasurer, Juxon, bishop of London, who
+  accompanied Charles to the scaffold, and other ministers were very
+  averse to the scheme, not only on account of the hostile feeling it
+  had evoked, but because the purchase of the land and making a brick
+  wall of ten miles around it, which was what the king wanted, was a
+  great deal too costly for his depleted exchequer. However, Charles,
+  with his usual fatal obstinacy, would not hear of abandoning the
+  scheme, and told Lord Cottington, who did his utmost to dissuade him
+  from it, &quot;he was resolved to go through with it, and had already
+  caused brick to be burned and much of the wall to be built.&quot;
+  This beginning of the wall before people consented to part with their
+  land or common rights, increased the public feeling on the subject,
+  and, happening at a time when public opinion was growing strongly
+  against arbitrary rule, was no doubt one of the circumstances which
+  contributed to Charles&#39;s fall.</p>
+
+  <p>George II. and Queen Caroline lived much at Richmond, and the
+  interview between Jeanie Deans and Her Majesty took place here.
+  Jeanie, it will be remembered, told her ducal friend that she thought
+  the park would be &quot;a braw place for the cows&quot;&#8212;a
+  sentiment similar to that of Mr. Black&#39;s Highland heroine,
+  Sheila, who pronounced it &quot;a beautiful ground for
+  sheep.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The practice of hunting deer in a park, now quite a thing of the
+  past, appears to have been very prevalent at Richmond during this
+  reign, and apparently was attended with considerable risk. In a
+  chronicle of 1731 we read:</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;<i>August</i> 13, 1731. The royal family hunted a stag in
+  Richmond new park: in the midst of the sport, Sir Robert
+  Walpole&#39;s horse fell with him just before the queen&#39;s chaise,
+  but he was soon remounted, and Her Majesty ordered him to bleed by
+  way of precaution.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;<i>Aug</i>. 28, 1731. The royal family hunted in Richmond
+  Park, when the Lord Delaware&#39;s lady and Lady Harriet
+  d&#39;Auverquerque, daughter to the earl of Grantham, were overturned
+  in a chaise, which went over them, but did no visible hurt. Mr.
+  Shorter, one of the king&#39;s huntsmen, had a fall from his horse,
+  and received a slight contusion in his head.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;<i>Sept</i>. 13, 1731. Some of the royal family and persons
+  of quality hunted a stag in Richmond Park. A stag gored the horse of
+  Coulthorp Clayton, Esq., and threw him. The Lady Susan Hamilton was
+  unhorsed.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;<i>Sept</i>. 14, being Holy Rood Day, the king&#39;s
+  huntsmen hunted their free buck in Richmond new park with
+  bloodhounds, according to custom.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>It will be noted that this sport took place at a season when no
+  hunting is now done in England.</p>
+
+  <p>There are two other small royal parks within a walk of
+  Richmond&#8212;Bushy and Hampton Court. Both contain magnificent
+  trees.</p>
+
+  <p>The New Forest is now the only royal appanage of the kind, and the
+  House of Hanover has never made use of it for hunting purposes,
+  although the Stuart kings were very fond of going there. It was to
+  enjoy this territory that Charles II. commenced the magnificent
+  palace at Winchester, the finished portions of which are now used as
+  barracks. Nell Gwyn&#39;s quarters at the deanery are still shown. Up
+  to 1779 there was a great tract of royal forest-ground near London,
+  on the Essex side, known as Enfield Chase, containing numbers of
+  deer. If we remember rightly, it is alluded to in <i>The Fortunes of
+  Nigel</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>There are many more parks in the south than in the north of
+  England&#8212;a circumstance which is remarkable, having regard to
+  the wilder character of the ground in the former.</p>
+
+  <p>According to a valuable work on parks published a few years ago by
+  Mr. Shirley, a large landed proprietor, there are three hundred and
+  thirty-four parks still stocked with deer in the different counties
+  of England, and red deer are found in about thirty-one. It is
+  supposed that the oldest is that attached to Eridge Castle, near that
+  celebrated and most ancient of English watering-places, Tonbridge
+  Wells, in Sussex. It is very extensive, and there are no less than
+  ninety miles of grass drives cut through the park and woods. Almost
+  the largest park is that attached to the present duke of
+  Marlborough&#39;s famous seat, Blenheim. A large proportion of this
+  magnificent demesne formed part of Woodstock Chase, a favorite
+  hunting-seat of British sovereigns from an early date up to the time
+  of Queen Anne. It was then granted by the Crown to the hero of
+  Blenheim, far more fortunate in respect of the nation&#39;s gift than
+  the hero of Waterloo, whose grant of lands lay in a swamp which it
+  cost him a little fortune to drain. Next to Blenheim, in point of
+  size, stands <span class="pagenum">[pg 191]</span> Tatton in
+  Cheshire, the seat of Lord Egerton. It contains 2500 acres, and the
+  portion appropriated to deer is far larger than at Blenheim. Tatton
+  is from ten to eleven miles around.</p>
+
+  <p>Another extensive park, 1500 acres, is that at Stowe, the duke of
+  Buckingham&#39;s. When in 1848 the family misfortunes reached a
+  climax which necessitated the sale of everything in Stowe House, the
+  deer in the park were sold off. But twenty-five years have rolled by,
+  and restored in a great degree the prosperity of the family. The duke
+  is again living at his splendid ancestral seat, is by degrees
+  restoring to their former home as the opportunity offers many of its
+  scattered treasures, and has restocked the park with deer.</p>
+
+  <p>Two parks pre-eminently famous for the magnificence of their oak
+  timber are Keddleston, Lord Scarsdale&#39;s, in Derbyshire, and
+  Bagot&#39;s Park, Lord Bagot&#39;s, in Staffordshire. The latter,
+  which contains a thousand acres, is a very ancient enclosure. It
+  contains, besides the deer, a herd of wild goats said to have been
+  presented by Richard II. to an ancestor of the present owner.</p>
+
+  <p>Parks vary from a paddock of twenty-one acres to twenty-eight
+  hundred, but the most usual dimensions are from one hundred and fifty
+  to four hundred acres. For a <i>multum in parvo</i> of beautiful park
+  scenery the traveler in search of these charming specimens of the
+  picturesque may be advised to take a tour in Herefordshire and
+  Worcestershire; and if he be a horseman he will do well to ride
+  through the country. &quot;Anyone,&quot; says Mr. Shirley, &quot;who
+  ascends the steep crest of the Malvern Hills in Worcestershire, and
+  looks down from the summit of the ridge on the western side of the
+  hills upon the richly wooded and beautifully undulating country which
+  lies stretched beneath as far as the mountains of South Wales, would
+  at once be struck with the &#39;bosky&#39; nature of the scenery, and
+  its perfect adaptation for the formation of deer-parks and sylvan
+  residences.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Grimsthorpe, Lady Aveland&#39;s (inherited from the dukes of
+  Ancaster, extinct); Thoresby, Earl Manvers&#39;s, formerly the
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 192]</span> duke of Kingston&#39;s, father
+  of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; and Knowsley, Lord Derby&#39;s, are
+  also very large parks.</p>
+
+  <p>A writer on Grimsthorpe in 1774 says: &quot;On a former visit I
+  was told that the park was sixteen miles and three quarters in
+  circumference, and esteemed the largest in England: since then it
+  has, nevertheless, been somewhat enlarged, but different spots in it
+  are cultivated.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>A few parks have been created and others restocked during the
+  present century. In Norfolk, Lord Kimberley, the present secretary of
+  state for the colonies, has restored the deer which were removed
+  during the present century, saying, it is reported, that &quot;a
+  place is not a place without deer&quot;&#8212;a sentiment shared by
+  many of his countrymen regarding an ancient grand-seigneur home. In
+  the same county a new park has been created at Sandringham, the seat
+  of the prince of Wales, the deer having been brought from Windsor.
+  Sandringham Park and Woods were half a century ago a sandy waste, but
+  fell into judicious hands and were admirably planted. The modern
+  history of the place is remarkable. Toward the close of the century
+  it became the property of a French refugee, Mr. Matou. This gentleman
+  having been driven from his native country by the Revolution,
+  conceived somehow the idea of importing from Sicily immense
+  quantities of rabbit skins, which were used for making hats of a
+  cheap kind which passed for beaver. In this way he acquired a large
+  fortune. In England he mixed in the best society, and became very
+  intimate with Earl Cowper, first husband of the well-known Lady
+  Palmerston, and at his death bequeathed Sandringham to the Honorable
+  Spencer Cowper, that nobleman&#39;s younger son, who married Lady
+  Blessington&#39;s stepdaughter, Lady Harriet Gardiner, after her
+  divorce from Count d&#39;Orsay. When the prince of Wales was casting
+  round for a country-seat, Sandringham was selected. Lord Palmerston
+  was then in office, and some ill-natured things were said as to the
+  sale of his stepson&#39;s place having been a much better thing for
+  Mr. Cowper than for the prince of Wales. Vast sums have since been
+  spent here.</p>
+
+  <p>Where a deer-park has long existed on his paternal estate, it goes
+  to an Englishman&#39;s heart to give it up. An incident in point
+  occurred about twenty years ago. In a secluded part of Devonshire,
+  approached by the narrow, high-hedged, tortuous lanes characteristic
+  of that part of the country, stands a magnificent old Tudor mansion
+  known as Great Fulford Hall. Here for upward of six hundred years
+  have been seated the Fulfords, a family of Saxon origin, the rivals
+  of the Tichbornes in antiquity. The mansion of Fulford was garrisoned
+  by Charles I., and taken by a detachment of Cromwell&#39;s army in
+  1645. The marks they left behind them may be seen to this day. The
+  Fulfords have supporters to their arms, a very rare circumstance in
+  the case of commoners. These supporters are two Saracens, and were
+  granted in consideration of services in the Crusades. &quot;Sir
+  Baldwin de Fulford fought a combat with a Saracen, for bulk and
+  bigness an unequal match (as the representation of him cut in the
+  wainscot at Fulford doth plainly shew), whom yet he vanquished, and
+  rescued a lady.&quot; This gentleman&#39;s granddaughter was the
+  mother of Henry VIII.&#39;s favorite, Russell, first earl of Bedford,
+  and the Fulfords are connected with a hundred other ancient and
+  honorable houses. But for a long time the heads of the house have
+  failed &quot;to marry money;&quot; and when this happens for two or
+  three generations in the case of a country gentleman with a large
+  family to portion off, the result must usually be impecuniosity.
+  Thus, when the late Mr. Fulford succeeded to the family property in
+  1847, he found himself the owner of a majestic old dilapidated
+  mansion, surrounded by a deer-park, which had been gradually growing
+  less until the portion of the park devoted to this purpose was little
+  more than a big field.</p>
+
+  <p>Like his ancestor in the time of &quot;the troubles,&quot; Mr.
+  Baldwin Fulford was a Conservative, and had been very useful to his
+  party. It was intended, therefore, to reward his services when the
+  time came by a county office, which would have placed him at ease
+  pecuniarily. When this office fell vacant the Tories were
+  &quot;in,&quot; and all seemed secure for Mr. Fulford&#39;s interest.
+  But there&#39;s many a slip &#39;twixt cup and lip. A gentleman
+  applied to the prime minister for the place for a friend of his,
+  whose services to the party he duly dilated on. &quot;I
+  understood,&quot; said his lordship, &quot;that Mr. Fulford&#39;s
+  claims are considered paramount.&quot; &quot;Mr. Fulford!&quot; was
+  the rejoinder. &quot;I scarcely thought that such a place as this
+  would be an object to Mr. Fulford&#8212;a gentleman of great
+  position, with a deer-park and all that sort of thing.&quot; &quot;A
+  deer-park! You surprise me. I understood that Mr. Fulford&#39;s
+  circumstances were extremely reduced. This alters the matter.&quot;
+  Unfortunately, the, minister committed himself too far to draw back
+  before making inquiries, when he learned that a deer-park having
+  existed at Fulford for some four or five centuries, its owner had
+  kept as a memento of grand old days a little remnant of the herd in a
+  paddock, as before mentioned. He never recovered the blow of this
+  disappointment. The heir to the property is, we believe, a son of the
+  late bishop of Montreal. The family motto is &quot;Bear
+  up&quot;&#8212;one eminently suited to its present condition, and we
+  may hope that it will be followed so successfully that this ancient
+  stock, which has held for so long a high place among the worthies of
+  Devon, may once more win the smiles of Fortune.</p>
+
+  <p>Many of the most picturesque parks are but little known, lying as
+  they do remote from railway stations. Mr. Nesfield, the great
+  landscape-gardener, considers that Longleat, the marquis of
+  Bath&#39;s, near Warminster, has greater natural advantages than any
+  park in England, and that these have been made the most of.</p>
+
+  <p>Lord Stamford&#39;s park of Bradgate, in Leicestershire, is in the
+  highest degree interesting. It is mostly covered with the common fern
+  or brakes, and the projecting bare and abrupt rocks rising here and
+  there, with a few gnarled and shivered oaks in the last stage of
+  decay, <span class="pagenum">[pg 193]</span> present a scene of
+  wildness and desolation in striking contrast to some of the beautiful
+  adjoining valleys and fertile country.</p>
+
+  <p>Another gem of its kind is Ugbrook. This is situated a few miles
+  from the Newton-Abbot station of the South Devon Railway, and lies in
+  a rocky nook on the confines of Dartmoor. Macaulay, whose brother was
+  vicar of the neighboring parish of Bovey-Tracey, knew it well, and
+  tells us in his <i>History</i> that Clifford (a member of the Cabal
+  ministry) retired to the woods of Ugbrook. He was a lucky man to have
+  such paternal acres to retire to, but probably the visitor to-day
+  sees this park in a condition which Charles&#39;s minister would
+  indeed have enjoyed. There is no place in England where a man may
+  feel more grateful to those who have gone before him for their taste
+  and forethought in creating a sylvan paradise. Although not very
+  large, this park contains almost every variety of scenery. There is a
+  grove gloomy from the heavy shadows of the magnificent trees which
+  compose it, glorious avenues of lime and beech, and monarch-like
+  trees, which, standing alone amid an expanse of sward, show to the
+  fullest advantage their superb proportions. Entering the park on one
+  side, the road winds beside a river, to which the bank gently slopes
+  on the one hand, whilst on the other it rises precipitately, clad
+  with the greenest foliage. An especial feature of this place is what
+  is known as &quot;the riding park,&quot; a stretch of smooth turf
+  extending some miles, from which you may get a view over thirty
+  miles, with the rocky heights of Dartmoor Forest, where the autumn
+  manoeuvres take place this year, on the one hand, and the Haldon
+  Hills on the other. This ancient heritage is still the property of
+  the Cliffords, the present peer being eighth baron in direct descent
+  from the lord treasurer. The Cliffords have always remained constant
+  to the Roman Catholic faith, and a Catholic chapel adjoins the
+  mansion.</p>
+
+  <p>A discriminating foreign tourist writes of Lord Hill&#39;s park,
+  Hawkstone, in Shropshire, which, also lying rather off <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 194]</span> the beaten track, is comparatively little
+  known: &quot;I must in some respects give Hawkstone the preference
+  over all I have seen. It is not art nor magnificence nor aristocratic
+  splendor, but Nature alone to which it is indebted for this
+  pre-eminence, and in such a degree that were I gifted with the power
+  of adding to its beauty, I should ask, What can I add? Imagine a spot
+  so commandingly placed that from its highest point you can let your
+  eye wander over fifteen counties. Three sides of this wide panorama
+  rise and fall in constant change of hill and dale like the waves of
+  an agitated sea, and are bounded at the horizon by the strangely
+  formed, jagged outline of the Welsh mountains, which at either end
+  descend to a fertile plain shaded by thousands of lofty trees, and in
+  the obscure distance, where it blends with the sky, is edged with a
+  white misty line&#8212;the Atlantic Ocean.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Moor Park, in Hertfordshire, is remarkable for the following
+  tradition concerning it: In Charles II.&#39;s reign it was bought by
+  the duke of Monmouth, whose widow&#8212;she who</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">In pride of youth, in beauty&#39;s bloom,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Had wept o&#39;er Monmouth&#39;s bloody
+    tomb&#8212;</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>is said to have ordered the heads of the trees in the park to be
+  cut off on being informed of her husband&#39;s execution. This
+  tradition is strengthened by the condition of many of the oaks here,
+  which are decayed from the top. The duchess sold the place in 1720,
+  thirty-five years after the duke&#39;s death. This is the Moor Park
+  of apricot fame, but not the one where Sir William Temple lived when
+  Swift was his secretary.</p>
+
+  <p>Most of the oldest and finest trees in England are naturally to be
+  found in the deer-parks. At Woburn, the duke of Bedford&#39;s, is the
+  largest ash&#8212;ninety feet high and twenty-three feet six inches
+  in circumference at the base. The Abbot&#39;s Oak, on which the last
+  abbot was hung, stands, or lately stood, here. It is remarkable that
+  oaks are more often struck by lightning than any other trees. At
+  Tortworth, Lord Ducie&#39;s, in Gloucestershire, is a chestnut
+  asserted to have been a boundary tree in the time of King John. So
+  late as 1788 it produced great quantities of chestnuts. At five feet
+  from the ground this tree measured fifty feet in circumference.</p>
+
+  <p>The lover of fine trees should wander through the glades of Lord
+  Leigh&#39;s park at Stoneleigh, in Warwickshire, where tall and
+  shapely oaks grow with such symmetry that you do not guess their
+  size, and are surprised to discover on measuring them how great it
+  is.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">Oh, how I love these solitudes</p>
+
+    <p class="i4">And places silent as the night&#8212;</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">There where no thronging multitudes</p>
+
+    <p class="i4">Disturb with noise their sweet delight!</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Oh, how mine eyes are pleased to see</p>
+
+    <p class="i4">Oaks that such spreading branches bear,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Which, from old Time&#39;s nativity,</p>
+
+    <p class="i4">And th&#39; envy of so many years,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Are still green, beautiful and fair</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">As at the world&#39;s first day they were!</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Writing of the confines of the ancient forest of Sherwood, Mr.
+  Howitt says of those sylvan delights: &quot;The great woods have
+  fallen under the axe, and repeated enclosures have reduced the open
+  forests, but at the Clipstone end still remains a remnant of its
+  ancient woodlands, unrifled except of deer&#8212;a specimen of what
+  the whole once was, and a specimen of consummate beauty and interest.
+  The part called Bilhaghe is a forest of oaks, and is clothed with the
+  most impressive aspect of age that can be presented to the eye in
+  these kingdoms. Stonehenge does not give you a feeling of greater
+  eld, because it is not composed of a material so easily acted on by
+  the elements. But the hand of Time has been on these woods, and has
+  stamped them with a most imposing character. The tempests,
+  lightnings, winds and wintry violence of a thousand years have flung
+  their force on these trees, and there they stand, trunk after trunk,
+  scathed, hollow, gray, gnarled, stretching out their bare, sturdy
+  arms, or their mingled foliage and ruin, a life in death. All is gray
+  and old. The ground is gray beneath, the trees are gray with clinging
+  lichens&#8212;the very heather and fern that spring beneath them have
+  a character of the past. If you turn aside and step amongst them,
+  your feet sink in a depth of moss and dry vegetation that is the
+  growth of ages, or rather that ages have not been able to destroy.
+  You stand and look round, and in the height of summer all is silent:
+  it is like the fragment of a world worn out and forsaken. These were
+  the trees under which King John pursued the red deer six hundred
+  years ago, these were the oaks beneath which Robin Hood led up his
+  bold band of outlaws.... Advance up this long avenue, which the noble
+  owner of the forest tract has cut through it, and, looking right and
+  left as you proceed, you will not be able long to refrain from
+  turning into the tempting openings that present themselves. Enter
+  which you please, you cannot be wrong. These winding tracks, just
+  wide enough for a couple of people on horseback or in a pony phaeton,
+  carpeted with a mossy turf which springs under your feet with a
+  delicious elasticity, and closed in with shadowy trunks and flowery
+  thickets&#8212;are they not lovely?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>In the time of Elizabeth the largest park in Warwickshire, and one
+  of the very finest in England, was that which surrounded the castle
+  rendered classic ground by the immortal limning of
+  Scott&#8212;Kenilworth. In a survey taken in the time of James I. it
+  is stated that &quot;the circuit of the castle mannours, parks and
+  chase lying round together contain at least nineteen or twenty miles
+  in a pleasant country, the like both for strength, state and pleasure
+  not being within the realme of England.&quot; Kenilworth came to an
+  end in Cromwell&#39;s time, a period very unfavorable to these sylvan
+  paradises. He had the park cut up and divided amongst various
+  grantees. How much damage was done to the park interest by the civil
+  wars the following extract from the Life of Margaret, duchess of
+  Newcastle, attests: &quot;Of eight parks which my lord had before the
+  wars, there was but one left that was not quite destroyed&#8212;viz.
+  Welbeck Park of about four miles compass; for my lord&#39;s brother,
+  Sir Charles Cavendish, who bought out the life of my lord in that
+  lordship, saved most part of it from being cut down; and in Blore
+  Park there were some few deer left. The rest of the parks were
+  totally defaced <span class="pagenum">[pg 195]</span> and destroyed,
+  both wood, pales and deer; amongst which was also Clipston Park of
+  seven miles compass, wherein my lord had taken much delight formerly,
+  it being rich of wood, and containing the greatest and tallest timber
+  trees of all the woods he shad; insomuch that only the pale-row was
+  valued at two thousand pounds. It was watered by a pleasant river
+  that runs through it, full of fish and otters; was well stocked with
+  deer, full of hares, and had great store of partridges, poots,
+  pheasants, etc., besides all sorts of water-fowl; so that this park
+  afforded all manner of sports, for hunting, hawking, coursing,
+  fishing, etc., for which my lord esteemed it very much. And although
+  his patience and wisdom is such that I never perceived him sad or
+  discontented for his own losses and misfortunes, yet when he beheld
+  the ruins of that park I observed him troubled, though he did little
+  express it, only saying he had been in hopes it would not have been
+  so much defaced as he found it, there being not one timber tree in it
+  left for shelter.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The number of deer-parks in Scotland and Ireland is small. The
+  principal park in the former is that of the duke of Buccleuch at
+  Dalkeith Palace, near Edinburgh. At Hamilton, belonging to the duke
+  of that ilk, are wild cattle similar to those at Chillingham.</p>
+
+  <p>A wonderfully picturesque Irish park is Rockingham, the Hon. L.
+  King Harinan&#39;s, in the county Roscommon. The traveler will
+  observe this beautiful and very extensive demesne as he goes from
+  Boyle to Sligo. It is at the foot of the Curlew Mountains, and
+  contains a magnificent sheet of water surrounding an island on which
+  stands an ancient castle, still inhabitable. At Strokestown, in the
+  same county, is a small park, where Mr. Mahon, its former owner,
+  planted many years ago all sorts of forest trees, to see how far the
+  deer would eat them: the only tree they entirely avoided was the
+  beech.</p>
+
+  <p>There is nothing grander in the three kingdoms than Lord
+  Waterford&#39;s seat, Curraghmore. Taken with the adjoining woods,
+  the demesne contains five <span class="pagenum">[pg 196]</span>
+  thousand acres. The special feature of this superb place is grandeur;
+  &quot;not that arising from the costly and laborious exertions of
+  man, but rather the magnificence of Nature. The beauty of the
+  situation consists in the lofty hills, rich vales and almost
+  impenetrable woods, which deceive the eye and give the idea of
+  boundless forests. The variety of the scenery is calculated to please
+  in the highest degree, and to gratify every taste.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>At Lyme Park, the splendid old seat of the Leghs in Cheshire,
+  &quot;a very remarkable custom,&quot; says Lysons, &quot;of driving
+  the red deer, which has not been practiced in any other park, either
+  in England or abroad, was established about a century ago by an old
+  park-keeper, who occupied that position for seventy years, dying at
+  over one hundred years of age. It was his custom in May and June,
+  when the animals&#39; horns were tender, to go on horseback, with a
+  rod in his hand, round the hills of this extensive park, and, having
+  collected the deer, to drive them before him like a herd of common
+  horned cattle, sometimes even opening a gate for them to pass
+  through. When they came to a place before the hall called the
+  Deer-Clod, they would stand in a collected body as long as the
+  spectators thought fit; the young ones following their dams, and the
+  old stags rising one against another and combating with their fore
+  feet, not daring at this season of the year to make use of their
+  horns. At the command of the keeper they would then move forward to a
+  large piece of water and swim through the whole length of it, after
+  which they were allowed to disperse.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Following the example of the abbots, many of the bishops formerly
+  had deer-parks, and up to 1831 the bishop of Durham, a
+  prince-palatine in his diocese, had a park at his country-seat, still
+  his residence, Bishops-Auckland; but now the only prelate enjoying
+  this distinction is the bishop of Winchester, at Farnham Castle, in
+  Hampshire.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;There are some,&quot; says a writer in an early number of
+  the <i>Westminster Review</i>, &quot;who enclose immense possessions
+  with walls and gates, and employ keepers with guns to guard every
+  avenue to the vast solitudes by which they choose to be surrounded.
+  Let such men pitch their tents in the deserts of Sahara or the wild
+  prairies of America. What business have they here in the midst of a
+  civilized community, linked together by chains of mutual obligation
+  and dependence?&quot; These observations apply to few private parks
+  now-a-days. Permission to drive, ride or walk through them is rarely
+  refused. Almost the only cases where there is much strictness in this
+  respect are those of parks situated near a great watering place, such
+  as Brighton or Tonbridge Wells. Thus, at the former, Lord
+  Chichester&#39;s rule is that all persons on horseback or in
+  carriages may pass through his ground, but foot-passengers are not
+  allowed. The late Lord Abergavenny, a man of very shy and retiring
+  disposition, was the least liberal park-owner in England. The gates
+  of his superb demesne of Eridge very rarely revolved on their hinges;
+  and this was the more remarkable, inasmuch as he did not reside there
+  more than three months in the year. The story was told that at his
+  accession to the property he had been more liberal, but that one day
+  he was seated at luncheon alone when, suddenly looking up, he
+  observed to his horror three proletarians flattening their noses
+  against the window-pane, and gaping with exasperating interest at the
+  august spectacle of a live lord at luncheon. To pull the bell and
+  issue an order for the immediate removal of the intruders was, in the
+  graphic language of the dime novel, the work of a moment; and from
+  that hour the gates of Eridge were so rigorously sealed that it was
+  often a matter of difficulty even for invited guests to obtain
+  admittance.</p>
+
+  <p>It may seem very ill-natured sometimes to refuse admittance on
+  easy terms to such places, and to act apparently in a sort of
+  dog-in-the-manger spirit. But it should be borne in mind that the
+  privilege when accorded has not unfrequently been abused, more
+  especially by the &quot;lower middle class&quot; of the English
+  people, <span class="pagenum">[pg 197]</span> whose manners are often
+  very intrusive. Such persons will approach close to the house, peer
+  into the windows of private apartments, or push in amongst the family
+  and guests while engaged in croquet or other out-door amusements.
+  Another common offence is leaving a disgusting <i>débris</i> lying
+  about after a picnic in grounds which it costs the owners thousands
+  of pounds yearly to keep in order. The sentiment from which such
+  places are kept up is not that of vulgar display. They are hallowed
+  by associations which are well depicted by the late Lord Lytton in an
+  eloquent passage in <i>Earnest Maltravers</i>:</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It is a wild and weird scene, one of those noble English
+  parks at midnight, with its rough forest-ground broken into dell and
+  valley, its never-innovated and mossy grass overrun with fern, and
+  its immemorial trees, that have looked upon the birth, and look yet
+  upon the graves, of a hundred generations. Such spots are the last
+  proud and melancholy trace of Norman knighthood and old romance left
+  to the laughing landscapes of cultivated England. They always throw
+  something of shadow and solemn gloom upon minds that feel their
+  associations, like that which belongs to some ancient and holy
+  edifice. They are the cathedral aisles of Nature, with their darkened
+  vistas, and columned trunks, and arches of mighty foliage. But in
+  ordinary times the gloom is pleasing, and more delightful than all
+  the cheerful lawns and sunny slopes of the modern taste.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p class="author">REGINALD WYNFORD.</p>
+
+  <blockquote class="footnote">
+    <a id="footnote1" name="footnote1"></a><b>Footnote 1:</b> <a href=
+    "#footnotetag1">(return)</a> [This was the famous Charlotte de la
+    Trémouille, so admirably portrayed by Scott in <i>Peveril of the
+    Peak</i>. Her direct male heirs terminated in her grandson, the
+    tenth earl, and she is now represented in the female line by the
+    duke of Atholl, who through her claims descent from the Greek
+    emperors.]
+  </blockquote><a name="rambles" id="rambles"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>RAMBLES AMONG THE FRUITS AND FLOWERS OF THE TROPICS.</h2>
+
+  <h3><a name="2H_4_0036"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> TWO
+  PAPERS.&#8212;I.</h3>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, Abdallah, what have you in view that can tempt one to
+  a ramble on such a breezeless morning as this?&quot; was my question
+  of the turbaned exquisite who had just presented himself on the
+  balcony where we sat at sunrise inhaling the fragrant breath of a
+  thousand flowers. We were at Singapore, that little ocean gem at the
+  foot of the Malayan peninsula, where, fair as a pearl, she nestles in
+  the crested coronet of the deep blue sea. The whole island is but
+  twenty-seven miles long, with a width varying from three to twelve;
+  but in no other area of such limited dimensions can the tourist find
+  so much of enchanting beauty and picturesqueness, or such a variety
+  of tropical products, as in this &quot;garden of the East.&quot;
+  Without mountains, but with its central peak of Bookit Timá rising
+  about six hundred feet above the sea, the scenery is diversified with
+  richly-wooded hills, evergreen dales, and luxuriant jungle-growth
+  drooping over and reflecting its graceful fringes in many a little
+  babbling brook. The fruits of the island are varied and luscious, the
+  foliage perennial, and its myriads of flowers so gorgeously tinted,
+  so redolent of balmy odors, that one is fairly bewildered with the
+  superabundance of sweets. Of course we were nothing loath to tarry a
+  few weeks on this fairy isle, and we gladly availed ourselves of the
+  opportunity thus afforded to enrich our herbariums and sketchbooks
+  with new specimens by making occasional excursions to the jungles,
+  and now and then a picnic to some of the thirty smaller islands that
+  surround Singapore. But as the foreign tourist in those enervating
+  tropical regions is not slow to acquire the Oriental love of ease and
+  inveterate aversion to fatigue even in pleasure-seeking, we usually
+  left our Mussulman comprador to seek out <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  198]</span> objects of interest and report to us beforehand, thus
+  saving us from the weariness of many a bootless expedition, and
+  catering to the precise tastes and desires of each of us in the way
+  of adding to our treasures.</p>
+
+  <p>On the morning in question Abdallah had just brought in the
+  invariable morning coffee, served in the purest and tiniest of
+  porcelain cups; and while we listlessly sipped the fragrant Mocha he
+  seemed scanning our faces with more than usual interest, evidently
+  expecting just such a question as I had asked. What a picture he was
+  as he stood there in flowing robes and huge turban, with his jet
+  black moustache and bronze-brown complexion, one small hand placed
+  over the heart in token of his absolute devotion to the foreign
+  sahibs, and his lithe, supple form leaning forward in the most
+  obsequious attitude imaginable! His answer was characteristic:</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, Madam Sahib, I find much beautiful flower, but not all
+  where lady sahib can go, unless she can ride in sampán. Some roads
+  too small for palanquin, and lady sahib&#39;s satin slipper must not
+  be soiled with dust or mud. But I engage one big sampán with six men
+  to pull, and, if the foreign sahibs all please, we make one grand
+  picnic to Pulo Nánas (Pineapple Island) and Pulo Panjan. They can
+  ride first to where boat is waiting, visit Pulo Nánas, take breakfast
+  under orange tree, see much fine fruit trees, and then go to Pulo
+  Panjan, where I gave orders for dinner to be served for the
+  sahibs.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But pray tell us who is to serve it,&quot; laughingly
+  responded one of our party. &quot;Are we to have monkeys or wild
+  squirrels for caterers? It must be one or the other, as I am sure I
+  have been informed that neither of those islands are inhabited by
+  human beings.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No man there, true, sahib,&quot; was our Mussulman&#39;s
+  ready rejoinder. &quot;But I send small boat with two men to pull,
+  and two cooks, with rice, fowls, and everything wanted for breakfast
+  and dinner. I believe they already at Pulo Nánas, cooking breakfast;
+  the palanquins are also at the door; and so, if it be the sahibs&#39;
+  pleasure, it is better to start before the sun gets very
+  high.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>All this certainly promised well for us pleasure-seekers, and was
+  no doubt quite as satisfactory an arrangement for our scheming
+  comprador, who always took care to add to every charge a very liberal
+  commission for his own valuable services. We well knew that he was
+  cheating us on a grand scale, but of what avail was such knowledge?
+  We should gain nothing by discharging one who had at least the merit
+  of being good-looking, well-mannered and pleasant-speaking, only to
+  engage another less civil and probably no more honest. And in India
+  all disbursements for personal and household expenses are made
+  through these compradors or stewards&#8212;not of necessity, but
+  because it is the custom of the country, and in the East one never
+  rebels against established usage.</p>
+
+  <p>Our preparations were soon made: sketchbooks, drawing materials
+  and covered baskets for specimens were transferred to the keeping of
+  our faithful Mussulman, and we set out, anticipating a day of rare
+  enjoyment. We were fortunate in securing the company of Mr.
+  M&#8212;&#8212;, the accomplished president of the Anglo-Chinese
+  College, who had spent some thirty years in Singapore, and was well
+  acquainted with its localities and objects of interest. He was like a
+  complete volume with illustrations on everything pertaining to the
+  East, could answer all manner of unheard-of questions about things
+  that everybody else had forgotten, and had always ready an
+  appropriate anecdote or story just to the point. His very dress was
+  characteristic. It consisted of loose trousers of gray linen, and an
+  old-fashioned white hunting-coat with Quaker collar, and huge pockets
+  that would have answered very well for the saddle-bags of an
+  itinerant surgeon. These were designed as receptacles for such stray
+  &quot;specimens&quot; in botany, geology or conchology as he might
+  chance to discover <i>en route</i>; while thrust into a smaller
+  breast-pocket he carried a brace of huntsman&#39;s pistols, with
+  antique powder-horn and shot-pouch slung over the shoulder. His hat
+  was a Panama with low, round crown and a rim nearly as large as an
+  ordinary umbrella. A Chinese youth, an orphan adopted by Mr.
+  M&#8212;&#8212; years before, accompanied his patron in a full suit
+  of yellow nankin made <i>à la Chinoise</i>, with broad-brimmed straw
+  hat, long, braided queue, and the inevitable Chinese fan. The rest of
+  us donned our white linen &quot;fatigue suits,&quot; and leghorn hats
+  of such vast dimensions as bade the wearers have no thought for
+  umbrellas. Thus equipped, we were ready for all sorts of
+  emergencies&#8212;climbing rocks, diving into jungles or wading
+  through muddy creeks.</p>
+
+  <p>The drive was for the most part through spice plantations and
+  groves of orange and palm, and, without delays, would have brought us
+  in an hour&#39;s time to the coast. But we could not consent to press
+  onward to the goal ahead without pausing for at least a glimpse of
+  the many objects of interest on the way. First we strolled over a
+  plantation of black pepper cultivated by Chinamen. The vine is a
+  creeper with a knotty stem that if unpruned will reach the height of
+  near thirty feet, but in order to render the vines more productive
+  they are kept down to about a dozen or fifteen feet, and each is
+  trained over a separate pole or prop. At each joint of the stem the
+  plant puts out its fibrous tendrils, grasping the prop, and so
+  climbing to the top. Whenever a vine happens to trail on the ground
+  these tendrils, like strawberry &quot;runners,&quot; shoot into the
+  earth, but then they bear no fruit. The branches are short, brittle
+  and easily broken, the leaves deep-green, heart-shaped and very
+  abundant, and the blossom a cluster of small white flowers, almost
+  destitute of odor. The fruit hangs in long clusters of some forty or
+  fifty grains each, somewhat after the fashion of the wild grape,
+  though much more diminutive in size. Until after it has reached its
+  full size it is green, when at maturity of a bright red, and black
+  only after it has become thoroughly dry. When the berries begin to
+  redden the bunches are gathered and spread upon mats in the
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 199]</span> sun to dry: then the corns soon
+  wither, turn black and drop from the stems, becoming thus the
+  shriveled black pepper known in commerce. What is known among us as
+  white pepper was formerly supposed to be a different species from the
+  black; but the sole difference is in the curing, that intended for
+  white pepper being placed in baskets under water until sufficiently
+  swollen for the exterior pellicle to rub off by rolling in the hands
+  after being again dried in the sun. The plants are propagated by
+  cuttings, which are generally placed some six feet apart, sometimes
+  being trained over the trunk of an old tree, and at others over a
+  strong stake. The vines commence bearing the third year, and continue
+  to do so for a dozen or more, when they are rooted up, new ones
+  having been previously planted to take their places.</p>
+
+  <p>We next called at two gambier plantations, both owned and
+  conducted by Chinamen who came to the island a few years before as
+  common coolies. The gambier (<i>Funis uncatis</i>) was formerly
+  called terra japonica, from being supposed to be an earth and to come
+  from Japan. It is grown on sandy soil or dry hills, and requires very
+  little labor in cultivation. It is a slender-stemmed, vine-like shrub
+  with oval-shaped leaves and pale purplish flowers in clusters. The
+  seeds germinate in forty days, and the seedlings are transplanted
+  when about nine inches high. When full grown they reach a height of
+  ten feet or more, and after the first year the leaves and branches
+  are regularly gathered and prepared for the market. Men and boys were
+  engaged in plucking the leaves and conveying them, in mat-bags
+  suspended on each end of a bamboo staff, to the boiling-ground. Here
+  they were boiled until the water was evaporated, and the inspissated
+  juice deposited, which we afterward saw drying in little squares. It
+  is a powerful astringent, having one-tenth more tannin than any other
+  substance known. It is used by the natives as a dye, also as a salve
+  for wounds and for chewing with betel-nut and tobacco, besides being
+  largely exported to Europe for tanning <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  200]</span> leather and for dyeing. All through the gambier
+  plantations, and in every department of the labor of preparing it for
+  the boiler, I observed that not a female was to be seen, and on
+  inquiring the reason was gravely told that gambier plants would not
+  flourish if touched by a woman! &quot;Sensitive plants&quot; indeed,
+  so readily to discern the difference between the handling of the two
+  sexes!</p>
+
+  <p>Our next call was at a coffee plantation, where we saw sixty
+  thousand young and healthy coffee trees, and two-thirds of them in a
+  bearing condition, yielding in the aggregate not less than fifty
+  thousand pounds of dry coffee per annum. The trees are beautifully
+  formed, and rise naturally to the height of sixteen feet or more, but
+  when under culture are kept at five or six feet for the convenience
+  of collecting the ripe fruit. They are planted in rows, the leaves
+  grow opposite each other, and many sessile flowers are produced at
+  their insertion. The blossoms are pure white, and when the plants are
+  in full bloom nothing can exceed their beauty or fragrance, the
+  branches looking as if frosted with snow, while the air is filled
+  with the delicate perfume. But the scene is brief as enchanting: the
+  flowers fade a few hours after they are full blown, to be succeeded
+  by tiny berries that are at first green, then a yellowish red, and
+  finally ripen into a rich crimson or purple; after which, unless
+  gathered at once, they shrivel and drop from the tree. This is about
+  seven months after the blooms make their appearance. The pulp is torn
+  off and separated from the seeds by means of a machine, and the
+  grains, after being thoroughly washed, are dried in the sun and put
+  up in bags. Chek Kongtwau, the Chinese proprietor of the plantation,
+  not only walked with us over his grounds, and answered all our
+  questions with exemplary patience, but insisted that we should go
+  into the house, be presented to his wife and partake of a lunch. He
+  regaled us with tea and coffee of his own growing and curing,
+  excellent turtle steaks, boiled rice, and curry made of shrimps and
+  cucumbers stewed together. For vegetables there were the Malay lobak,
+  a tender white radish, and the cocoa-nut bud stewed in the milk of
+  the ripe fruit; and as dessert we had placed before us, for the first
+  time, the far-famed durian, so universal a favorite among Orientals
+  as to command a higher price than any other fruit in market, yet so
+  abominably disgusting in smell that the olfactories of few strangers
+  can tolerate its approach. To me the odor seemed precisely that
+  supposed to be produced by the admixture of garlic and assafoetida;
+  and as a plate piled with the rich golden pulp was placed before me
+  by our hostess, I came so near fainting as to be compelled to seek
+  the open air. The old Chinaman followed me, and when he had learned
+  the cause of my indisposition, laughed heartily, saying, &quot;Wait a
+  year or two. You have not been in the country long enough to
+  appreciate this rare luxury. But when you have become initiated into
+  a knowledge of its surpassing excellences, never an orange, pineapple
+  or other fruit will you touch when a durian can be had.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Just as we were re-entering our palanquins, Chek Kongtwau inquired
+  whether we had yet seen the anoo palm or sago tree, of which he said
+  there was but a solitary specimen in the island, most of the sago
+  manufactured at Singapore being brought in its crude state from the
+  swamps of Sumatra. He told us the famous tree was several miles from
+  his house, out of our direct route, but if we had time to visit it he
+  would undertake to guide us safely through the jungle to and from the
+  tree. We found it standing in solitary grandeur in a low swamp, and
+  lifting its long pinnated leaves from the extreme top of a trunk full
+  thirty feet high and twenty-eight inches in diameter. Its general
+  appearance is not unlike the cocoa-nut palm. Our conductor called the
+  sago tree <i>sibla</i>, but the Malays give it the name of
+  <i>rumbiga</i>. They say that each tree, if kept properly pruned
+  down, will produce at least five hundred pounds of pith per annum;
+  but it soon degenerates if suffered to grow to any considerable
+  height. The pith is soaked in large troughs of running water until it
+  dissolves and afterward settles, the sand and heavy dirt sinking
+  beneath it, and the fibres and scum floating on top. After being
+  separated from these impurities the sago is dried, and then
+  granulated by passing it through perforated plates till it becomes
+  smooth and polished like so many pearls, when it is packed in boxes
+  and bags for sale. We did not see the process that day, of course,
+  but afterward at the large factory on the river a few miles above the
+  settlement.</p>
+
+  <p>One more plantation, a grove of the stately areca-nut or betel
+  trees, we determined to visit before taking the boat. The smooth road
+  was bordered everywhere with the beautiful melastoma or Singapore
+  rose, of perennial foliage and always in bloom, underneath acacias
+  and palms; and the very earth was carpeted with beauty and fragrance
+  enough to have formed the bridal-couch of a fairy queen. Over such a
+  highway three miles were quickly made, and we alighted at the
+  entrance of a narrow lane that led to the abode of Cassim Mootoo, the
+  Malay owner and cultivator of the betel-nut plantation. At the outer
+  door a stone monster of huge proportions and uncouth features kept
+  guard against the uncanny spirits that are supposed to frequent
+  out-of-the-way lanes and dreary passages. The planter received us
+  pleasantly, accepted our apologies for troubling him, and offered to
+  show us over the grounds. He was far less courtly in manners than the
+  Chinese coffee-cultivator, to whom we should scarcely have ventured
+  to offer a fee, while out of the Malay&#39;s cunning eyes there
+  gleamed the evident expectation of a snug bonus of silver rupees,
+  which he received as a matter of course when we bade him adieu, and
+  having counted them over and jingled them for a moment in his
+  fingers, he thrust them into his pouch as he re-entered the
+  house.</p>
+
+  <p>We found the areca trees planted in rows, and growing to the
+  height of some forty feet, with straight, branchless trunks,
+  terminated at the top with ten or twelve pinnated leaves, each of
+  which is full five feet long. The fruit grows in clusters immediately
+  below the tuft of leaves. The outer shell is of a bright <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 201]</span> golden hue, that gradually deepens to
+  crimson as the fruit matures, and when opened shows a brown,
+  astringent nut about the size of a nutmeg. This is the portion chewed
+  with chunám and tobacco all over the East; and its use is so
+  universal that one seldom meets a man, woman or child of any Oriental
+  nation whose mouth is not filled, always and everywhere, with the
+  execrable mixture. Pepper leaves are sprinkled with chunám (lime) and
+  rolled up: a slice of betel-nut with a quid of tobacco is placed in
+  the mouth first, and then the rolled-up leaf is bitten off, and all
+  masticated together. When a visitor calls the betel-box is
+  immediately passed to him; and as in regard to the eating of salt in
+  Western Asia, so, in the eastern and southern portions, those who
+  have once partaken of betel-nut together are ever after sworn to
+  faithful and undying friendship. The use of the areca-nut preserves
+  the teeth from decay, but keeps them stained of a disgusting
+  brick-red color.</p>
+
+  <p>On the outer edge of Cassim&#39;s plantation, where the soil was
+  damp, we noticed several long rows of the nepah palm, generally known
+  as attap, and extensively used for thatching houses in the East. It
+  has the same huge pinnated leaves as most of the other palms, but is
+  destitute of the long straight trunk, the leaves commencing from near
+  the root, and the entire height being seldom more than twelve or
+  fourteen feet. We saw also a few specimens of the hutan, a
+  strange-looking palmate shrub with leaves fifteen feet long, which
+  are generally used by the Malays for sails, in lieu of canvas, for
+  their piratical proas. But the strangest of all the palms we saw was
+  the talipát, so called from the Bali word <i>talipoin</i>, a priest;
+  and the name was originally derived from the fact that the sacred
+  fans used by Booddhist priests in their religious ceremonies are
+  formed of its leaves. This fan is a prescribed item of clerical
+  costume, and no conscientious Booddhist priest ever appears without
+  this long-handled fan held directly in front of his face, to prevent
+  the sacred countenance from coming <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  202]</span> in contact with anything unclean. The sacred books of the
+  Booddhists and Brahmins are also written on the talipát palm leaves,
+  as are many of their historical records and scientific works. This
+  mammoth tree sometimes reaches the height of nearly two hundred feet,
+  and its trunk the circumference of twelve feet. It lives to the age
+  of nearly a century, but blossoms only a single time; during the
+  whole period of its existence. The flower, some thirty feet in
+  length, bursts with a loud explosion at maturity, and in dying
+  scatters the seeds that are to produce the next generation of trees.
+  A single leaf will sometimes measure forty feet in circumference; and
+  it is no unusual sight on the Malabar coast, where storms are so
+  fierce and sudden, to see ten or fifteen men finding shelter in a
+  boat over which is spread a single; palm leaf, which effectually
+  shields all from both wind and rain. When the storm has subsided the
+  huge leaf may be folded up like a lady&#39;s fan, and is so light as
+  to be readily carried by a man under one arm. The talipát never grows
+  wild, it is said, as do most of the other palms; and it reaches its
+  greatest perfection in the island of Ceylon. All that I ever met with
+  were under cultivation, being tended and nursed with the utmost care.
+  Indeed, half a dozen talipát palm trees are a fortune in themselves,
+  the leaves being very profitable as merchandise, while a crop may be
+  gathered every year during a long life, and then the tree be of
+  sufficient value to be bequeathed to the heirs of the owner.</p>
+
+  <p>Bidding adieu to our Malayan host, we once more entered the
+  palanquins, and in a little while were set down on the coast, where
+  lay our sampán with flag hoisted and pennons gayly flaunting in the
+  breeze. First we passed Battu Bliah, &quot;the sailing
+  rock&quot;&#8212;so called from its fancied resemblance to a ship
+  under widespread canvas; then around an abrupt projection of
+  Erskine&#39;s Hill, in a narrow passage between Singapore and Baltan
+  Máteo, we came in full view of the promontory upon the highest point
+  of which is built the palace-bungalow of the old sultan-rajah who
+  held sway over the island previous to its purchase by Sir Stamford
+  Raffles for the British government, in 1819. The old rajah has passed
+  away, but the bungalow is still occupied by his son, a pensioner on
+  the English Crown, and one of the most daring pirates in all that
+  region&#8212;successful enough to have achieved a fame for prowess,
+  but too crafty ever to be caught.</p>
+
+  <p>At Pulo Nánas, where we were to lunch, we found the cloth was
+  already laid on the green grass under the protecting shadow of a huge
+  orange tree, whose ripe golden fruit offered a dainty dessert. We
+  took our seats with the &quot;professor&quot; at the head, and were
+  soon discussing the merits of boiled chicken, fried fish, omelette,
+  oysters, turtle eggs and sundry fruits and confections with the zest
+  created by seven hours of active exercise in the open air. Then came
+  the reaction, inclining every one more to repose than research, and
+  the hours would probably have been dreamed away barren of adventures,
+  had it not been for our indomitable professor. We had missed him but
+  a moment, when suddenly he reappeared, holding at arm&#39;s length
+  what seemed in the distance about a dozen brown, scaly snakes a yard
+  long, all strung together. Simultaneously the entire company sprang
+  to their feet and started for a race as this regiment of frightful
+  reptiles was thrust into their midst by the radiant
+  &quot;dominie,&quot; whose face was fairly aglow with mischief.
+  &quot;Where did they come from? What are you going to do with
+  them?&quot; exclaimed everybody at once, turning to look at the
+  monsters as they lay passive and motionless where the professor had
+  thrown them. &quot;Give them to Saint Patrick, to keep company with
+  those he drove out of the Emerald Isle; or we&#39;ll have them for
+  dinner if you prefer,&quot; was the laughing response. Reassured by
+  the non-combatant air of the dreaded reptiles, we ventured a nearer
+  approach, and our astonishment may readily be imagined when we found
+  not snakes, but simply a cluster of the pendent blossoms of the
+  rattan tree (<i>Arundo bambos</i>), one of the strangest of all the
+  floral products of the tropics. They hang from the tree in clusters
+  usually of ten or twelve, each a yard or more in length, looking like
+  a soldier&#39;s aigrettes suspended among the green leaves, or
+  perhaps still more like a string of chestnut-colored scales threaded
+  through the centre. Waving to and fro in the summer breeze, as I
+  afterward saw them, intertwined with the graceful tendrils of the
+  beautiful passion-flower with its rare feathery chalice of purple and
+  gold, and flanked on every side by ferns of exquisite symmetry,
+  reflecting their dainty fringes in the clear waters, the <i>tout
+  ensemble</i> is one of radiant loveliness, seemingly too fair to be
+  hidden away among lonely jungles.</p>
+
+  <p>Consigning our newly acquired treasure to the keeping of the
+  comprador, we sauntered forth in search of other discoveries, and
+  were richly rewarded by finding several perfect specimens of the
+  monkey-cup or pitcher-plant (<i>Nepenthes distillatoria</i>). This
+  plant is found in moist places, such as are suited to the growth of
+  ferns, mangroves and palmate shrubs. It has pendent from each leaf a
+  natural pitcher or elongated cup, growing perfectly upright and
+  capable of holding a pint or more of liquid. It is provided also with
+  a natural cover, which when closed prevents the ingress of leaves or
+  rubbish falling from other trees. The most curious circumstance
+  connected with this strange plant is, that it is nearly always found
+  full of pure, sparkling water, and that the lid closes of itself as
+  soon as the receptacle is full, and opens whenever it is empty. The
+  water is thus protected from dust, and kept always fit for the use of
+  thirsty travelers, as well as of the immense troops of monkeys that
+  inhabit tropical jungles. When the dainty cup has been drained of its
+  refreshing contents, this wonderful little plant again throws wide
+  the portals of its exhausted receptacle for the free entrance of rain
+  or dew. Another plant, one we had often heard of, and sought for
+  without success, the so-called oyster tree, was found, and proved to
+  be nothing very wonderful after all. It is simply <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 203]</span> an ordinary oyster or other shell-fish,
+  that, tired of lying in the mud, concludes by way of variety to try
+  swinging in the air for a while, and so fastens itself to the long,
+  pendent branches of the mangroves that grow luxuriantly on the shores
+  of most tropical islands.</p>
+
+  <p>There seeming to be no more objects of interest to detain us at
+  Pulo Nánas, and our chuliahs having already gone on to prepare dinner
+  at Pulo Panjan, we rallied our forces and followed suit. It was
+  already four o&#39;clock, and so near the equinoctial line, where
+  there is no twilight, it is dark soon after six; but then Pulo Panjan
+  was on our route homeward, and we should have time at least to dine
+  and gather some of the beautiful flowers for which the island is
+  famous, as well as to taste the white pineapple, a rare and exquisite
+  variety that grows here in great abundance. Both rind and pulp are of
+  a pale straw-color; hence the name, to distinguish this species from
+  the ordinary golden-colored fruit, which is far inferior to the
+  white. Those we obtained were magnificent specimens&#8212;large and
+  juicy, with a flavor to tempt the appetite of the veriest epicure.
+  Abdallah peeled them in such a way as to remove the bur entire, and
+  brought them to our grassy &quot;board&quot; on pure white porcelain
+  plates garnished with wreaths of fragrant flowers. Never were the
+  gods feasted on nectar and ambrosia more divinely luscious than the
+  white pines and golden mangoes, the rich juicy grapes and sparkling
+  sherbet, with which we were regaled on that bright summer eve at the
+  base of the old flagstaff towering above our heads.</p>
+
+  <p>We had not much time for roaming, but gathered whole handfuls of
+  the lotus or water-lily, with its pale-blue, golden or rose-tinted
+  blooms gleaming up from the sparkling waters like the fabled charms
+  of mermaid or sea-nymph. There are many varieties of this exquisite
+  flower&#8212;blue, pink, carnation, bright yellow, royal purple
+  fringed with gold, and, more beautiful than all, pure, virgin white,
+  with the faintest possible rose tinge in the centre of each section
+  of the corolla, <span class="pagenum">[pg 204]</span> a just
+  perceptible blush, as of its own conscious loveliness. This last
+  variety is the royal flower of Siam: it is borne before the king at
+  weddings, funerals and all state festivals, and the royal
+  reception-rooms are always beautifully decorated with the young buds
+  arranged in costly vases of exquisite workmanship. The costly silk
+  and lace canopies over the cradles of the infants of the king&#39;s
+  family are also made in the form of a lotus reversed; and it is said
+  that in cases of fever or eruptive diseases the leaves of the fresh
+  lotus are spread over the royal couches, as being not only sanitary,
+  but more agreeable to the invalid than the ordinary linen or silk
+  bedding. Guided by the rare rich perfume of its waxen buds, we found
+  a choice specimen of the bride-like moon-creeper, and bore if off,
+  vine, blooms and all, to a place among the floral adornments of our
+  own home.</p>
+
+  <p>We reached home at eight o&#39;clock, after a cruise, by sea and
+  by land, of thirteen hours; but the day had been so replete with
+  enjoyment that we scarcely felt conscious of fatigue, and were off
+  again the next morning, soon after sun-rise, for a ride to Bookit
+  Timá (&quot;hill of tin&quot;), the central and loftiest peak of
+  Singapore Island. It is nine miles from the city, with a smooth road
+  to the very summit, so that we might go either in pony palanquins or
+  on horseback. We chose the latter, as affording us better opportunity
+  for observation and the collection of &quot;specimens,&quot; and, as
+  we could readily gain the mountain-top in season for a nine
+  o&#39;clock breakfast, the heat would not be oppressive. Abdallah
+  despatched the chuliahs, each with a stout load of provisions,
+  table-ware and cooking-utensils, at dawn, and when we arrived our
+  <i>déjeuner</i> was ready to be served. The viands were tempting and
+  the cookery faultless, but we could scarce do justice to either, so
+  eager were we to begin our explorations on the summit and sides of
+  this beautiful hill, or rather hills, for there are twin peaks
+  closely connected, and each presenting an enchanting view of verdant
+  fields and fertile valleys, of the neighboring city, the wide expanse
+  of blue waters beyond, and the shipping in the harbor. Having
+  satisfied ourselves with gazing at the distant prospect, we began to
+  descend in search of adventures, sending our ponies ahead to await us
+  at the base of the mountain, where we were to dine. Onward we
+  strolled, gradually descending, every step marked by
+  novelties&#8212;flowers, grasses, weeds and shrubs vieing with each
+  other in varied and glad-some beauty. At length we sat down to rest
+  beneath a huge bombax or cotton tree (<i>Bombax ceiba</i>), its
+  widespread branches and thick foliage shielding us effectually from
+  the noonday sun, a fragrant blossom falling occasionally into our
+  laps or pelting us over head and shoulders, while with every passing
+  zephyr the fleecy down from the ripe bolls floated hither and
+  thither, looking for all the world like a snow-storm, except that the
+  sun was shining luminously in the clear heavens. This tree must have
+  been sixty feet in height, a grand, noble type of a green old age
+  after scores of years well and usefully spent, still vigorous and
+  productive. We met specimens afterward even taller and larger than
+  this, and they are said sometimes to reach the height of a hundred
+  feet. The timber is light and porous, and is in great demand for
+  boats. Lower down, the various palms, especially the cocoa-nut and
+  cabbage, were all about us. The former is found in nearly every
+  tropical clime, and is of all trees the one most indispensable to the
+  East Indian, furnishing him with meat, drink, medicine, clothing,
+  lodging and fuel. The ripe kernel of the nut, besides being eaten,
+  has expressed from it an excellent oil, that feeds all the lamps in
+  an Oriental house, supplies the table with a most palatable
+  substitute for butter, and the belle with a choice article of
+  perfumery; the green nut affords a delicious beverage to the thirsty
+  traveler; the fibrous covering of the nut is readily converted into
+  strong and durable cordage, and the polished shells into
+  drinking-cups, ladles and spoons; the leaves are frequently used for
+  thatch, the wood for lathing and musical instruments, and the sap for
+  toddy, an intoxicating drink very common in the East. The tree is
+  graceful and pretty, with a tuft of large pinnated leaves at the top,
+  and nestled cosily in their midst are the clusters of fruit. It grows
+  to the height of forty or fifty feet, is long-lived, and bears fruit
+  nearly the whole year round. The cabbage palm is much less common in
+  a wild state, and few planters will take the trouble to cultivate it,
+  since a whole tree must be destroyed to obtain a single dish. The
+  edible part consists of snow-white flakes found just inside the bark
+  near the top of the tree. When stewed in the expressed juice of the
+  cocoa-nut it constitutes one of the most luscious dishes I have ever
+  eaten. The tree is tall and large, and the pinnated leaves very
+  long.</p>
+
+  <p>In the moist portions of the jungle toward the foot of the hill
+  were whole groves of the fragrant pandanus, ferns of infinite
+  variety, and a species of wild mignonette with a perfume like that of
+  commingled strawberries and lemon. Now and then we paused beneath the
+  thick green foliage of the <i>Magnolia grandiflora</i>, as it towered
+  in stately grandeur above its sister flowers, acknowledged queen of
+  the parterre, and dispensing with genuine Oriental profusion its rare
+  and delicious perfume. A step farther and our gaze was riveted by the
+  modest purity of the spotless japonica, the fragrant tuberose and
+  Cape jessamine, the graceful passion-flower, with its royal beauty
+  and storied reminiscences, the peerless dauk-málé, fragrant and fair,
+  the <i>Kalla Indica</i>, with its five long petals of heavenly blue,
+  the gold-plant of the Chinese, and crimson boon-gah-riah of the
+  Malays, the last two consecrated symbols in the religious rites of
+  those nations. What a medley of sweets, flaunting their gay colors in
+  the bright tropical sunshine! Then the innumerable company of
+  roses&#8212;tea, moss, perpetual, cluster, climbing, variegated, and
+  a score of others&#8212;how fair, fresh and fragrant they are,
+  peerless, queen-like still, even amid such a gorgeous <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 205]</span> array of ripe floral charms! These, and a
+  thousand others for which we have no names in our language, are
+  scattered profusely over those sunny lands of dreamy beauty, vieing
+  with each other in rare, rich perfume, exquisite grace of form and
+  matchless blending of their warm, ripe colors.</p>
+
+  <p>The next day we dined at Dr. Almeida&#39;s, and in his magnificent
+  garden found several choice specimens of both the <i>Victoria
+  regia</i> and the <i>Rafflesia Arnoldi</i>, the two largest flowers
+  in the world, each bloom measuring two feet in diameter. But the
+  rarest of all the doctor&#39;s treasures was the night-blooming
+  cereus. There were six blooms in full maturity&#8212;four on one
+  stalk and two on another&#8212;creamy, waxen flowers of exquisite
+  form, the leaves of the corolla of a pale golden hue and the petals
+  intensely white. The calyx rises from a long, hollow footstalk, which
+  is formed of rough plates overlapping each other like tiles on a
+  roof. From the centre of this footstalk rises a bundle of filaments
+  that encircle the style, stamens springing also from the insertion of
+  the leaves of the corolla, lining it with delicate beauty and waving
+  their slender forms with exquisite grace. But the real charm of the
+  cereus is its wondrous perfume, exhaled just at night-fall, and
+  readily discernible over the circuit of a mile. The peculiar odor
+  cannot be understood by mere description, but partakes largely of
+  that of sweet lilies, violets, the tuberose and vanilla. After the
+  bud appears the growth is very rapid, often two or three inches a
+  day&#8212;that is, in the height of the stalk, the flower expanding
+  proportionately. When fully grown it begins to unfold its charms as
+  the twilight deepens into night, and reaches perfect maturity about
+  an hour before midnight: at three o&#39;clock its glory is already
+  beginning to wane, though scarcely perceptibly; but at dawn it is
+  fading rapidly, and by sun-rise only a wilted, worthless wreck
+  remains, good for nothing but to be &quot;cast out and trodden under
+  foot of men.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p class="author">FANNIE R. FEUDGE.</p><a name="thule" id="thule">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a> <span class="pagenum">[pg 206]</span>
+
+  <h2>A PRINCESS OF THULE.</h2>
+
+  <h3>BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF &quot;THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A
+  PHAETON.&quot;</h3><a name="thulechxii" id="thulechxii">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER XII.</h3>
+
+  <h3>TRANSFORMATION.</h3>
+
+  <p>Had Sheila, then, Lavender could not help asking himself, a bad
+  temper, or any other qualities or characteristics which were apparent
+  to other people, but not to him? Was it possible that, after all,
+  Ingram was right, and that he had yet to learn the nature of the girl
+  he had married? It would be unfair to say that he suspected something
+  wrong about his wife&#8212;that he fancied she had managed to conceal
+  something&#8212;merely because Mrs. Lavender had said that Sheila had
+  a bad temper; but here was another person who maintained that when
+  the days of his romance were over he would see the girl in another
+  light.</p>
+
+  <p>Nay, as he continued to ask himself, had not the change already
+  begun? He grew less and less accustomed to see in Sheila a beautiful
+  wild sea-bird that had fluttered down for a time into a strange home
+  in the South. He had not quite forgotten or abandoned those
+  imaginative scenes in which the wonderful sea-princess was to enter
+  crowded drawing-rooms and have all the world standing back to regard
+  her and admire her and sing her praises. But now he was not so sure
+  that that would be the result of Sheila&#39;s entrance into society.
+  As the date of a certain dinner-party drew near he began to wish she
+  was more like the women he knew. He did not object to her strange
+  sweet ways of speech, nor to her odd likes and dislikes, nor even to
+  an unhesitating frankness that nearly approached rudeness sometimes
+  in its scorn of all compromise with the truth; but how would others
+  regard these things? He did not wish to gain the reputation of having
+  married an oddity.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Sheila,&quot; he said on the morning of the day on which
+  they were going to this dinner-party, &quot;you should not say
+  <i>like-a-ness</i>. There are only two syllables in <i>likeness</i>.
+  It really does sound absurd to hear you say
+  <i>like-a-ness</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She looked up to him with a quick trouble in her eyes. When had he
+  spoken to her so petulantly before? And then she cast down her eyes
+  again, and said submissively, &quot;I will try not to speak like
+  that. When you go out I take a book and read aloud, and try to speak
+  like you; but I cannot learn all at once.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;<i>I</i> don&#39;t mind,&quot; he said. &quot;But you know
+  other people must think it so odd. I wonder why you should always say
+  <i>gyarden</i> for <i>garden</i> now, when it is just as easy to say
+  <i>garden</i>?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Once upon a time he had said there was no English like the English
+  spoken in Lewis, and had singled out this very word as typical of one
+  peculiarity in the pronunciation. But she did not remind him of that.
+  She only said in the same simple fashion, &quot;If you will tell me
+  my faults I will try to correct them.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She turned away from him to get an envelope for a letter she had
+  been writing to her father. He fancied something was wrong, and
+  perhaps some touch of compunction smote him, for he went after her
+  and took her hand, and said, &quot;Look here, Sheila. When I point
+  out any trifles like that, you must not call them faults, and fancy I
+  have any serious complaint to make. It is for your own good that you
+  should meet the people who will be your friends on equal terms, and
+  give them as little as possible to talk about.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I should not mind their talking about me,&quot; said Sheila
+  with her eyes still cast down, &quot;but it is your wife they must
+  not talk about; and if you will tell me anything I do wrong I will
+  correct it.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, you must not think it is anything so serious as that.
+  You will soon pick up from the ladies you will meet some notion of
+  how you differ from them; and if you should startle or puzzle them a
+  little at first by talking about the chances of the fishing or the
+  catching of wild-duck, or the way to reclaim bogland, you will soon
+  get over all that.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Sheila said nothing, but she made a mental memorandum of three
+  things she was not to speak about. She did not know why these
+  subjects should be forbidden, but she was in a strange land and going
+  to see strange people, whose habits were different from hers.
+  Moreover, when her husband had gone she reflected that these people,
+  having no fishing and no peat-mosses and no wild-duck, could not
+  possibly be interested in such affairs; and thus she fancied she
+  perceived the reason why she should avoid all mention of those
+  things.</p>
+
+  <p>When in the evening Sheila came down dressed and ready to go out,
+  Lavender had to admit to himself that he had married an exceedingly
+  beautiful girl, and that there was no country gawkiness about her
+  manner, and no placid insipidity about her proud and handsome face.
+  For one brief moment he triumphed in his heart, and had some wild
+  glimpse of his old project of startling his small world with this
+  vision from the northern seas. But when he got into the hired
+  brougham, and thought of the people he was about to meet, and of the
+  manner in which they would carry away such and such impressions of
+  the girl, he lost faith in that admiration. He would much rather have
+  had Sheila unnoticeable and unnoticed&#8212;one who would quietly
+  take her place at the dinner-table, and attract no more special
+  attention than the flowers, for example, which every one would glance
+  at with some satisfaction, and then forget in the interest of talking
+  and dining. He was quite conscious of his own weakness in thus
+  fearing social criticism. He knew that Ingram would have taken Sheila
+  anywhere in her blue serge dress, and been quite content and
+  oblivious of observation. But then Ingram was independent of those
+  social circles in which a married man must move, and in which his
+  position is often defined for him by the disposition and manners of
+  his wife. Ingram did not know how women talked. <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 207]</span> It was for Sheila&#39;s own sake, he
+  persuaded himself, that he was anxious about the impression she
+  should make, and that he had drilled her in all that she should do
+  and say.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Above all things,&quot; he said, &quot;mind you take no
+  notice of me. Another man will take you in to dinner, of course, and
+  I shall take in somebody else, and we shall not be near each other.
+  But it&#39;s after dinner, I mean: when the men go into the
+  drawing-room don&#39;t you come and speak to me or take any notice of
+  me whatever.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Mayn&#39;t I look at you, Frank?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;If you do you&#39;ll have half a dozen people all watching
+  you, saying to themselves or to each other, &#39;Poor thing! she
+  hasn&#39;t got over her infatuation yet. Isn&#39;t it pretty to see
+  how naturally her eyes turn toward him?&#39;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But I shouldn&#39;t mind them saying that,&quot; said Sheila
+  with a smile.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, you mustn&#39;t be pitied in that fashion. Let them keep
+  their compassion to themselves.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Do you know, dear,&quot; said Sheila very quietly,
+  &quot;that I think you exaggerate the interest people will take in
+  me? I don&#39;t think I can be of such importance to them. I
+  don&#39;t think they will be watching me as you fancy.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, you don&#39;t know,&quot; he said. &quot;I know they
+  fancy I have done something romantic, heroic and all that kind of
+  thing, and they are curious to see you.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;They cannot hurt me by looking at me,&quot; said Sheila
+  simply. &quot;And they will soon find out how little there is to
+  discover.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The house being in Holland Park they had not far to go; and just
+  as they were driving up to the door a young man, slight, sandy-haired
+  and stooping, got out of a hansom and crossed the pavement.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;By Jove!&quot; said Lavender, &quot;there is Redburn, I did
+  not know he knew Mrs. Lorraine and her mother. That is Lord Arthur
+  Redburn, Sheila: mind, if you should talk to him, not to call him
+  &#39;my lord.&#39;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Sheila laughed and said, &quot;How am I to remember all these
+  things?&quot;</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 208]</span>
+
+  <p>They got into the house, and by and by Lavender found himself,
+  with Sheila on his arm, entering a drawing-room to present her to
+  certain of his friends. It was a large room, with a great deal of
+  gilding and color about it, and with a conservatory at the farther
+  end; but the blaze of light had not so bewildering an effect on
+  Sheila&#39;s eyes as the appearance of two ladies to whom she was now
+  introduced. She had heard much about them. She was curious to see
+  them. Many a time had she thought over the strange story Lavender had
+  told her of the woman who heard that her husband was dying in a
+  hospital during the war, and started off, herself and her daughter,
+  to find him out; how there was in the same hospital another dying man
+  whom they had known some years before, and who had gone away because
+  the girl would not listen to him; how this man, being very near to
+  death, begged that the girl would do him the last favor he would ask
+  of her, of wearing his name and inheriting his property; and how,
+  some few hours after the strange and sad ceremony had been performed,
+  he breathed his last, happy in holding her hand. The father died next
+  day, and the two widows were thrown upon the world, almost without
+  friends, but not without means. This man Lorraine had been possessed
+  of considerable wealth, and the girl who had suddenly become mistress
+  of it found herself able to employ all possible means in assuaging
+  her mother&#39;s grief. They began to travel. The two women went from
+  capital to capital, until at last they came to London; and here,
+  having gathered around them a considerable number of friends, they
+  proposed to take up their residence permanently. Lavender had often
+  talked to Sheila about Mrs. Lorraine&#8212;about her shrewdness, her
+  sharp sayings, and the odd contrast between this clever, keen, frank
+  woman of the world and the woman one would have expected to be the
+  heroine of a pathetic tale.</p>
+
+  <p>But were there two Mrs. Lorraines? That had been Sheila&#39;s
+  first question to herself when, after having been introduced to one
+  lady under that name, she suddenly saw before her another, who was
+  introduced to her as Mrs. Kavanagh. The mother and daughter were
+  singularly alike. They had the same slight and graceful figure, which
+  made them appear taller than they really were, the same pale, fine
+  and rather handsome features, the same large, clear gray eyes, and
+  apparently the same abundant mass of soft fair hair, heavily plaited
+  in the latest fashion. They were both dressed entirely in black,
+  except that the daughter had a band of blue round her slender waist.
+  It was soon apparent, too, that the manner of the two women was
+  singularly different; Mrs. Kavanagh bearing herself with a certain
+  sad reserve that almost approached melancholy at times, while her
+  daughter, with more life and spirit in her face, passed rapidly
+  through all sorts of varying moods, until one could scarcely tell
+  whether the affectation lay in a certain cynical audacity in her
+  speech, or whether it lay in her assumption of a certain coyness and
+  archness, or whether there was any affectation at all in the matter.
+  However that might be, there could be no doubt about the sincerity of
+  those gray eyes of hers. There was something almost cruelly frank in
+  the clear look of them; and when her face was not lit up by some
+  passing smile the pale and fine features seemed to borrow something
+  of severity from her unflinching, calm and dispassionate habit of
+  regarding those around her.</p>
+
+  <p>Sheila was prepared to like Mrs. Lorraine from the first moment
+  she had caught sight of her. The honesty of the gray eyes attracted
+  her. And, indeed, the young widow seemed very much interested in the
+  young wife, and, so far as she could in that awkward period just
+  before dinner, strove to make friends with her. Sheila was introduced
+  to a number of people, but none of them pleased her so well as Mrs.
+  Lorraine. Then dinner was announced, and Sheila found that she was
+  being escorted across the passage to the room on the other side by
+  the young man whom she had seen get out of the hansom.</p>
+
+  <p>This Lord Arthur Redburn was the younger son of a great Tory duke;
+  he represented in the House a small country borough which his father
+  practically owned; he had a fair amount of ability, an uncommonly
+  high opinion of himself, and a certain affectation of being bored by
+  the frivolous ways and talk of ordinary society. He gave himself
+  credit for being the clever member of the family; and if there was
+  any cleverness going, he had it; but there were some who said that
+  his reputation in the House and elsewhere as a good speaker was
+  mainly based on the fact that he had an abundant assurance and was
+  not easily put out. Unfortunately, the public could come to no
+  decision on the point, for the reporters were not kind to Lord
+  Arthur, and the substance of his speeches was as unknown to the world
+  as his manner of delivering them.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, Mrs. Lorraine had intended to tell this young man something
+  about the girl whom he was to take in to dinner, but she herself had
+  been so occupied with Sheila that the opportunity escaped her. Lord
+  Arthur accordingly knew only that he was beside a very pretty woman,
+  who was a Mrs. Somebody&#8212;the exact name he had not
+  caught&#8212;and that the few words she had spoken were pronounced in
+  a curious way. Probably, he thought, she was from Dublin.</p>
+
+  <p>He also arrived at the conclusion that she was too pretty to know
+  anything about the Deceased Wife&#39;s Sister bill, in which he was,
+  for family reasons, deeply interested, and considered it more likely
+  that she would prefer to talk about theatres and such things.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Were you at Covent Garden last night?&quot; he said.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No,&quot; answered Sheila. &quot;But I was there two days
+  ago, and it is very pretty to see the flowers and the fruit; and then
+  they smell so sweetly as you walk through.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh yes, it is delightful,&quot; said Lord Arthur. &quot;But
+  I was speaking of the theatre.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Is there a theatre in there?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He stared at her, and inwardly hoped she was not
+  mad.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 209]</span>
+
+  <p>&quot;Not in among the shops, no. But don&#39;t you know Covent
+  Garden Theatre?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I have never been in any theatre, not yet,&quot; said
+  Sheila.</p>
+
+  <p>And then it began to dawn upon him that he must be talking to
+  Frank Lavender&#39;s wife. Was there not some rumor about the girl
+  having come from a remote part of the Highlands? He determined on a
+  bold stroke: &quot;You have not been long enough in London to see the
+  theatres, I suppose.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>And then Sheila, taking it for granted that he knew her husband
+  very well, and that he was quite familiar with all the circumstances
+  of the case, began to chat to him freely enough. He found that this
+  Highland girl of whom he had heard vaguely was not at all shy. He
+  began to feel interested. By and by he actually made efforts to
+  assist her frankness by becoming equally frank, and by telling her
+  all he knew of the things with which they were mutually acquainted.
+  Of course by this time they had got up into the Highlands. The young
+  man had himself been in the Highlands&#8212;frequently, indeed. He
+  had never crossed to Lewis, but he had seen the island from the
+  Sutherlandshire coast. There were very many deer in Sutherlandshire,
+  were there not? Yes, he had been out a great many times, and had had
+  his share of adventures. Had he not gone out before daylight, and
+  waited on the top of a hill, hidden by some rocks, to watch the mists
+  clear along the hillsides and in the valley below? Did not he tremble
+  when he fired his first shot, and had not something passed before his
+  eyes so that he could not see for a moment whether the stag had
+  fallen or was away like lightning down the bed of the stream? Somehow
+  or other, Lord Arthur found himself relating all his experiences, as
+  if he were a novice begging for the good opinion of a master. She
+  knew all about it, obviously, and he would tell her his small
+  adventures if only that she might laugh at him. But Sheila did not
+  laugh. She was greatly delighted to have this talk about the hills
+  and the deer and the wet mornings. She forgot all about the dinner
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 210]</span> before her. The servants
+  whipped off successive plates without her seeing anything of them:
+  they received random answers about wine, so that she had three full
+  glasses standing by her untouched. She was no more in Holland Park at
+  that moment than were the wild animals of which she spoke so proudly
+  and lovingly. If the great and frail masses of flowers on the table
+  brought her any perfume at all, it was a scent of peat-smoke. Lord
+  Arthur thought that his companion was a little too frank and
+  confiding, or rather that she would have been had she been talking to
+  any one but himself. He rather liked it. He was pleased to have
+  established friendly relations with a pretty woman in so short a
+  space; but ought not her husband to give her a hint about not
+  admitting all and sundry to the enjoyment of these favors? Perhaps,
+  too, Lord Arthur felt bound to admit to himself there were some men
+  who more than others inspired confidence in women. He laid no claims
+  to being a fascinating person, but he had had his share of success,
+  and considered that Sheila showed discrimination as well as
+  good-nature in talking so to him. There was, after all, no necessity
+  for her husband to warn her. She would know how to guard against
+  admitting all men to a like intimacy. In the mean time he was very
+  well pleased to be sitting beside this pretty and agreeable
+  companion, who had an abundant fund of good spirits, and who showed
+  no sort of conscious embarrassment in thanking you with a bright look
+  of her eyes or by a smile when you told her something that pleased or
+  amused her.</p>
+
+  <p>But these flattering little speculations were doomed to receive a
+  sudden check. The juvenile M.P. began to remark that a shade
+  occasionally crossed the face of his fair companion, and that she
+  sometimes looked a little anxiously across the table, where Mr.
+  Lavender and Mrs. Lorraine were seated, half hidden from view by a
+  heap of silver and flowers in the middle of the board. But though
+  they could not easily be seen, except at such moments as they turned
+  to address some neighbor, they could be distinctly enough heard when
+  there was any lull in the general conversation. And what Sheila heard
+  did not please her. She began to like that fair, clear-eyed young
+  woman less. Perhaps her husband meant nothing by the fashion in which
+  he talked of marriage and the condition of a married man, but she
+  would rather have not heard him talk so. Moreover, she was aware that
+  in the gentlest possible fashion Mrs. Lorraine was making fun of her
+  companion, and exposing him to small and graceful shafts of ridicule;
+  while he seemed, on the whole, to enjoy these attacks.</p>
+
+  <p>The ingenuous self-love of Lord Arthur Redburn, M.P., was severely
+  wounded by the notion that, after all, he had been made a
+  cat&#39;s-paw of by a jealous wife. He had been flattered by this
+  girl&#39;s exceeding friendliness; he had given her credit for a
+  genuine impulsiveness which seemed to him as pleasing as it was
+  uncommon; and he had, with the moderation expected of a man in
+  politics who hoped some day to assist in the government of the nation
+  by accepting a junior lordship, admired her. But was it all pretence?
+  Was she paying court to him merely to annoy her husband? Had her
+  enthusiasm about the shooting of red-deer been prompted by a wish to
+  attract a certain pair of eyes at the other side of the table? Lord
+  Arthur began to sneer at himself for having been duped. He ought to
+  have known. Women were as much women in a Hebridean island as in
+  Bayswater. He began to treat Sheila with a little more coolness,
+  while she became more and more preoccupied with the couple across the
+  table, and sometimes was innocently rude in answering his questions
+  somewhat at random.</p>
+
+  <p>When the ladies were going into the drawing-room, Mrs. Lorraine
+  put her hand within Sheila&#39;s arm and led her to the entrance to
+  the conservatory. &quot;I hope we shall be friends,&quot; she
+  said.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I hope so,&quot; said Sheila, not very warmly.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Until you get better acquainted with your husband&#39;s
+  friends you will feel rather lonely at being left as at present, I
+  suppose.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;A little,&quot; said Sheila.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It is a silly thing altogether. If men smoked after dinner I
+  could understand it. But they merely sit, looking at wine they
+  don&#39;t drink, talking a few common-places and yawning.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why do they do it, then?&quot; said Sheila.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;They don&#39;t do it everywhere. But here we keep to the
+  manners and customs of the ancients.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What do you know about the manners of the ancients?&quot;
+  said Mrs. Kavanagh, tapping her daughter&#39;s shoulder; as she
+  passed with a sheet of music.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I have studied them frequently, mamma,&quot; said the
+  daughter with composure, &quot;&#8212;in the monkey-house at the
+  Zoological Gardens.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The mamma smiled, and passed on to place the music on the piano.
+  Sheila did not understand what her companion had said; and indeed
+  Mrs. Lorraine immediately turned, with the same calm, fine face and
+  careless eyes, to ask Sheila whether she would not, by and by, sing
+  one of those northern songs of which Mr. Lavender had told her.</p>
+
+  <p>A tall girl, with her back hair tied in a knot and her costume
+  copied from a well-known pre-Raphaelite drawing, sat down to the
+  piano and sang a mystic song of the present day, in which the moon,
+  the stars and other natural objects behaved strangely, and were
+  somehow mixed up with the appeal of a maiden who demanded that her
+  dead lover should be reclaimed from the sea.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Do you ever go down to your husband&#39;s studio?&quot; said
+  Mrs. Lorraine.</p>
+
+  <p>Sheila glanced toward the lady at the piano.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, you may talk,&quot; said Mrs. Lorraine, with the least
+  expression of contempt in the gray eyes. &quot;She is singing to
+  gratify herself, not us.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes, I sometimes go down,&quot; said Sheila in as low a
+  voice as she could manage without falling into a whisper, &quot;and
+  it is such a dismal place. It is very hard on him to have to work in
+  a big bare room like that, with the windows <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  211]</span> half blinded. But sometimes I think Frank would rather
+  have me out of the way.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And what would he do if both of us were to pay him a
+  visit?&quot; said Mrs. Lorraine. &quot;I should so like to see the
+  studio! Won&#39;t you call for me some day and take me with
+  you?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Take her with her, indeed! Sheila began to wonder that she did not
+  propose to go alone. Fortunately, there was no need to answer the
+  question, for at this moment the song came to an end, and there was a
+  general movement and murmur of gratitude.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Thank you,&quot; said Mrs. Lorraine to the lady who had
+  sung, and who was now returning to the photographs she had
+  left&#8212;&quot;thank you very much. I knew some one would instantly
+  ask you to sing that song: it is the most charming of all your songs,
+  I think, and how well it suits your voice, too!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Then she turned to Sheila again: &quot;How did you like Lord
+  Arthur Redburn?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I think he is a very good young man.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Young men are never good, but they may be very
+  amiable,&quot; said Mrs. Lorraine, not perceiving that Sheila had
+  blundered on a wrong adjective, and that she had really meant that
+  she thought him honest and pleasant.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You did not speak at all, I think, to your neighbor on the
+  right: that was wise of you. He is a most insufferable person, but
+  mamma bears with him for the sake of his daughter, who sang just now.
+  He is too rich. And he smiles blandly, and takes a sort of
+  after-dinner view of things, as if he coincided with the arrangements
+  of Providence. Don&#39;t you take coffee? Tea, then. I have met your
+  aunt&#8212;I mean, Mr. Lavender&#39;s aunt: such a dear old lady she
+  is!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I don&#39;t like her,&quot; said Sheila.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, don&#39;t you, really?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Not at present, but I shall try to like her.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well,&quot; said Mrs. Lorraine calmly, &quot;you know she
+  has her peculiarities. I wish she wouldn&#39;t talk so much about
+  Marcus Antoninus and doses of medicine. <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  212]</span> I fancy I smell calomel when she comes near. I suppose if
+  she were in a pantomime, they&#39;d dress her up as a phial, tie a
+  string round her neck and label her &#39;POISON.&#39; Dear me, how
+  languid one gets in this climate! Let us sit down. I wish I was as
+  strong as mamma.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>They sat down together, and Mrs. Lorraine evidently expected to be
+  petted and made much of by her new companion. She gave herself pretty
+  little airs and graces, and said no more cutting things about
+  anybody. And Sheila somehow found herself being drawn to the girl, so
+  that she could scarcely help taking her hand, and saying how sorry
+  she was to see her so pale and fine and delicate. The hand, too, was
+  so small that the tiny white fingers seemed scarcely bigger than the
+  claws of a bird. Was not that slender waist, to which some little
+  attention was called by a belt of bold blue, just a little too
+  slender for health, although the bust and shoulders were exquisitely
+  and finely proportioned?</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;We were at the Academy all the morning, and mamma is not a
+  bit tired. Why has not Mr. Lavender anything in the Academy? Oh, I
+  forgot&quot; she added, with a smile. &quot;Of course, he has been
+  very much engaged. But now I suppose he will settle down to
+  work.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Sheila wished that this fragile-looking girl would not so
+  continually refer to her husband; but how was any one to find fault
+  with her when she put a little air of plaintiveness into the
+  ordinarily cold gray eyes, and looked at her small hand as much as to
+  say, &quot;The fingers there are very small, and even whiter than the
+  glove that covers them. They are the fingers of a child, who ought to
+  be petted.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Then the men came in from the dining-room. Lavender looked round
+  to see where Sheila was&#8212;perhaps with a trifle of disappointment
+  that she was not the most prominent figure there. Had he expected to
+  find all the women surrounding her and admiring her, and all the men
+  going up to pay court to her? Sheila was seated near a small table,
+  and Mrs. Lorraine was showing her something. She was just like
+  anybody else. If she was a wonderful sea-princess who had come into a
+  new world, no one seemed to observe her. The only thing that
+  distinguished her from the women around her was her freshness of
+  color and the unusual combination of black eyelashes and dark blue
+  eyes. Lavender had arranged that Sheila&#39;s first appearance in
+  public should be at a very quiet little dinner-party, but even here
+  she failed to create any profound impression. She was, as he had to
+  confess to himself again, just like anybody else.</p>
+
+  <p>He went over to where Mrs. Lorraine was, and sat down beside her.
+  Sheila, remembering his injunctions, felt bound to leave him there;
+  and as she rose to speak to Mrs. Kavanagh, who was standing by, that
+  lady came and begged her to sing a Highland song. By this time
+  Lavender had succeeded in interesting his companion about something
+  or other, and neither of them noticed that Sheila had gone to the
+  piano, attended by the young politician who had taken her in to
+  dinner. Nor did they interrupt their talk merely because some one
+  played a few bars of prelude. But what was this that suddenly
+  startled Lavender to the heart, causing him to look up with surprise?
+  He had not heard the air since he was in Borva, and when Sheila
+  sang</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">Hark, hark! the horn</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">On mountain-breezes borne!</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Awake, it is morn,</p>
+
+    <p class="i6">Awake, Monaltrie!&#8212;</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>all sorts of reminiscences came rushing in upon him. How often had
+  he heard that wild story of Monaltrie&#39;s flight sung out in the
+  small chamber over the sea, with a sound of the waves outside and a
+  scent of sea-weed coming in at the door and the windows! It was from
+  the shores of Borva that young Monaltrie must have fled. It must have
+  been in Borva that his sweetheart sat in her bower and sang, the
+  burden of all her singing being &quot;Return, Monaltrie!&quot; And
+  then, as Sheila sang now, making the monotonous and plaintive air
+  wild and strange&#8212;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">What cries of wild despair</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Awake the sultry air?</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Frenzied with anxious care,</p>
+
+    <p class="i6">She seeks Monaltrie&#8212;</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>he heard no more of the song. He was thinking of bygone days in
+  Borva, and of old Mackenzie living in his lonely house there. When
+  Sheila had finished singing he looked at her, and it seemed to him
+  that she was still that wonderful princess whom he had wooed on the
+  shores of the Atlantic. And if those people did not see her as he saw
+  her, ought he to be disappointed because of their blindness?</p>
+
+  <p>But if they saw nothing mystic or wonderful about Sheila, they at
+  all events were considerably surprised by the strange sort of music
+  she sang. It was not of a sort commonly heard in a London
+  drawing-room. The pathos of its minor chords, its abrupt intervals,
+  startling and wild in their effect, and the slowly subsiding wail in
+  which it closed, did not much resemble the ordinary drawing-room
+  &quot;piece.&quot; Here, at least, Sheila had produced an impression;
+  and presently there was a heap of people round the piano, expressing
+  their admiration, asking questions and begging her to continue. But
+  she rose. She would rather not sing just then. Whereupon Lavender
+  came out to her and said, &quot;Sheila, won&#39;t you sing that wild
+  one about the farewell&#8212;that has the sound of the pipes in it,
+  you know?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh yes,&quot; she said directly.</p>
+
+  <p>Lavender went back to his companion.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;She is very obedient to you,&quot; said Mrs. Lorraine with a
+  smile.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes, at present,&quot; he said; and he thought meanly of
+  himself for saying it the moment the words were uttered.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">Oh, soft be thy slumbers, by Tigh-na-linne&#39;s
+    waters;</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Thy late-wake was sung by Macdiarmid&#39;s fair
+    daughters;</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">But far in Lochaber the true heart was weeping</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Whose hopes are entombed in the grave where
+    thou&#39;rt sleeping.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>So Sheila sang; and it seemed to the people that this ballad was
+  even more strange than its predecessor. When the song was over,
+  Sheila seemed rather anxious to get out of the crowd, and indeed
+  walked away into the conservatory to have a look at the
+  flowers.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 213]</span>
+
+  <p>Yes, Lavender had to confess to himself, Sheila was just like
+  anybody else in this drawing-room. His sea-princess had produced no
+  startling impression. He forgot that he had just been teaching her
+  the necessity of observing the ways and customs of the people around
+  her, so that she might avoid singularity.</p>
+
+  <p>On one point, at least, she was resolved she would attend to his
+  counsels: she would not make him ridiculous by any show of affection
+  before the eyes of strangers. She did not go near him the whole
+  evening. She remained for the most part in that half conservatory,
+  half ante-room at the end of the drawing-room; and when any one
+  talked to her she answered, and when she was left alone she turned to
+  the flowers. All this time, however, she could observe that Lavender
+  and Mrs. Lorraine were very much engrossed in their conversation;
+  that she seemed very much amused, and he at times a trifle
+  embarrassed; and that both of them had apparently forgotten her
+  existence. Mrs. Kavanagh was continually coming to Sheila and trying
+  to coax her back into the larger room, but in vain. She would rather
+  not sing any more that night. She liked to look at flowers. She was
+  not tired at all, and she had already seen those wonderful
+  photographs about which everybody was talking.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, Sheila, how did you enjoy yourself?&quot; said her
+  husband as they were driving home.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I wish Mr. Ingram had been there,&quot; said Sheila.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Ingram! He would not have stopped in the place five minutes,
+  unless he could play the part of Diogenes and say rude things to
+  everybody all round. Were you at all dull?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;A little.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Didn&#39;t somebody look after you?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh yes, many persons were very kind.
+  But&#8212;but&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Nobody seemed to be better off than myself. They all seemed
+  to be wanting something to do; and I am sure they were all very glad
+  to come away.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, no, no, Sheila. That is only <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  214]</span> your fancy. You were not much interested, that is
+  evident; but you will get on better when you know more of the people.
+  You were a stranger&#8212;that is what disappointed you&#8212;but you
+  will not always be a stranger.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Sheila did not answer. Perhaps she contemplated with no great hope
+  or longing the possibility of her coming to like such a method of
+  getting through an evening. At all events, she looked forward with no
+  great pleasure to the chance of her having to become friends with
+  Mrs. Lorraine. All the way home Sheila was examining her own heart to
+  try to discover why such bitter feelings should be there. Surely that
+  girl was honest: there was honesty in her eyes. She had been most
+  kind to Sheila herself. And was there not at times, when she
+  abandoned the ways and speech of a woman of the world, a singular coy
+  fascination about her, that any man might be excused for yielding to,
+  even as any woman might yield to it? Sheila fought with herself, and
+  resolved that she would cast forth from her heart those harsh fancies
+  and indignant feelings that seemed to have established themselves
+  there. She would <i>not</i> hate Mrs. Lorraine.</p>
+
+  <p>As for Lavender, what was he thinking of, now that he and his
+  young wife were driving home from their first experiment in society?
+  He had to confess to a certain sense of failure. His dreams had not
+  been realized. Every one who had spoken to him had conveyed to him,
+  as freely as good manners would admit, their congratulations and
+  their praises of his wife. But the impressive scenes he had been
+  forecasting were out of the question. There was a little curiosity
+  about her on the part of those who knew her story, and that was all.
+  Sheila bore herself very well. She made no blunders. She had a good
+  presence, she sang well, and every one could see that she was
+  handsome, gentle and honest. Surely, he argued with himself, that
+  ought to content the most exacting. But, in spite of all argument, he
+  was not content. He did not regret that he had sacrificed his liberty
+  in a freak of romance; he did not even regard the fact of a man in
+  his position having dared to marry a penniless girl as anything very
+  meritorious or heroic; but he had hoped that the dramatic
+  circumstances of the case would be duly recognized by his friends,
+  and that Sheila would be an object of interest and wonder and talk in
+  a whole series of social circles. But the result of his adventure was
+  different. There was only one married man the more in London, and
+  London was not disposed to pay any particular heed to that
+  circumstance.</p><a name="thulechxiii" id="thulechxiii">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER XIII.</h3>
+
+  <h3>BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON.</h3>
+
+  <p>If Frank Lavender had been told that his love for his wife was in
+  danger of waning, he would have laughed the suggestion to scorn. He
+  was as fond of her and as proud of her as ever. Who knew as well as
+  himself the tenderness of her heart, the delicate sensitiveness of
+  her conscience, the generosity of self-sacrifice she was always ready
+  to bestow? and was he likely to become blind, so that he should fail
+  to see how fair and frank and handsome she was? He had been
+  disappointed, it is true, in his fancies about the impression she
+  would produce on his friends; but what a trifle was that! The folly
+  of those fancies was his own. For the rest, he was glad that Sheila
+  was not so different from the other women whom he knew. He hit upon
+  the profound reflection, as he sat alone in his studio, that a
+  man&#39;s wife, like his costume, should not be so remarkable as to
+  attract attention. The perfection of dress was that you should be
+  unconscious of its presence: might that not be so with marriage?
+  After all, it was better that he had not bound himself to lug about a
+  lion whenever he visited people&#39;s houses.</p>
+
+  <p>Still, there was something. He found himself a good deal alone.
+  Sheila did not seem to care much for going into society; and although
+  he did not much like the notion of going by himself, nevertheless one
+  had certain duties toward one&#39;s friends to perform. She did not
+  even care to go down to the Park of a forenoon. She always professed
+  her readiness to go, but he fancied it was a trifle tiresome for her;
+  and so, when there was nothing particular going on in the studio, he
+  would walk down through Kensington Gardens himself, and have a chat
+  with some friends, followed generally by luncheon with this or the
+  other party of them. Sheila had been taught that she ought not to
+  come so frequently to that studio. Bras would not lie quiet.
+  Moreover, if dealers or other strangers should come in, would they
+  not take her for a model? So Sheila stayed at home; and Mr. Lavender,
+  after having dressed with care in the morning&#8212;with very
+  singular care, indeed, considering that he was going to his
+  work&#8212;used to go down to his studio to smoke a cigarette. The
+  chances were that he was not in a humor for working. He would sit
+  down in an easy-chair and kick his heels on the floor for a time,
+  watching perhaps the sunlight come in through the upper part of the
+  windows and paint yellow squares on the opposite wall. Then he would
+  go out and lock the door behind him, leaving no message whatever for
+  those crowds of importunate dealers who, as Sheila fancied, were
+  besieging him with offers in one hand and purses of gold in the
+  other.</p>
+
+  <p>One morning, after she had been indoors for two or three days, and
+  had grown hopelessly tired of the monotony of watching that sunlit
+  square, she was filled with an unconquerable longing to go away, for
+  however brief a space, from the sight of houses. The morning was
+  sweet and clear and bright, white clouds were slowly crossing a fair
+  blue sky, and a fresh and cool breeze was blowing in at the open
+  French windows.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Bras,&quot; she said, going down stairs and out into the
+  small garden, &quot;we are going into the country.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The great deer-hound seemed to know, and rose and came to her with
+  great gravity, while she clasped on the leash. He was no frisky
+  animal to show his delight by yelping and gamboling, but he laid his
+  long nose in her hand, and <span class="pagenum">[pg 215]</span>
+  slowly wagged the down-drooping curve of his shaggy tail; and then he
+  placidly walked by her side up into the hall, where he stood awaiting
+  her.</p>
+
+  <p>She would go along and beg of her husband to leave his work for a
+  day and go with her for a walk down to Richmond Park. She had often
+  heard Mr. Ingram speak of walking down, and she remembered that much
+  of the road was pretty. Why should not her husband have one
+  holiday?</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It is such a shame,&quot; she had said to him that morning
+  as he left, &quot;that you will be going into that gloomy place, with
+  its bare walls and chairs, and the windows so that you cannot see out
+  of them!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I must get some work done somehow, Sheila,&quot; he said,
+  although he did not tell her that he had not finished a picture since
+  his marriage.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I wish I could do some of it for you,&quot; she said.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You! All the work you&#39;re good for is catching fish and
+  feeding ducks and planting things in gardens. Why don&#39;t you come
+  down and feed the ducks in the Serpentine?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I should like to do that,&quot; she answered. &quot;I will
+  go any day with you.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well,&quot; he said, &quot;you see, I don&#39;t know until I
+  get along to the studio whether I can get away for the fore-noon; and
+  then if I were to come back here, you would have little or no time to
+  dress. Good-bye, Sheila.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Good-bye,&quot; she had said to him, giving up the
+  Serpentine without much regret.</p>
+
+  <p>But the forenoon had turned out so delightful that she thought she
+  would go along to the studio, and hale him out of that gaunt and
+  dingy apartment. She should take him away from town: therefore she
+  might put on that rough blue dress in which she used to go boating in
+  Loch Roag. She had lately smartened it up a bit with some white
+  braid, and she hoped he would approve.</p>
+
+  <p>Did the big hound know the dress? He rubbed his head against her
+  arm and hand when she came down, and looked up and whined almost
+  inaudibly.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 216]</span>
+
+  <p>&quot;You are going out, Bras, and you must be a good dog and not
+  try to go after the deer. Then I will send a very good story of you
+  to Mairi; and when she comes to London after the harvest is over, she
+  will bring you a present from the Lewis, and you will be very
+  proud.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She went out into the square, and was perhaps a little glad to get
+  away from it, as she was not sure of the blue dress and the small hat
+  with its sea-gull&#39;s feather being precisely the costume she ought
+  to wear. When she got into the Uxbridge road she breathed more
+  freely, and in the lightness of her heart she continued her
+  conversation with Bras, giving that attentive animal a vast amount of
+  information, partly in English, partly in Gaelic, which he answered
+  only by a low whine or a shake of his shaggy head.</p>
+
+  <p>But these confidences were suddenly interrupted. She had got down
+  to Addison Terrace, and was contentedly looking at the trees and
+  chatting to the dog, when by accident her eye happened to light on a
+  brougham that was driving past. In it&#8212;she beheld them both
+  clearly for a brief second&#8212;were her husband and Mrs. Lorraine,
+  so engaged in conversation that neither of them saw her. Sheila stood
+  on the pavement for a couple of minutes absolutely bewildered. All
+  sorts of wild fancies and recollections came crowding in upon
+  her&#8212;reasons why her husband was unwilling that she should visit
+  his studio, why Mrs. Lorraine never called on her, and so forth and
+  so forth. She did not know what to think for a time; but presently
+  all this tumult was stilled, and she had resolved her doubts and made
+  up her mind as to what she should do. She would not suspect her
+  husband&#8212;that was the one sweet security to which she clung. He
+  had made use of no duplicity: if there were duplicity in the case at
+  all, he could not be the author of it. The reasons for his having of
+  late left her so much alone were the true reasons. And if this Mrs.
+  Lorraine should amuse him and interest him, who ought to grudge him
+  this break in the monotony of his work? Sheila knew that she herself
+  disliked going to those fashionable gatherings to which Mrs. Lorraine
+  went, and to which Lavender had been accustomed to go before he was
+  married. How could she expect him to give up all his old habits and
+  pleasures for her sake? She would be more generous. It was her own
+  fault that she was not a better companion for him; and was it for
+  her, then, to think hardly of him because he went to the Park with a
+  friend instead of going alone?</p>
+
+  <p>Yet there was a great bitterness and grief in her heart as she
+  turned and walked on. She spoke no more to the deer-hound by her
+  side. There seemed to be less sunlight in the air, and the people and
+  carriages passing were hardly so busy and cheerful and interesting as
+  they had been. But all the same, she would go to Richmond Park, and
+  by herself; for what was the use in calling in at the studio? and how
+  could she go back home and sit in the house, knowing that her husband
+  was away at some flower-show or morning concert, or some such thing,
+  with that young American lady?</p>
+
+  <p>She knew no other road to Richmond than that by which they had
+  driven shortly after her arrival in London; and so it was that she
+  went down and over Hammersmith Bridge, and round by Mortlake, and so
+  on by East Sheen. The road seemed terribly long. She was an excellent
+  walker, and in ordinary circumstances would have done the distance
+  without fatigue; but when at length she saw the gates of the Park
+  before her, she was at once exceedingly tired and almost faint from
+  hunger. Here was the hotel in which they had dined: should she enter?
+  The place seemed very grand and forbidding: she had scarcely even
+  looked at it as she went up the steps with her husband by her side.
+  However, she would venture, and accordingly she went up and into the
+  vestibule, looking rather timidly about. A young gentleman,
+  apparently not a waiter, approached her and seemed to wait for her to
+  speak. It was a terrible moment. What was she to ask for? and could
+  she ask it of this young man? Fortunately, he spoke first, and asked
+  her if she wished to go into the coffee-room, and if she expected any
+  one.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, I do not expect any one,&quot; she said; and she knew
+  that he would perceive the peculiarity of her accent; &quot;but if
+  you will be kind enough to tell me where I may have a
+  biscuit&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>It occurred to her that to go into the Star and Garter for a
+  biscuit was absurd; and she added wildly, &quot;&#8212;or anything to
+  eat.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The young man obviously regarded her with some surprise; but he
+  was very courteous, and showed her into the coffee-room and called a
+  waiter to her. Moreover, he gave permission for Bras to be admitted
+  into the room, Sheila promising that he would lie under the table and
+  not budge an inch. Then she looked round. There were only three
+  persons in the room&#8212;one, an old lady seated by herself in a far
+  corner, the other two being a couple of young folks too much
+  engrossed with each other to mind any one else. She began to feel
+  more at home. The waiter suggested various things for lunch, and she
+  made her choice of something cold. Then she mustered up courage to
+  ask for a glass of sherry. How she would have enjoyed all this as a
+  story to tell to her husband but for that incident of the morning!
+  She would have gloried in her outward bravery, and made him smile
+  with a description of her inward terror. She would have written about
+  it to the old man in Borva, and bid him consider how she had been
+  transformed, and what strange scenes Bras was now witnessing. But all
+  that was over. She felt as if she could no longer ask her husband to
+  be amused by her childish experiences; and as for writing to her
+  father, she dared not write to him in her present mood. Perhaps some
+  happier time would come. Sheila paid her bill. She had heard her
+  husband and Mr. Ingram talk about tipping waiters, and knew that she
+  ought to give something to the man who had attended on her. But how
+  much? He was a very august-looking person, with formally-cut whiskers
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 217]</span> and a severe expression of
+  face. When he had brought back the change to her she timidly selected
+  a half crown and offered it to him. There was a little glance of
+  surprise: she feared she had not given him enough. Then he said
+  &quot;Thank you!&quot; in a vague and distant fashion, and she knew
+  that she had not given him enough. But it was too late. Bras was
+  summoned from under the table, and again she went out into the fresh
+  air.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, my good dog!&quot; she said to him as they together
+  walked up to the gates and into the Park, &quot;this is a very
+  extravagant country. You have to pay half a crown to a servant for
+  bringing you a piece of cold pie, and then he looks as if he was not
+  paid enough. And Duncan, who will do everything about the house, and
+  will give us all our dinners, it is only a pound a week he will get,
+  and Scarlett has to be kept out of that. And wouldn&#39;t you like to
+  see poor old Scarlett again?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Bras whined as if he understood every word.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I suppose now she is hanging out the washing on the
+  gooseberry bushes, and you know the song she always used to sing
+  then? Don&#39;t you know that Scarlett carried me about long before
+  you were born, for you are a mere infant compared with me? and she
+  used to sing to me&#8212;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">Ged&#39; bheirte mi&#39; bho&#39;n bhas so,</p>
+
+    <p class="i6">Mho Sheila bheag òg!</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And that is what she is singing just now in the garden; and Mairi
+  she is bringing the things out of the washing-house. Papa is over in
+  Stornoway this morning, arranging his accounts with the people there;
+  and perhaps he is down at the quay, looking at the Clansman, and
+  wondering when she is to bring me into the harbor. The castle is all
+  shut up, you know, with cloths over all the wonderful things, and the
+  curtains all down, and most of the shutters shut. Do you think papa
+  has got my letter in his pocket, and does he read it over and over
+  again, as I read all his letters to me over and over again?
+  Ah&#8212;h! You bad dog!&quot;</p><span class="pagenum">[pg
+  218]</span>
+
+  <p>Bras had forgotten to listen to his mistress in the excitement of
+  seeing in the distance a large herd of deer under certain trees. She
+  felt by the leash that he was trembling in every limb with
+  expectation, and straining hard on the collar. Again and again she
+  admonished him in vain, until she had at last to drag him away down
+  the hill, putting a small plantation between him and the herd. Here
+  she found a large, umbrageous chestnut tree, with a wooden seat round
+  its trunk, and so she sat down in the green twilight of the leaves,
+  while Bras came and put his head in her lap. Out beyond the shadow of
+  the tree all the world lay bathed in sunlight, and a great silence
+  brooded over the long undulations of the Park, where not a human
+  being was within sight. How strange it was, she fell to thinking,
+  that within a short distance there were millions of men and women,
+  while here she was absolutely alone! Did they not care, then, for the
+  sunlight and the trees and the sweet air? Were they so wrapped up in
+  those social observances that seemed to her so barren of
+  interest?</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;They have a beautiful country here,&quot; she said, talking
+  in a rambling and wistful way to Bras, and scarcely noticing the
+  eager light in his eyes, as if he were trying to understand.
+  &quot;They have no rain and no fog; almost always blue skies, and the
+  clouds high up and far away. And the beautiful trees they have too!
+  you never saw anything like that in the Lewis, not even at Stornoway.
+  And the people are so rich and beautiful in their dress, and all the
+  day they have only to think how to enjoy themselves and what new
+  amusement is for the morrow. But I think they are tired of having
+  nothing to do; or perhaps, you know, they are tired because they have
+  nothing to fight against&#8212;no hard weather and hunger and
+  poverty. They do not care for each other as they would if they were
+  working on the same farm, and trying to save up for the winter; or if
+  they were going out to the fishing, and very glad to come home again
+  from Caithness to find all the old people very well and the young
+  ones ready for a dance and a dram, and much joy and laughing and
+  telling of stories. It is a very great difference there will be in
+  the people&#8212;very great.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Bras whined: perhaps he understood her better now that she had
+  involuntarily fallen into something of her old accent and habit of
+  speech.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Wouldn&#39;t you like, Bras, to be up in Borva
+  again&#8212;only for this afternoon? All the people would come
+  running out; and it is little Ailasa, she would put her arms round
+  your neck; and old Peter McTavish, he would hear who it was, and come
+  out of his house groping by the wall, and he would say, &#39;Pless
+  me! iss it you, Miss Sheila, indeed and mir-over? It iss a long time
+  since you hef left the Lewis.&#39; Yes, it is a long time&#8212;a
+  long time; and I will be almost forgetting what it is like sometimes
+  when I try to think of it. Here it is always the same&#8212;the same
+  houses, the same soft air, the same still sunlight, the same things
+  to do and places to see&#8212;no storms shaking the windows or ships
+  running into the harbor, and you cannot go down to the shore to see
+  what has happened, or up the hill to look how the sea is raging. But
+  it is one day we will go back to the Lewis&#8212;oh yes, we will go
+  back to the Lewis!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She rose and looked wistfully around her, and then turned with a
+  sigh to make her way to the gates. It was with no especial sort of
+  gladness that she thought of returning home. Here, in the great
+  stillness, she had been able to dream of the far island which she
+  knew, and to fancy herself for a few minutes there: now she was going
+  back to the dreary monotony of her life in that square, and to the
+  doubts and anxieties which had been suggested to her in the morning.
+  The world she was about to enter once more seemed so much less
+  homely, so much less full of interest and purpose, than that other
+  and distant world she had been wistfully regarding for a time. The
+  people around her had neither the joys nor the sorrows with which she
+  had been taught to sympathize. Their cares seemed to her to be
+  exaggerations of trifles&#8212;she could feel no pity for them: their
+  satisfaction was derived from sources unintelligible to her. And the
+  social atmosphere around her seemed still and close and suffocating;
+  so that she was like to cry out at times for one breath of God&#39;s
+  clear wind&#8212;for a shaft of lightning even&#8212;to cut through
+  the sultry and drowsy sameness of her life.</p>
+
+  <p>She had almost forgotten the dog by her side. While sitting under
+  the chestnut she had carelessly and loosely wound the leash round his
+  neck in the semblance of a collar, and when she rose and came away
+  she let the dog walk by her side without undoing the leash and taking
+  proper charge of him. She was thinking of far other things, indeed,
+  when she was startled by some one calling to her, &quot;Look out,
+  miss, or you&#39;ll have your dog shot!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She turned and caught a glimpse of what sent a thrill of terror to
+  her heart. Bras had sneaked off from her side&#8212;had trotted
+  lightly over the breckans, and was now in full chase of a herd of
+  deer which were flying down the slope on the other side of the
+  plantation. He rushed now at one, now at another: the very number of
+  chances presented to him proving the safety of the whole herd. But as
+  Sheila, with a swift flight that would have astonished most town-bred
+  girls, followed the wild chase and came to the crest of the slope,
+  she could see that the hound had at length singled out a particular
+  deer&#8212;a fine buck with handsome horns that was making straight
+  for the foot of the valley. The herd, that had been much scattered,
+  were now drawing together again, though checking nothing of their
+  speed; but this single buck had been driven from his companions, and
+  was doing his utmost to escape from the fangs of the powerful animal
+  behind him.</p>
+
+  <p>What could she do but run wildly and breathlessly on? The dog was
+  now far beyond the reach of her voice. She had no whistle. All sorts
+  of fearful anticipations rushed in on her mind, the most prominent of
+  all being the anger of her father if Bras were shot. How could she go
+  back to Borva with such a tale? <span class="pagenum">[pg 219]</span>
+  and how could she live in London without this companion who had come
+  with her from the far North? Then what terrible things were connected
+  with the killing of deer in a royal park! She remembered vaguely what
+  Mr. Ingram and her husband had been saying; and while these things
+  were crowding in upon her, she felt her strength beginning to fail,
+  while both the dog and the deer had disappeared altogether from
+  sight.</p>
+
+  <p>Strange, too, that in the midst of her fatigue and fright, while
+  she still managed to struggle on with a sharp pain at her heart and a
+  sort of mist before her eyes, she had a vague consciousness that her
+  husband would be deeply vexed, not by the conduct or the fate of
+  Bras, but by her being the heroine of so mad an adventure. She knew
+  that he wished her to be serious and subdued and proper, like the
+  ladies whom she met, while an evil destiny seemed to dog her
+  footsteps and precipitate her into all sorts of erratic mishaps and
+  &quot;scenes.&quot; However, this adventure was likely soon to have
+  an end. She could go no farther. Whatever had become of Bras, it was
+  in vain for her to think of pursuing him. When she at length reached
+  a broad and smooth road leading through the pasture, she could only
+  stand still and press her two hands over her heart, while her head
+  seemed giddy, and she did not see two men who had been standing on
+  the road close by until they came up and addressed her.</p>
+
+  <p>Then she started and looked round, finding before her two men who
+  were apparently laborers of some sort, one of them having a shovel
+  over his shoulder.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Beg your pardon, miss, but wur that your dawg?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes,&quot; she said eagerly. &quot;Could you get him? Did
+  you see him go by? Do you know where he is?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Me and my mate saw him go by, sure enough; but as for
+  getting him&#8212;why the keepers&#39;ll have shot him by this
+  time.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh no!&quot; cried Sheila, almost in tears, &quot;they must
+  not shoot him. It was my fault. I will pay them for all the harm he
+  has done. Can&#39;t you tell me which way he will go
+  past?&quot;</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 220]</span>
+
+  <p>&quot;I don&#39;t think, miss,&quot; said the spokesman quite
+  respectfully, &quot;as you can go much furder. If you would sit down
+  and rest yourself, and keep an eye on this &#39;ere shovel, me and my
+  mate will have a hunt arter the dawg.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Sheila not only accepted the offer gratefully, but promised to
+  give them all the money she had if only they would bring back the dog
+  unharmed. She made this offer in consequence of some talk between her
+  husband and her father which she had overheard. Lavender was speaking
+  of the civility he had frequently experienced at the hands of Scotch
+  shepherds, and of the independence with which they refused to accept
+  any compensation even for services which cost them a good deal of
+  time and trouble. Perhaps it was to please Sheila&#39;s father, but
+  at any rate, the picture the young man drew of the venality and the
+  cupidity of folks in the South was a desperately dark one. Ask the
+  name of a village, have your stick picked up for you from the
+  pavement, get into a cab or get out of it, and directly there was a
+  touch of the cap and an unspoken request for coppers. Then, as the
+  services rendered rose in importance, so did the fees&#8212;to
+  waiters, to coachmen, to game-keepers. These things and many more
+  sank into Sheila&#39;s heart. She heard and believed, and came down
+  to the South with the notion that every man and woman who did you the
+  least service expected to be paid handsomely for it. What, therefore,
+  could she give those two men if they brought back her deer-hound but
+  all the money she had?</p>
+
+  <p>It was a hard thing to wait here in the greatest doubt and
+  uncertainty while the afternoon was visibly waning. She began to grow
+  afraid. Perhaps the men had stolen the dog, and left her with this
+  shovel as a blind. Her husband must have come home, and would be
+  astonished and perplexed by her absence. Surely, he would have the
+  sense to dine by himself, instead of waiting for her; and she
+  reflected with some glimpse of satisfaction that she had left
+  everything connected with dinner properly arranged, so that he should
+  have nothing to grumble at.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Surely,&quot; she said to herself as she sat there, watching
+  the light on the grass and the trees getting more and more
+  yellow&#8212;&quot;surely I am very wicked or very wretched to think
+  of his grumbling in any case. If he grumbles, it is because I will
+  attend too much to the affairs of the house, and not amuse myself
+  enough. He is very good to me, and I have no right to think of his
+  grumbling. And I wish I cared to amuse myself more&#8212;to be more
+  of a companion to him; but it is so difficult among all those
+  people.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The reverie was interrupted by the sound of footsteps on the grass
+  behind, and she turned quickly to find the two men approaching her,
+  one of them leading the captive Bras by the leash. Sheila sprang to
+  her feet with a great gladness. She did not care even to accuse the
+  culprit, whose consciousness of guilt was evident in his look and in
+  the droop of his tail. Bras did not once turn his eyes to his
+  mistress. He hung down his head, while he panted rapidly, and she
+  fancied she saw some smearing of blood on his tongue and on the side
+  of his jaw. Her fears on this head were speedily confirmed.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I think, miss, as you&#39;d better take him out o&#39; the
+  Park as soon as may be, for he&#39;s got a deer killed close by the
+  Robin Hood Gate, in the trees there; and if the keepers happen on it
+  afore you leave the Park, you&#39;ll get into trouble.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, thank you!&quot; said Sheila, retaining her composure
+  bravely, but with a terrible sinking of the heart; &quot;and how can
+  I get to the nearest railway station?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You&#39;re going to London, miss?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, I suppose the nearest is Richmond; but it would be
+  quieter for you&#8212;don&#39;t you see, miss?&#8212;if you was to go
+  along to the Roehampton Gate and go to Barnes.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Will you show me the gate?&quot; said Sheila, choosing the
+  quieter route at once.</p>
+
+  <p>But the men themselves did not at all like the look of
+  accompanying her and this dog through the Park. Had they not already
+  condoned a felony, or done something equally dreadful, in handing to
+  her a dog that had been found keeping watch and ward over a slain
+  buck? They showed her the road to the Roehampton Gate, and then they
+  paused before continuing on their journey.</p>
+
+  <p>The pause meant money. Sheila took out her purse. There were three
+  sovereigns and some silver in it, and the entire sum, in fulfillment
+  of her promise, she held out to him who had so far conducted the
+  negotiations.</p>
+
+  <p>Both men looked frightened. It was quite clear that either good
+  feeling or some indefinite fear of being implicated in the killing of
+  the deer caused them to regard this big bribe as something they could
+  not meddle with; and at length, after a pause of a second or two, the
+  spokesman said with great hesitation, &quot;Well, miss, you&#39;ve
+  kep&#39; your word; but me and my mate&#8212;well, if so be as
+  it&#39;s the same to you&#8212;&#39;d rather have summut to drink
+  your health.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Do you think it is too much?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The man looked at his neighbor, who nodded.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It was only for ketchin&#39; of a dawg, miss, don&#39;t you
+  see?&quot; he remarked slowly, as if to impress upon her that they
+  had had nothing to do with the deer.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Will you take this, then?&quot; and she offered them half a
+  crown each.</p>
+
+  <p>Their faces lightened considerably: they took the money, and with
+  a formal expression of thanks moved off, but not before they had
+  taken a glance round to see that no one had been a witness of this
+  interview.</p>
+
+  <p>And so Sheila had to walk away by herself, knowing that she had
+  been guilty of a dreadful offence, and that at any moment she might
+  be arrested by the officers of the law. What would the old King of
+  Borva say if he saw his only daughter in the hands of two policemen?
+  and would not all Mr. Lavender&#39;s fastidious and talkative and
+  wondering friends pass about the newspaper report of her trial and
+  conviction? A man was approaching her. As he drew near her heart
+  failed her, for might not this <span class="pagenum">[pg 221]</span>
+  be the mysterious George Ranger himself, about whom her husband and
+  Mr. Ingram had been talking? Should she drop on her knees at once and
+  confess her sins, and beg him to let her off? If Duncan were with her
+  or Mairi, or even old Scarlett Macdonald, she would not have cared so
+  much, but it seemed so terrible to meet this man alone.</p>
+
+  <p>However, as he drew near he did not seem a fierce person. He was
+  an old gentleman with voluminous white hair, who was dressed all in
+  black and carried an umbrella on this warm and bright afternoon. He
+  regarded her and the dog in a distant and contemplative fashion, as
+  though he would probably try to remember some time after that he had
+  really seen them; and then he passed on. Sheila began to breathe more
+  freely. Moreover, here was the gate, and once she was in the high
+  road, who could say anything to her? Tired as she was, she still
+  walked rapidly on; and in due time, having had to ask the way once or
+  twice, she found herself at Barnes Station.</p>
+
+  <p>By and by the train came in: Bras was committed to the care of the
+  guard, and she found herself alone in a railway-carriage for the
+  first time in her life. Her husband had told her that whenever she
+  felt uncertain of her where-abouts, if in the country, she was to ask
+  for the nearest station and get a train to London; if in town, she
+  was to get into a cab and give the driver her address. And, indeed,
+  Sheila had been so much agitated and perplexed during this afternoon
+  that she acted in a sort of mechanical fashion, and really escaped
+  the nervousness which otherwise would have attended the novel
+  experience of purchasing a ticket and of arranging about the carriage
+  of a dog in the break-van. Even now, when she found herself traveling
+  alone, and shortly to arrive at a part of London she had never seen,
+  her crowding thoughts and fancies were not about her own situation,
+  but about the reception she should receive from her husband. Would he
+  be vexed with her? Or pity her? Had he called with Mrs. Lorraine to
+  take her somewhere, and found her gone? Had he brought home
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 222]</span> some bachelor friends to
+  dinner, and been chagrined to find her not in the house?</p>
+
+  <p>It was getting dusk when the slow four-wheeler approached
+  Sheila&#39;s home. The hour for dinner had long gone by. Perhaps her
+  husband had gone away somewhere looking for her, and she would find
+  the house empty.</p>
+
+  <p>But Frank Lavender came to meet his wife in the hall, and said,
+  &quot;Where have you been?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She could not tell whether there was anger or kindness in his
+  voice, and she could not well see his face. She took his hand and
+  went into the dining-room, which was also dusk, and standing there
+  told him all her story.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;This is too bad, Sheila!&quot; he said in a tone of deep
+  vexation. &quot;By Jove! I&#39;ll go and thrash that dog within an
+  inch of his life.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No,&quot; she said, drawing herself up; and for one brief
+  second&#8212;could he but have seen her face&#8212;there was a touch
+  of old Mackenzie&#39;s pride and firmness about the ordinarily gentle
+  lips. It was but for a second. She cast down her eyes and said
+  meekly, &quot;I hope you won&#39;t do that, Frank. The dog is not to
+  blame. It was my fault.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, really, Sheila,&quot; he said, &quot;you are very
+  thoughtless. I wish you would take some little trouble to act as
+  other women act, instead of constantly putting yourself and me into
+  the most awkward positions. Suppose I had brought any one home to
+  dinner, now? And what am I to say to Ingram? for of course I went
+  direct to his lodgings when I discovered you were nowhere to be
+  found. I fancied some mad freak had taken you there; and I should not
+  have been surprised. Indeed, I don&#39;t think I should be surprised
+  at anything you do. Do you know who was in the hall when I came in
+  this afternoon?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No,&quot; said Sheila.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why that wretched old hag who keeps the fruit-stall. And it
+  seems you gave her and all her family tea and cake in the kitchen
+  last night.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;She is a poor old woman,&quot; said Sheila humbly.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;A poor old woman!&quot; he said impatiently. &quot;I have no
+  doubt she is a lying old thief, who would take an umbrella or a coat
+  if only she could get the chance. It is really too bad, Sheila, your
+  having all those persons about you, and demeaning yourself by
+  amending on them. What must the servants think of you?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I do not heed what any servants think of me,&quot; she
+  said.</p>
+
+  <p>She was now standing erect, with her face quite calm.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Apparently not,&quot; he said, &quot;or you would not go and
+  make yourself ridiculous before them.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Sheila hesitated for a moment, as if she did not understand; and
+  then she said, as calmly as before, but with a touch of indignation
+  about the proud and beautiful lips, &quot;And if I make myself
+  ridiculous by attending to poor people, it is not my husband who
+  should tell me so.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She turned and walked out, and he was too surprised to follow her.
+  She went up stairs to her own room, locked herself in and threw
+  herself on the bed. And then all the bitterness of her heart rose up
+  as if in a flood&#8212;not against him, but against the country in
+  which he lived, and the society which had contaminated him, and the
+  ways and habits that seemed to create a barrier between herself and
+  him, so that she was a stranger to him, and incapable of becoming
+  anything else. It was a crime that she should interest herself in the
+  unfortunate creatures round about her&#8212;that she should talk to
+  them as if they were human beings like herself, and have a great
+  sympathy with their small hopes and aims; but she would not have been
+  led into such a crime if she had cultivated from her infancy upward a
+  consistent self-indulgence, making herself the centre of a world of
+  mean desires and petty gratifications. And then she thought of the
+  old and beautiful days up in the Lewis, where the young English
+  stranger seemed to approve of her simple ways and her charitable
+  work, and where she was taught to believe that in order to please him
+  she had only to continue to be what she was then. There was no great
+  gulf of time between that period and this; but what had not happened
+  in the interval? She had not changed&#8212;at least she hoped she had
+  not changed. She loved her husband with her whole heart and soul: her
+  devotion was as true and constant as she herself could have wished it
+  to be when she dreamed of the duties of a wife in the days of her
+  maidenhood. But all around her was changed. She had no longer the old
+  freedom&#8212;the old delight in living from day to day&#8212;the
+  active work, and the enjoyment of seeing where she could help and how
+  she could help the people around her. When, as if by the same sort of
+  instinct that makes a wild animal retain in captivity the habits
+  which were necessary to its existence when it lived in freedom, she
+  began to find out the circumstances of such unfortunate people as
+  were in her neighborhood, some little solace was given to her; but
+  these people were not friends to her, as the poor folk of Borvabost
+  had been. She knew, too, that her husband would be displeased if he
+  found her talking with a washerwoman over her family matters, or even
+  advising one of her own servants about the disposal of her wages; so
+  that, while she concealed nothing from him, these things nevertheless
+  had to be done exclusively in his absence. And was she in so doing
+  really making herself ridiculous? Did he consider her ridiculous? Or
+  was it not merely the false and enervating influences of the indolent
+  society in which he lived that had poisoned his mind, and drawn him
+  away from her as though into another world?</p>
+
+  <p>Alas! if he were in this other world, was not she quite alone?
+  What companionship was there possible between her and the people in
+  this new and strange land into which she had ventured? As she lay on
+  the bed, with her head hidden down in the darkness, the pathetic wail
+  of the captive Jews seemed to come and go through the bitterness of
+  her thoughts, like some mournful refrain: &quot;By the rivers of
+  Babylon, there we sat down; yea we wept when we remembered
+  Zion.&quot; She almost heard <span class="pagenum">[pg 223]</span>
+  the words, and the reply that rose up in her heart was a great
+  yearning to go back to her own land, so that her eyes were filled
+  with tears in thinking of it, and she lay and sobbed there in the
+  dusk. Would not the old man living all by himself in that lonely
+  island be glad to see his little girl back again in the old house?
+  And she would sing to him as she used to sing, not as she had been
+  singing to those people whom her husband knew. &quot;For there they
+  that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that
+  wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of
+  Zion.&quot; And she had sung in the strange land, among the strange
+  people, with her heart breaking with thoughts of the sea and the
+  hills and the rude and sweet and simple ways of the old bygone life
+  she had left behind her.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Sheila!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She thought it was her father calling to her, and she rose with a
+  cry of joy. For one wild moment she fancied that outside were all the
+  people she knew&#8212;Duncan and Scarlett and Mairi&#8212;and that
+  she was once more at home, with the sea all around her, and the salt,
+  cold air.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Sheila, I want to speak to you.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>It was her husband. She went to the door, opened it, and stood
+  there penitent and with downcast face.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Come, you must not be silly,&quot; he said with some
+  kindness in his voice. &quot;You have had no dinner. You must be
+  hungry.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I do not care for any: there is no use troubling the
+  servants when I would rather lie down,&quot; she said.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;The servants! You surely don&#39;t take so seriously what I
+  said about them, Sheila? Of course you don&#39;t need to care what
+  the servants think. And in any case they have to bring up dinner for
+  me, so you may as well come and try.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Have you not had dinner?&quot; she said timidly.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Do you think I could sit down and eat with the notion that
+  you might have tumbled into the Thames or been kidnapped, or
+  something?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am very sorry,&quot; she said in a low <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 224]</span> voice, and in the gloom he felt his hand
+  taken and carried to her lips. Then they went down stairs into the
+  dining-room, which was now lit up by a blaze of gas and candles.</p>
+
+  <p>During dinner of course no very confidential talking was possible,
+  and indeed Sheila had plenty to tell of her adventures at Richmond.
+  Lavender was now in a more amiable mood, and was disposed to look on
+  the killing of the roebuck as rather a good joke. He complimented
+  Sheila on her good sense in having gone in at the Star and Garter for
+  lunch; and altogether something like better relations was established
+  between them.</p>
+
+  <p>But when dinner was finally over and the servants dismissed,
+  Lavender placed Sheila&#39;s easy-chair for her as usual, drew his
+  own near hers, and lit a cigarette.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Now, tell me, Sheila,&quot; he said, &quot;were you really
+  vexed with me when you went up stairs and locked yourself in your
+  room? Did you think I meant to displease you or say anything harsh to
+  you?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, not any of those things,&quot; she said calmly: &quot;I
+  wished to be alone&#8212;to think over what had happened. And I was
+  grieved by what you said, for I think you cannot help looking at many
+  things not as I will look at them. That is all. It is my bringing up
+  in the Highlands, perhaps.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Do you know, Sheila, it sometimes occurs to me that you are
+  not quite comfortable here? And I can&#39;t make out what is the
+  matter. I think you have a perverse fancy that you are different from
+  the people you meet, and that you cannot be like them, and all that
+  sort of thing. Now, dear, that is only a fancy. There need be no
+  difference if only you will take a little trouble.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, Frank!&quot; she said, going over and putting her hand
+  on his shoulder, &quot;I cannot take that trouble. I cannot try to be
+  like those people. And I see a great difference in you since you have
+  come back to London, and you are getting to be like them and say the
+  things they say. If I could only see you, my own darling, up in the
+  Lewis again, with rough clothes on and a gun in your hand, I should
+  be happy. You were yourself up there, when you were helping us in the
+  boat, or when you were bringing home the salmon, or when we were all
+  together at night in the little parlor, you know&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;My dear, don&#39;t get so excited. Now sit down, and I will
+  tell you all about it. You seem to have the notion that people lose
+  all their finer sentiments simply because they don&#39;t, in society,
+  burst into raptures over them. You mustn&#39;t imagine all those
+  people are selfish and callous merely because they preserve a decent
+  reticence. To tell you the truth, that constant profession of noble
+  feelings you would like to see would have something of ostentation
+  about it.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Sheila only sighed. &quot;I do not wish them to be altered,&quot;
+  she said by and by, with her eyes grown pensive: &quot;all I know is,
+  that I could not live the same life. And you&#8212;you seemed to be
+  happier up in the Highlands than you have ever been since.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, you see, a man ought to be happy when he is enjoying a
+  holiday in the country along with the girl he is engaged to. But if I
+  had lived all my life killing salmon and shooting wild-duck, I should
+  have grown up an ignorant boor, with no more sense
+  of&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He stopped, for he saw that the girl was thinking of her
+  father.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, look here, Sheila. You see how you are
+  placed&#8212;how we are placed, rather. Wouldn&#39;t it be more
+  sensible to get to understand those people you look askance at, and
+  establish better relations with them, since you have got to live
+  among them? I can&#39;t help thinking you are too much alone, and you
+  can&#39;t expect me to stay in the house always with you. A husband
+  and wife cannot be continually in each other&#39;s company, unless
+  they want to grow heartily tired of each other. Now, if you would
+  only lay aside those suspicions of yours, you would find the people
+  just as honest and generous and friendly as any other sort of people
+  you ever met, although they don&#39;t happen to be fond of expressing
+  their goodness in their talk.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I have tried, dear&#8212;I will try again,&quot; said
+  Sheila.</p>
+
+  <p>She resolved that she would go down and visit Mrs. Lavender next
+  day, and try to be interested in the talk of such people as might be
+  there. She would bring away some story about this or the other
+  fashionable woman or noble lord, just to show her husband that she
+  was doing her best to learn. She would drive patiently round the Park
+  in that close little brougham, and listen attentively to the
+  moralities of Marcus Aurelius. She would make an appointment to go
+  with Mrs. Lavender to a morning concert; and she would endeavor to
+  muster up courage to ask any ladies who might be there to lunch with
+  her on that day, and go afterward to this same entertainment. All
+  these things and many more Sheila silently vowed to herself she would
+  do, while her husband sat and expounded to her his theories of the
+  obligations which society demanded of its members.</p>
+
+  <p>But her plans were suddenly broken asunder.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I met Mrs. Lorraine accidentally to-day,&quot; he said.</p>
+
+  <p>It was his first mention of the young American lady. Sheila sat in
+  mute expectation.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;She always asks very kindly after you.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;She is very kind.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He did not say, however, that Mrs. Lorraine had more than once
+  made distinct propositions, when in his company, that they should
+  call in for Sheila and take her out for a drive or to a flower-show,
+  or some such place, while Lavender had always some excuse ready.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;She is going to Brighton to-morrow, and she was wondering
+  whether you would care to run down for a day or two.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;With her?&quot; said Sheila, recoiling from such a proposal
+  instinctively.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Of course not. I should go. And then at last, you know, you
+  would see the sea, about which you have been dreaming for ever so
+  long.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The sea! There was a magic in the very word that could, almost at
+  any moment, <span class="pagenum">[pg 225]</span> summon tears into
+  her eyes. Of course she accepted right gladly. If her husband&#39;s
+  duties were so pressing that the long-talked-of journey to Lewis and
+  Borva had to be repeatedly and indefinitely postponed, here at least
+  would be a chance of looking again at the sea&#8212;of drinking in
+  the freshness and light and color of it&#8212;of renewing her old and
+  intimate friendship with it that had been broken off for so long by
+  her stay in this city of perpetual houses and still sunshine.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You can tell her you will go when you see her to-night at
+  Lady Mary&#39;s. By the way, isn&#39;t it time for you to begin to
+  dress?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, Lady Mary&#39;s!&quot; repeated Sheila mechanically, who
+  had quite forgotten about her engagement for that evening.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Perhaps you are too tired to go,&quot; said her husband.</p>
+
+  <p>She was a little tired, in truth. But surely, just after her
+  promises, spoken and unspoken, some little effort was demanded of
+  her; so she bravely went to dress, and in about three-quarters of an
+  hour was ready to drive down to Curzon street. Her husband had never
+  seen her look so pleased before in going out to any party. He
+  flattered himself that his lecture had done her good. There was fair
+  common sense in what he had said, and although, doubtless, a
+  girl&#39;s romanticism was a pretty thing, it would have to yield to
+  the actual requirements of society. In time he should educate
+  Sheila.</p>
+
+  <p>But he did not know what brightened the girl&#39;s face all that
+  night, and put a new life into the beautiful eyes, so that even those
+  who knew her best were struck by her singular beauty. It was the sea
+  that was coloring Sheila&#39;s eyes. The people around her, the glare
+  of the candles, the hum of talking, and the motion of certain groups
+  dancing over there in the middle of the throng,&#8212;all were faint
+  and visionary, for she was busily wondering what the sea would be
+  like the next morning, and what strange fancies would strike her when
+  once more she walked on sand and heard the roar of waves. That,
+  indeed, was the sound <span class="pagenum">[pg 226]</span> that was
+  present in her ears while the music played and the people murmured
+  around her. Mrs. Lorraine talked to her, and was surprised and amused
+  to notice the eager fashion in which the girl spoke of their journey
+  of the next day. The gentleman who took her in to supper found
+  himself catechised about Brighton in a manner which afforded him more
+  occupation than enjoyment. And when Sheila drove away from the house
+  at two in the morning she declared to her husband that she had
+  enjoyed herself extremely, and he was glad to hear it; and she was
+  particularly kind to himself in getting him his slippers, and
+  fetching him that final cigarette which he always had on reaching
+  home; and then she went off to bed to dream of ships and flying
+  clouds and cold winds, and a great and beautiful blue plain of
+  waves.</p>
+
+  <p class="center">[TO BE CONTINUED.]</p><a name="gold" id="gold">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>GOLD.</h2>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">A day of bright reflections on the pond,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And wavering shadows over moss and frond:</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">A wayward breeze, the summer&#39;s latest born,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Teased the stiff grain and bent the stately
+      corn,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Or rocked the bird-nests in the prickly thorn.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">Above, the lavish sun filled air with gold;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Again, below, on mimic waves it rolled,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And hid in lily cups. Her netted hair</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Gleamed in the splendor, bright beyond compare,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Forming about her head a nimbus rare.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">The velvet mullen raised its yellow head,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">The buttercups like precious ore were spread:</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Like golden shuttles flung by spirit hands,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Weaving invisible their magic strands,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Darted quick orioles in joyous bands.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">Fond helianthus turned her fervent face,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Meek antirrhinum paled and grew apace;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Late dandelions, robed in cloth of gold,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">With golden-rod, upsprung from out the mould,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And pensive, gold-eyed daisies pranked the
+      wold.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">As snowy, gold-rimmed cloudlets hide the sky,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">So hid her eyelid&#39;s golden fringe her eye:</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">As every growing beauty of the earth</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">But figures forth great Nature&#39;s hidden
+      worth,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">So my love&#39;s charms from her pure heart had
+      birth.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">Pure heart of gold to me that day was given,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And promise true as gold made earth a heaven;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Then far away fled every doubt forlorn;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">We felt for us the Golden Age reborn,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And envied none their gold from labor torn.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <center>
+    ITA ANIOL PROKOP.
+  </center><a name="glimpses" id="glimpses"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 227]</span>
+
+  <h2>GLIMPSES OF GHOST-LAND.</h2>
+
+  <p>It is no longer the fashion to scoff at tales of the supernatural.
+  On the contrary, there is a growing tendency to investigate subjects
+  which were formerly pooh-poohed by most persons claiming to be well
+  informed and capable of reasoning. It is, however, without
+  propounding any theory or advancing any opinion that I record a few
+  instances of apparently supernatural, or at least inexplicable,
+  occurrences. I can vouch for the truth of nearly all the stories I am
+  about to relate, one of them only not being either my personal
+  experience or narrated to me by some one of the actors in the
+  scene.</p>
+
+  <p>My first story shall be one that was told to me by an aged lady
+  who was one of the friends of my youth, and who often mentioned this
+  strange incident of her placid, yet busy life. She was a sensible,
+  practical woman, the last person in the world likely to be led astray
+  by an overheated imagination or deceived by hallucinations. Her early
+  youth had been passed in the country, her father being a wealthy
+  farmer. She had formed a close intimacy with the daughter of a
+  gentleman living at some distance from her father&#39;s farm, and the
+  two were seldom apart. An invitation given to my friend (whom I shall
+  call Mrs. L&#8212;&#8212;) to visit some relatives in a neighboring
+  city caused a brief separation between the two girls, and they parted
+  with many protestations of enduring affection. On the day appointed
+  for Mrs. L&#8212;&#8212;&#39;s return she set out at the prescribed
+  hour. The latter part of her journey was to be performed on
+  horseback. On a bright sunny afternoon in June she found herself,
+  about five o&#39;clock, drawing near her father&#39;s house. Suddenly
+  in the broad road before her she perceived a female form walking
+  rapidly toward her, and, to her delight, recognized her friend
+  coming, as she thought, to meet her.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I will make her go back with me and take tea,&quot; was Mrs.
+  L&#8212;&#8212;&#39;s thought as she whipped up her horse in her
+  haste to greet the dear one, who was all the more beloved on account
+  of their temporary separation. But as she approached the figure, and
+  before she had had time to speak, or indeed to do more than notice
+  that her friend looked very pale and ill, her horse, an unusually
+  quiet, steady animal, seemed struck with sudden terror, reared,
+  shied, and finally plunged into a hollow by the roadside, from which
+  she had some difficulty in extricating him. When she did succeed in
+  bringing him back to the level road she found, to her astonishment,
+  that the young girl had disappeared. Around her lay the open fields,
+  before her and behind her the road&#8212;all in the bright lustre of
+  the summer afternoon&#8212;but no trace of the figure could she see.
+  Completely mystified, she hastened home, there to learn that her
+  friend had died suddenly that very morning.</p>
+
+  <p>The next incident I shall narrate was told me by a German
+  gentleman whose mother was the heroine of the tale. His father had
+  been appointed to some public office in a small German town, and
+  among the emoluments of the place was the privilege of residing in a
+  large, old-fashioned, but very handsome mansion. The husband and wife
+  set off in high spirits to inspect their new abode, to which some
+  portion of their furniture had already been transferred. They went
+  from room to room, inspecting and planning, till they came to an
+  apartment the ceiling of which was elaborately decorated with plaster
+  Cupids, baskets of flowers, etc., modeled in high relief, and with a
+  centre-piece of unusual size and magnificence. A small table, the
+  only article of furniture the room contained, was placed directly
+  under this centre-piece. The young wife, rather weary of her
+  researches, was standing beside this table, and was leaning on it
+  while she went on talking with her husband, <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  228]</span> when suddenly a loud, imploring voice called from down
+  stairs, &quot;Caroline! Caroline! come down to
+  me&#8212;come!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Who can that be?&quot; asked the husband in amazement.
+  &quot;I fastened all the doors and windows before we left the lower
+  rooms.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Again came the loud call, this time with an accent of agonized
+  entreaty: &quot;Caroline! oh, Caroline! come down&#8212;<i>do</i>
+  come!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The young couple hesitated no longer, but hastened down stairs.
+  There was no one there. Doors and windows were securely fastened, and
+  the old house looked as solitary as when they had first entered
+  it.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Very strange!&quot; said the gentleman. &quot;But now that
+  we <i>are</i> down here, Caroline, suppose we take a look at the
+  garden?&quot; So they sallied forth to examine that portion of their
+  new domain, but scarcely had they entered it when they were startled
+  by a loud crash within the house. Looking up, they saw volumes of
+  what appeared to be smoke issuing from the window of the room they
+  had just quitted, and fearing that the room was on fire, they quickly
+  returned to it. There was no fire: what had appeared to be smoke was
+  only a cloud of dust, for the massive and elaborately ornamented
+  ceiling had fallen, and the heavy centre-piece had crushed to
+  fragments the table against which the young wife had so lately been
+  leaning. But for the warning voice her destruction would have been
+  inevitable. My informant went on to state that the pieces of the
+  shattered table were preserved as sacred relics by his parents, and
+  that his mother always declared that she had recognized in the
+  mysterious voice that of a dear relative long before deceased.</p>
+
+  <p>It was once my fortune to pass some weeks in a &quot;haunted
+  house.&quot; I was quite young then, a mere school-girl in fact, and
+  the friend whom I came to visit was also very young; and both of us
+  were too gay and frolicsome to care much for whatever was strange or
+  startling in our surroundings. Not that we ever saw anything&#8212;my
+  friend herself, the daughter of the house, had never done
+  so&#8212;but the sounds we heard were sufficiently odd and
+  inexplicable to fill us with astonishment, if not with terror. Twice
+  during my visit I was roused from a sound slumber by a loud, heavy
+  crash, resembling that which might be caused by the overthrow of a
+  marble-topped washstand or bureau, or some other equally ponderous
+  piece of furniture. The room actually vibrated, and yet a close
+  scrutiny of that and the adjoining apartments failed to reveal any
+  cause for the peculiar noise. It was a sound which could not possibly
+  have been produced by cracking furniture, falling bricks, scampering
+  rats, or any other of the numerous causes of supposed ghostly sounds.
+  The room overhead was used as a linen-room, and was always kept
+  locked; and besides, the noise (which I afterward heard on another
+  occasion in broad daylight, when I was wide awake) was unmistakably
+  <i>in</i> the room where we found ourselves. My friend told me that
+  she had heard it very often&#8212;so often, in fact, that she had got
+  quite used to it, and no longer felt any emotion save that of
+  curiosity.</p>
+
+  <p>There was another room in which (also in broad daylight) I heard a
+  strange crackling sound like the rustling of a large sheet of stiff
+  paper or parchment turned slowly in the reader&#39;s hands. This
+  noise also was one of frequent occurrence. Among the things seen by
+  other members of the family was a light that glided over walls and
+  ceiling in points inaccessible to outside light or reflection. Then
+  there was a lady in black silk who had more than once been seen
+  gliding about the house, but who always disappeared when accosted or
+  followed. Three slow, solemn raps sometimes sounded at dead of night
+  at the door of one member of the family, a skeptical and irascible
+  old gentleman.</p>
+
+  <p>But, strange to say, all these uncanny sights and sounds portended
+  nothing, and seemed to be utterly without a purpose or a cause. The
+  house was a cheerful modern one, and the father of my friend was its
+  first occupant; so there was nothing in the past to which these
+  unearthly occurrences could refer. Nor were they warnings of coming
+  misfortune. Neither death nor disaster ever followed in their train,
+  and in due course of time the family ceased to trouble their heads
+  about them&#8212;were not at all frightened, and scarcely even
+  annoyed. There were other sounds which I did not myself hear, but of
+  which I was told&#8212;stealthy footsteps that paced a certain
+  corridor at dead of night; a sharp, rattling noise like hail dashing
+  against the window-panes, and one or two other trifling yet equally
+  unaccountable occurrences. Once, too, a young lady visiting the house
+  heard in the next room to that in which she was loud and lamentable
+  sounds, as of a woman weeping bitterly and in sore distress. She
+  listened in considerable perplexity for some time, fearing to intrude
+  on the sorrows of some member of the family; but at last she resolved
+  to go and proffer aid, if not consolation. As he approached the door
+  between the two rooms the sound suddenly ceased, and, to her
+  amazement, she found the adjoining apartment not only empty, but with
+  the door locked and bolted on the inside.</p>
+
+  <p>I once knew a young lady who, on going to pay a visit to a friend
+  who had recently moved into a new house, was asked to walk up stairs,
+  and on complying saw an old woman preceding her up the staircase.
+  Supposing her to be one of the servants, she took but little notice
+  of her, though struck by the peculiarity of her gait, a sort of jerky
+  limp, as though one leg was shorter than the other. In the course of
+  conversation with her friend she mentioned the old woman, and asked
+  if she was the housekeeper. &quot;Housekeeper? no,&quot; said the
+  lady: &quot;we have no such person about our house. You must have
+  been mistaken.&quot; The visitor then described the person she had
+  seen, and when she mentioned the peculiar limp her hostess seemed
+  startled. After a pause she said: &quot;No such person lives here
+  <i>now</i>, but the woman who took care of this house before we
+  rented it was exactly such a person as you describe, and was lame in
+  just such a manner. But she died here <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  229]</span> about six weeks ago&#8212;I think in this very
+  room&#8212;so your eyes must certainly have deceived you.&quot; The
+  lady still persisted that she had seen the old woman; so the servants
+  were called and the house thoroughly searched, but no intruder was
+  discovered.</p>
+
+  <p>I have known several instances of persons who have seen the
+  &quot;fetch&quot; or apparition of a living person, called in Germany
+  the &quot;Doppelgänger;&quot; yet, though such appearances are
+  usually supposed to portend the death or illness of the person thus
+  strangely &quot;doubled,&quot; I have never yet heard of a case where
+  any unpleasant consequences followed. For instance, an old friend of
+  mine, a gentleman of undoubted veracity, once told me that on one
+  occasion he entered his house about five o&#39;clock in the
+  afternoon, and ran up stairs to his mother&#39;s bed-chamber, where
+  he saw her standing near the centre of the room, clad in a loose
+  white gown and engaged in combing out her long black hair. He
+  remained looking at her for some moments, expecting that she would
+  speak to him, but she did not take notice in any way of his presence,
+  and neither spoke nor looked at him. He then addressed her, but,
+  receiving no reply, became indignant and went down stairs, where, to
+  his amazement, he found his mother seated by the parlor window,
+  dressed and <i>coiffée</i> as usual. It was some years before he
+  would trust himself to tell her of what he had seen, fearing that she
+  might consider it an omen of approaching death, and indeed, though
+  not a superstitious man, he was inclined so to view it himself; but
+  his mother lived for many years after the appearance of her wraith. I
+  also knew a young gentleman to whom the unpleasant experience of
+  beholding his own double was once vouchsafed. He had been spending a
+  quiet evening with some young ladies, and returned home about eleven
+  o&#39;clock, let himself into the house with his latch-key and
+  proceeded to his own room, where he found the gas already lighted,
+  though turned down to a mere blue spark. He turned it up, and the
+  full light of the jet shone on his <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  230]</span> bed, which stood just beside the burner, and there,
+  extended at full length, lay&#8212;himself. His first idea was of a
+  burglar or some such intruder. But his second glance dispelled that
+  impression. He stood for some moments gazing at the prostrate figure
+  with feelings which must have been anything but agreeable: he noticed
+  little peculiarities of his own dress and features, and marked the
+  closed eyelids and easy respiration of slumber. At length, plucking
+  up courage, he attempted to pass his hand under the pillow to draw
+  out a small revolver which he usually kept there, and as he did so he
+  felt the pressure of the pillow as though weighed down by a reclining
+  head. This completely unnerved him. He went out of the room, locking
+  the door on the outside, and spent the remainder of the night on a
+  sofa in the parlor. He did not re-enter his chamber till broad
+  daylight, when, to his delight, he found that his ghostly visitor had
+  vanished.</p>
+
+  <p>The next story on my list was narrated to me by one of the most
+  sensible and intelligent women I ever met&#8212;a lady of great
+  strength of character, joined to a fine and highly cultivated mind.
+  During her childhood my friend (whom I shall call Mrs.
+  X&#8212;&#8212;) dwelt with her parents in a large, roomy house in
+  the vicinity of one of our inland cities. The house was a double one,
+  a solid, substantial structure built of stone, and had been purchased
+  by her father a short time before the occurrences which I am about to
+  relate. A wide lawn at the back of the mansion sloped down to the
+  bank of a small stream, along the verge of which, without intervening
+  bank or path, ran the terminating wall of the grounds. The stables
+  were also situated at the foot of this lawn, and the back windows of
+  these stables looked out on the water. Mrs. X&#8212;&#8212; had
+  several brothers and sisters, all of whom, as well as herself, were
+  still children at the period of which she spoke.</p>
+
+  <p>One summer evening her parents accepted an invitation to take tea
+  with a friend, and went out, leaving the children at play in the
+  library, a room which opened on the main hall on the ground floor.
+  The front door was open, and as it grew dark a large hanging lamp
+  which fully illuminated the hall was lighted, so that every part of
+  it, as well as the staircase, was fully illuminated. Late in the
+  evening the children were disturbed at their play in the library by
+  the sound of heavy footsteps ascending the outer steps and then
+  pacing along the hall. Imagining that it was their parents who had
+  returned earlier than they expected, they rushed to the door to greet
+  them, but to their astonishment they could see no one, though the
+  heavy steps were still heard traversing the hall, ascending the
+  staircase, and finally resounding on the floor of a room overhead.
+  The children summoned the servants, who merely laughed at their
+  story, till one of the maids, who had been busy up stairs, came down
+  and said that her master and mistress must surely have returned, as
+  she had heard them walking along the entry and afterward entering one
+  of the rooms. Upon this, one of the men-servants went up stairs and
+  made a careful search, but without rinding any one. In the midst of
+  the excitement the lady and gentleman of the house returned home, and
+  upon hearing the story the gentleman himself instituted a second and
+  more vigorous search, which, like the first, was wholly without
+  result.</p>
+
+  <p>Some time after this the children were playing under their
+  nurse&#39;s care on the lawn at the back of the house one gray,
+  dismal afternoon in the early autumn. The attention of the whole
+  party was suddenly attracted by the figure of a man passing slowly
+  outside of the stone wall that stretched along the foot of the lawn,
+  and finally disappearing behind the stable. As he did so a tremendous
+  uproar arose among the horses in the stable, and on examination one
+  of them, a remarkably fine and docile animal, whose stall happened to
+  be next the window that opened on the water, was found to be in a
+  perfect ecstasy of terror, plunging, rearing and struggling to get
+  loose in a manner that rendered the task of releasing and removing
+  him anything but an easy or even a safe one. After the horse was got
+  out of the stable and led away, the question arose, What had
+  frightened him? Could the man they had seen passing behind the stable
+  have done anything to terrify him? Then, for the first time, it
+  dawned on the minds of the whole party that no human being could have
+  walked where they had seen the passing figure, as the wall rose
+  straight from the verge of the water, and there was no pathway
+  between the wall and the stream, which in that spot was deep, though
+  not very wide. Strange to say, the horse could never be induced to
+  re-enter that stable, but always manifested signs of wild alarm and
+  excitement when brought even to the door, though in all other
+  respects he was perfectly gentle and tractable.</p>
+
+  <p>Owing to the size of the family, one of the large garret-rooms had
+  been fitted up as a bed-room for one of the younger boys, who
+  preferred having a chamber of his own to sharing the apartment of one
+  of his brothers. He had not occupied it long before he began to
+  complain of frightful dreams, and more than once he came trembling
+  down stairs and took refuge in his mother&#39;s room, terrified by
+  something horrible&#8212;<i>what</i>, he could not define, but
+  something that came into his room at night and roused him from his
+  slumbers. Thinking that the child was merely nervous and excitable,
+  she changed the arrangements, put him to sleep in the bed-room of one
+  of his brothers, and gave up the apartment in the garret to one of
+  the servants. But in a very short time the complaints were renewed:
+  the girl could not sleep on account of that vague, strange horror,
+  which often drove her shrieking and half awakened from her bed. So
+  the lady had the room dismantled, and used it as a lumber-room, and
+  during the remaining years of her occupancy of the house was troubled
+  no more.</p>
+
+  <p>As time passed on, the increasing exigencies of his growing family
+  induced Mrs. X&#8212;&#8212;&#39;s father to purchase a house in
+  town, and he accordingly rented his country-mansion to a childless
+  pair, a clergyman and his wife. The new residents <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 231]</span> had not been long installed when a series
+  of ghostly disturbances began in real earnest. I believe that nothing
+  more was ever <i>seen</i>, but the kitchen at night, when all the
+  family had retired, would at times become the seat of an appalling
+  uproar of inarticulate voices and clashing dishes and dragging
+  furniture. If any one was bold enough to venture down stairs, the
+  noise would suddenly cease, and the kitchen itself never showed any
+  trace of these unearthly revels, every plate, dish, cup and chair
+  remaining in its accustomed place. Then, too, the footsteps of the
+  invisible intruder were heard again, and often while the minister was
+  writing in his study the steps would be heard coming through the door
+  and across the room, and the unseen visitor would seat himself in the
+  chair that usually stood opposite to that of the clergyman at the
+  writing-table, when a sound as of the pages of a large book with
+  stiff paper leaves being slowly turned would usually ensue. The
+  minister often addressed his invisible companion, but never received
+  any reply to his questions or his appeals.</p>
+
+  <p>On hearing these strange stories, Mrs. X&#8212;&#8212;&#39;s
+  father determined upon trying to trace out the history of the house
+  before it came into his possession. He learned that it had originally
+  been occupied by the person who built it, a man of low origin, who,
+  being looked upon as a pillar of the Church by the congregation to
+  which he belonged, had been entrusted with the task of collecting
+  certain sums due to it&#8212;whether actual income or subscriptions I
+  do not now recollect. At all events, he never paid over the money,
+  but launched out into sundry extravagances rather unusual for a man
+  in his station of life, amongst which was the erection of this large
+  and handsome house. But from the time the house was finished a blight
+  seemed to fall upon his life. He gave up all his religious and
+  regular habits, frequented evil company, took to drinking, and
+  finally, in a fit of delirium tremens, hanged himself in the very
+  garret room of which I have before spoken. <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  232]</span> The scenes at his funeral were said to baffle
+  description. The corpse was laid out in the kitchen, and thither all
+  his late boon-companions repaired and turned the sad ceremonial into
+  a hideous orgy. Among other horrible deeds, they took the corpse from
+  the coffin, propped it up in a chair and poured whisky down its
+  throat.</p>
+
+  <p>The incidents which I have related happened when Mrs.
+  X&#8212;&#8212; was a child, and she is now in the prime of
+  womanhood. When she finished her story I recollected that scarce a
+  year ago I had read in a Philadelphia paper an extract from one of
+  the journals of the town near which this house stood, giving an
+  account of an investigation which was then taking place of the cause
+  of sundry strange disturbances occurring in this very house. The
+  extract closed with the history of its builder and first occupant,
+  tallying exactly with what she related to me, though with fewer
+  details. So, after all these years, the perturbed spirit still
+  refuses to rest.</p>
+
+  <p>The narrative with which I shall conclude this chapter of ghostly
+  experiences is one for the truth of which I am not prepared to vouch,
+  as I was neither an actor in its scenes nor was it related to me by
+  one who was. Yet were the incidents of any other than a supernatural
+  nature I should consider the authority from which I learned them as
+  unquestionable.</p>
+
+  <p>A few years ago a lady in quest of summer lodgings for herself,
+  her sister and her children (her husband being absent) was offered a
+  large, old-fashioned house in the vicinity of one of our seashore
+  resorts on highly advantageous terms. Having inspected the house and
+  found it, though old, in good repair, she engaged it joyfully, and a
+  few weeks after the date of her first negotiations she was settled
+  there with her family. For some time nothing occurred to mar the
+  peace of the household. The children enjoyed the fresh sea-breezes,
+  their pleasant sports on the beach and the large airy rooms, while
+  the ladies sewed and read and looked after household matters and took
+  long walks after the fashion of most people during the summer season
+  by the seaside. One night, when the mother was about to retire to
+  rest, one of her younger children, a bright little boy, called to her
+  from his sleeping-room. Fearing that he was ill, she hastened to
+  him.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Mamma,&quot; he said very earnestly, &quot;I wish you would
+  tell that strange woman to keep out of my room.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What woman, dear?&quot; asked his mother, convinced that he
+  had been dreaming.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I don&#39;t know her name, and I can&#39;t see her face
+  because she wears a big sun-bonnet, but she comes and stands at the
+  foot of my bed, and she frightens me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, never mind, dear. Go to sleep, and if ever she
+  troubles you again, come into my room and sleep with me,&quot;
+  answered the mother, still thinking that the child had been wakened
+  by an uneasy dream. The little fellow, thus soothed and consoled,
+  soon fell asleep, and slept soundly till morning. But a few nights
+  afterward the child came running into his mother&#39;s room at dead
+  of night, panting and terrified, and exclaiming, &quot;Mamma! mamma!
+  she has come again!&quot; His mother took him into her arms, and soon
+  caressed away his fears, but thinking that the child&#39;s uneasiness
+  was caused by his sleeping alone, she had his bed moved into her own
+  chamber, and fitted up the vacant apartment as a guest-chamber. Soon
+  after this the servants began to complain of strange sights and
+  sounds for which they could not account, and one burning July day the
+  sister, who was seated by the parlor window, happened to say,
+  &quot;Oh, I am so warm!&quot; when a voice, seemingly from the
+  cellar, made answer, &quot;And <i>I</i> am so cold!&quot; Struck with
+  amazement, she called, but no one replied, and subsequent
+  investigation proved that there was no one in the cellar at that
+  moment, nor could there have been, as its only door was always kept
+  locked.</p>
+
+  <p>I cannot now recall the details of various strange occurrences
+  which afterward took place, but will pass on to the final one, which
+  may be considered as the dénoûment of the whole story. The lady of
+  the house, a strong-minded, practical woman, had always sternly
+  rejected the theory that the odd incidents that annoyed her had any
+  supernatural origin; so, disregarding them wholly, she sent an
+  invitation to an old friend of hers, a clergyman, to pay her a visit
+  of some weeks&#39; duration. Her invitation was accepted, and in due
+  time her guest arrived and was put in possession of the spare
+  bed-room. Night coming on, the whole household retired to rest. Early
+  in the morning the active hostess rose to see that all was in order
+  for the further entertainment of her guest, when, on going into the
+  parlor to unfasten the shutters, what was her amazement to find him
+  there extended on the sofa, and looking very ill, as though he had
+  passed a wretched night! In answer to her anxious questioning he
+  stated that on retiring to rest he had fallen into a profound
+  slumber, from which he suddenly woke, and saw a woman wearing a large
+  sun-bonnet, which completely concealed her face, standing beside his
+  bed, the moonlight which shone into the room rendering every detail
+  of her figure distinctly visible. Supposing that she was one of the
+  servants who had come to his room to see that he was perfectly
+  comfortable and wanted nothing, he spoke to her. What she replied, or
+  how he first became convinced that the Thing before him was no form
+  of flesh and blood, I cannot now remember; but I recollect two
+  particulars of the interview: one was, that she told him to look for
+  her in the cellar; the other, that he asked her why she wore a
+  sun-bonnet, and she answered, &quot;Because the lime has spoilt my
+  face.&quot; At this his failing senses forsook him, and when
+  consciousness returned his ghostly visitor had disappeared.</p>
+
+  <p>His hostess heard him in silence. As soon as breakfast was over
+  she requested him to accompany her to the cellar. Careful examination
+  soon revealed a spot where some of the stones with which it was paved
+  had been removed and afterward replaced. Assistants with proper tools
+  were procured, the stones <span class="pagenum">[pg 233]</span> were
+  lifted, and after a few minutes of vigorous digging a mass of lime
+  was disclosed, in which was found imbedded a quantity of calcined
+  fragments of bone, which medical authority afterward pronounced to be
+  portions of a human skeleton. These poor remains were carefully
+  removed, placed in a box and interred in a neighboring cemetery, and
+  the &quot;woman in a sun-bonnet&quot; was seen no more.</p>
+
+  <p>Subsequent investigation into the history of the old house
+  revealed the following facts. It had originally been occupied by a
+  retired sea-captain and his only son, the latter a wild, reckless
+  youth of evil character and confirmed bad habits. A young girl went
+  to live there as a servant, and for some months seemed well contented
+  with her place, but afterward she became gloomy and unhappy, and was
+  frequently seen in tears by the neighbors. At last she disappeared,
+  and it was given out by her employers that she had gone to visit some
+  friends at a distance, but she did not return, and suspicion was
+  already directed toward the old man and his son, when one morning the
+  house was found to be shut up, its inhabitants having found it
+  expedient to remove as silently and secretly as possible. The girl
+  was never heard of afterward. The discovery of the bones led to the
+  supposition that the younger man had seduced her, had afterward
+  murdered her to conceal his original crime, and that he had then
+  buried the body in the cellar, taking the precaution to cover it with
+  quicklime.</p>
+
+  <p>As I said at the beginning of this article, I neither wish to
+  propound any theories nor to deduce any conclusions from the
+  relations I have given. I can only reiterate my statement that they
+  came to me from sources the reliability of which I cannot question. I
+  have carefully excluded everything relating to the supernatural which
+  I ever heard from the lips of ignorant and superstitious persons, and
+  have only recorded such incidents as bore an added weight of evidence
+  in the shape of the sense, intelligence and unquestionable veracity
+  of their relators.</p>
+
+  <p class="author">LUCY H. HOOPER.</p><a name="afternoon" id=
+  "afternoon"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  234]</span>
+
+  <h2>AFTERNOON.</h2>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i6">Small, shapeless drifts of cloud</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Sail slowly northward in the soft-hued sky,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">With blue half-tints and rolling summits
+      bright,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">By the late sun caressed; slight hazes shroud</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">All things afar; shineth each leaf anigh</p>
+
+      <p class="i6">With its own warmth and light.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i6">O&#39;erblown by Southland airs,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">The summer landscape basks in utter peace:</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">In lazy streams the lazy clouds are seen;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Low hills, broad meadows, and large, clear-cut
+      squares</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Of ripening corn-fields, rippled by the breeze,</p>
+
+      <p class="i6">With shifting shade and sheen.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i6">Hark! and you may not hear</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">A sound less soothing than the rustle cool</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Of swaying leaves, the steady wiry drone</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Of unseen crickets, sudden chirpings clear</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Of happy birds, the tinkle of the pool,</p>
+
+      <p class="i6">Chafed by a single stone.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i6">What vague, delicious dreams,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Born of this golden hour of afternoon,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">And air balm-freighted, fill the soul with
+      bliss,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Transpierced like yonder clouds with lustrous
+      gleams,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Fantastic, brief as they, and, like them, spun</p>
+
+      <p class="i6">Of gilded nothingness!</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i6">All things are well with her.</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">&#39;Tis good to be alive, to see the light</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">That plays upon the grass, to feel (and sigh</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">With perfect pleasure) the mild breezes stir</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Among the garden roses, red and white,</p>
+
+      <p class="i6">With whiffs of fragrancy.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i6">There is no troublous thought,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">No painful memory, no grave regret,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">To mar the sweet suggestions of the hour:</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">The soul, at peace, reflects the peace without,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Forgetting grief as sunset skies forget</p>
+
+      <p class="i6">The morning&#39;s transient shower.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <center>
+    EMMA LAZARUS.
+  </center><a name="gossip" id="gossip"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 235]</span>
+
+  <h2>OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.</h2>
+
+  <h3><a name="washington" id="washington"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+  WASHINGTON&#39;S BIRTHPLACE IN 1873.</h3>
+
+  <p>Was George Washington born in Great Britain or America? Absurd as
+  this question must sound to an American, it has been gravely
+  discussed within the last few months by a writer in the London
+  <i>Notes and Queries</i>, who has the effrontery to say that
+  Washington&#39;s own brief assertion in a letter to the effect that
+  he was born in Virginia cannot be conclusive. &quot;No man&#39;s
+  unsupported testimony,&quot; he adds, &quot;as to the place of his
+  birth would be taken in evidence in a court of justice, for his
+  knowledge of the event must necessarily be from hearsay or from
+  records.&quot; This is silly enough. I did not see the whole article,
+  or learn by what arguments the writer endeavored to substantiate his
+  doubts, if he really had any, as to the true birthplace of the
+  <i>Pater Patriae</i>, but, feeling some interest in the matter, I cut
+  out the slip containing the quotation just given, and enclosed it in
+  a letter to a prominent gentleman living in Westmoreland not far from
+  Wakefield, the estate on which the birthplace&#8212;or rather the
+  site of it&#8212;is situated, with a request that he would reply to
+  it. He did so promptly and almost indignantly.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am amazed,&quot; says he, &quot;at the contents of the
+  printed slip you send me. That any man of ordinary intelligence,
+  living within the bounds of civilization, could be ignorant of or
+  doubt the fact that General Washington was born in America, I did not
+  for a moment suppose.&quot; He goes on to say that if
+  Washington&#39;s biography, written by so many competent hands, and
+  founded upon sources the most authentic, and particularly the Lives
+  of Marshall, Sparks and Irving, were not sufficient to convince
+  incredulity itself, he is at a loss to know what would. Certainly, he
+  would not attempt the task himself. In addition to the well-known
+  biographies, traditions and memoranda attest the fact beyond the
+  possibility of enlightened doubt. Other credible and corroborative
+  records are not wanting. &quot;Had the question,&quot; he concludes,
+  &quot;been asked of Dr. Livingstone by some savage in the depths of
+  the African jungles, it would not have been surprising; but to come
+  from a writer in <i>London</i>, it is inexpressibly marvelous, and
+  looks like a relapse into barbarism.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Among the memoranda alluded to is a fac-simile of the entry of the
+  birth of Washington in the Bible of his mother, which is given in
+  Howe&#39;s <i>Historical Collections of Virginia</i>, as follows:</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;<i>George Washington son to Augustine and Mary his Wife was
+  Born 11&#39;th Day of February</i> 173-1/2 <i>about</i> 10 <i>in the
+  Morning and was Baptized the</i> 3&#39;th (sic) <i>of April following
+  M&#39;r Beverley Whiting and Cap&#39;n Christopher Brooks godfathers
+  and M&#39;rs Mildred Gregory God-mother.&quot;</i></p>
+
+  <p>There are no marks of punctuation, and Howe states that the
+  original entry is supposed to have been made by Washington&#39;s
+  mother. If so, the handwriting, not very unlike Washington&#39;s own,
+  is unusually masculine, compact, even and clear for a woman&#39;s.
+  Howe&#39;s book was published in 1836. At that time the old family
+  Bible, a much dilapidated quarto with the title-page missing, and
+  covered with the striped Virginia cloth so common in old days, was in
+  the possession of George W. Bassett, Esq., of Farmington, Hanover
+  county, who married a grand-niece of Washington. At that time, too,
+  the birthplace, which had been destroyed previous to the Revolution,
+  was much more plainly marked than it is now. From its associations,
+  and from its natural beauties as well, the place was doubly
+  interesting. Standing half a mile from the junction of Pope&#39;s
+  Creek with the Potomac River, it commanded a view of the Maryland
+  shore and of the course of the Potomac for many miles. The house was
+  a low-pitched, <span class="pagenum">[pg 236]</span> single-storied
+  frame dwelling, with four rooms on the first floor, and a huge
+  chimney at each end on the outside&#8212;the style of the better
+  class of houses of those days. A stone, placed there to mark its site
+  by G.W.P. Custis, bore the simple inscription:</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;HERE, ON THE 11TH OF FEBRUARY (O.S.), 1732, GEORGE
+  WASHINGTON WAS BORN.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Such was its appearance in 1834 or &#39;35, when Howe visited it.
+  Its present condition may be gathered from what the writer of the
+  letter in response to the London querist has to say about the site
+  itself, that being all that is left of a place so memorable and so
+  deserving of perpetuation:</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I have had no opportunity to obtain the sketch I promised
+  you. Indeed, there is virtually no material to make a sketch of. The
+  birthplace is now simply an old field lying waste, with indistinct
+  vestiges of a human habitation. An old chimney stands which belonged
+  to an outhouse (kitchen or laundry), some remains of a cellar, and
+  the foundations of a house in which tradition states Washington was
+  born. There was a stone slab, with a simple inscription, placed on
+  the spot some sixty years ago by G. W: P. Custis, to denote the
+  place, but it was long ago removed from its original position,
+  mutilated and broken, so that only a fragment remains.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>That a place of such interest&#8212;one might call it
+  sacred&#8212;should be left to decay and obliteration is no new thing
+  in Virginia. Enemies might well declare that neglect of her mighty
+  dead is characteristic of the old commonwealth. The truth is, she has
+  a great many dead to care for, and of late years all her time has
+  been absorbed in the care of her living. But something has been done,
+  or attempted to be done, to rescue Washington&#39;s birthplace from
+  oblivion. As far back as 1858 an act was passed by the General
+  Assembly of Virginia, accepting from Lewis Washington a grant of the
+  &quot;site of the birthplace of George Washington, and the home and
+  graves of his progenitors in America,&quot; and appropriating five
+  thousand dollars &quot;to enclose the same in an iron fence,&quot;
+  etc. Hon. Henry A. Wise, governor of Virginia at the time this act
+  was passed, entered with zeal and alacrity upon the work, the
+  execution of which was entrusted to him by the Legislature&#8212;went
+  in person to Westmoreland, examined carefully the sites, negotiated
+  with the owner of the adjacent farm for right of way, adopted a plan
+  for the enclosures and tablets, and began a correspondence with
+  mechanics and artisans at the North with a view to the speedy
+  completion of the work, and&#8212;just then his term expired, the war
+  soon followed, and the matter was of course dropped.</p>
+
+  <p>The money appropriated, together with the accrued interest, is now
+  in the treasury of Virginia, and although Governor Walker in his late
+  message did not bring the subject to the attention of the
+  Legislature, the long-delayed work will be consummated sooner or
+  later, and &quot;a neat iron fence&quot; with a few plain slabs will
+  be erected on the hallowed spot. But it strikes the present writer
+  that five thousand dollars, or even ten thousand dollars, form rather
+  a small sum for such an object, and that &quot;a neat iron
+  fence&quot; is not exactly the thing that the place and its memories
+  demand. But not a dollar more may be expected of Virginia at this
+  time. She owes too much, and has too little. If one of the many
+  Northern gentlemen who are lavishing their hundreds of thousands on
+  colleges and other charities would come to Westmoreland and put
+  something a little better than a &quot;neat iron fence&quot; around
+  the birthplace of Washington, he would do a noble deed for himself
+  and for both sections of his lately estranged country.</p>
+
+  <p class="author">R.B.E.</p><a name="vicissitudes" id="vicissitudes">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>VICISSITUDES IN HIGH LIFE.</h3>
+
+  <p>The London papers lately recorded the death of a lady who was the
+  representative and last descendant, save one sister, of a house
+  famous in English history. This was Lady Langdale, widow of
+  Bickersteth, first and last Lord Langdale, and sister of Harley, last
+  earl of Oxford. Lady Langdale had but one child, who married Count
+  Teleki, a Hungarian nobleman, and pre-deceased her mother, dying
+  childless. Lord Langdale was the son of Mr. Bickersteth, surgeon, of
+  Kirby-Lonsdale, Westmoreland. He was brought up to his father&#39;s
+  vocation, and traveled, as physician, with the earl of Oxford.</p>
+
+  <p>Impressed, no doubt, with Mr. Bickersteth&#39;s extraordinary
+  abilities, Lord Oxford advised him to go to college and read for the
+  law, which offered greater prizes than the medical profession.
+  Accordingly, he entered at Cambridge, and in 1808 graduated as senior
+  wrangler. Twenty-seven years later, in 1835, he married the daughter
+  and heiress of his friend and patron, and the year following was
+  created a peer.</p>
+
+  <p>His brother Edward was the celebrated evangelical leader in the
+  Church of England. Bred to the law, he abandoned that profession for
+  holy orders. Their nephew, son of their brother John, is the present
+  bishop of Ripon.</p>
+
+  <p>The Harleys have been seated for six or seven centuries in
+  Herefordshire, at Brampton-Bryan and Egwood, properties which in part
+  remained in Lady Langdale&#39;s possession. By marriage! with the
+  heiress of the Vaughans in the fifteenth century, they became
+  possessed of Wigmore Castle, the ancient heritage of the extinct
+  earls of Mortimer, and great estates which added to their
+  consequence.</p>
+
+  <p>When Charles II. made a batch of peers on his restoration, the
+  Harley of that day displayed a rare modesty. The king offered him a
+  viscounty, but he declined the honor, &quot;lest his zeal and
+  services for the restoration of the ancient government should be
+  reproached as proceeding from ambition, and not conscience;&quot; and
+  so scrupulous was he that his being made a knight of the Bath even
+  was done without his knowledge, he being then at Dunkirk, and Charles
+  inserting with his own hand his name in the list. But his son was
+  destined for a higher dignity, for he it was who became in the tenth
+  year of the reign of Charles II.&#39;s niece, Queen Anne, earl of
+  Oxford and Mortimer, being the famous Harley of that reign, linked in
+  our memories <span class="pagenum">[pg 237]</span> with St. John Lord
+  Bolingbroke, the Mashams, Marlboroughs, Swift, Addison, Pope, and the
+  host of brilliant men which makes the reign of one of the feeblest
+  women who ever sat on a throne a period of almost pre-eminent
+  interest in English annals to men of cultivated mind subject to the
+  influence of association. By Elizabeth Foley, daughter of the first
+  Lord Foley, of Witley Court (sold, about thirty-five years ago, with
+  the bulk of the Foley estates, for £990,000 to Lord Dudley, who
+  married Lady Mordaunt&#39;s sister), the famous lord treasurer,
+  Oxford, had one son, the second earl. He was the friend of Swift, to
+  whom the dean addressed so many letters. A man of literary tastes, he
+  spent a portion of his immense fortune in forming the finest library
+  of the period, and it is to him the student is indebted for the
+  magnificent collection known as the &quot;Harleian,&quot; which
+  subsequently became, by purchase, the property of the nation, and is
+  deposited in the British Museum. He married the greatest heiress of
+  the day, Lady Henrietta Cavendish-Holies, only daughter and heir of
+  the duke of Newcastle (of the Holies creation&#8212;the present duke,
+  a Pelham-Clinton, derives from a different descent). He left but one
+  daughter. She married the second duke of Portland, grandson of Dutch
+  William&#39;s pet page Bentinck, whom he imported into England, and
+  loaded with honors and emolument until even the House of Commons of
+  <i>that</i> day cried out loudly, &quot;Enough! stop!&quot; Through
+  this lady the Bentincks got Welbeck, the duke of Portland&#39;s chief
+  seat to-day.</p>
+
+  <p>Meanwhile, the Oxford honors and patrimonial estates in
+  Herefordshire passed to the second earl&#39;s first cousin, and so
+  on, in regular succession, until the earldom became extinct by the
+  death of Lady Langdale&#39;s brother a few years ago. One of Lady
+  Langdale&#39;s sisters married a General Bacon. At the time of the
+  marriage he was but a poor captain, and his wealth did not much
+  increase, whilst his family did, and his wife, the once beautiful
+  Lady Charlotte, Byron&#39;s &quot;Ianthe&quot;&#8212;to whom he
+  addressed <span class="pagenum">[pg 238]</span> the famous lines
+  which form the prelude of <i>Childe Harold</i>, beginning,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+  <p>Not in those climes where I have late been straying&#8212;</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>had to see her daughter a governess in the family of a Cornishman,
+  once a common miner! One of her daughters is now married to the son
+  of Lord Mount Edgecumbe&#39;s agent. It seems that the sisters could
+  not forgive the mesalliance, as they deemed it, for Lady
+  Langdale&#39;s will shows no bequest to the Bacons.</p>
+
+  <p>Lady Langdale had another sister, who married a son of Doctor
+  Vernon-Harcourt, long archbishop of York, grandfather of
+  &quot;Historicus,&quot; the well-known political letter-writer of the
+  London <i>Times</i>. This lady died about the same time as Lady
+  Langdale. One sister only, the wife of a foreign nobleman, survives.
+  She is the last of the Harleys of the great minister&#39;s
+  line.</p><a name="madeira" id="madeira"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>A GLASS OF OLD MADEIRA.</h3>
+
+  <p>We had met in Europe some dozen years ago&#8212;I from
+  Massachusetts, he from Carolina. We both looked grave for an instant
+  as a friend presented us to each other, naming our respective
+  residences, and then both laughed cheerily, and were good friends
+  ever after. We enjoyed <i>Tartuffe</i> and the <i>Mariage de
+  Figaro</i> in company with each other at the Theatre Francois, heard
+  Mario, Grisi, Gratiano and Borghi Mamo in Verdi&#39;s
+  <i>Trovatore</i> at the Opéra Italien, danced with <i>les filles de
+  l&#39;Opéra</i> at Cellarius&#39;s saloons, and had many a midnight
+  carouse afterward at the Maison Doré. Nor had our time always been
+  unprofitably spent. Toward Easter we journeyed together to Rome, and
+  stood side by side before the masterpieces of Raphael and Domenichino
+  in the Vatican, strolled by moonlight amid the ruins of the Coliseum,
+  and drank out of the same cup from the Fountain of Trevi; often
+  visited Crawford&#39;s studio, where then stood the famous group
+  which now adorns the frieze of the Capitol at Washington, and by
+  actual observation agreed in thinking his Indian not unworthy of
+  comparison with the famous statue of the Dying Gladiator. We stood
+  together on the Tarpeian Rock, and, looking down upon the mutilated
+  Column of Trajan and all the ruins of ancient Rome, read out of the
+  same copy of Horace the famous ode beginning, &quot;Exegi monumentum
+  aere perennius.&quot; We were both passionately fond of sculpture and
+  of painting, and often sat for hours before the glorious Descent from
+  the Cross of Daniel da Volterra in the Chiesa della Trinità dei
+  Monti, the principal figure in which is said to have been sketched by
+  Michael Angelo, and which, although less widely known, appeared to
+  our minds equal in execution and superior in grandeur to any other
+  painting in the world.</p>
+
+  <p>After our return to this country I happened to go South one
+  winter, and spent a month with my friend on his plantation in the low
+  country of Carolina. It seemed to be our fate to meet amid the ruins
+  of the past. But the war had not then occurred, and we had many a
+  hunt together, in which, after a glorious burst of the hounds through
+  the open savannas, I brought down more than one noble buck. On other
+  days we would drive with the ladies along the broad beach upon which
+  stood the summer residences of the neighboring planters. And
+  sometimes we would stroll lazily about the lanes of his estate,
+  basking in the mellow sunshine in the midst of February, and chatting
+  of Capri and Sorrento in a climate equal to that of Italy.</p>
+
+  <p>And we met again the other day in the streets of a Northern city.
+  He looked older certainly, and very careworn, but his eye was as
+  bright as ever and his voice as cheery.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Come and dine with me,&quot; he said after we had given each
+  other a hurried account of our present abodes and occupations.
+  &quot;You will find me in rather modest and decidedly airy lodgings,
+  and I cannot offer you either wild-ducks or venison. A rasher of
+  bacon and a glass of madeira as we chat over old times: what say you
+  to the bill-of fare? You remember the old French adage, &#39;Quand on
+  n&#39;a pas ce que l&#39;on aime, faut bien aimer ce que l&#39;on
+  a.&#39;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;A quelle heure, mon ami?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Four o&#39;clock.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>And at five that afternoon we were seated together, the remnants
+  of our frugal repast removed, and on the scrupulously polished old
+  mahogany table which separated us stood a cut-glass decanter of old
+  Carolina madeira, the bouquet of which filled the room with its
+  fragrance.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Fill your glass, Harry: &#39;tis not the fragrance of the
+  wine, but the sentiment connected with it, which prevents me from
+  offering you a pipe. The odor of the best Virginia would seem to me a
+  desecration. There are only a dozen bottles left in that cupboard. I
+  never uncork one except for a near friend. &#39;Tis out of fashion
+  now: hock and champagne have taken its place; but, do you know, I
+  like it the better on that account. It reminds me of the past, and,
+  though still a young man, it is one of my greatest pleasures to dwell
+  on the picture which a glass of it never fails to recall to my
+  imagination. You remember Woodlawn? For five-and-twenty years, during
+  the whole of a long minority and subsequent travels abroad, those old
+  bottles stood wreathed with cobwebs in the garret of the old mansion.
+  You drank one with me in 1859. The rest were buried at the
+  commencement of the war, and this is one of the few which survived
+  it. There are not many of your compatriots to whom I would tell the
+  story of its preservation, for it illustrates a feature of feudal
+  attachment which they persistently refuse to believe possible.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You remember the stately old negro who occupied the
+  porter&#39;s lodge at Woodlawn, and who told you with such pride that
+  he and his ancestors had always occupied a favored post near the
+  great house? You remember, too, his grand air, fashioned after the
+  gentlemen of the olden time, the contemporaries of Washington,
+  Rutledge and Pinckney? And in what awe and reverence his
+  fellow-servants stood of him! Well, when the war fairly began, and
+  all hope of amicable adjustment was exhausted, I did what every true
+  man on either side was bound to do&#8212;raised a company for the
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 239]</span> service, removed my family to
+  an up-country farm, and left Old John in charge of my residence and
+  interests in the low country. The Federal gunboats soon appeared upon
+  the coast, entered the bay and ran up the rivers. Many of the younger
+  people went off with them, but during the long and dreary four years
+  which ensued Old John remained staunch at his post, cultivating the
+  land as best he might, and sending constantly supplies of money and
+  provisions to his mistress. At last the whole thing broke down: Lee
+  surrendered, Johnston surrendered. Troops as well as gunboats swarmed
+  in all directions. Not only regular soldiers, but raw negro levies,
+  occupied the towns and were posted through the country. Stories were
+  circulated that I was killed, that I was captured; and the latter
+  statement was true. There were rumors that the land was to be divided
+  among the negroes, and one dark night in the early summer of 1865
+  some drunken sailors, escaped from the gunboats lying in the bay,
+  raised a mob of negroes from the various plantations and gutted
+  nearly every house in the parish. Among others they came to mine
+  eager for wine, and John was pointed out by some of the neighboring
+  negroes as knowing where it was concealed. The sailors threatened his
+  life: he refused to tell. They held a pistol to his head, but the old
+  man remained staunch in his refusal. Provoked by his fidelity, at
+  length they brutally beat him with the butts of their pistols until
+  his gray hairs were dabbled in gore, and went off to other plunder,
+  telling their followers to take what they wanted from my residence.
+  But, bruised, bleeding and crippled though he was, Old John still
+  defended his master&#39;s property, and sitting on the front steps of
+  the house kept the whole crowd at bay by the firmness and dignity of
+  his attitude. I heard of the affair first from a white man who lived
+  in the neighborhood, and it was not until I asked him about it that
+  he told me himself. The next day he gave to my own people the
+  furniture remaining in the house to keep until I came back, but
+  positively refused to <span class="pagenum">[pg 240]</span> allow
+  them to take of the crops that had been gathered any more than was
+  required for their subsistence, and this he regularly shared out to
+  them at stated intervals. And when, after a long imprisonment and
+  much enfeebled myself, I landed one evening at the wharf which leads
+  up to the house, the first figure which met my sight was the old man
+  faithfully guarding the barns. His eyesight was too dim for him to
+  see me, but as soon as he heard my voice he seized my hand with
+  passionate fervor, pressing it repeatedly to his lips and bedewing it
+  with tears. Can you wonder if he has shared my fortunes ever since?
+  But not at Woodlawn. The negroes generally were wild with the notion
+  of freedom, and utterly ignorant of the practical meaning of the
+  term. To me they were always civil and affectionate, but I preferred
+  that some other than myself should teach them its rugged lesson, and
+  immediately leased the place for a term of years to one better fitted
+  than I to derive profit from it under the new system. The gentlemen
+  and the negroes are the two classes upon whom the first results of
+  the fearful revolution in society caused by the war fell with
+  heaviest weight. Both were totally unprepared for it, and both have
+  so far suffered cruelly. A year ago Old John died, faithful and cared
+  for to the last. A few months ago the lease I had executed expired,
+  and I visited the estate again. All the glamour of the past had
+  disappeared. The home of my fathers knew me no more, and I have sold
+  it. Cuffee, whom you remember as my body-servant, who followed me
+  through the war, and bore me on his back from the battlefield upon
+  which I was severely wounded, and who would have come with me here
+  had circumstances permitted of my retaining his
+  services,&#8212;Cuffee has taken to politics, and now represents the
+  county in the Legislature of the State; and the last figure that I
+  remember seeing as I left the place was that of old Sary, the sick
+  nurse, her long black hair streaming in the wind (you remember she
+  was an Indian half-breed), her feet bare, her petticoat ragged and
+  limp, standing in the lane which leads from the house&#8212;her arms
+  akimbo, a sort of miniature Meg Merrilies&#8212;screaming out to me,
+  &#39;You left you own plantashun.&#39; Yes, I have left my own
+  plantation, and am grubbing out a modest and sometimes a rather
+  precarious existence elsewhere. But for all that, it is more
+  wholesome than mouldering among the ruins of a past that can never
+  return. The fight has been fairly fought, and New England has won the
+  day. Germany is up, France is down; Italy united, the pope existing
+  on sufferance in the palace where erstwhile emperors did him homage.
+  I don&#39;t quarrel with Fortune. Nay, in many things I dare say the
+  world has benefited by the change. And so, when I take my children
+  sometimes to look at Crawford&#39;s famous group, I even enjoy the
+  spirit of pride with which they look upon the figure of America, and
+  the zest with which they enjoy the vigorous onslaught of the pioneer
+  on the forest tree; but my own eyes seek the Indian chieftain
+  reclining in mute despair on the right of the group, and I have a
+  strange sympathy with the fortune which his very attitude so forcibly
+  indicates. Our battle of Dorking has been fought, and, whatever may
+  be the fate of the next generation, all that is left to me of home or
+  of country are the golden drops which sparkle in this tiny
+  glass.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p class="author">RAMBLER.</p><a name="matinee" id="matinee">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>AT A MATINÉE: A MONOLOGUE.</h3>
+
+  <p>Oh Dear! I meant to be very early, people do look so cross when
+  you squeeze by them. I don&#39;t think it is exactly proper, either,
+  when they are men. Here is my seat, No. 10: that girl has piled all
+  her waterproofs on it. Why don&#39;t she take them away quicker? and
+  I wish she wouldn&#39;t grope about my feet for her overshoes.</p>
+
+  <p>I never sat right next to the orchestra before. What a convenient
+  railing to hang my umbrella on! Provoking it should rain so to-day.
+  There now! my waterproof is all disposed of, and I know my dress is
+  all right, so I shall enjoy myself.</p>
+
+  <p>What a ridiculous girl beside me! <i>Such</i> a bunch of curls!
+  The two young men on the other side look like gentlemen: the one this
+  way especially nice&#8212;lovely eyes and moustache. I&#39;ll look
+  round the house as far as I can without moving. Can&#39;t see much,
+  though, for I&#39;m so near the front. Why on earth didn&#39;t
+  brother Bob put me where I could see the people?</p>
+
+  <p>Why, there&#39;s Lucy Morris! I can&#39;t bear that girl: her hair
+  is almost the color of mine. A vacant seat beside her, too; so she
+  came with some one. Wonder who it is? I hope she won&#39;t see
+  me.</p>
+
+  <p>Oh, how funny! The musicians come up out of a hole just like the
+  tame rats at the Museum, nasty things!&#8212;the rats, I mean. The
+  man right in front of me has a trombone. I know what it is, because
+  the name is written on his music. I&#39;m so glad, for I never knew
+  exactly what a trombone was until now. And what a funny instrument!
+  He doesn&#39;t blow at all for ever so long, and then suddenly comes
+  in with two or three toots.</p>
+
+  <p>But, good gracious! there&#39;s Dick Livingstone! I saw him come
+  in at that door. I&#39;m so glad I came! He asked me night before
+  last at Mrs. Harris&#39;s if I was coming to the matinée, and of
+  course I said &quot;Yes,&quot; though I didn&#39;t have the slightest
+  idea of doing so until he spoke. But what&#8212;! He has taken the
+  seat by that Lucy Morris, and has given her a programme. I hate that
+  girl!</p>
+
+  <p>There goes the curtain. What a stupid play! Why did I come? The
+  damp will ruin my dress. Oh, that horrid girl! Well, of all the
+  ridiculous acting I ever saw, this is the worst! I should think they
+  would be ashamed to put such people on the stage. He is opening her
+  fan. A fan to-day! absurd! I <i>won&#39;t</i> look again. How that
+  man rants! I&#39;m sure I don&#39;t know why I came: I might have
+  known how poor it would be. Even <i>I</i> can see that Leicester and
+  Mortimer have dresses at least a hundred years apart. I wonder if
+  their legs are stuffed? Oh dear! that&#39;s hardly proper. What Dick
+  can see to admire in that <span class="pagenum">[pg 241]</span> girl
+  is beyond my comprehension. Such airs and graces!&#8212;all put on;
+  and how she makes eyes at him! I can feel it behind my back.</p>
+
+  <p>How absurdly Queen Elizabeth is dressed! and what a fright she is!
+  And I wore my new hat, too: he said he liked blue so much. I could
+  just cry, I am so provoked. It&#39;s all her fault, I know. Oh! the
+  play! Yes, Dudley is making love. Ridiculous! There, the
+  curtain&#39;s down at last, and&#8212;what&#8212;! Dick is getting
+  up: he looks as if he were saying good-bye. There&#39;s Lucy&#39;s
+  uncle: he sits down beside her&#8212;he must have brought her. Oh,
+  what a relief! After all, it was very natural for Dick to take the
+  vacant seat, he is so thoughtful always. Lucy can talk pretty well
+  sometimes, too. If she only had some idea of dress! There! I&#39;m
+  sure Dick saw me, but of course I shall take no notice.</p>
+
+  <p>Upon my word, the young man next me is admiring the girl&#39;s
+  hair on the other side of me. It&#39;s hideous&#8212;red as a carrot,
+  and stuck on at that. Thank Goodness! my hair hasn&#39;t a tinge of
+  red in it&#8212;pure <i>blonde cendré</i>&#8212;but I have to pay
+  awfully to match it. Wish I could tell that young fellow her hair is
+  all stuck on. Hark! the nice one says,</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why, it is all her own&#8212;I see it growing&quot;
+  &quot;S-s-s-h!&quot; says the other: &quot;she&#39;ll hear you.&quot;
+  &quot;Loveliest hair I ever saw,&quot; continues No. 1: &quot;pure
+  gold, not a tinge of red&#8212;&quot; It&#39;s <i>my</i> hair they
+  are discussing. What a nice fellow he is! I&#39;ll just turn a little
+  away, so he can study that curl which really does grow out of my
+  head. It is worth all the trouble it gives me, for it makes the
+  others seem so natural. I declare, he is looking right at me: suppose
+  he should speak? I should <i>die</i>! Nonsense! he is bowing to a
+  lady in the dress-circle. I know he&#39;d like to do something for
+  me. Brother Bob says girls can&#39;t be too careful. I might drop
+  something. Not my handkerchief&#8212;that <i>would</i> be
+  improper&#8212;but my opera-glass case: nothing could be said against
+  that. Oh my! I haven&#39;t used my glasses yet, I&#39;m so near the
+  stage. I&#39;ll look round the house; so here goes. &quot;Thank you,
+  sir,&quot; <span class="pagenum">[pg 242]</span> with my sweetest
+  smile and such a nice flutter. I saw him nudge his friend.</p>
+
+  <p>There goes the curtain again. Mary queen of Scots: I thought she
+  was prettier. Oh, the act is really over; I actually forgot
+  everything but the stage. My eyes are all wet. But it won&#39;t do to
+  cry: they would be red. I don&#39;t quite like some of the words they
+  use, though&#8212;they make one feel queer. Now, why couldn&#39;t
+  they say &quot;illegitimate child&quot;? It means just the same;
+  besides, it&#39;s longer.</p>
+
+  <p>I wonder how Dick Livingstone liked it? <i>Mr</i>. Livingstone, I
+  should say. Brother Bob doesn&#39;t think it nice for girls to speak
+  of young men by their first names. But then brothers are so
+  particular about their own sisters, though, Goodness knows, they
+  flirt enough with other people&#39;s. Bob and Kate Harris, for
+  example, and yet he preaches at <i>me</i>!</p>
+
+  <p>Oh, the young men are going out. They push by as well as they can,
+  but still they crowd unpleasantly. I am sure I&#39;ve seen that nice
+  one somewhere. They are going to stay away, too, I think, for they
+  have taken their over-coats. If only Dick&#8212;Mr. Livingstone, I
+  mean&#8212;</p>
+
+  <p>Oh, there&#39;s the curtain again. It&#39;s really quite
+  interesting. I was mistaken about the actors: they do very well
+  indeed. Queen Elizabeth is excellent, and so are they all. It shows
+  how careful one ought to be not to judge too hastily. That&#39;s what
+  mother always says. I won&#39;t do so again.</p>
+
+  <p>Well, that play is over&#8212;now for the comedy. Some one says it
+  is still raining. I hate a waterproof, my figure looks so well in
+  this suit. I might carry my cloak over my arm, but then I&#39;m
+  afraid the rain will ruin my dress. I <i>must</i> wear the waterproof
+  and be a dowdy. I don&#39;t believe, after all, that it would hurt
+  the underskirt, and then, with the umbrella up, I should have to take
+  his arm. I shouldn&#39;t like to get this dress spoiled, either. I
+  know mother wouldn&#39;t give me another. Brother Bob says men
+  don&#39;t care so much about women&#39;s dress: they like to see a
+  sensible girl. I don&#39;t believe that; besides, I have thick boots,
+  and I&#39;m sure that&#39;s sensible. I don&#39;t care: I won&#39;t
+  wear the waterproof unless it is a perfect deluge. My goodness! I
+  don&#39;t see Dick anywhere! Suppose, after all, he didn&#39;t come
+  to meet me? and I gave him that flower at Mrs. Leslie&#39;s, too! I
+  wish the thing was over.</p>
+
+  <p>But oh, what a pretty dress! and how sweet she is! I had no idea
+  she could be so cunning, after being such a tragedy queen. The man on
+  the stage actually kissed her. Bob says they don&#39;t really kiss,
+  though.</p>
+
+  <p>I&#39;m sorry it&#39;s over. Oh dear! I don&#39;t like being alone
+  in such a crowd. Brother Bob wouldn&#39;t have let me come, I know,
+  only he thought I should meet the Davidsons. No matter: I&#39;ll
+  never tell him. I do believe Dick hasn&#39;t stayed, after all.
+  I&#39;ll just put on my waterproof and thick veil, and go home and
+  have a good cry.</p>
+
+  <p>Oh, Mr. Livingstone, how you startled me! I had no idea you were
+  here. Yes, I am by myself: certainly you may escort me home. Take a
+  walk in this pouring rain? Why, it&#39;s all sunshine!</p>
+
+  <p class="author">C.A.D.</p><a name="notes" id="notes">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>NOTES.</h2>
+
+  <p>Wellnigh half a century has elapsed since the discovery of the
+  beautiful Venus of Milo (the exact year was 1825), and yet now, for
+  the first time, the endless discussions regarding two doubtful and
+  interesting points in its history have been set at rest. These two
+  points are&#8212;first, the original pose of the statue; and,
+  secondly, the reason of its being armless. After so many years of
+  dispute over these questions, it occurred at length to M. Jules Ferry
+  to do what of course ought to have been done long ago&#8212;namely,
+  go to the very spot whence the statue was exhumed, and there talk
+  with all the surviving witnesses of the exhumation. M. Ferry not long
+  since put his idea into execution, went to Milo, took into
+  consultation with him M. Brest, son of the consul who procured the
+  statue for France, and found and cross-questioned two Greeks who were
+  present at the unearthing of the statue. M. Ferry has collected the
+  details of his labors in an elaborate communication to the Académie
+  des Beaux Arts, but a brief indication of the results obtained may be
+  made as follows:</p>
+
+  <p>First, then, the Venus was found in 1825 at the foot of a little
+  hill, where it had been covered up by successive crumblings of the
+  earth above. The proprietor of the ground, wishing to clear a little
+  more of the soil for his planting, chanced to strike the statue with
+  his shovel. &quot;It was on its base, erect,&quot; said the two Greek
+  peasants to the French minister. &quot;With one hand she held
+  together her draperies, and in the other an apple&quot;&#8212;the
+  same, doubtless, that Paris had just given her. Such, very briefly,
+  is the clear, short, definite, decisive story which puts an end to
+  ten thousand disquisitions and hypotheses about the pose. The
+  evidence thus given is that of people who actually saw what they
+  describe. But, secondly, what of those &quot;long-lost arms&quot;?
+  and how came they to be lost? The body of the Venus was formed of two
+  blocks, and the arms were afterward fastened upon the trunk. When
+  discovered, it was intact. M. Brest, the French consul, instantly
+  bought the Venus for five hundred dollars, while the Turkish
+  government on its part hurried off a small vessel to bring it away,
+  offering the owner of the farm fivefold the French price, or
+  something like two thousand five hundred dollars. A French
+  <i>aviso</i>, sent by M. de Rivière, the ambassador at
+  Constantinople, arrived on the scene at the very moment when the
+  Turks had got possession of the statue, and were embarking it on
+  their vessel. A dispute arose at once, and in the material as well as
+  legal confusion the arms of the Venus, which had been detached for
+  safer transportation, were missed. The people of the neighborhood got
+  up a story that the arms were carried off by the Turkish vessel out
+  of chagrin and spite, but this seems to be mere surmise where all
+  else is clear.</p>
+  <hr />
+
+  <p>The story of Demosthenes and the pebbles is familiar. Less
+  familiar, we <span class="pagenum">[pg 243]</span> venture to say, is
+  the theory that declamation is sometimes the cause of stammering; or,
+  rather, that stuttering impels a man to talkativeness, and the
+  yielding to this tendency fixes the habit of stammering and makes it
+  worse. Hence it might plausibly be argued that it is the rostrum, or
+  the very emotion of speaking in public, which makes some orators
+  become stammerers. At all events, in Paris an institution has been
+  founded expressly to remedy stuttering; and M. Chervin, its director,
+  not long ago presented before a meeting of the learned societies at
+  the Sorbonne some interesting statistics on his specialty. These
+  statistics seem to show that stuttering is in direct proportion with
+  the habit of speaking, and that the more one speaks the more one
+  stutters. This is certainly an unexpected result of the restoration
+  of freedom of speech in France. M. Chervin mentions a village of
+  eighteen hundred souls where everybody, without exception, undeniably
+  stutters. What strange dialogues, says Jules Claretie (who cites
+  these points in <i>l&#39;Indépendance Belge</i>), must take place
+  there! A very curious fact is, that stammering is less frequent in
+  the north of France than in the south. In the north-east it is least
+  known, and most in the south-east. For example, all things being
+  equal, for six stammerers in Paris there would be twenty-five in
+  Lyons and seventy in Marseilles. The admitted garrulity or fluency of
+  southern speaking is often the cause or the preface to stammering.
+  Thus, comically concludes M. Claretie, oratorical habits threaten to
+  make stammering become the order of the day, and for one Vergniaud
+  there will be ten stutterers, and ten more stutterers for one General
+  Foy. Nevertheless, in earlier days, Camille Desmoulins stammered, and
+  yet spoke but little at the Convention. It does not appear that
+  Charles Lamb was a garrulous person, and in the familiar experience
+  of daily life we rarely find stutterers to be rapid talkers. Still,
+  this latter fact really helps M. Chervin&#39;s theory, since we may
+  conclude it is precisely because stammerers find that a very rapid
+  utterance <span class="pagenum">[pg 244]</span> increases their
+  defect that they force themselves to speak deliberately, and also not
+  to tire the vocal muscles. Hence, apart from the jesting inference
+  which M. Claretie, in French journalist&#39;s fashion, is bent son
+  twisting out of the scientific statistics, there would appear to be a
+  mutual influence, perfectly comprehensible, of rapidity in utterance
+  and a tendency to stammering. We could not safely go on to generalize
+  that only voluble people become stutterers, or that all stutterers
+  are unusually garrulous and unusually eager in enunciation; but we
+  may conclude that if they are thus careless and rattling in delivery,
+  their peculiarity will be likely to grow more marked, and that
+  accordingly a natural tendency to the same defect is developed by the
+  same habits or necessities of much and rapid talking.</p>
+  <hr />
+
+  <p>Two illustrations of nineteenth-century precocity, rather superior
+  to the generality of anecdotes regarding the wisdom of the rising
+  generation, we find in recent French papers. One of them is
+  originated by the <i>Moulin-à-Parole</i>. Madame de B. was visiting,
+  with her baby, her friend Madame X. After chattering three-quarters
+  of an hour, without giving anybody else a chance to put in a word,
+  Madame X. pauses, when Baby immediately takes up the burden of
+  conversation. Madame X., getting tired at last, says, &quot;Why do
+  you talk so much, mignonne? It isn&#39;t nice for a little girl like
+  you to do so.&quot; &quot;Oh,&quot; replies Baby very graciously,
+  &quot;it is only so that mamma may rest!&quot; A little lad furnishes
+  the other instance of the premature sagacity of modern childhood. A
+  famous merchant has four children, three daughters and a boy named
+  Arthur. Two of the former die successively of consumption, and at the
+  funeral of the second a friend of the family comes to offer his
+  compliments of condolence, and, patting little Arthur&#39;s head,
+  tells the poor lad the house must seem lonely to him now.
+  &quot;Yes,&quot; briskly replies Arthur, whom his father has brought
+  up to accurate ideas, &quot;here we children are reduced <i>fifty per
+  cent</i>.&quot; Worthy to take charge of these children would have
+  been the prudent bonne of whom <i>Charivari</i> speaks. The morning
+  after engaging herself to Madame R. she hastened to that lady with
+  her finger wrapped in a handkerchief, and in an agitated voice asked
+  if the <i>converts</i> were real silver. &quot;Why so,
+  Nannette?&quot; &quot;Because, I just pricked my finger with a fork,
+  and I know that if it is plated copper I ought to take the precaution
+  of having the place bled.&quot; &quot;Don&#39;t be alarmed,&quot;
+  replies the lady, smiling despite herself at the young girl&#39;s
+  innocence, &quot;my plate is all solid.&quot; &quot;Ah,&quot; says
+  the bonne with a sigh of relief, &quot;I am so glad!&quot; The day
+  after, the simple young lady disappeared with all the silver. It is
+  not every bonne that would take such precautions.</p>
+  <hr />
+
+  <p>Paris has always been famous among modern cities for its genius
+  and industry in adding variety to its cuisine, either by the
+  audacious invention of new dishes or the felicitous combination of
+  old ones&#8212;either by discovering new sources of food or new
+  methods of preparing it. It was a curious incident in the late
+  history of the city that what had been a fashionable whim became a
+  hard necessity&#8212;that after Saint-Hilaire and the hippophagists
+  had struggled to introduce horseflesh as regular provender, the siege
+  of Paris made horseflesh a prized rarity. But the zest resulting from
+  the enforced diet of dogs, cats, rats and monkeys in bombardment days
+  appears to have been so great that we now hear of an enterprise
+  worthy to have a Brillat-Savarin to celebrate it&#8212;namely, the
+  formation of a society under the presidency of the naturalist
+  Lespars, designed to bring into vogue as eatable a great class of
+  living creatures whose presence now inspires ordinary persons only
+  with disgust. A naturalist who devotes himself to eating such
+  creatures with a motive so philanthropic deserves our praise, though
+  we may not be able to personally imitate his heroic example. Among
+  the choice dishes mentioned by one paper as selected to figure at the
+  first public banquet of M. Lespars are a plate of white worms, a
+  bushel of grasshoppers, <span class="pagenum">[pg 245]</span> and a
+  broil of magpies seasoned with the slugs that infest certain green
+  berries. One regards this announcement with more or less incredulity;
+  but little doubt seems to hang over the assertion that the dormouse
+  has just been introduced into the list of French game-dishes. The
+  puzzle for the cooks seems to be with regard to the proper sauce for
+  the new delicacy; but this matter does not trouble the little
+  chimney-sweeps, who find the animal so long associated in poetry and
+  in fact chiefly with their own humble career, now rising to the
+  dignity of game, and commanding a price for the table. Piedmont has
+  thus far furnished the larger part of the displays of
+  <i>marmottes</i> in Paris stalls. The chief trouble in making rats,
+  magpies and other delicacies of that sort really popular amongst the
+  poorer classes is that the latter do not possess adroit cooks to
+  disguise the original flavor under aromatic adjuncts, nor yet the
+  money to buy the necessary spices and side-dishes, nor the high grade
+  of champagne wines with which the wealthy and noble patrons of
+  &quot;food reform&quot; commonly wash down unpalatable
+  viands.</p><a name="literature" id="literature">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>LITERATURE OF THE DAY.</h2>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    Rousseau. By John Morley. 2 vols. London: Chapman &amp; Hall.
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>It was in the natural course of things that modern criticism, ever
+  aiming at a wider comprehension, a keener analysis, a greater
+  independence of judgment and expression, should test itself anew on a
+  subject affording so full a scope and so sure a touchstone as the
+  life and writings of Rousseau. The character of Rousseau, with its
+  strange blending of delicate beauty and repulsive infirmity, requires
+  to be handled with the firm but tender and sympathetic touch which
+  the nurse or the physician lays upon a child afflicted with sores.
+  His career, with its alternations of obscurity and conspicuousness,
+  of tumult and torpidity, of wretchedness and rapture, must be
+  followed with an eye keen to detect the springs and alive to the
+  subtle play of circumstance and impulse. His influence, if not more
+  profound, more varied, extensive and direct than that of any thinker
+  and writer since Luther, is to be traced in the whole history of his
+  own and of later times, under manifold aspects and amid momentous
+  changes of spirit and of form. In the case of most men who have
+  helped to mould the ideas and direct the tendencies of an age, it
+  would be difficult to determine what each has contributed to the
+  general result, or to say with certainty that the work performed by
+  one would not, if he had been wanting, have been equally accomplished
+  by others. On the other hand, there are a few
+  master-spirits&#8212;men not of an age but for all time&#8212;whose
+  power has been so deeply infused, so generally and silently absorbed,
+  that it would be vain to inquire how it has operated in detail. We
+  cannot indicate the course or fix the limits of its action: we
+  perceive only that without it our intellectual life must have been
+  dormant or extinct. Rousseau belongs to neither of these classes. His
+  power was not general but specific, not creative but stimulative, not
+  a source of perennial light but the torch of a conflagration; yet it
+  was original and independent, it did not co-operate but clashed with
+  that of his contemporaries, and while it acted upon minds far higher
+  and broader than his own, it received no aid except from disciples
+  and imitators. Of the French Revolution we may say with precision and
+  confidence that it owed primarily its peculiar character&#8212;its
+  austere ideals and wild distortions, its illimitable aspirations and
+  chaotic endeavors&#8212;to the extent to which the nation had become
+  imbued with his spirit and theories. In regard to literature, it is
+  not sufficient to point to a long list of celebrated writers, from
+  Chateaubriand and De Staël to Lamartine and George Sand, whose works
+  have reflected the characteristic <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  246]</span> hues of his sentiment and style; or to adduce particular
+  instances of his influence upon writers of higher and more contrasted
+  genius, such as Goethe and Byron, Schiller and Richter: what is to be
+  noted, as underlying all such examples and illustrations, is the fact
+  that a literature distinguished from that which had immediately
+  preceded it by earnestness, simplicity and depth, by spontaneous and
+  vivid conceptions and freedom from conventional restraints, had its
+  beginning with him, appealing to emotions and ideas which he was the
+  first to call into renewed and general activity. In education, in
+  art, in modifications of religious opinion and of social life, the
+  same force, if less measurable and distinct, is everywhere apparent
+  either as an active participant or a strong original impulse.</p>
+
+  <p>It need hardly be said that, as productions of genius, the
+  writings of Rousseau cannot hold any rank proportionate to the effect
+  which they thus produced. They are not among the treasures that
+  constitute our intellectual capital, the possessions which we could
+  not lose without becoming bankrupt. They are rather among the
+  instruments which, having served their purpose, may be laid aside,
+  however interesting as mementoes or admirable as curiosities. Their
+  highest qualities&#8212;their fervor, simplicity and grace&#8212;do
+  not of themselves disclose the secret of their power. From the point
+  of view of mere literary criticism we are apt to be more observant of
+  their defects than their beauties. By the side of earlier and later
+  models they are seen to be deficient in the very
+  qualities&#8212;force of passion and depth of thought&#8212;by which
+  they startled or enthralled contemporary readers.</p>
+
+  <p>If we turn to the man himself, we might imagine at the first
+  glance that none could have been less fitted for the position of a
+  leader of thought, a founder of systems and schools, the apostle of a
+  new era. The career for which Nature seemed to have destined him, and
+  which, in truth, he may almost be said to have followed, was that of
+  a vagabond, or at the best a recluse. Of all the advantages we desire
+  and anxiously seek for our children, Rousseau enjoyed none. Poverty,
+  degradation and neglect weighed upon him from his birth. The evil in
+  him was unchecked, the good unfostered, by any training hand. The
+  opportunity and the faculty of acquiring any substantial nutriment
+  from books seemed alike denied him. His intercourse with mankind
+  through all his earlier and the greater part of his later life was
+  confined to the ignorant, and with these alone was he ever able to
+  hold any harmonious relations or any grateful interchange of
+  sentiment. Physically, mentally and morally diseased, weak yet stern,
+  sensitive but unpliant, equally devoid of courage and of tact, he
+  could not come in contact with the world without suffering a shock
+  and swift recoil that drove him back to the refuge of
+  solitude&#8212;to the mute companionship of external Nature or the
+  brooding contemplation of himself. Even the ideals which, despite his
+  practical aberrations from them, he yet intensely worshiped, had, in
+  his conception of them, little connection with the activities of
+  life: truth, simplicity, order, purity and peace were ideas that
+  occupied his soul only to fill it with a horror of reality, with
+  yearnings for an idyllic repose, with dreams of a state which he
+  persuaded himself had been the original condition of the race, in
+  which virtue and right must prevail through the mere absence of
+  occasion for wrong or temptation to evil.</p>
+
+  <p>Yet it is not in some radiance breaking through this cloudy
+  environment, it is not in this or that faculty overcoming all
+  obstacles, it is in the entirety of his nature as originally formed,
+  and as moulded or marred by circumstance and fate, that we shall find
+  the secret of that spell which he exercised over men of all classes
+  and characters. The culture which might have sweetened and perhaps
+  ennobled his life would have unfitted him for his mission. It would
+  have brought him more or less into harmony with his age; and it was
+  by his utter and vehement opposition to its habits and opinions that
+  he turned the stream into a different channel. Not only his finer
+  intuitions and purer tastes, but his unsatisfied desires, his errors,
+  his remorse, urged him to make war upon it, as the step-mother that
+  had sought to enervate or brutalize his mind while defrauding him of
+  his inheritance. He held up the image of its corruption, shallowness
+  and false refinement, and that of a life of simple manners and
+  unperverted instincts. That he depicted this as the real life of a
+  primitive epoch only gave greater pungency to the contrast. The
+  eighteenth century, aroused to the consciousness of its own
+  degeneracy, its false and artificial existence, readily accepted an
+  idealized Geneva, an idealized Sparta, as the type of a primitive
+  community, the model on which society was to be refashioned. What the
+  &quot;pure word of God&quot; had been to the Reformers, that
+  &quot;Nature&quot; became to the revolutionists in all departments of
+  thought and action, in poetry and music as in philosophy and
+  politics&#8212;a shibboleth to rally and unite all the elements of
+  discontent and aspirations for change, a universal test by which to
+  try all doctrines and systems. In either case, as was soon
+  discovered, the test would itself admit of diverse interpretations;
+  but in the mean while the solvent had taken effect, the authority of
+  custom and tradition had been overthrown, old organizations had
+  crumbled into dust.</p>
+
+  <p>That the agitation thus evoked should have produced many
+  grotesque, many frightful results, cannot seem strange. Long before
+  the lower strata had been reached the surface was in a state of
+  ebullition. Polite society was delightfully thrilled with a feeling
+  of its own depravity, and found in the novel sensation the zest that
+  had been wanting to its jaded powers of enjoyment. Nor was it
+  awakened from its illusions by the first eruption from below. In a
+  transport of delirium it threw away, as if they had been idle gems,
+  of use only when cast into the public treasury, the privileges and
+  prerogatives that had formed the basis of the monarchy. Thenceforth
+  the only effort was to secure a <i>tabula rasa</i> on which to rear
+  that new and perfect state of which the model was at hand, if only
+  the proper materials could be found and the foundations be laid. Of
+  the men who acquired a temporary mastery, three only, by the massive
+  force of practical genius, were able to free themselves from the
+  fascination of the common ideal. But Mirabeau and Danton were
+  overborne by the full tide, and Napoleon, when he arrested it in its
+  languor, turned it into depths from which it emerged the other day to
+  sweep away his column in the Place Vendôme.</p>
+
+  <p>In thus glancing at the vast proportions of the subject, we have
+  wandered far from the range of Mr. Morley&#39;s work, which has a
+  special purpose with well-defined limits. It is not a complete
+  biography of Rousseau, much less a history of his times. It gives no
+  full or vivid portraiture of character, no adequate narrative of
+  events, no summary even of results. It is an analytical study, an
+  examination of the life and works of <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  247]</span> Rousseau with a view to determine their precise nature
+  and quality, rather than their relative value or bearings. Within
+  these limits it exhibits ample knowledge and skill, combined with a
+  searching but tolerant judgment. Without labored discussion or
+  passionate apology, it clears away entangling prejudices and current
+  misconceptions, to assume a position from which undistorted views may
+  be obtained. At times, indeed, Mr. Morley carries his impartiality to
+  the verge of indifference. His certificate of Grimm&#39;s
+  &quot;integrity&quot; rests on very slender grounds, and the Memoirs
+  of Madame d&#39;épinay are subjected to no such scrutiny as the
+  circumstances of their composition and preservation call for, before
+  their statements can be accepted as authority. But whatever minor
+  defects may be found in the book, the general spirit and execution
+  are admirable. It is full of interest and suggestiveness both for
+  readers to whom the subject may not be unfamiliar, and for those who
+  may hitherto have neglected to explore it. Above all, it is valuable
+  as marking the line to which English criticism has advanced, its
+  capacity for treating complicated and delicate questions with
+  clearness, frankness and entire fairness.</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    Pascarel: Only a Story. By &quot;Ouida,&quot; author of
+    &quot;Tricotrin,&quot; &quot;Folle-Farine,&quot; &quot;Under Two
+    Flags,&quot; etc. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott &amp; Co.
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>The genius of &quot;Ouida&quot; is <i>sui generis</i>, and must in
+  part create the standards by which it is to be judged. Her works are
+  so different from the common type of modern novels that they demand
+  to be looked at from a different point of view. The present standard
+  of excellence in prose fiction seems to be the conformity of
+  character and incident to what is actually seen in life. It is a good
+  test for all mere stories, but is manifestly <i>not</i> the test by
+  which to gauge the recent works of &quot;Ouida.&quot; She does not
+  aim at this pre-Raphaelite delineation of men and things as they are.
+  Her characters are idealizations: her later books are prose-poems,
+  not only in the affluence and rhythm of their style, but in the
+  allegoric form and purpose which, pervade them. This characteristic
+  is plain enough in <i>Tricotrin</i> and <i>Folle-Farine</i>, but
+  finds its most marked expression in <i>Pascarel</i>. &quot;Only an
+  Allegory&quot; would be a more expressive sub-title for the book than
+  &quot;Only a Story,&quot; <span class="pagenum">[pg 248]</span> for
+  the story is the mere thread which sustains and binds together a
+  series of parables and crystallized truths. Most of these, indeed,
+  she has embodied in former works, but nowhere as in <i>Pascarel</i>
+  is the author&#39;s design to teach them made so manifest.</p>
+
+  <p>The book is almost wholly free from that extravagance of
+  expression and recklessness of all established codes of taste which
+  have diverted attention from her purpose, and led to a false estimate
+  of the character and tendency of her writings. It has none of the
+  hindrances, for instance, which prevent many from seeing the
+  magnificence of the conception in <i>Folle-Farine</i>. Its object is
+  to enforce the lesson that the only true greatness is that which
+  loses sight of self&#8212;that Love, and Love alone, is, both in its
+  insight and its purpose, divine. &quot;Love sees as God sees, and
+  with infinite wisdom has infinite pardon.&quot; &quot;Laughter and
+  love are all that are really worth having in the world,&quot; but to
+  gain them &quot;one must seek them first for others, with a wish pure
+  from the greed of self.&quot; &quot;The world owes nothing to so
+  personal a passion as ambition.&quot; &quot;The first fruits of a
+  man&#39;s genius are always pure of greed.&quot; What makes a great
+  artist is the &quot;vital, absolute absorption of personality in his
+  love of art.&quot; The experience of the donzella (which constitutes
+  what there is of the story), a nobler, and, we think, a <i>truer</i>,
+  type of womanhood than Viva, yet with a like over-estimate of the
+  advantages of wealth and position, brings her to the conviction that
+  Pascarel is right. These truths, however, find their most effective
+  illustration in the wealth of Italian tradition and history with
+  which the pages abound. &quot;Here is the secret of Florence, sublime
+  aspiration&#8212;the aspiration which gave her citizens force to live
+  in poverty and clothe themselves in simplicity, so as to give up
+  their millions of florins to bequeath miracles in stone and metal and
+  color to the future.&quot; &quot;In her throes of agony she kept
+  always within her that love of the ideal, impersonal, consecrate,
+  void of greed, which is the purification of the individual life and
+  the regeneration of the body politic.&quot; &quot;Her great men drew
+  their inspiration from the very air they breathed, and the men who
+  knew they were not great had the patience and unselfishness to do
+  their minor work for her zealously and perfectly.&quot; The workmen
+  who chiseled the stones and the boys who ground the colors &quot;did
+  their part mightily and with reverence.&quot; The unrivaled works of
+  art which are the true greatness of Italy owe their existence to the
+  self-forgetfulness of their makers. So the love of Italy is in its
+  essence a love for that which is best and noblest in human
+  nature&#8212;&quot;the consecration of self to an object higher than
+  self.&quot; This love, however, to be true, must be more than
+  perception or sentiment&#8212;it must bear fruit in <i>likeness</i>
+  to that which it admires. &quot;Each gift which men receive imposes a
+  corresponding duty.&quot; &quot;We are Italians,&quot; says Pascarel
+  after recounting the glories of Italian achievement: &quot;great as
+  the heritage is, so great the duty likewise.&quot; As a
+  companion-book of Italian travel, <i>Pascarel</i> has a special
+  value, suffused as it is throughout with the blended charm of
+  picturesque beauty and magical associations that belongs to the
+  country and the people.</p>
+  <hr />
+
+  <h3><a name="books" id="books"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> <i>Books
+  Received</i>.</h3>
+
+  <p>The Great Events of History, from the Creation of Man till the
+  Present Time. By William Francis Collier, LL.D., Trinity College,
+  Dublin. Edited by an experienced American Teacher, New York: J.W.
+  Schermerhorn &amp; Co.</p>
+
+  <p>Words and their Uses, Past and Present: A Study of the English
+  Language. By Richard Grant White. New edition, revised and corrected.
+  New York: Sheldon &amp; Co.</p>
+
+  <p>Manual of Land Surveying, with Tables. By David Murray, A.M.,
+  Ph.D., Professor of Mathematics in Rutgers College. New York: J.W.
+  Schermerhorn &amp; Co.</p>
+
+  <p>The Greatest Plague of Life; or, The Adventures of a Lady in
+  Search of a Good Servant. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson &amp;
+  Brothers.</p>
+
+  <p>Snatches of Song. By Jeanie Morison (Mrs. Campbell of Ballochyle).
+  London: Longmans, Green &amp; Co.</p>
+
+  <p>The Life and Times of Philip Schuyler. By Benson J. Lossing, LL.D.
+  New York: Sheldon &amp; Co.</p>
+
+  <p>Lewis Arundel: A Novel. By Frank E. Smedley. Philadelphia: T.B.
+  Peterson &amp; Brothers.</p>
+
+  <p>Our Forest Home. By the author of &quot;Robert Joy&#39;s
+  Victory.&quot; Illustrated. Boston: Henry Hoyt.</p>
+
+  <p>Philip Earnscliffe: A Novel. By Mrs. Annie Edwards. New York:
+  Sheldon &amp; Co.</p>
+
+  <p>Heart&#39;s Delight. By Mrs. Caroline E.K. Davis. Illustrated.
+  Boston: Henry Hoyt. Henry Hoyt.</p>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13828 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #13828 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13828)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature
+and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873., by Various
+
+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: Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873.
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: October 22, 2004 [EBook #13828]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Patricia Bennett and the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE
+
+OF
+
+_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE_.
+
+Vol XII, No. 29.
+
+AUGUST, 1873.
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS
+  THE NEW HYPERION [Illustrated] By EDWARD STRAHAN.
+    II.--The Two Chickens.
+  OUR HOME IN THE TYROL [Illustrated] By MARGARET HOWITT.
+    CHAPTER VII.
+    CHAPTER VIII.
+  ON THE CHURCH STEPS By SARAH C. HALLOWELL.
+    CHAPTER I.
+    CHAPTER II.
+    CHAPTER III.
+    CHAPTER IV.
+    CHAPTER V.
+  INSIDE JAPAN By W.E. GRIFFIS.
+  JASON'S QUEST By CHARLES WARREN STODDARD.
+    I.
+    II.
+    III.
+    IV.
+  FOREBODINGS.
+  DEER-PARKS By REGINALD WYNFORD.
+  RAMBLES AMONG THE FRUITS AND FLOWERS OF THE TROPICS By FANNIE R. FEUDGE.
+  TWO PAPERS.--I.
+  A PRINCESS OF THULE By WILLIAM BLACK.
+    CHAPTER XII.--Transformation.
+    CHAPTER XIII.--By The Waters Of Babylon.
+  GOLD By ITA ANIOL PROKOP.
+  GLIMPSES OF GHOST-LAND By LUCY H. HOOPER.
+  AFTERNOON</a> By EMMA LAZARUS.
+  OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
+    Washington's Birthplace In 1873 By R.B.E.
+    Vicissitudes In High Life.
+    A Glass Of Old Madeira.
+    At A Matin�e: A Monologue. By C.A.D.
+  NOTES.
+  LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
+    Books Received.
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+  THE FLOWERS OF WAR.
+  THE INVADERS OF ROMIAINVILLE.
+  STORY OF AN OLD MAN AND AN ELDER.
+  MERCHANDISE IN THE TEMPLE.
+  FATHER JOLIET.
+  THE TWO CHICKENS.
+  LOVE LEFT ALONE.
+  "FOND OF CHICKEN."
+  THE WIFE.
+  THE LONE CRUSADE.
+  TENDER CHARITY.
+  NECESSITY KNOWING LAW.
+  THE FERRY.
+  JOVE'S THUNDER.
+  SCHOOL.
+  ON WITH THE DANCE!
+  ENDYMION.
+  HOW THE MODERN DOG TREATS LAZARUS.
+  THE LAUGHING LACKEY.
+  THE PRESENT.
+  THE CONVALESCENT.
+  THE DIVIDED BURDEN.
+  SHARE MY CUP.
+  BREAKING STONES.
+  SICKNESS AND COURTSHIP.
+  THE WAGON.
+  DINNER-TIME!
+  FIDELITY.
+  A LITTLE VISITOR.
+  FRANCINE.
+  "DON'T WRING MY HEART!"
+  VIEW OF TAUFERS VALLEY.
+  SCHLOSS TAUFERS.
+  HAPPY SOULS IN PARADISE.
+  CROSSING THE TORRENT.
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW HYPERION.
+
+FROM PARIS TO MARLY BY WAY OF THE RHINE.
+
+II.--THE TWO CHICKENS.
+
+
+[Illustration: THE FLOWERS OF WAR.]
+
+"Thou art no less a man because thou wearest no hauberk nor mail sark,
+and goest not on horseback after foolish adventures."
+
+So I said, reassuring myself, thirty years ago, when, as Paul Flemming
+the Blond, I was meditating the courageous change of cutting off my
+soap-locks, burning my edition of Bulwer and giving my satin stocks to
+my shoemaker: I mean, when I was growing up--or, in the more beauteous
+language of that day, when Flemming was passing into the age of
+bronze, and the flowers of Paradise were turning to a sword in his
+hands.
+
+Well, I say it again, and I say it with boldness, you can wear a tin
+botany-box as bravely as a hauberk, and foolish adventures can be
+pursued equally well on foot.
+
+Stout, grizzled and short winded, I am just as nimble as ever in the
+pretty exercise of running down an illusion. Yet I must confess, as I
+passed the abattoirs of La Villette, whence blue-smocked butcher-boys
+were hauling loads of dirty sheepskins, I could not but compare myself
+to the honest man mentioned in one of Sardou's comedies: "The good
+soul escaped out of a novel of Paul de Kock's, lost in the throng
+on the Boulevard Malesherbes, and asking the way to the woods of
+Romainville."
+
+[Illustration: THE INVADERS OF ROMIAINVILLE.]
+
+Romainville! And hereabouts its tufts of chestnuts should be, or were
+wont to be of old. I am in the grimy quarter of Belleville. Scene of
+factories, of steam-works and tall bleak mansions as it is to-day,
+Belleville was once a jolly country village, separated on its hilltop
+from Paris, which basked at its feet like a city millionaire sprawling
+before the check apron and leather shoes of a rustic beauty. Inhabited
+by its little circle of a few thousand souls, it looked around itself
+on its eminence, seeing the vast diorama of the city on one side,
+and on the other the Pr�s-Saint-Gervais, and the woods of Romainville
+waving off to the horizon their diminishing crests of green. A jolly
+old tavern, the Ile d'Amour, hung out its colored lamps among the
+trees, and the orchestra sounded, and the feet of gay young lovers,
+who now are skeletons, beat the floor. The street was a bower of
+lilacs, and opposite the Ile d'Amour was the village church.
+
+Then the workmen of the Paris suburbs were invaders: they besieged the
+village on Sundays in daring swarms, to be beaten back successfully by
+the duties of every successive Monday. Now they are fixed there. They
+are the colorless inhabitants of these many-storied houses. The town's
+long holiday is over. Where the odorous avenues of lilacs stretched
+along, affording bouquets for maman and the children and toothpicks
+for ferocious young warriors from the garrisons, are odious lengths
+of wall. Everything is changed, and from the gardens the grisettes of
+Alfred de Musset are with sighing sent. Their haunts are laboratories
+now, and the Ile d'Amour is a mayor's office.
+
+I, to whom the beer-scandals of the Rhine and the students' holidays
+of the Seine were among the Childe-Harold enormities of a not
+over-sinful youth, was sadly disappointed. Thinking of the groves of
+an Eden, I ran against the furnaces of a Pandemonium. For a stroll
+back toward my adolescence, Belleville was a bad beginning. I
+determined to console myself with the green meadows of Saint-Gervais
+and the pretty woods of Romainville. Attaining the latter was half
+an hour's affair among long walls and melancholy houses: at
+Saint-Gervais, a double file of walls and houses--at Romainville,
+houses and walls again. In the latter, where formerly there were
+scarcely three watches distributed amongst the whole village, I was
+incensed to find the shop of a clockmaker: it was somewhat consoling,
+though, to find it a clockmaker's of the most pronounced suburban
+kind, with pairs of wooden shoes amongst the guard-chains in the
+window, and pots of golden mustard ranged alternately with the
+antiquated silver turnips.
+
+Before the church I found yet standing a knotty little elder tree, a
+bewitched-looking vegetable. A beadle in a blouse, engaged in washing
+one of the large altar-candles with soap and water at the public pump,
+gave me the following history of the elder tree. I am passionately
+fond of legends, and this is one quite hot and fresh, only a hundred
+years old. Hear the tale of the elder of Romainville.
+
+The excellent cur� of Romainville in the last century was a man of
+such a charitable nature that his all was in the hands of the
+poor. The grocer of the village, a potentate of terrific powers and
+inexorable temper, finally refused to trust him with the supply of
+oil necessary for the lamp in the sanctuary. Soon the sacred flame
+sputtered, palpitated, flapped miserably over the crusted wick: the
+cur�, responsible before Heaven for the life of his lamp, tottered
+away from the altar with groans of anguish. Arrived in the garden, he
+threw himself on his knees, crying _Me� culp�_, and beating his bosom.
+The garden contained only medicinal plants, shaded by a linden and an
+elder: completely desperate, the unhappy priest fixed his moist eyes
+on the latter, when lo! the bark opened, the trunk parted, and a jet
+of clear aromatic liquid spouted forth, quite different from any sap
+yielded by elder before. It was oil. A miracle!
+
+The report spread. The grocer came and humbly visited the priest in
+his garden, his haughty hat, crammed with bills enough to have spread
+agony through all the cottages of Romainville, humbly carried between
+his legs. He came proposing a little speculation. In exchange for a
+single spigot to be inserted in the tree, and the hydraulic rights
+going with the same, he offered all the bounties dearest to the
+priestly heart--unlimited milk and honey, livers of fat geese and pies
+lined with rabbit. The priest, though hungry--hungry with the demoniac
+hunger of a fat and paunchy man--turned his back on the tempter.
+
+[Illustration: STORY OF AN OLD MAN AND AN ELDER.]
+
+One day a salad, the abstemious relish yielded by his garden herbs,
+was set on the table by Jeanneton. At the first mouthful the good cur�
+made a terrible face--the salad tasted of lamp-oil. The unhappy girl
+had filled a cruet with the sacred fluid. From that day the bark
+closed and the flow ceased.
+
+There is one of the best oil-stories you ever heard, and one of the
+most recent of attested miracles. For my part, I am half sorry it is
+so well attested, and that I have the authority of that beadle in the
+blouse, who took my little two-franc piece with an expression of much
+intelligence. I love the Legend.
+
+[Illustration: MERCHANDISE IN THE TEMPLE.]
+
+The environs of Paris are but chary of Legend. I treasure this
+specimen, then, as if it had been a rare flower for my botany-box.
+
+But the botany-box indeed, how heavy it was growing! The umbrella, how
+awkward! The sun, how vigorous and ardent! Who ever supposed it could
+become so hot by half-past eight in the morning?
+
+[Illustration: FATHER JOLIET.]
+
+Certainly the ruthless box, which seemed to have taken root on my
+back, was heavier than it used to be. Had its rotundity developed,
+like its master's? I stopped and gathered a flower, meaning to analyze
+it at my next resting-place. I opened my box: then indeed I perceived
+the secret of its weightiness. It revealed three small rolls of
+oatmeal toasted, a little roast chicken, a bit of ham, some mustard
+in a cleaned-out inkstand! This now was the treachery of Josephine.
+Josephine, who never had the least sympathy for my botanical
+researches, and who had small comprehension of the nobler hungers and
+thirsts of the scientific soul, had taken it on her to convert my box
+into a portable meat-safe!
+
+Bless the old meddler, how I thanked her for her treason! The aspect
+of the chicken, in its blistered and varnished brown skin, reminded
+me that I was clamorously hungry. Shade of Apicius! is it lawful for
+civilized mortals to be so hungry as I was at eight or nine in the
+morning?
+
+At last I saw the end of that dusty, featureless street which
+stretches from the barrier to the extremity of Romainville. I saw
+spreading before me a broad plain, a kind of desert, where, by
+carefully keeping my eyes straight ahead, I could avoid the sight of
+all houses, walls, human constructions whatever.
+
+My favorite traveler, the celebrated Le Vaillant, to whom I am
+indebted for so many facts and data toward my great theory of
+Comparative Geography, says that in first reaching the solitudes of
+Caffraria he felt himself elated with an unknown joy. No traced road
+was before him to dictate his pathway--no city shaded him with its
+towers: his fortune depended on his own unaided instincts.
+
+I felt the same delight, the same liberty. Something like the heavy
+strap of a slave seemed to break behind me as I found myself quite
+clear of the metropolis. Mad schemes of unanticipated journeys danced
+through my head; I might amble on to Villemonble, Montfermeil, Raincy,
+or even to the Forest of Bondy, so dear to the experimental botanist.
+Had I not two days before me ere my compact with Hohenfels at Marly?
+And in two days you can go from Paris to Florence. Meantime, from the
+effects of famine, my ribs were sinking down upon the pelvic basin of
+my frame.
+
+The walk, the open air, the sight of the fowl, whose beak now burned
+into my bosom's core, had sharpened my appetite beyond bearing. Yet
+how could I eat without some drop of cider or soft white wine to
+drink? Besides, slave of convention that I have grown, I no longer
+understand the business of eating without its concomitants--a shelter
+and something to sit on.
+
+The plain became wearisome. There are two things the American-born,
+however long a resident abroad, never forgives the lack of in
+Europe. The first I miss when I am in Paris: it is the perpetual
+street-mending of an American town. Here the boulevards, smeared with
+asphaltum or bedded with crunched macadam, attain smoothness without
+life: you travel on scum. But in the dear old American streets the
+epidermis is vital: what strength and mutual reliance in the cobbles
+as they stand together in serried ranks, like so many eye-teeth! How
+they are perpetually sinking into prodigious ruts, along which the
+ponderous drays are forced to dance on one wheel in a paroxysm
+of agony and critical equipoise! But the perpetual state of
+street-mending, that is the crowning interest. What would I not
+sometimes give to exchange the Swiss sweeping-girls, plying their long
+brooms desolately in the mud, for the paviors' hammers of America,
+which play upon the pebbles like a carillon of muffled bells? As
+for the other lack, it is the want of wooden bridges. Far away in my
+native meadows gleams the silver Charles: the tramp of horses' hoofs
+comes to my ear from the timbers of the bridge. _Here_, with a pelt
+and a scramble your bridge is crossed: nothing addresses the heart
+from its stony causeway. But the low, arched tubes of wood that span
+the streams of my native land are so many bass-viols, sending out
+mellow thunders with every passing wagon to blend with the rustling
+stream and the sighing woods. Shall I never hear them again?
+
+A reminiscence more than ten years old came to give precision to my
+ramblings in the past. Beyond the rustic pathway I was now following I
+could perceive the hills of Trou-Vassou. Hereabouts, if memory served
+me, I might find a welcome, almost a home, and the clasp of cordial if
+humble hands. Here I might find folks who would laugh when I arrived,
+and would be glad to share their luncheon with me But--ten years gone
+by!
+
+[Illustration: THE TWO CHICKENS.]
+
+This computation chilled my hopes. What family remains ten years in a
+spot--above all, a spot on that fluctuating periphery of Paris, where
+the mighty capital, year after year, bursts belt after belt? Where
+might they have gone? Francine!--Francine must be twenty-two. Married,
+of course. Her husband, no doubt, has dragged her off to some
+other department. Her parents have followed. March, volunteer, and
+disentangle yourself from these profitless speculations!
+
+Ten minutes farther on, in the shade of the fort at Noisy-le-Sec,
+I saw a red gable and the sign of a tavern. As a tourist I have a
+passion for a cabaret: in practice, I find V�fours to unite perhaps a
+greater number of advantages.
+
+[Illustration: LOVE LEFT ALONE.]
+
+Some soldiers of the Fortieth were drinking and laughing in a corner.
+I took a table not far off, and drew my cold victuals out of my box of
+japanned tin, which they doubtless took for a new form of canteen. The
+red-fisted gar�on, without waiting for orders, set up before me, like
+ten-pins, a castor in wood with two enormous bottles, and a litre of
+that rinsing of the vats which, under the name "wine of the country,"
+is so distressingly similar in every neighborhood. Resigned to
+anything, I was about drawing out my slice of ham, the chicken seeming
+to me just there somewhat too proud a bird and out of harmony with the
+local color, when my glance met two gray eyes regarding my own in the
+highest state of expansion. The lashes, the brows, the hair and the
+necklace of short beard were all very thick and quite gray. The face
+they garnished was that of the tavern-keeper.
+
+[Illustration: "FOND OF CHICKEN."]
+
+"Why, it is you, after all, Father Joliet!" I said, after a rapid
+inspection of his figure.
+
+[Illustration: THE WIFE.]
+
+"Ah, it is Monsieur Flemming, the Am�ricain-flamand!" cried the host,
+striking one hand into the other at the imminent risk of breaking his
+pipe. In a trice he trundled off my bottle of rinsings, and replaced
+it by one of claret with an orange seal, set another glass, and posted
+himself in front of me.
+
+I asked the waiter for two plates, and with a slight blush evoked the
+chicken from my box. The soldiers of the Fortieth opened a battery of
+staring and hungry eyes.
+
+"And how came you here?" asked I of Joliet.
+
+"It is I who am at the head of the hotel," he replied, proudly
+pointing out the dimensions of the place by spreading his hands.
+"My old establishment has sunk into the fosses of the fort: it was a
+transaction between the government and myself."
+
+"And was the transaction a good one for you?"
+
+"Not so bad, not so bad," said he, winking his honest gray eyes with
+a world of simple cunning. "It cannot be so very bad, since I owe
+nothing on the hotel, and the cellar is full, and I am selling
+wholesale and retail."
+
+The vanity which a minute since had expanded his hands now got into
+his legs, and set them upright under his body. He stood upon them,
+his eyes proudly lowered upon the seal of the claret. A pang of envy
+actually crossed my mind. I, simple _rentier_, with my two little
+establishments pressing more closely upon my resources with every
+year's increase of house-rates, how could I look at this glorious
+small freeholder without comparisons?
+
+"So, then, Father Joliet," said I, "you are rich?"
+
+"At least I depend no longer on my horse, and that thanks to you and
+the government."
+
+"To me! What do you mean?"
+
+"Why, have you forgotten the two chickens?"
+
+[Illustration: THE LONE CRUSADE.]
+
+At the allusion to the chickens we caught each other's eye, and
+laughed like a pair of augurs. But the mysterious fowls shall be
+explained to the reader.
+
+[Illustration: TENDER CHARITY.]
+
+[Illustration: NECESSITY KNOWING LAW.]
+
+I need not explain that I have cast my lot with the Colonial Americans
+of Paris, and taken their color. It is a sweet and luxurious mode of
+life. The cooks send round our dinners quite hot, or we have faultless
+servants, recommended from one colonist to another: these capital
+creatures sometimes become so thoroughly translated into American
+that I have known them shift around from flat to flat in colonized
+households of the second and third stories without ever touching
+French soil for the best part of a lifetime. At our receptions,
+dancing-teas and so on we pass our time in not giving offence.
+Federals and Confederates, rich cotton-spinners from Rhode Island and
+farmers from thousand-acre granges in the West, are obliged to mingle
+and please each other. Naturally, we can have no more political
+opinions than a looking-glass. We entertain just such views as
+_Galignani_ gives us every morning, harmonized with paste from a dozen
+newspapers. Our grand national effort, I may say, the common
+principle that binds us together as a Colony, is to forget that we
+are Americans. We accordingly give our whole intellects to the task of
+appearing like Europeans: our women succeed in this particularly well.
+Miss Yuba Sequoia Smith, whose father made a fortune in water-rights,
+is now afraid to walk a single block without the attendance of a
+chambermaid in a white cap, though she came up from California quite
+alone by the old Panama route. Everybody agrees that our ladies dress
+well. Shall I soon forget how proud Mrs. Aquila Jones was when
+a gentleman of the emperor's body-guard took her for Marguerite
+Bellanger in the Bois? Our men, not having the culture of costume to
+attend to, are perhaps a little in want of a stand-point. Still,
+we can play billiards in the Grand H�tel and buy fans at the
+Palais Royal. We go out to Saint-Cloud on horseback, we meet at the
+minister's; and I contend that there was something conciliatory and
+national in a Southern colonel offering to take Bigelow to see
+Menken at the Ga�t�, or when I saw some West Pointers and a nephew of
+Beauregard's lighting the pipe of peace at a handsome tobacconist's
+in the Rue Saint-Honor�. The consciousness that we have no longer a
+nationality, and that nobody respects us, adds a singular calm, an
+elevation, to our views. Composed as our cherished little society is
+of crumbs from every table under heaven, we have succeeded in forming
+a way of life where the crusty fortitude and integrity of patriotism
+is unnecessary. Our circle is like the green palace of the magpies in
+Musset's _Merle Blanc_, and like them we live "de plaisir, d'honneur,
+de bavardage, de gloire et de chiffons."
+
+[Illustration: THE FERRY.]
+
+[Illustration: JOVE'S THUNDER.]
+
+I confess that there was a period, between the fresh alacrity of a
+stranger's reception in the Colony and the settled habits I have
+now fallen into, when I was rather uneasy. A society of migrators, a
+system woven upon shooting particles, like a rainbow on the rain,
+was odd. Residents of some permanency, like myself, were constantly
+forming eternal friendships with people who wrote to them in a month
+or two from Egypt. In this way a quantity of my friendships were
+miserably lacerated, until I learned by practice just how much
+friendship to give. At this period I was much occupied with vain
+conciliations, concessions and the reconciling of inconsistencies. A
+brave American from the South, an ardent disciple of Calhoun, was a
+powerful advocate of State Rights, and advocated them so well that
+I was almost convinced; when it appeared one day that the right of
+States to individual action was to cease in cases where a living
+chattel was to escape from the South to the North.
+
+[Illustration: SCHOOL.]
+
+In this case the State, in violation of its own
+laws unrecognizant of that kind of ownership, was to account for the
+property and give it back, in obedience to general Congressional order
+and to the most advanced principles of Centralization. Before I
+had digested this pill another was administered to me in that
+small English section of our circle which gave us much pride and an
+occasional son-in-law. This was by no less a person than my dear old
+friend Berkley, now grown a ruddy sexagenarian, but still given to
+eating breakfast in his bath-tub. The wealthy Englishman, who had
+got rich by exporting china ware, was sound on the subject of free
+commerce between nations. That any industry, no matter how young might
+be the nation practicing it, or how peculiar the difficulties of its
+prosecution, should ever be the subject of home protection, he stamped
+as a fallacy too absurd to be argued. The journals venturing such
+an opinion were childish drivelers, putting forth views long since
+exploded before the whole world. He was still loud in this opinion
+when his little book of epigrams, _The Raven of Zurich and Other
+Rhymes_, came out, and being bright and saucy was reprinted in
+America. The knowledge that he could not tax on a foreign soil his own
+ideas, the plastic pottery of his brain, was quite too much for
+his mental balance, and he took to inveighing against free trade
+in literary manufactures without the slightest perception of
+inconsistency, and with all the warmth, if not the eloquence, of Mr.
+Dickens on the same theme. The gradual accumulation of subjects like
+these--subjects _taboo_ in gentle society--soon made it apparent that
+in a Colony of such diverse colors, where every man had a sore spot
+or a grievance, and even the Cinderellas had corns in their little
+slippers, harmony could only be obtained by keeping to general
+considerations of honor, nobility, glory, and the politics of
+Beloochistan; on which points we all could agree, and where Mr.
+Berkley's witty eloquence was a wonder.
+
+[Illustration: ON WITH THE DANCE!]
+
+It is to my uneasy period, when I was sick with private griefs and
+giddy with striving to reconcile incompatibilities, that the episode
+of the Chickens belongs. I was looking dissatisfied out of one of
+my windows. Hohenfels, disappointed of a promenade by an afternoon
+shower, was looking dissatisfied out of the other. Two or three
+people, waiting for four o'clock lunch, were lounging about. I had
+just remarked, I believe, that I was a melancholy man, for ever
+drinking "the sweet wormwood of my sorrows." A dark phantom, like that
+of Adamastor, stood up between me and the stars.
+
+"Nonsense, you ingrate!" responded the baron from his niche, "you are
+only too happy. You are now in the precise position to define my
+old conception of the Lucky Dog. The Lucky Dog, you know, in my
+vocabulary, is he who, free from all domestic cares, saunters up and
+down his room in gown and slippers, drums on the window of a rainy
+afternoon, and, as he stirs his evening fire, snaps his fingers at the
+world, saying, 'I have no wife nor children, good or bad, to provide
+for.'"
+
+[Illustration: ENDYMION.]
+
+I replied that I did not willingly give way to grief, but that the
+main-spring of my life was broken.
+
+"Did you ever try," spoke up a buxom lady from a sofa--it was the
+Frau Kranich, widow of the Frankfort banker, the same who used to give
+balls while her husband was drugged to sleep with opium, and now for
+a long time in Paris for some interminable settlement with Nathan
+Rothschild--"Did you ever try the tonic of a good action? _I_ never
+did, but they actually say it rejuvenates one considerably."
+
+I avowed that I had more faith in the study of Geography.
+Nevertheless, to oblige her, I would follow any suggestion.
+
+[Illustration: HOW THE MODERN DOG TREATS LAZARUS.]
+
+"Benefit the next person who applies to you."
+
+"Madame, I will obey."
+
+At this moment a wagon of singular appearance drew up before my
+windows. I knew it well enough: it was the vehicle of a handy,
+convenient man who came along every other morning to pick up odd jobs
+from me and my neighbors. He could tinker, carpenter, mend harness:
+his wife, seated in the wagon by his side, was good at a button, or
+could descend and help Josephine with her ironing. A visit at this
+hour, however, was unprecedented.
+
+As Charles was beginning a conversation under the hood of the wagon, I
+opened the window. "Come into the room," I said.
+
+Hohenfels maliciously opened his. "Come in," he added "Monsieur
+Flemming is especially anxious to do you a benefit."
+
+The man, uncovering, was now standing in the little garden before
+the house--a man with a face at once intelligent and candid, which is
+unfortunately rare among the poor rascals of his grade. Although still
+young, he was growing gray: his blouse, patched and re-sewed at all
+the seams, was clean and whole. Poverty had tested him, but had as yet
+picked no flaws in him. By this time my windows were alive with faces.
+
+The man, humble but not awkward, made two or three respectful bows.
+"Monsieur," he said to me, "I hope you are fond of chickens. I am
+desirous to sell you a fine pair."
+
+[Illustration: THE LAUGHING LACKEY.]
+
+Chickens for me! and what was it supposed I should do with them?
+At this point the voice of the Frau Kranich was heard, clear and
+malicious: "It is a bargain: bring them in."
+
+At the same time the canvas cover of the wagon puffed outward, giving
+issue to a heavy sigh.
+
+The man went to a sort of great cage in lattice-work occupying the
+back of the vehicle. Then he backed his wagon up to the sidewalk, and
+we saw, sitting on the cage and framed by the oval of the wagon-cover,
+a young woman of excellent features, but sadly pale. She now held the
+two chickens in her lap, caressing them, laying their heads against
+her cheek, and enwreathing them in the folds of her great shawl. I
+could only close the bargain with the utmost speed, to be safe from
+ridicule.
+
+"Your price?" I asked.
+
+"Fix it yourself, sir," said the man, determined to confuse me. "You
+are doubtless thoroughly acquainted with poultry."
+
+"The nankeen--colored one," spoke up again the bell-like and
+inexorable voice from the other window, "is a yellow Cr�vecoeur,
+very well formed and lively-looking: the slate-colored one is a
+Cochin-China, with only a few of the white feathers lacking from
+the head. They are chef-d'oeuvres, and are worth fully forty francs
+apiece."
+
+"Only look, sir, at their claws and bills, see their tongues, and
+observe under their wings: they are young, wholesome and of fine
+strain--"
+
+He was running on when I stopped him: "Here are a hundred francs for
+you, brave man."
+
+The patchwork blouse cut a caper, a look of lively joy shot from
+the man's eyes, where a tear was gathering, and the wagon, from its
+bursting cover, gave utterance to a sob.
+
+"Why sell them," I asked, touched in spite of myself, "if you are so
+attached to them? Is the money indispensable to you? I might possibly
+make an advance."
+
+"Ah, you are a real Christian--you are now," said the honest Joliet,
+polishing his eyeball with his coat-cuff. "The good woman holds by
+them, it is true. Holy Virgin! it's she that has raised them, and I
+may say brooded over them in the coop. The eggs were for our salad
+when we had nothing better than nettles and sorrel. But, day in and
+night in, we have no other lodging than our wagon, and the wife is
+promising to give me a dolly; and if we don't take out the cage, where
+will the cradle go, sir?"
+
+[Illustration: THE PRESENT.]
+
+The calculation appeared reasonable. I received the birds, and they
+were the heroes, in their boudoir under the piano, of that night's
+conversazione.
+
+[Illustration: THE CONVALESCENT.]
+
+[Illustration: THE DIVIDED BURDEN.]
+
+How hard it is for a life cast upon the crowded shores of the Old
+World to regain the place once lost is shown by the history of my
+honest friend Joliet. Born in 1812, of an excellent family living
+twenty miles from Versailles, the little fellow lost his mother before
+he could talk to her. When he was ten years old, his father, who had
+failed after some land speculations, and had turned all he had into
+money, tossed him up to the lintel of the doorway, kissed him, put a
+twenty-franc gold-piece into his little pocket, and went away to
+seek his fortune in Louisiana: the son never heard of him more. The
+lady-president of a charitable society, Mademoiselle Marx, took pity
+on the abandoned child: she fed him on bones and occasionally beat
+him. She was an ingenious and inventive creature, and made her own
+cat-o'-nine-tails: an inventor is for ever demonstrating the merits
+of his implement. Soon, discovering that he was thankless and
+unteachable, she made him enter, as youngest clerk, the law-office
+of her admirer and attorney, Constabule. This gentleman, not finding
+enough engrossing work to keep the lad out of mischief, allowed him to
+sweep his rooms and blacken his boots. Little Joliet, after giving a
+volatile air to a great many of his employer's briefs by making paper
+chickens of them, showed his imperfect sense of the favors done him
+by absconding. In fact, proud and independent, he was brooding over
+boyish schemes of an honorable living and a hasty fortune. He soon
+found that every profession required an apprenticeship, and that an
+apprenticeship could only be bought for money. He was obliged, then,
+to seek his grand fortune through somewhat obscure avenues. If I
+were to follow my poor Joliet through all his transmigrations and
+metempsychoses, as I have learned them by his hints, allusions and
+confessions, I should show him by turns working a rope ferry, where
+the stupid and indolent cattle, whose business it is to draw men, were
+drawn by him; then letter-carrier; supernumerary and call-boy in a
+village theatre; road-mender on a vicinal route; then a beadle,
+a bell-ringer, and a sub-teacher in an infant school, where he
+distributed his own ignorance impartially amongst his little patrons
+at the end of a stick; after this, big drum in the New Year's
+festivals, and ready at a moment's opportunity to throw down the
+drumstick and plunge among the dancers, for Joliet was a well-hinged
+lad, and the blood of nineteen years was tingling in his heels. After
+fluttering thus from branch to branch, like the poor birdling that
+cannot take its flight, discouraged by his wretched attempts at life,
+he plunged straight before him, hoping for nothing but a turn of luck,
+driving over the roads and fields, lending a hand to the farmers,
+sleeping in stables and garrets, or oftener in the open air;
+sometimes charitably sheltered in a kind man's barn, and perhaps--oh
+bliss!--honestly employed with him for a week or two; at others rudely
+repulsed as a good-for-nothing and vagabond. Vagabond! That truly was
+his profession now. He forgot the charms of a fixed abode. He came
+to like his gypsy freedom, the open air and complete independence. He
+laughed at his misery, provided it shifted its place occasionally.
+
+[Illustration: SHARE MY CUP.]
+
+[Illustration: BREAKING STONES.]
+
+One day, when Hazard, his ungenerous guardian, seemed to have
+quite forgotten him, he walked--on an empty stomach, as the doctors
+say--past the lofty walls of a ch�teau. A card was placed at the gate
+calling for additional hands at a job of digging. Each workman, it
+was promised, had a right to a plate of soup before beginning. This
+article tempted him. At the gate a lackey, laughing in his face,
+told him the notice had been posted there six months: workmen were no
+longer wanted. "Wait, though," said the servant, and in another minute
+gave the applicant a horse!--a real, live horse in blood and bones,
+but in bones especially. "There," said the domestic, "set a beggar
+on horseback and see him ride to the devil!" And, laughing with that
+unalloyed enjoyment which one's own wit alone produces, he retired
+behind his wicket.
+
+[Illustration: SICKNESS AND COURTSHIP.]
+
+The horse thus vicariously fulfilling the functions of a plate of soup
+was a wretched glandered beast--not old, but shunned on account of the
+contagious nature of his disease. Having received the order to take
+him to be killed at the abattoir, monsieur the valet, having better
+things to do, gave the commission to Joliet, with all its perquisites.
+
+Joliet did not kill the steed: he cured it. He tended it, he drenched
+it, he saved it. By what remedy? I cannot tell. I have never been a
+farrier, though Joliet himself made me perforce a poulterer. Many a
+bit of knowledge is picked up by those who travel the great roads. The
+sharp Bohemian, by playing at all trades, brushing against gentry of
+all sorts and scouring all neighborhoods, becomes at length a living
+cyclopaedia.
+
+[Illustration: THE WAGON.]
+
+Joliet, like Democritus and Plato, saw everything with his own eyes,
+learned everything at first hand. He was a keen observer, and in our
+interviews subsequent to the affair of the chickens I was more than
+once surprised by the extent of his information and the subtlety of
+his insight. His wits were tacked on to a number of remote supports.
+In our day, when each science has become so complicated, so obese,
+that a man's lifetime may be spent in exercising round one of them,
+there are hardly any generalizers or observers fit to estimate their
+relativity, except among the two classes called by the world idlers
+and ignorants--the poets and the Bohemians.
+
+Joliet, now having joined the ranks of the cavalry, found his account
+in his new dignity. He became an orderly, a messenger. He carried
+parcels, he transported straw and hay. If the burden was too heavy for
+the poor convalescent, the man took his own portion with a good grace,
+and the two mutually aided each other on the errand. Thanks to his
+horse, the void left by his failure to learn a trade was filled up by
+a daily and regular task: what was better, an affection had crept into
+his heart. He loved his charge, and his charge loved him.
+
+This great hotel, the world, seemed to be promising entertainment then
+for both man and beast, when an epoch of disaster came along--a season
+of cholera. In the villages where Joliet's business lay the doors just
+beginning to be hospitable were promptly shut against him. Where the
+good townsmen had recognized Assistance in his person, they now saw
+Contagion.
+
+[Illustration: DINNER-TIME!]
+
+If he had been a single man, he could have lain back and waited for
+better times. But he now had two mouths to feed. He kissed his horse
+and took a resolution.
+
+He had never been a mendicant. "Beggars don't go as hungry as I have
+gone," said he. "But what will you have? Nobility obliges. My father
+was a gentleman. I have broken stones, but never the _devoirs_ of my
+order."
+
+He left the groups of villages among which his new industry had lain.
+The cholera was behind him: trouble, beggary perhaps, was before him.
+As night was coming on, Joliet, listlessly leading his horse, which he
+was too considerate to ride, saw upon the road a woman whom he took
+in the obscurity for a farmer's wife of the better class or a decent
+villager. For an introduction the opportunity was favorable enough.
+On her side, the _quasi_ farmer's wife, seeing in the dusk an honest
+fellow dragging a horse, took him for a "gentleman's gentleman" at
+the least, and the two accosted each other with that easy facility of
+which the French people have the secret. Each presented the other with
+a hand and a frank smile.
+
+[Illustration: FIDELITY.]
+
+Joliet, whom I have erred perhaps in comparing to Democritus, was
+nevertheless a laugher and a philosopher. But his grand ha-ha! usually
+infectious, was not shared on this occasion. The wanderer could not
+show much merriment. A sewing-woman with a capacity for embroidery,
+her needle had given her support, but now a sudden warning of
+paralysis, and symptoms of cholera added to that, had driven her
+almost to despair. She was without home, friend or profession.
+
+[Illustration: A LITTLE VISITOR.]
+
+Joliet set her incontinently on horseback, and walked by her side to
+a good village cur�'s two miles off--the same who had assisted him to
+his first communion, and for whom he subsequently became a beadle. The
+kind priest opened his arms to the man, his heart to the woman, his
+stable to the horse. For his second patient my Bohemian set in motion
+all his stock of curative ideas. In a month she was well, and the cur�
+no longer had three pensioners, for of two of them he made one.
+
+Two poverties added may make a competence. Monsieur and Madame Joliet
+were good and willing. The man began to wear a strange not
+unbecoming air of solidity and good morals. The girls now saluted him
+respectfully when he passed through a village.
+
+One thing, however, in the midst of his proud honeymoon perplexed him
+much. Hardly married, and over head and ears in love, he knew not how
+to invite his bride to some wretched garret, himself deserting her to
+resume his former life in the open air. To give up the latter seemed
+like losing existence itself.
+
+One morning, as he asked himself the difficult question, a pair of
+old wheels at the door of a cartwright seemed of their own accord
+to resolve his perplexity. He bought them, the payment to be made in
+labor: for a week he blew the wheelwright's bellows. The wheels were
+his own: to make a wagon was now the affair of a few old boards and a
+gypsy's inventiveness.
+
+Thus was conceived that famous establishment where, for several years,
+lived the independent monarch and his spouse, rolling over the roads,
+circulating through the whole belt of villages around Paris, and
+carrying in their ambulant home, like the Cossacks, their utensils,
+their bed, their oven, their all.
+
+From town to town they carried packages, boxes and articles of barter.
+At dinner-time the van was rolled under a tree. The lady of the house
+kindled a fire in the portable stove behind a hedge or in a ditch. The
+hen-coop was opened, and the sage seraglio with their sultan prudently
+pecked about for food. At the first appeal they re-entered their cage.
+
+[Illustration: FRANCINE.]
+
+At the same appeal came flying up the dog of the establishment, a most
+piteous-looking griffin, disheveled, moulted, staring out of one eye,
+lame and wild. For devotion and good sense his match could be found
+nowhere. Like his horse, his wife, his house and the pins in his
+sleeve, Joliet had picked the collie up on the road.
+
+The arrival of a tiny visitor to the Bohemian's address made a
+change necessary. Little Francine's dowry was provided by my humorous
+acquisition of the yellow and slate-colored chickens.
+
+With his savings and my banknote Joliet determined to have a fixed
+residence. He succeeded of course. The walls, the windows, the doors,
+everything but the garden-patch, he picked up along the roads.
+
+[Illustration: "DON'T WRING MY HEART!"]
+
+Buried in eglantine and honeysuckle, soon no one would suspect the
+home-made character of Joliet's ch�teau. It became the centre of my
+botanizing excursions. Francine grew into a fair, slim girl, like the
+sweetest and most innocent of Gavarni's sketches, and sold flowers to
+the passers-by.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such were the souvenirs I had of this brave tavern-keeper in his old
+capacity of roadster and tramp. Now, after an hiatus of years, I
+found him before me in a different character at the beginning of my
+roundabout trips to Marly.
+
+But what had become of my favorite little rose-merchant?
+
+"Francine?" asked Joliet briskly, as if he was wondering whom I could
+mean by such a name. "You mean my wife? Poor thing! She is dead."
+
+"I am speaking of your daughter, Father Joliet."
+
+"Oh, my daughter, my girl Francine? She went to live with her
+godmother. It was ten years ago."
+
+"And you have not seen her since?"
+
+"Yes--yes--two years back. She has gone again."
+
+"To her godmother?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why so?"
+
+"Her godmother would not receive her. Don't wring my heart so, sir!"
+
+EDWARD STRAHAN.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+OUR HOME IN THE TYROL.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF TAUFERS VALLEY.]
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+We left the Hof one August Friday--we were not superstitious--a goodly
+company, sufficient to freight the rumbling old stage-wagon which
+jolted daily between Bruneck and Taufers, a distance of nine miles. At
+this village the sedater portion of the party were to settle down with
+books, pencils and drawing-paper until the Alpine visit should have
+been paid.
+
+The valley of Taufers, running northward with a grand vista to the
+north-west of the vast Zillerthal snow-fields, suggests at a distance
+the idea of a stern, joyless district. When in the broader Pusterthal
+the sunshine floods upland plain and slope, this important but narrow
+tributary valley lies steeped in its gloomy shade, the dark sides of
+the Sambock frowning grimly on the opposite shadowy Tesselberg. Great,
+therefore, was the surprise of some of the party to find, as we drove
+along, instead of melancholy solitude, prosperous villages basking in
+sunshine, whilst little children skipped merrily, and men and women
+worked amongst the golden stooks as if enjoying the labor of their
+hands. Yes, strange to say, effulgent sunshine everywhere on acre
+and meadow, and slanting down upon a wayside cottage garden, where
+a freshly-painted Christ lay drying between tall sunflowers. This
+cottage seemed the only shadow in this unexpectedly bright picture,
+for, occupied by a religious image-maker, crucifixes and wooden saints
+peeped wholesale out of the windows. Is it a want of sensibility in
+these poor Tyrolese peasants which causes them to cling tenaciously to
+such frightful material forms of religion, making them give prominence
+to every conceivable sign of sacred sorrow and suffering? But the
+jolting stage-wagon allowed us no time to analyze this painful,
+ever-recurring feature of the Tyrol. When we next looked up we
+saw above us, on a wooded crag, a square gray tower, which, once a
+stronghold, appears, as if exhausted with old age, to be tottering
+into the midst of lesser ruins.
+
+It was Neuhaus, once a fortress of the rigid old barons of Tuvers.
+Hugo, the sixth lord, died there in 1309, and in the chapel, which
+still stands, mass is said at stated periods for the salvation of his
+soul and the souls of his relations. The whole place would undoubtedly
+have been given over to the owls and the bats had not two adjacent
+springs--one of iron, the other of chalk and alum--been considered, a
+quarter of a century since, either as preventives or as cures for
+the cholera, then raging. A chalet was therefore planted on the rocks
+between the chapel and the castle, and a bath-house opened, which
+would probably be still much frequented on account of the beauty of
+the situation were the bath-owner only a little more attentive to the
+comfort of his humble guests.
+
+The valley, apparently so gloomy, proved not only cheerful, but full
+of romance and old-world memories. Other castles there were,
+perched gracefully on their crags; and thus, much sooner than we
+had anticipated, we found ourselves stopping at the Post in Taufers.
+Rather Sand in Taufers, the single appellation being used chiefly for
+the parent church, which, with a mortuary chapel and a house for
+the "young and sick," stands apart. Sand and Moritz, two prosperous
+villages, cluster with this group of buildings at the head of the
+valley, gathering like fiefs at the foot of the fine old castle, still
+one of the grandest feudal remains in ruin-bestrewn Tyrol. A third
+village, M�klen, though quite distinct, lies sufficiently near to
+deserve being included in the circle.
+
+The Post, in prospect of the increase of custom occasioned by the
+Pusterthal railway, had enlarged its borders during the past winter.
+Nor had it been deceived in the speculation, for, although only one
+up-and-down train in the day crawls along the valley, the news of the
+comfortable inn in the midst of beautiful scenery had already brought
+custom enough. Thus all our powers of persuasion were lost upon
+the handsome sister of the young wirth, a noted beauty of the
+neighborhood. "Their house was full already. Nine guests, who had
+never sent word beforehand, were quite out of the question, but the
+Herrschaft could be accommodated at the Elephant opposite, which was
+related to the Post."
+
+So, crossing over to the Elephant, the house being entirely empty,
+we found space and cleanliness, and might have found perfect comfort
+withal, had not the landlord and landlady proved in a perpetual state
+of somnolency, their few waking intervals being barely sufficient
+for the supply of the simplest wants. In spite of these and
+other unsatisfactory auspices, such as the tea being served in a
+soup-tureen, the stayers voted to remain at the Elephant in our
+absence, making up for all inward deficiencies by outdoor enjoyment.
+
+A country clown with an honest face, Ignaz by name, agreed for a
+trifle to carry our bundles and ample provision of food to the Olm. He
+made a serious matter of it, however, when he pertinaciously insisted
+on four in the morning being the hour for starting. The dispute
+finally ended by the agreement to allow Ignaz to carry our belongings
+at the hour he chose, seeing that all the village was ready to take an
+affidavit as to his honesty, and we being allowed the same freedom of
+choice for ourselves. All having thus been comfortably arranged, we
+sallied forth for an evening stroll.
+
+A turn in the quiet village street soon revealed the great massive
+castle on its plateau of rock--shattered towers, broken battlements,
+oriel and bay windows jutting out here and there, its bulwarks running
+down the precipice, but not, as formerly, shutting in the narrow gorge
+leading into the Ahrnthal, a busy, populous valley, closed in its turn
+by the snow-clad bulk of the Tauern, down which, on the farther side,
+the noted Kriml waterfall plunges. Remembering, from a visit paid to
+the castle in the former year, that an easy winding road, shaded
+by trees and commanding splendid mountain-views, led through the
+fortifications by the back of the castle to the great gateway, we
+chose it in preference to the steep, perpendicular path, which, always
+taken by the natives, led equally to the drawbridge and main entrance.
+To our extreme regret, however, we soon found our course impeded by
+the huge trunks of mighty pine trees lying in a perfect pell-mell
+above and on both sides of us. A glance up the hillside showed scores
+more of these slain giants. To proceed was almost hopeless, and
+we were forced to rest upon some timber and mark our future course
+between piles oozing with turpentine.
+
+Whilst we were engaged in our calculations, an old crone, who had
+been groping about in the crevices for chips and sticks, stopped, and
+seeing us thus penned in by tree boles, eyed us with a compassionate
+look. "Ja, ja!" said she, "with fallen trees all jumbled together it
+is hard for the Herrschaft to move on; but it's harder for us poor
+folks, who have seen the trees growing here ever since we were born,
+to hear day and night the axe going hack, hack, and the trees come
+thudding down. Sixteen strong Welschers from a distance do the work:
+they knew well enough a Taufern would have looked long at the sixers
+(ten-kreuzer pieces) before he would have shorn the mighty forests.
+Look you!" and she pointed to the sky. "As far as you can see they are
+felling."
+
+We looked, and sure enough the vast woods that clothed the lofty
+mountainsides were being ruthlessly cleared away. We suggested that a
+protest should be made.
+
+"Oh, na, na! The woods are none of ours. The graf de Ferraris too has
+sold the estate to a gesellschaft from Vienna. They care nothing for
+the castle, but are hungry for timber. The count lives a long way
+off, and does not feel it, but it must eat the heart of his aged
+lady mother to the fibres--she lives in the village--to know that
+foreigners are sweeping down masses of trees by wholesale--trees that
+have always kept the poor man's noodles boiling. And where are the
+planks to come from for our houses, our barns, our stables? And how
+can the cattle be kept from straying without fences of wood? Then,
+too, avalanches of snow and of stones will fall, and maybe overwhelm
+the village. Thanks to the Mother of God! they will drop on my grave,
+but, Lord Jesus, the children and the children's children!"
+
+Having given us these sad scraps of information, and heaving a
+big sigh, the poor old soul lifted up her bundle of chips and went
+fumbling forward over her stumbling-blocks.
+
+Sad and true was the picture which she had drawn. Nor does it,
+alas! belong exclusively to Taufers, but to the whole Tyrol. In many
+instances the people are themselves eager for this reckless clearing.
+They hope thereby to secure more pasturage, the feeding and rearing
+of cattle being the great idea of wealth to the Tyroler. So they make
+ready money of their timber, which now in the form of masts floats on
+the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal. The Venetians, requiring timber,
+have turned the once beautiful, richly-wooded Dalmatia into a dreary,
+barren land. In the Tyrol it is not generally foreigners, but the
+natives, who unhesitatingly sweep away woods, which, causing grass and
+plants to grow, have enabled human habitations to be erected on spots
+that would otherwise be but dreary wildernesses, the battle-fields of
+chilling winds and scorching sunshine. The precious timber, which like
+refuse they cart into the clumsy yawning craters called stoves, or
+else sell out of the country for economy so called, might not only
+supply the land for centuries with a proper amount of fuel, either as
+wood or charcoal, but bring prosperity to many a sequestered village
+if turned into tools and kitchen utensils, whilst still leaving
+thousands of trees for export. "The supply has never failed yet," say
+the Tyrolese: "why should we replant forests to have to cut them down
+again, when the ground, too, is good for grass or corn?" So the axe
+lies ruthlessly at the root of every tree, for a heavy reckoning
+hereafter to the Tyroler.
+
+With a weighing and balancing over every step which we took worthy
+of a diplomatist, we finally stood upon the drawbridge of the castle.
+Here the savage customs of the rude days in which it was built
+immediately impress the beholder. Traces remain of the ponderous iron
+portcullis, heavy wooden bars, arrow-holes, and slits in the masonry
+for the pouring of boiling water or oil upon adverse knight or lordly
+freebooter. A steep path leads through two great entrance-gates into
+the large inner court, which is erected upon the virgin rock. A roof
+of old wooden shingles shelters the well, and ancient rotting timber
+mingles everywhere with the impervious stone in the massive buildings
+of the castle, conveying a sense of weakness and decay in the midst of
+the strongest durability.
+
+Not only was the old castle dismantled, but apparently entirely
+abandoned this summer evening. We were preparing to return without
+seeing the interior when a little maiden arrived from the village, who
+with flushed face and timid mien drew the castle key from under a
+big stone, stood on tiptoe and turned the heavy lock, and the door
+creaking on its hinges we were left to wander at our will through
+old wainscoted rooms in the dreamy twilight. No spirit of modern
+restoration had ever reached them: they were allowed to remain just
+as inconvenient, but also just as quaint, as on the day of their
+erection. There were gloomy recesses enough, but there were likewise
+graceful carvings, mottoes, rare tracery and wood-work; while, strange
+to say, in several chambers grotesque wooden birds were suspended from
+the ceiling like malformed ducks, conveying at first no idea of the
+Holy Dove which the old lords had desired to symbolize, yet probably
+in those unquiet days their best conception of this emblem of peace.
+
+The barons not only fought, squabbled and feasted, but prayed too
+in their fashion; so we came upon the chapel, disfigured by barbaric
+effigies, tawdry ornamentation and flimsy modern artificial flowers.
+It is still used for the weekly mass which, as at Neuhaus, is read
+here for the peace of the turbulent lords of Tuvers. Still, within
+the memory of man a hermit occupied some narrow chambers adjoining the
+chapel. He had retired amongst these ruins of transitory greatness to
+warn his fellow-creatures against carnal passions, prayed for the dead
+and shrived the living. The old anchorite has passed, we hope, into
+heavenly repose, but cinders, which may almost be called holy ashes,
+still lie scattered on his deserted little hearth.
+
+The banqueting-hall, a fine though low room, supported on solid
+rounded arches, contains innumerable flour-and corn-bins, which,
+though dating from the Middle Ages, are still in perfect condition.
+Here knight and baron caroused, here mummers have played and bears
+have danced, whilst sword and spur clanked upon the rude stone floor.
+In the ladies' bower above many a minne-singer has struck his lyre.
+Nay, Oswald von Wolkenstein, a prince amongst troubadours, wearing
+his golden chain and brilliant orders, has brought tears from many a
+gentle eye as he sang to his harp his pathetic elegies, the cruelty of
+Sabina his lady, and his adventures in England, Spain and Persia.
+He was a noble, courtly knight, conversing in French, Moorish,
+Catalonian, Castilian, German, Latin, Wendisch, Lombardic and Russian;
+and his bones lie in the great cloister of Neustift, not half a day's
+journey from Taufers.
+
+How often, too, has the shrill sound of the bugle called to feats
+of arms in the court, to hawking and hunting in valley and
+mountain-forest! How many a crusader against Turk, infidel, _Prussian_
+and _Hussite_ has crossed the wooden drawbridge upon his war-horse!
+Yes, and what an excitement in the noble Catholic household when in
+the adjoining Ahrnthal the peasants, becoming enamored of Lutheranism,
+rose in the peasant war of 1525! How darkly, too, must they have
+painted the fanatical bauer Barthlm� Duregger of St. Peter's in the
+Ahrnthal, who, after being taken prisoner, escaped near their
+postern gate to circulate threats of fire and murder throughout the
+neighborhood, vowing to reduce Bruneck to ashes! Reappearing with a
+band of twelve poachers and twenty-six laborers, and accompanied
+by Peter Baszler of Antholz, he robbed and plundered the clergy,
+stripping the worthy priest Andreas Spaat of all his worldly goods,
+so that he died in the utmost poverty. Although much blood was shed
+in their pursuit, this lawless, misguided man and his band were never
+taken. Great as their sin would naturally seem to the noble family at
+the castle, no less lamentable and equally worthy of torture and
+death would the heretics of Bruneck appear. About the same time the
+sacrilegious books, as they were called, of Zwingli and Luther were
+sold there openly, conventicle hymns were sung in the streets, and the
+priest Stephan Gobi preached against the holy doctrine of confession
+and the invocation of saints; whilst the schoolmaster Bartholomew
+Huber, though he could not find time to teach the children the
+catechism, puzzled their innocent minds with Virgil's _Georgics_ and
+Cicero's _Letters_. Toward the end of the sixteenth century the heresy
+was suppressed, when the lords and ladies of Taufers Castle sang no
+doubt a triumphant Te Deum in their chapel. The inmates were not then
+barons of Tuvers proper, for the title having early become extinct
+the castle passed into many noble hands, sometimes reaching those of
+royalty. Such a booty never remained unoccupied, until, coming
+into the possession of Hieronymus, count of Ferraris, in 1685, his
+descendants gradually permitted it to fall into ruin, its evil days
+culminating under the present count, who sold the estate a few years
+since to a speculating company, who merely value it for the timber.
+The rooms which still remain habitable are tenanted by peasants and by
+the sixteen pitiless wood-cutters.
+
+Seven o'clock the next morning found Frau Anna, E----, the two
+Margarets and our good Moidel bound full of life and spirits for the
+Eder Olm. We had soon left the village of Moritz behind us, and were
+climbing a shady wood-path, when we met a peasant-woman with her
+daughter, and she exclaimed, "What! Herrschaft going to Rein! What big
+eyes they will make over the stones!"
+
+Sure enough, very big eyes were made by some of the Herrschaft. After
+ascending to a meadow amphitheatre, then resting in a sunny wood,
+redolent of pine odors, near the foundations of a ruined stronghold,
+the Burgkofel, we came upon a realm of gigantic boulders. Some, in
+the shape of huge granite slabs, formed a rude, continuous broadway;
+others, scarred and furrowed, but softened and beautified by golden
+and silver lichen, torn by storms and snow from the cyclopean
+mountain-walls, were scattered topsy-turvy on either hand; many had
+become lodged in the river, where they carried on a steady defence
+against the tumultuous Giessbach, which, having its rise in mountains
+ten thousand feet high, leapt, foaming milky white, over and between
+them, forming a long series of bold cascades for a distance of half a
+dozen miles. The road continued by the boisterous rapids, hemmed in on
+the other hand by woods and threatening mountain-walls. The thunder of
+the waters prevented continuous conversation: we therefore admired in
+silence the grandeur of the scene and the magnificent glimpses which
+slight curves in the road afforded ever and anon of neighboring
+mountain-peaks and wooded valleys below.
+
+No carriage of any kind can ascend this road. It would be difficult
+indeed for horses; nevertheless, the herds of cattle traverse it
+in the journey to and from the Olm, their hoofs being able to find
+foothold on the rock. Moidel said that the cattle were so delighted
+to go to the Alps for the summer after the winter's confinement in
+the stall that they made the journey with a kind of joyful impatience,
+going on still more eagerly as they approached the end. "Not so,
+however," added Moidel, "with the pigs. I have often sat and cried on
+these rocks at their perverse ways when I have had to bring them up.
+They would only stand still and grunt while I begged and prayed and
+pushed. When they reached the top a new spirit soon seized them: they
+were here, there and everywhere--in a week's time leaping like goats,
+as if they had taken to wine."
+
+We made the climb slowly, and noon was long passed when we reached
+the saw-mills, the first houses in the mountain parish of St. Wolfgang
+or Rein. The busy, purring mills stood on the edge of the Sarine at
+the extremity of a flat mountain-valley intersected by innumerable
+brooks, which, continually overflowing, turn it constantly into a
+lake. The grass had been under water a week previously, but was now
+sufficiently dry for us to sit and rest. Whilst we were so doing,
+Ignaz, our _tr�ger_, stood before us, his empty basket on his back.
+
+"The barn is swept and garnished in readiness for the Herrschaft, and
+their bundles and parcels are arranged there in beautiful order--many
+bundles, and far heavier than they looked last night." Ignaz, however,
+was of opinion that though the pay was small the gentry meant well
+by him, and therefore he had not scrupled to take the food the worthy
+farmer's wife had offered him, leaving the Christian soul to be repaid
+by the gentlefolks when they came. And, moreover, he had advised the
+landlord at Rein that the gentry were passing through, so that they
+should not fail to find eatables ready, seeing hunger and weariness
+were best consoled by food.
+
+After which communication we regarded Ignaz as much less a clown than
+he looked. Pushing forward, we soon saw the little inn shining forth
+a mile farther up the valley--a small white chalet, with the
+pink-checked feather beds hanging to air in the upper gallery.
+
+Moidel looked grave over the dinner which the interposition of Ignaz
+had prepared for us. "The place is called Rein (clean)," she said,
+"but it is none of the cleanest. A Graf once reached Rein, and he
+thought it so pastoral that he asked at the inn for a drink of new
+milk, but the landlord shook his head and asked for other orders,
+seeing there was none in the house. Then the Graf said he would take
+cream, but the landlord shook his head and asked for other orders.
+Fresh eggs? Yes, the landlord said there were eggs, and begged him to
+step into the zechstube until they were boiled. When they came they
+made the very room smell, and the Graf in disgust ordered wine. This
+was speedily forthcoming, but with so dirty a glass that the Graf,
+making a long face, angrily called for the reckoning and departed."
+
+After Moidel's tale, and certain recollections of our own concerning
+the little hostel last year, we all approached the house with very
+humble expectations. The wirth, already on the lookout, received
+Moidel and two of the party as old friends, and hearing no nay he
+marshaled us up stairs, and flinging open a bed-room door, looked
+proudly triumphant as even Moidel uttered an exclamation of surprise.
+
+Whether constant reminders from his neighbors of the Graf's
+unfortunate visit, or a wave of civilization from the Pusterthal had
+reached this secluded mountain-inn, certain it is that twelve months
+had wrought a marvelous change here. Whilst the rest of the house
+remained rough, dirty and primitive, the landlord had devoted all
+his powers of taste and judgment upon this upper chamber. Leaning
+complacently against the door, he received our congratulations on the
+pretty ceiling and walls of carved deal wainscot, on the grand new
+bed, and the bouquet of fresh Edelweiss in a wash-basin, but showed
+surprise that the fiery tigers and gliding serpents which in a couple
+of gilt frames adorned the walls received no flattering comments from
+our lips. He next displayed a visitors' book, containing already some
+half dozen names, watching closely the astonishment it should produce
+in us as he prepared the table for our meal. But even the study of the
+names had to be interrupted, for he had purchased some steel knives
+and forks, which were, he considered, to bring him great credit and
+reputation; nor could he complete his work without hinting at the
+superiority of his table-cloth and napkins. Fortunately, a call from
+below that the pancakes were ready enabled us to have a little laugh
+to ourselves. Linen being used in all peasant houses, he had discarded
+it as vulgar, wearing himself an unbleached cotton shirt with an
+incipient frill, and supplying his guests with a table-cloth and
+napkins of the same material from an empty wash-basin.
+
+We had already discussed two dishes of hot pancakes--really worthy of
+commendation--enjoyed an hour's rest, taken coffee, and were rising to
+depart, when the landlady appeared with a hop, skip and jump. She was
+a lively, voluble little woman, who, though she had attired herself
+for us in two enormous cloth petticoats, a stuff bodice and yards of
+Bohemian lace in frills and ruffles, by way of displaying the wealth
+of her wardrobe, bobbed and curtseyed as if set on wires. Great was
+the difficulty, between the amusing, friendly wife and the husband
+proud of her and his inn, either to pay our bill or get away. They
+declared there was no hurry about the reckoning, and pressed us still
+to stay. Seeing our resolution, the wirth with a sigh produced a brown
+painted board from under his arm, a piece of chalk from his pocket,
+made the bill, gave us change out of a tea-cup, and amidst reiterated
+invitations to return if not satisfied with the barn, we tore
+ourselves away, their friendly good-byes and good wishes floating
+after us.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+We now left the Reinthal and turned into the side-valley of
+Bachernthal. It was the 17th of August, but the little plots of corn
+still waved long and green, giving a feeling of early summer. We
+were in a perfect paradise of an Alpine valley. Before us the great
+near-lying mountains, the princely Hoch Gall and the Gross Lengstein
+Glacier, shone like molten silver against the intense blue sky, whilst
+the Schnebige Nock rose pure and isolated across the narrow valley,
+suggesting to one of the party the simile of the swan-breasted maiden
+of Northern mythology.
+
+After passing several chalets we came to that of the Eder Olm. It
+belonged to the Hofbauer, and was occupied by his _p�chter_ or bailiff
+the year round. Here, too, was the barn which we were to use as
+our night-quarters during our stay. It was a great wooden building,
+divided into three compartments, one being two-thirds filled with hay,
+on which we were intended to sleep. It was true that Josef the p�chter
+had succeeded by means of sweeping and a little arrangement in making
+the barn really attractive; but, alas! alas! we had hardly begun
+preparing our beds when the horrible discovery was made that under the
+surface the hay was soaking wet. Josef could hardly be blamed for not
+telling us, as in the Tyrol the people regard lying on wet or dewy
+grass as a natural system of hydropathy.
+
+We had not shawls and cloaks enough to construct beds upon the barn
+floor, and the p�chter's house, though substantial, was but a dark
+den, already stuffed full with wife and children. Must we, then,
+really return to the inn at Rein with its ornamental snakes and lions?
+
+It was dusk out of doors, but pitch dark within, save for the dim,
+uncertain light of a horn lantern, and, all regularly worn out with
+our ten miles' climb, we sighed for bed. It was futile, however,
+simply to exchange expressions of dismay; so, groping about, to our
+joy we alighted suddenly upon several bundles of clean, fresh straw
+stowed away in the farthest recess of the opposite division. In a
+trice a dangerous corn-chopping machine had been removed, the straw
+loosened and spread out, and, covered with shawls and water-proof, it
+formed as comfortable a great bed of Ware as ever weary bones could
+desire. Forming a row, the tired wanderers were soon sleeping
+the sleep of five just persons, the sound of several neighboring
+waterfalls soothing rather than disturbing slumber.
+
+In the early morning it was put to the vote and carried that eider
+down and spring mattresses were useless innovations after luxurious
+straw, and that whilst some benighted people might regard us as having
+been in purgatory, we had been in paradise, and hoped to be there
+again within twenty-four hours. And the barn, too! How poor in
+comparison seemed a conventional house on this sweet Sunday morning!
+We had prudently filled all the large apertures in the eaves and
+wooden sides the night before with hay, but there were plenty of
+crevices for the sun to peep in by, whilst with wafts of mountain-air
+it entered freely by the folding barn door as Moidel gently passed in
+and out, on breakfast matters intent. Corn- and grain-bins, sieves,
+flails and ladders pleased us better for the nonce than formal
+furniture, although none the less convenient did we find the great
+square wooden table and the benches which the p�chter had thoughtfully
+placed on the threshing-floor which formed the central division.
+
+[Illustration: SCHLOSS TAUFERS.]
+
+On one side of the barn a small room had been boarded off. It
+contained empty milk-pans, ox-bells, old ropes and cords, together
+with two chests and two pairs of men's strong leather boots.
+This, Moidel suggested, should be used as joint store-room and
+dressing-room. Fortunately, however, we had applied it to neither
+requirement, when a singular occurrence took place which might be
+classed as a ghost-story at night or an optical delusion by day. The
+great barn-door quietly opened, Moidel having gone out and shut it,
+and two figures--one in soiled homespun shirt and _loden_ trousers,
+wooden clogs, with a little black leather skull-cap on his head and a
+pipe in his mouth; the other older, in leather breeches, brown knitted
+worsted jacket, and an old black silk handkerchief tied round his
+neck--glided in. We could have sworn that they were Jakob and the old
+senner Franz, but no response came to our exclamation of recognition,
+and in a second they had vanished into the said little room, where all
+remained, however, as silent as before. Two of us now began even to
+doubt, but the other two were positive, that figures had floated
+in. Ten minutes later the mystery was solved by the identical Jakob,
+attended by Franz, reappearing from the chamber, not, however, in
+the hard-working dress in which they had entered, but in full
+Sunday array, the leather boots upon their feet and broad-brimmed,
+flower-bedecked beavers in their hands. Poor Jakob! sore must
+have been his perplexity when, in the hope of slinking into his
+wardrobe-room unobserved, we had come open-eyed upon him in his soiled
+array. At the cost of apparent rudeness, arising chiefly from shyness,
+he had silently disappeared, the old servant following his example.
+Now, however, they could both freely welcome us to the Olm, expressing
+the pleasure it would give them to accompany us to the senner huts on
+their return with Moidel at ten o'clock from church.
+
+This was Jakob's first introduction to Frau Anna and E----. He eyed
+them closely and silently for some minutes; then said, "I like them:
+they look good!" and so they went to mass.
+
+The barn and chalet called Eder formed part of the Hofbauer's lower
+Alp, where a little later in the season the cattle were brought down
+for several weeks of pasturage before they descended to their winter
+home. We were now bound in company with the returning church-goers for
+the group of senner huts belonging to the larger still more elevated
+tract, which the Hofbauer rented in company with five other bauers.
+Leaving the meadows very shortly after quitting our night-quarters,
+where we seemed already in the very bosom of the snow-mountains, we
+began again to ascend through a wood of primeval pines and fir trees,
+long gray moss hanging from their hoary branches like patriarchs'
+beards, whilst round their stems, amidst a chaos of rocks, were spread
+the softest carpets of moss and lichen. In the centre of the wood,
+where an opening covered with the finest turf afforded an agreeable
+resting-place, as usual a cross--that most familiar object in a
+Tyrolese landscape--had been erected. In this instance, more striking
+and melancholy than ever, for this general point of attraction to
+peasants seemed here, in the very heart of the mountains, to be
+forgotten and despised. Small in size, as if wood had been grudged
+in this land of wood, the writing on the cross erased by storms,
+the dissevered arms and limbs were painfully scattered on the sward
+below--type indeed as of a powerless Saviour unable to save or to
+bless. Indeed, so offensive and discordant did this pitiable emblem
+appear, and in such mocking contrast to the sublimity of the scene,
+that we spoke of it to Moidel, as, laden with our eatables, she came
+slowly up behind. "Ah," she replied, "it is not that the cross is
+left unregarded, nor is it age which has thus damaged it, but the wild
+storms and lasting snows. A new cross is often erected, but it has not
+long been exposed before it is again utterly defaced. The herdsmen
+and senners, however, see the meaning under it, and it keeps them
+straight, Fr�ulein."
+
+Well-intentioned but slow of apprehension, these poor peasants cling
+to a carved Christ, and feel a horrible alarm, as if you were offering
+them a vacant creed, when you touch upon anything higher. Thus Moidel,
+though very intelligent, looked somewhat grave and quiet until the
+woods opened and she had to point out the senner huts. These were rude
+but very picturesque log cabins, built in a clearing amongst a steep
+chaos of rocks, with the glaciers and the majestic peak of the
+Hoch Gall shining above all. Five were dwelling-houses, the rest
+cattle-sheds and barns: our people's hut was the highest of the group,
+and we had a long climb over the boulders before we reached it.
+
+Seeing us approaching, good old Franz, who had gone forward in
+advance, fastened on his apron and fried marvelous monograms and
+circles of cream batter, of which we, the guests, were soon partaking
+in the best room, otherwise the store-room and dairy. The hut was
+divided into two compartments, both entered by adjoining doors from
+the outside. Seated on milking-stools in somewhat dangerous proximity
+to pans of rich cream, balls of butter and cheeses, the salt and
+meal-bin served as our dining table. In the kitchen, Franz, resting
+from his successful culinary labors, sat with Moidel and Jakob by the
+hearth, where huge blocks of stone kept the fire in compass, the smoke
+curling out of the door, and enjoyed in return some of our ham, wine
+and almond cake.
+
+[Illustration: HAPPY SOULS IN PARADISE.]
+
+The hut was close quarters, even for the two ordinary inmates: there
+were, however, innumerable contrivances for stowing away all kinds of
+useful things, besides notches in the thick wooden partition for hands
+and feet when at night they crept to their burrow of hay under the
+low eaves. Everything with the exception of the old stone floor was
+scrupulously clean: without, the pigs dabbled in the mire between
+the rugged rocks, and nettles grew, but beyond, mountains, woods and
+illimitable space were spread in uninterrupted fullness.
+
+Resting after dinner at a little distance from the huts, we learned
+from Jakob, who was full of excitement on the subject, that shortly
+after we left the inn at Rein the preceding evening a gentleman
+from Bohemia arrived. He immediately communicated to the wirth his
+intention of ascending one of the three great mountains rising from
+the Bachernthal, either the Hoch Gall (11,283 feet high), the Wild
+Gall or the Schnebige Nock, both some thousand feet lower, but perhaps
+even more attractive, as still possessing the charm of untrodden
+summits. The wirth consequently sent for a fine, clever young fellow,
+Johann Ausserkofer, a friend of Jakob's, and whose home we had passed
+on the previous night before reaching the Eder Olm. He had ascended
+the Hoch Gall with two gentlemen in the August of the former year,
+and now recommended an attempt at the still virgin Wild Gall. The
+arrangement being speedily made, for extra help and security Johann
+fetched his younger brother, Josef, as a companion, and the little
+party started by torchlight at two o'clock in the morning.
+
+Jakob now produced a telescope, through which he hoped we might detect
+moving figures amongst the snow of the Wild Gall. In vain we strained
+our eyes through the greasy old telescope, for neither moving figures
+nor stationary black dots were visible. Even Jakob with his eagle
+eye confessed to seeing no trace of man either amongst the irregular
+ash-colored rocks or upon the snowy curves of the Wild Gall, which,
+like a huge white-crested breaker at sea, upheaved itself in the air
+as in the very act of turning. Quite as solitary and untrodden did
+it look as its still more stately sister, the Hoch Gall, a mountain
+deservedly the especial pride of the district, its lofty pinnacle
+piercing the sky, whilst a vast sheet of thick, pure snow hung
+straight and smooth down its concave sides, a huge mountain-buttress
+linking the lower portion of this snow pyramid to the white,
+glittering expanse of the Gross Lengstein Glacier--a buttress of
+many thousand feet, standing prominently forth like an antediluvian
+monster, on whose gigantic pachydermatous flanks the shattered,
+blasted stems of dead uniform fir trees shone out a silvery gray,
+mingling in color with the loose, glittering d�bris which had slidden
+into the upland valley just below. Two silver threads descending from
+the glaciers of the Hoch Gall wound through these fallen stones into
+the green turf of the Bachernthal, but whether formed of snow or water
+it would have been difficult to decide, had not ever and anon a sound
+as of a distant train been borne upon the breeze, proving them to be
+brooks, which helped to swell the roaring, tumbling Giessbach, whose
+boisterous acquaintance we had already made.
+
+The Hoch Gall, which has been twice ascended, was first attempted in
+1869 by a very adventurous, clever young Alpine climber, Karl Hofmann,
+the only son of a well-known physician of Munich--a youth of whom it
+is said that no study was too difficult, no danger too great, no
+peak too high for him. Innumerable were the mountains which he scaled
+between 1866 and 1870, and of which he wrote excellent, accurate
+descriptions: then laying down his young life--he was but
+twenty-three--on September 2, 1870, in the fierce battle of Sedan, his
+spirit passed away to mightier slopes, to more delectable mountains.
+
+Again, in the August of 1871, after our first visit to the Olm, the
+ascent was repeated by two other members of the Tyrolese Alpine Club,
+Herr Richter and Herr Str�dl. They brought with them two experienced
+men--one the chief guide of the Gross Glockner, the other of the
+Venediger Spitze--and, except for Hofmann's written description, had
+to plan and calculate for themselves, there being no local knowledge
+of the mountain attainable, as the two guides who accompanied the
+young explorer were also dead.
+
+Although well provided with their own guides, they thought it right
+to take some active young man of the neighborhood with them, in order
+that he in his turn might help future climbers. At the recommendation
+of the landlord of Rein--who on this important occasion commenced
+his visitors' book--they chose for the purpose Jakob's friend, Johann
+Ausserkofer. They started by torchlight one Monday morning, and after
+a steep climb through a wild mountain-forest on the opposite side of
+the Bachernthal, crossing a vast glacier and the crevasse between the
+Hoch Gall and the Wild Gall, began the real ascent, which proved so
+perpendicular as to be achieved principally with the aid of ropes.
+After a toilsome nine hours and a quarter they had the good fortune to
+reach the summit in safety. The weather was favorable, and the view,
+in Richter's opinion, far surpassed the much-vaunted panorama from the
+Kriml Tauern. A long rest, and raising a cromlech in memory of their
+bold achievement, and then the steep descent over snow and glaciers
+was effected, and St. Wolfgang reached after fourteen hours of toil
+and great danger.
+
+[Illustration: CROSSING THE TORRENT.]
+
+At half-past four, Jakob, having crossed the valley in search of his
+oxen, came upon the Bohemian gentleman--whose name afterward proved to
+be Dr. Hecht--with the two Ausserkofers, and learned their adventures
+in the ascent of the Wild Gall. After clambering over steep, slippery
+glaciers they had begun the climb proper at five o'clock in the
+morning, Dr. Hecht pushing forward in order to be the first human
+being who had ever placed his foot upon the summit of the mountain.
+He had indeed almost reached the highest point when a dark, terrific
+chasm suddenly yawned beneath him, entirely cutting off all farther
+progress. The three explorers, although considerably dejected by
+the disagreeable check and the waste of labor and time which it
+had involved, determining not to be baffled, resolved to make a
+considerable d�tour. After having, with much trouble, reached a lower
+plateau, they attacked the precipitous, almost invincible mountain
+from another side, the still early hour of the day alone permitting
+the renewal of the attempt. Leaving their telescope and provisions to
+await their return, they boldly scrambled, crept and worked their way
+up the scaly side, and finally reached the summit in safety. The view
+thence they declared to be magnificent. They too raised a cromlech,
+and then a giddy descent followed. However, all three were full of
+spirits when Jakob met them, and the Ausserkofers declared that they
+were ready henceforth to pilot any other tourist to the summit for a
+moderate four or five gulden apiece.
+
+Jakob, as herdsman, had left us at three o'clock to look after the
+cattle, we strolling with him as far as a wild old wood which formed a
+strange contrast to this Sunday afternoon, as lovely an August day as
+ever rejoiced the earth. The near yet unattainable Hoch Gall glittered
+coldly white between the stems and branches of gigantic pines, which,
+scathed and bleached by lightning and storm, rose in the form of
+ruined towers or lay tumbled about in the wildest, dreariest confusion
+amongst the rugged enormous rocks, fit emblems of the forest in
+the Inferno inhabited by the souls of the lost. Nor was this stern,
+forbidding scene enlivened when a melancholy man, carrying the dead
+body of a goat across his shoulders, crossed the torrent on a fallen
+tree and advanced slowly up the craggy path, followed by a little boy
+timidly picking his way behind.
+
+"Ach, Mathies, in God's name, another goat!" said Moidel, lifting
+her eyes from a little book, the life of the odd, humane Joseph II.,
+which, bought for a few kreuzers at a fair, was worth as many guldens
+in the pleasure which it gave her.
+
+The man glanced from under his eyebrows, and answered with a sigh,
+"_Gott hat's so w�lln, Diendl_" ("God would have it so, maiden"); and
+then he added in dialect, "It was a beautiful creature. I missed it in
+the reckoning last night. After mass I strode far and wide searching
+it, until an hour since I found the body hanging by a hind hoof from a
+cleft in the Auvogl Nock. See, it has broken its leg in its struggles.
+Ah, poor beast! A solitary, cruel death, _und hast ma g'nomma mei
+Ruah_" ("and it has taken my rest from me").
+
+"Poor Mathies! his half dozen goats are all that he has in the world.
+He rents one of father's huts, but since he has brought them to the
+Olm two or three are already dead." This Moidel explained to us as he
+moved dejectedly forward. "Father, however, told him that our Olm was
+bad for goats. They not only slip from the rocks, but grow thin and
+weakly. Just the reverse of the cattle. Onkel Johann--there is no one
+so deep as he in cattle--says that every blade of grass on our Olm is
+worth half a pint of milk. And it's not the air, nor the water,
+nor the winds that make it wholesome, but some law that he cannot
+understand. Who can? There is Jagdhaus, a wonderfully fertile
+_sennerei_ an hour beyond Rein. It is far finer than our Olm, which
+is so mountainous that timid new-comers amongst the cattle must first
+teach themselves to walk about; but at Jagdhaus, which is as large
+as a village, all the land is smooth, fat pasturage for miles. Yet
+a curse rests on the place for which neither priests nor farmers can
+account. Some seasons, it is true, all goes well, but in others the
+cattle are suddenly bitten, fall dead, and their flesh then turns
+black and rustles like paper. Some say that it is an insect or animal
+that attacks them; others, that it is caused by the grass which they
+eat; and there are again others who are sure that it is a phantom
+which, touching them, blasts them. And there seems reason in the idea,
+because when the priest of Taufers, who has an Olm there, goes and
+says mass and prays for the cattle, or when the _Sterniwitz_ (landlord
+of the Stern), who has acres of pasturage and many heads of cattle at
+Jagdhaus, pays a Capuchin to go thither and pray, the murrain ceases."
+
+In Moidel's tale we had almost forgotten our long walk back to the
+barn and the arrangement for supper previously at the huts. Now, it
+curiously happened that whilst waiting for the tea-pan--rather than
+tea-kettle--to boil, I accidentally alighted upon a people's calendar,
+published at Brixen for the current year, protruding its somewhat
+greasy pages from behind a churn; and after turning over long
+black-and red-lettered lists of fasts and feasts, came upon some
+pertinent advice to the Tyrolese farmers by Adolph Trientl, concerning
+_Milzbrand_. He described it as a dreadful pestilence, the scourge
+of many a mountain-pasture. Hundreds of cattle, he tells them, are
+sacrificed to it yearly. Even the deer and lesser game die from the
+contagion, as well as human beings; death in the latter case being
+occasioned either by eating the meat of diseased animals or by having
+cuts or wounds which have come in contact with the victims. Even the
+bite of a fly which has fed on the contaminated meat will propagate
+the malady. Hides or reins made of the skins are known years after
+to reproduce Milzbrand. Where the body of an affected animal has been
+buried the ground becomes contagious for a long run of years, the
+cattle pasturing there being attacked. The only remedy consists in
+burning the contaminated body, and then keeping the live-stock from
+the place where the victim fell. When Milzbrand appears the farmer
+feels he has no option between sacrificing his cattle and abandoning
+for a season his rich pastures. And yet a little attention might soon
+cause a remedy, the evil often arising from the water of a particular
+pool or brook, which if carefully guarded against makes the rest of
+the Alp perfectly secure.
+
+When I ventured to quote from the calendar to Moidel, suggesting that
+at Jagdhaus it might certainly be the water, she remained impervious
+to any new views on the subject. "There was Milzbrand, and that might
+arise from the water, for all she knew, but at Jagdhaus it was a rod
+of God, which only prayer averted."
+
+Adolf Trientl appears to be a Tyrolese priest, who travels annually
+through his native land watching closely the agriculture and domestic
+economy, and trying, countenanced by government, to help his country
+people to an easier working life, healthier houses and more profitable
+land. To the credit of the clergy of Brixen, his practical often pithy
+remarks are published in their church calendar. He and his colleagues
+must, however, use almost supernatural patience and energy before they
+can move a Tyroler one jot from the beaten path which his ancestors
+have taken for a thousand years before him. The people are perfectly
+content, it is pleaded, with the existing state of things: why should
+they change their sowing or ploughing any more than the sun his course
+or the mountains their position? Changes, like bad weather, breed
+discontent.
+
+We had brought no books with us for our five days at the Olm, and in
+the pauses of our out-door enjoyment the calendar, greasy rather from
+contact with butter and milk than with fingers, afforded amusing,
+profitable reading: a lecture may often be pleasant to hear when not
+addressed to one's self.
+
+Moidel, Jakob and Franz, though they had looked with blind eyes on
+the print, did not turn deaf ears when we spoke; only we had to manage
+that all we said and thought did not come as a quoted sermon, but as
+suggestions and inquiries from us, who did not know half as much about
+a dairy and farm-life as they did. First of all, we tried to make them
+believe that the staff of life need not of necessity be rye bread
+of so hard and flinty a nature as to require in every house a square
+wooden board and iron chopper to cut it.
+
+"Yes," said Moidel, "it is very hard for old people, who must needs
+sop it, but while one's teeth are good the crunching is a pleasure.
+And then it must needs be dry, because the oven can only be heated
+once in three months. I wish it could come round oftener, for there
+is no going to bed on baking nights, with some three hundred loaves to
+pop into the oven."
+
+"How could the poor bake often," suggested Jakob, "when there is only
+one oven amongst them in the village?"
+
+"Why," said we, looking very learned, "you have a common schoolmaster,
+and a common swineherd, and a common goose-boy: why not have a common
+baker, who knew how to make good, light dough, and could bake a good
+batch of bread for each family weekly?"
+
+To Franz, eating good bread only a few days old appeared woeful
+extravagance. "Bread," he said, "should be like rocks to last, not
+like snow to melt away. The rye meal would fly before the wind at that
+rate, and where would the poor man then be?"
+
+Butter and cheese-making, however, involved hours of deep discussion.
+You would indeed have thought that man merely came into the world to
+make butter and cheese. Personal experience after two summers in
+the Tyrol had made us reflect very much upon the butter and cheese
+question. Whether regarded as a luxury or a necessity, the Swiss
+Gruy�re and Emmenthal cheese and the fresh dainty pats of butter made
+the contrast striking in the Tyrol. The milk and cream were rich and
+delicious, but became simply loathsome when transformed into butter
+or cheese. We wondered how and why it was that we could never obtain
+perfectly palatable butter, until we discovered the universal practice
+of churning it, without salt, into huge oblong balls, large as the
+nave of a wheel, which naturally soon turn rancid. It does not on this
+account lose its value to the natives, who use very little butter,
+melting it down into a clarified dripping called Schmalz for their
+endless fryings and frizzlings. This badly made butter is, however,
+often adorned with the emblems of the Passion, such as the cross,
+ladder, crown of thorns and nails. It was so at the Hofbauer's Olm.
+It is considered to enhance the value of the butter _Kugel_ or ball,
+especially when given to the priest in payment for masses said for
+dead relations. The Ursuline Sisters were paid for Moidel's education
+in butter.
+
+And the native cheese!--meagre cheese, as it is justly called--a
+poor, insipid, not overclean curd cheese. The curds are often merely
+squeezed in a cloth, then turned out and placed upon an upper shelf to
+dry, where they look like the back portions of gigantic skulls until
+damp and mould somewhat destroy the resemblance. The kind called fat
+cheese is not much better. It is, however, made with greater care, and
+dried in bands of pine bark in the Alpine kitchen. This distasteful
+butter and cheese, the sole result of gallons of rich milk and cream
+and many a long summer week upon the lofty Alp, becomes still
+more distasteful when the milk and cream are kept in the one hot,
+over-crowded sleeping-room, or in a dairy where the goatherd sleeps
+amongst the milk-dishes. The mountain dwellings are dark and badly
+constructed, and if furnished with a proper dairy, the prejudiced
+housewife often refuses to use it, believing that cream will not set
+unless the milk is warm; thus, much becomes sour, and is either thrown
+away or turned into a still more inferior cheese. Or she purposely
+lets the cream become rancid before she churns, that the children
+may not take too great a fancy to the Schmalz, and thus it may last
+longer!
+
+We had tasted already too much of this milky tree of knowledge not to
+learn with pleasure from the Brixen calendar that in different parts
+of the Tyrol co-operative _sennereien_ had been started with the
+greatest success. A manager was employed in each who understood
+perfectly the Swiss mode of cheese-making and the best manner of
+churning. Thus, the most excellent produce was gained from the same,
+or rather from a smaller, quantity of milk, when the reckless waste
+was deducted. Each shareholder had the right of skimming the milk
+from his own cows, taking what he required for his personal use, or
+he might send his entire share of butter, cheese, whey and goats' milk
+with the common stock to market, where such co-operative wares already
+brought the highest price. Thus, the farmer gained both ways, not only
+receiving more money, but saving in dairy utensils, house room and
+fuel, and his wife in labor.
+
+Great was our glee over these enlightened and successful efforts; but
+a friendly dispute immediately arose when one amongst us expressed a
+surprise that the half dozen bauers who shared the Olm in common
+did not manage matters on this improved principle. They would find
+themselves richer, more care-free men. Moidel declared her inability
+to form an opinion. Old Franz, however, had much to say. He thought
+it would be foolish. Why need the Hofbauer mix himself up with others,
+when he only wanted to make meagre cheese for family use, while if
+there were any over it always brought its worth in kreuzers at the
+market? And then the pounds and pounds of butter were all wanted for
+Schmalz. It might be sweeter, it is true, if they could melt it down
+at the hut, but then there was the fear of setting the place on fire,
+and the home-melted Schmalz went fast enough, as Moidel knew. And as
+for the artificial Schmalz which was being sold in the towns now,
+it was made of palm-oil, fresh suet and butter, and colored with
+the yellow dye called Orleans; and people praised this machine-made
+Schmalz and talked of progress! But he hoped, so long as he handled a
+frying-pan, to stick to good old Schmalz and good old ways.
+
+MARGARET HOWITT.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+ON THE CHURCH STEPS.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+What a picture she was as she sat there, my own Bessie! and what a
+strange place it was to rest on, those church steps! Behind us lay the
+Woolsey woods, with their wooing fragrance of pine and soft rushes of
+scented air; and the lakes were in the distance, lying very calm
+in the cloud-shadows and seeming to wait for us to come. But to-day
+Bessie would nothing of lakes or ledges: she would sit on the church
+steps.
+
+In front of us, straight to the gate, ran a stiff little walk of white
+pebbles, hard and harsh as some bygone creed.
+
+"Think of little bare feet coming up here, Bessie!" I said with a
+shiver. "It is too hard. And every carriage that comes up the hill
+sees us."
+
+"And why shouldn't they see us?" said my lady, turning full upon me.
+"I am not ashamed to be here."
+
+"Churches should always have soft walks of turf; and lovers," I would
+fain have added, "should have naught but whispering leaves about
+them."
+
+But Bessie cut me short in her imperious way: "But we are not lovers
+this morning: at least," with a half-relenting look at my rueful face,
+"we are very good friends, and I choose to sit here to show people
+that we are."
+
+"What do you care for _people_--the Bartons or the Meyricks?" as I
+noticed a familiar family carriage toiling up the hill, followed by
+a lighter phaeton. I recognized already in the latter vehicle the
+crimson feather of Fanny Meyrick, and "the whip that was a parasol."
+
+"Shall I step out into the road this minute, and stop those ladies
+like a peaceable highwayman, and tell them you have promised to marry
+me, and that their anxiety as to our intimacy may be at rest? Give me
+but leave and I will do it. It will make Mrs. Barton comfortable. Then
+you and I can walk away into those beckoning woods, and I can have you
+all to myself."
+
+Indeed she was worth having. With the witchery that some girls know,
+she had made a very picture of herself that morning, as I have
+said. Some soft blue muslin stuff was caught up around her in airy
+draperies--nothing stiff or frilled about her: all was soft and
+flowing, from the falling sleeve that showed the fair curve of her arm
+to the fold of her dress, the ruffle under which her little foot
+was tapping, impatiently now. A little white hat with a curling blue
+feather shaded her face--a face I won't trust myself to describe, save
+by saying that it was the brightest and truest, as I then thought, in
+all the world.
+
+She said something rapidly in Italian--she is always artificial when
+she uses a foreign tongue--and this I caught but imperfectly, but it
+had a proverbial air about it of the error of too hasty assumptions.
+
+"Well, now I'll tell you something," she said as the carriages
+disappeared over the top of the hill. "Fanny Meyrick is going abroad
+in October, and we shall not see her for ever so long."
+
+Going abroad? Good gracious! That was the very thing I had to tell
+her that morning--that I too was ordered abroad. An estate to be
+settled--some bothering old claim that had been handed down from
+generation to generation, and now springing into life again by the
+lapsing of two lives on the other side. But how to tell her as she
+looked up into my face with the half-pleading, half-imperious smile
+that I knew so well? How to tell her _now_?
+
+So I said nothing, but foolishly pushed the little pebbles aside with
+my stick, fatuously waiting for the subject to pass. Of course my
+silence brought an instant criticism: "Why, Charlie, what ails you?"
+
+"Nothing. And really, Bessie, what is it to us whether Fanny Meyrick
+go or stay?"
+
+"I shouldn't have thought it _was_ anything. But your silence, your
+confusion--Charlie, you do care a little for her, after all."
+
+Two years ago, before Bessie and I had ever met, I had fluttered
+around Fanny Meyrick for a season, attracted by her bright brown
+eyes and the gypsy flush on her cheek. But there were other moths
+fluttering around that adamantine candle too; and I was not long in
+discovering that the brown eyes were bright for each and all, and that
+the gypsy flush was never stirred by feeling or by thought. It was
+merely a fixed ensign of health and good spirits. Consequently the
+charm had waned, for me at least; and in my confessions to Bessie
+since our near intimacy it was she, not I, who had magnified it into
+the shadow even of a serious thought.
+
+"Care for her? Nonsense, Bessie! Do you want me to call her a mere
+doll, a hard, waxen--no, for wax will melt--a Parian creature, such
+as you may see by the dozens in Schwartz's window any day? It doesn't
+gratify you, surely, to hear me say that of any woman."
+
+And then--what possessed me?--I was so angry at myself that I took
+a mental _r�sum�_ of all the good that could be said of Fanny
+Meyrick--her generosity, her constant cheerfulness; and in somewhat
+headlong fashion I expressed myself: "I won't call her a dolt and an
+idiot, even to please you. I have seen her do generous things, and she
+is never out of temper."
+
+"Thanks!" said Bessie, nodding her head till the blue feather
+trembled. "It is as well, as Aunt Sloman says, to keep my shortcomings
+before you."
+
+"When did Aunt Sloman say that?" I interrupted, hoping for a diversion
+of the subject.
+
+"This morning only. I was late at breakfast. You know, Charlie, I was
+_so_ tired with that long horseback ride, and of course everything
+waited. Dear aunty never _will_ begin until I come down, but sits
+beside the urn like the forlornest of martyrs, and reads last night's
+papers over and over again."
+
+"Well? And was she sorry that she had not invited me to wait with
+her?"
+
+"Yes," said Bessie. "She said all sorts of things, and," flushing
+slightly, "that it was a pity you shouldn't know beforehand what you
+were to expect."
+
+"I wish devoutly that I had been there," seizing the little hand
+that was mournfully tapping the weatherbeaten stone, and forcing the
+downcast eyes to look at me. "I think, both together, we could have
+pacified Aunt Sloman."
+
+It _was_ a diversion, and after a little while Bessie professed she
+had had enough of the church steps.
+
+"How those people do stare! Is it the W----s, do you think, Charlie? I
+heard yesterday they were coming."
+
+From our lofty position on the hillside we commanded the road leading
+out of the village--the road that was all alive with carriages on this
+beautiful September morning. The W---- carriage had half halted to
+reconnoitre, and had only not hailed us because we had sedulously
+looked another way.
+
+"Let's get away," I said, "for the next carnage will not only stop,
+but come over;" and Bessie suffered herself to be led through the
+little tangle of brier and fern, past the gray old gravestones with
+"Miss Faith" and "Miss Mehitable" carved upon them, and into the leafy
+shadow of the waiting woods.
+
+Other lovers have been there before us, but the trees whisper no
+secrets save their own. The subject of our previous discussion was not
+resumed, nor was Fanny Meyrick mentioned, until on our homeward road
+we paused a moment on the hilltop, as we always did.
+
+It is indeed a hill of vision, that church hill at Lenox. Sparkling
+far to the south, the blue Dome lay, softened and shining in the
+September sun. There was ineffable peace in the faint blue sky, and,
+stealing up from the valley, a shimmering haze that seemed to veil the
+bustling village and soften all the rural sounds.
+
+Bessie drew nearer to me, shading her eyes as she looked down into the
+valley: "Charlie dear, let us stay here always. We shall be happier,
+better here than to go back to New York."
+
+"And the law-business?" I asked like a brutal bear, bringing the
+realities of life into my darling's girlish dream.
+
+"Can't you practice law in Foxcroft, and drive over there every
+morning? People do."
+
+"And because they do, and there are enough of them, I must plod along
+in the ways that are made for me already. We can make pilgrimages
+here, you know."
+
+"I suppose so," said Bessie with a sigh.
+
+Just then Fanny Kemble's clock in the tower above us struck the
+hour--one, two, three.
+
+"Bless me! so late? And there's that phaeton coming back over the hill
+again. Hurry, Charlie! don't let them see us. They'll think that we've
+been here all the time." And Bessie plunged madly down the hill, and
+struck off into the side-path that leads into the Lebanon road. The
+last vibrations of the bell were still trembling on the air as I
+caught up with her again.
+
+But again the teasing mood of the morning had come over her. Quite out
+of breath with the run, as we sat down to rest on the little porch of
+Mrs. Sloman's cottage she said, very earnestly, "But you haven't once
+said it."
+
+"Said what, my darling?"
+
+"That you are glad that Fanny is going abroad."
+
+"Nonsense! Why should I be glad?"
+
+"Are you sorry, then?"
+
+If I had but followed my impulse then, and said frankly that I was,
+and why I was! But Mrs. Sloman was coming through the little hall: I
+heard her step. Small time for explanation, no time for reproaches.
+And I could not leave Bessie, on that morning of all others, hurt or
+angry, or only half convinced.
+
+"No, I am not sorry," I said, pulling down a branch of honeysuckle,
+and making a loop of it to draw around her neck. "It is nothing,
+either way."
+
+"Then say after me if it is nothing--feel as I feel for one minute,
+won't you?"
+
+"Yes, indeed."
+
+"Say, after me, then, word for word, 'I am glad, _very_ glad, that
+Fanny Meyrick is to sail in October. I would not have her stay on this
+side for _worlds_!"
+
+And like a fool, a baby, I said it, word for word, from those sweet
+smiling lips: "I am glad, _very_ glad, that Fanny Meyrick is to sail
+in October. I would not have her stay on this side for _worlds_!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+The next day was Sunday, and I was on duty at an early hour, prepared
+to walk with Bessie to church. My darling was peculiar among women in
+this: her church-going dress was sober-suited; like a little gray nun,
+almost, she came down to me that morning. Her dress, of some soft gray
+stuff, fell around her in the simplest folds, a knot of brown ribbon
+at her throat, and in her hat a gray gull's wing.
+
+I had praised the Italian women for the simplicity of their
+church-attire: their black dresses and lace veils make a picturesque
+contrast with the gorgeous ceremonials of the high altar. But there
+was something in this quiet toilet, so fresh and simple and girl-like,
+that struck me as the one touch of grace that the American woman can
+give to the best even of foreign taste. Not the dramatic abnegation
+indicated by the black dress, but the quiet harmony of a life atune.
+
+Mrs. Sloman was ready even before Bessie came down. She was a
+great invalid, although her prim and rigid countenance forbore any
+expression save of severity. She had no pathos about her, not a touch.
+Whatever her bodily sufferings may have been--and Bessie dimly hinted
+that they were severe to agony at times--they were resolutely shut
+within her chamber door; and when she came out in the early morning,
+her cold brown hair drawn smoothly over those impassive cheeks, she
+looked like a lady abbess--as cold, as unyielding and as hard.
+
+There was small sympathy between the aunt and niece, but a great deal
+of painstaking duty on the one side, and on the other the habit of
+affection which young girls have for the faces they have always known.
+
+Mrs. Sloman had been at pains to tell me, when my frequent visits to
+her cottage made it necessary that I should in some fashion explain to
+her as to what I wanted there, that her niece, Bessie Stewart, was in
+nowise dependent on her, not even for a home. "This cottage we rent
+in common. It was her father's desire that her property should
+not accumulate, and that she should have nothing at my hands but
+companionship, and"--with a set and sickly smile--"advice when it was
+called for. We are partners in our expenses, and the arrangement can
+be broken up at any moment."
+
+Was this all? No word of love or praise for the fair young thing that
+had brightened all her household in these two years that Bessie had
+been fatherless?
+
+I believe there was love and appreciation, but it was not Mrs.
+Sloman's method to be demonstrative or expansive. She approved of the
+engagement, and in her grim way had opened an immediate battery of
+household ledgers and ways and means. Some idea, too, of making me
+feel easy about taking Bessie away from her, I think, inclined her to
+this business-like manner. I tried to show her, by my own manner, that
+I understood her without words, and I think she was very grateful to
+be spared the expression of feeling. Poor soul! repression had become
+such a necessity to her!
+
+So we talked on gravely of the weather, and of the celebrated Doctor
+McQ----, who was expected to give us an argumentative sermon that
+morning, until _my_ argument came floating in at the door like a calm
+little bit of thistledown, to which our previous conversation had been
+as the thistle's self.
+
+The plain little church was gay that morning. Carriage after carriage
+drove up with much prancing and champing, and group after group of
+city folk came rustling along the aisles. It was a bit of Fifth Avenue
+let into Lenox calm. The World and the Flesh were there, at least.
+
+In the hush of expectancy that preceded the minister's arrival there
+was much waving of scented fans, while the well-bred city glances took
+in everything without seeming to see. I felt that Bessie and I
+were being mentally discussed and ticketed. And as it was our first
+appearance at church since--well, _since_--perhaps there was just a
+little consciousness of our relations that made Bessie seem to retire
+absolutely within herself, and be no more a part of the silken crowd
+than was the grave, plain man who rose up in the pulpit.
+
+I hope the sermon was satisfactory. I am sure it was convincing to a
+brown-handed farmer who sat beside us, and who could with difficulty
+restrain his applauding comment. But I was lost in a dream of a near
+heaven, and could not follow the spoken word. It was just a quiet
+little opportunity to contemplate my darling, to tell over her
+sweetness and her charm, and to say over and again, like a blundering
+school-boy, "It's all mine! mine!"
+
+The congregation might have been dismissed for aught I knew, and
+left me sitting there with her beside me. But I was startled into the
+proprieties as we stood up to sing the concluding hymn. I was standing
+stock-still beside her, not listening to the words at all, but with
+a pleasant sense of everything being very comfortable, and an
+old-fashioned swell of harmony on the air, when suddenly the book
+dropped from Bessie's hand and fell heavily to the floor. I should
+have said she flung it down had it been on any other occasion, so
+rapid and vehement was the action.
+
+I stooped to pick it up, when with a decided gesture she stopped me.
+I looked at her surprised. Her face was flushed, indignant, I thought,
+and instantly my conscience was on the rack. What had I done, for my
+lady was evidently angry?
+
+Glancing down once more toward the book, I saw that she had set her
+foot upon it, and indeed her whole attitude was one of excitement,
+defiance. Why did she look so hot and scornful? I was disturbed and
+anxious: what was there in the book or in me to anger her?
+
+As quickly as possible I drew her away from the bustling crowd when
+the service was concluded. Fortunately, there was a side-door through
+which we could pass out into the quiet churchyard, and we vanished
+through it, leaving Mrs. Sloman far behind. Over into the Lebanon
+road was but a step, and the little porch was waiting with its cool
+honeysuckle shade. But Bessie did not stop at the gate: she was in no
+mood for home. And yet she would not answer my outpouring questions as
+to whether she was ill, or what _was_ the matter.
+
+"I'll tell you in a minute. Come, hurry!" she said, hastening along up
+the hill through all the dust and heat.
+
+At last we reached that rustic bit of ruin known popularly as the
+"Shed." It was a hard bit of climbing, but I rejoiced that Bessie, so
+flushed and excited at the start, grew calmer as we went; and when,
+the summit reached, she sat down to rest on a broken board, her color
+was natural and she seemed to breathe freely again.
+
+"Are they all hypocrites, do you think, Charlie?" she said suddenly,
+looking up into my face.
+
+"They? who? Bessie, what have I done to make you angry?"
+
+"You? Nothing, dear goose! I am angry at myself and at everybody else.
+Did it flash upon you, Charlie, what we were singing?"
+
+Then she quoted the lines, which I will not repeat here, but they
+expressed, as the sole aspiration of the singer, a desire to pass
+eternity in singing hymns of joy and praise--an impatience for the
+time to come, a disregard of earth, a turning away from temporal
+things, and again the desire for an eternity of sacred song.
+
+"Suppose I confess to you," said I, astonished at her earnestness,
+"that I did not at all know what I was singing?"
+
+"That's just it! just what makes it so dreadful! _Nobody_ was thinking
+about it--nobody! Nobody there wanted to give up earth and go straight
+to heaven and sing. I looked round at all the people, with their new
+bonnets, and the diamonds, and the footmen in the pews up stairs, and
+I thought, What lies they are all saying! Nobody wants to go to heaven
+at all until they are a hundred years old, and too deaf and blind and
+tired out to do anything on earth. My heaven is here and now in my own
+happiness, and so is yours, Charlie; and I felt so convicted of being
+a story-teller that I couldn't hold the book in my hand."
+
+"Well, then," said I, "shall we have one set of hymns for happy
+people, and another for poor, tired-out folks like that little
+dressmaker that leaned against the wall?" For Bessie herself had
+called my attention to the pale little body who had come to the church
+door at the same moment with us.
+
+"No, not two sets. Do you suppose that she, either, wants to _sing_ on
+for ever? And all those girls! Sorry enough they would be to have to
+die, and leave their dancing and flirtations and the establishments
+they hope to have! It wouldn't be much comfort to them to promise them
+they should _sing_. Charlie, I want a hymn that shall give thanks that
+I am alive, that I have _you_."
+
+"Could the dressmaker sing that?"
+
+"No;" and Bessie's eyes sought the shining blue sky with a wistful,
+beseeching tenderness. "Oh, it's all wrong, Charlie dear. She ought to
+tell us in a chant how tired and hopeless she is for this world; and
+we ought to sing to her something that would cheer her, help her, even
+in this world. Why must she wait for all her brightness till she dies?
+So perfectly heartless to stand up along side of her and sing _that_!"
+
+"Well," I said, "you needn't wait till next Sunday to bring her your
+words of cheer."
+
+In a minute my darling was crying on my shoulder. I could understand
+the outburst, and was glad of it.
+
+All athrill with new emotions, new purposes, an eternity of love,
+she had come to church to be reminded that earth was naught, that the
+trials and tempests here would come to an end some day, and after, to
+the patiently victorious, would come the hymns of praise. _Earth_
+was very full that morning to her and me; _earth_ was a place for
+worshipful harmonies; and yet the strong contrast with the poor
+patient sufferer who had passed into church with us was too much for
+Bessie: she craved an expression that should comprehend alike her
+sorrow and our abundant joy.
+
+The tempest of tears passed by, and we had bright skies again. Poor
+Mrs. Sloman's dinner waited long that day; and it was with a guilty
+sense that she was waiting too that we went down the hill at a
+quickened pace when the church clock, sounding up the hillside, came
+like a chiding voice.
+
+And a double sense of guiltiness was creeping over me. I must return
+to New York to-morrow, and I had not told Bessie yet of the longer
+journey I must make so soon. I put it by again and again in the short
+flying hours of that afternoon; and it was not until dusk had fallen
+in the little porch, as we sat there after tea, and I had watched the
+light from Mrs. Sloman's chamber shine down upon the honeysuckles and
+then go out, that I took my resolution.
+
+"Bessie," I said, leaning over her and taking her face in both my
+hands, "I have something to tell you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+"I have something to tell you;" and without an instant's pause I went
+on: "Mr. D---- has business in England which cannot be attended to
+by letter. One of us must go, and they send me. I must sail in two
+weeks."
+
+It was a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, and Bessie gave a little gasp
+of surprise: "So soon! Oh, Charlie, take me with you!" Realizing in
+the next instant the purport of the suggestion, she flung away from my
+hands and rushed into the parlor, where a dim, soft lamp was burning
+on the table. She sat down on a low chair beside it and hid her face
+on the table in her hands.
+
+Like a flash of lightning all the possibilities of our marriage before
+many days--arranging it with Mrs. Sloman, and satisfying my partners,
+who would expect me to travel fast and work hard in the short time
+they had allotted for the journey,--all came surging and throbbing
+through my brain, while my first answer was not given in words.
+
+When I had persuaded Bessie to look at me and to answer me in turn,
+I hoped we should be able to talk about it with the calm judgment it
+needed.
+
+"To leave my wife--my wife!"--how I lingered on the word!--"in some
+poky lodgings in London, while I am spending my day among dusty boxes
+and files of deeds in a dark old office, isn't just my ideal of our
+wedding-journey; but, Bessie, if _you_ wish it so--"
+
+What was there in my tone that jarred her? I had meant to be
+magnanimous, to think of her comfort alone, of the hurry and business
+of such a journey--tried to shut myself out and think only of her in
+the picture. But I failed, of course, and went on stupidly, answering
+the quick look of question in her eyes: "If you prefer it--that is,
+you know, I must think of you and not of myself."
+
+Still the keen questioning glance. What new look was this in her eyes,
+what dawning thought?
+
+"No," she answered after a pause, slowly withdrawing her hand from
+mine, "think of yourself."
+
+I had expected that she would overwhelm me in her girlish way with
+saucy protestations that she would be happy even in the dull London
+lodgings, and that she would defy the law-files to keep me long from
+her. This sudden change of manner chilled me with a nameless fear.
+
+"If _I_ prefer it! If _I_ wish it! I see that I should be quite in
+your way, an encumbrance. Don't talk about it any more."
+
+She was very near crying, and I wish to heaven she had cried. But she
+conquered herself resolutely, and held herself cold and musing before
+me. I might take her hand, might kiss her unresisting cheek, but she
+seemed frozen into sudden thoughtfulness that it was impossible to
+meet or to dispel.
+
+"Bessie, you know you are a little goose! What could I wish for in
+life but to carry you off this minute to New York? Come, get your hat
+and let's walk over to the parsonage now. We'll get Doctor Wilder to
+marry us, and astonish your aunt in the morning."
+
+"Nonsense!" said Bessie with a slight quiver of her pretty, pouting
+mouth. "Do be rational, Charlie!"
+
+I believe I was rational in my own fashion for a little while, but
+when I ventured to say in a very unnecessary whisper, "Then you will
+go abroad with me?" Bessie flushed to her temples and rose from the
+sofa. She had a way, when she was very much in earnest, or very much
+stirred with some passionate thought, of pacing the parlor with her
+hands clasped tightly before her, and her arms tense and straining at
+the clasping hands. With her head bent slightly forward, and her brown
+hair hanging in one long tress over her shoulder, she went swiftly
+up and down, while I lay back on the sofa and watched her. She would
+speak it out presently, the thought that was hurting her. So I felt
+secure and waited, following every movement with a lover's eye. But
+I ought not to have waited. I should have drawn her to me and shared
+that rapid, nervous walk--should have compelled her with sweet force
+to render an account of that emotion. But I was so secure, so entirely
+one with her in thought, that I could conceive of nothing but a
+passing tempest at my blundering, stupid thoughtfulness for her.
+
+Suddenly at the door she stopped, and with her hand upon it said,
+"Good-night, Charlie;" and was out of the room in a twinkling.
+
+I sprang from the sofa and to the foot of the stairs, but I saw only a
+glimpse of her vanishing dress; and though I called after her in
+low, beseeching tones, "Bessie! Bessie!" a door shut in the distant
+corridor for only answer.
+
+What to do? In that decorous mansion I could not follow her; and my
+impulse to dash after her and knock at her door till she answered me,
+I was forced to put aside after a moment's consideration.
+
+I stood there in the quiet hall, the old clock ticking away a solemn
+"I-told-you-so!" in the corner. I made one step toward the kitchen
+to send a message by one of the maids, but recoiled at the suggestion
+that this would publish a lovers' quarrel. So I retreated along the
+hall, my footsteps making no noise on the India matting, and entered
+the parlor again like a thief. I sat down by the table: "Bessie will
+certainly come back: she will get over her little petulance, and know
+I am here waiting."
+
+All about the parlor were the traces of my darling. A soft little coil
+of rose-colored Berlin wool, with its ivory needle sheathed among the
+stitches, lay in a tiny basket. I lifted it up: the basket was made
+of scented grass, and there was a delicious sweet and pure fragrance
+about the knitting-work. I took possession of it and thrust it into my
+breast-pocket. A magazine she had been reading, with the palest slip
+of a paper-knife--a bit of delicate Swiss wood--in it, next came in my
+way. I tried to settle down and read where she had left off, but the
+words danced before my eyes, and a strange tune was repeating in my
+ears, "Good-night, Charlie--good-night and good-bye!"
+
+One mad impulse seized me to go out under her window and call to her,
+asking her to come down. But Lenox nights were very still, and the
+near neighbors on either side doubtless wide awake to all that was
+going on around the Sloman cottage.
+
+So I sat still like an idiot, and counted the clock-strokes, and
+nervously calculated the possibility of her reappearance, until I
+heard, at last, footsteps coming along the hall in rapid tread. I
+darted up: "Oh, Bessie, I knew you would come back!" as through the
+open door walked in--Mary, Mrs. Sloman's maid!
+
+She started at seeing me: "Excuse me, sir. The parlor was so--I
+thought there was no one here."
+
+"What is it, Mary?" I asked with assumed indifference. "Do you want
+Miss Bessie? She went up stairs a few moments ago."
+
+"No, sir. I thought--that is--" glancing down in awkward confusion at
+the key she held in her hand. She was retiring again softly when I saw
+in the key the reason of her discomposure.
+
+"Did you come in to lock up, Mary?" I asked with a laugh.
+
+"Yes, sir. But it is of no consequence. I thought you had gone, sir."
+
+"Time I was, I suppose. Well, Mary, you shall lock me out, and then
+carry this note to Miss Bessie. It is so late that I will not wait for
+her. Perhaps she is busy with Mrs. Sloman."
+
+Something in Mary's face made me suspect that she knew Mrs. Sloman
+to be sound asleep at this moment; but she said nothing, and waited
+respectfully until I had scribbled a hasty note, rifling Bessie's
+writing-desk for the envelope in which to put my card. Dear child!
+there lay my photograph, the first thing I saw as I raised the dainty
+lid.
+
+"Bessie," I wrote, "I have waited until Mary has come in with her
+keys, and I suppose I must go. My train starts at nine to-morrow
+morning, but you will be ready--will you not?--at six to take a
+morning walk with me. I will be here at that hour. You don't know how
+disturbed and anxious I shall be till then."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Morning came--or rather the long night came to an end at last--and at
+twenty minutes before six I opened the gate at the Sloman cottage.
+It was so late in September that the morning was a little hazy and
+uncertain. And yet the air was warm and soft--a perfect reflex, I
+thought, of Bessie last night--an electric softness under a brooding
+cloud.
+
+The little house lay wrapped in slumber. I hesitated to pull the bell:
+no, it would startle Mrs. Sloman. Bessie was coming: she would surely
+not make me wait. Was not that her muslin curtain stirring? I would
+wait in the porch--she would certainly come down soon.
+
+So I waited, whistling softly to myself as I pushed the withered
+leaves about with my stick and drew strange patterns among them. Half
+an hour passed.
+
+"I will give her a gentle reminder;" so I gathered a spray from the
+honeysuckle, a late bloom among the fast-falling leaves, and aimed
+it right at the muslin curtain. The folds parted and it fell into the
+room, but instead of the answering face that I looked to see, all was
+still again.
+
+"It's very strange," thought I. "Bessie's pique is not apt to last so
+long. She must indeed be angry."
+
+And I went over each detail of our last night's talk, from her first
+burst of "Take me with you!" to my boggling answers, my fears, so
+stupidly expressed, that it would be anything but a picturesque
+bridal-trip, and the necessity that there was for rapid traveling and
+much musty, old research.
+
+"What a fool I was not to take her then and there! She _is_ myself:
+why shouldn't I, then, be selfish? When I do what of all things I want
+to, why can't I take it for granted that she will be happy too?" And
+a hot flush of shame went over me to think that I had been about to
+propose to her, to my own darling girl, that we should be married as
+soon as possible _after_ I returned from Europe.
+
+Her love, clearer-sighted, had striven to forestall our separation:
+why should we be parted all those weary weeks? why put the sea between
+us?
+
+I had accepted all these obstacles as a dreary necessity, never
+thinking for the moment that conventional objections might be
+overcome, aunts and guardians talked over, and the whole matter
+arranged by two people determined on their own sweet will.
+
+What a lumbering, masculine plan was mine! _After I returned from
+Europe!_ I grew red and bit my lips with vexation. And now my dear
+girl was shy and hurt. How should I win back again that sweet impulse
+of confidence?
+
+Presently the household began to stir. I heard unbarring and
+unbolting, and craftily retreated to the gate, that I might seem to be
+just coming in, to the servant who should open the door.
+
+It was opened by a housemaid--not the Mary of the night before--who
+stared a moment at seeing me, but on my asking if Miss Bessie was
+ready yet to walk, promised smilingly to go and see. She returned in
+a moment, saying that Miss Bessie begged that I would wait: she was
+hurrying to come down.
+
+The child! She has slept too soundly. I shall tell her how insensate
+she must have been, how serenely unconscious when the flower came in
+at the window.
+
+The clock on the mantel struck seven and the half hour before Bessie
+appeared. She was very pale, and her eyes looked away at my greeting.
+Passively she suffered herself to be placed in a chair, and then, with
+something of her own manner, she said hurriedly, "Don't think I got
+your note, Charlie, last night, or I wouldn't, indeed I wouldn't, have
+kept you waiting so long this morning."
+
+"Didn't Mary bring it to you?" I asked, surprised.
+
+"Yes: that is, she brought it up to my room, but, Charlie dear, I
+wasn't there: I wasn't there all night. I did shut my door, though I
+heard you calling, and after a little while I crept out into the entry
+and looked over the stairs, hoping you were there still, and that I
+could come back to you. But you were not there, and everything was so
+still that I was sure you had gone--gone without a word. I listened
+and listened, but I was too proud to go down into the parlor and see.
+And yet I could not go back to my room, next Aunt Sloman's. I went
+right up stairs to the blue room, and stayed there. Mary must have put
+your note on my table when she came up stairs. I found it there this
+morning when I went down."
+
+"Poor darling! And what did you do all night in the blue room? I am
+afraid," looking at her downcast eyes, "that you did not sleep--that
+you were angry at me."
+
+"At you? No, at myself," she said very low.
+
+"Bessie, you know that my first and only thought was of the hurry and
+worry this journey would cost you. You know that to have you with me
+was something that I had scarce dared to dream."
+
+"And therefore," with a flash of blue eyes, "for me to dare to dream
+it was--" and again she hid her face.
+
+"But, my precious, don't you know that it was for _you_ to suggest
+what I wanted all the time, but thought it would be too much to ask?"
+For I had discovered, of course, in my morning's work among the dead
+leaves on the porch, that I had desired it from the moment I had
+known of my journey--desired it without acknowledging it to myself or
+presuming to plan upon it.
+
+At this juncture breakfast was announced, and the folding doors thrown
+open that led into the breakfast-parlor, disclosing Mrs. Sloman seated
+by the silver urn, and a neat little table spread for three, so quick
+had been the housemaid's intuitions.
+
+"Good-morning, Charles: come get some breakfast. You will hardly be in
+time for your train," suggested Aunt Sloman in a voice that had in it
+all the gloom of the morning. Indeed, the clouds had gathered heavily
+during the parlor scene, and some large drops were rattling against
+the window.
+
+I looked at my watch. After eight! Pshaw! I will let this train go,
+and will telegraph to the office. I can take the night train, and thus
+lose only a few hours. So I stayed.
+
+What rare power had Bessie in the very depths of her trouble, and with
+her face pale and eyes so heavy with her last night's vigil--what gift
+that helped her to be gay? Apparently not with an effort, not forced,
+she was as joyous and frank as her sunniest self. No exaggeration of
+laughter or fun, but the brightness of her every-day manner, teasing
+and sparkling round Aunt Sloman, coquetting very naturally with me.
+It was a swift change from the gloomy atmosphere we had left behind in
+the parlor, and I basked in it delighted, and feeling, poor fool! that
+the storm was cleared away, and that the time for the singing of birds
+was come.
+
+I was the more deceived. I did not know all of Bessie yet. Her horror
+of a scene, of any suspicion that there was discord between us, and
+her rare self-control, that for the moment put aside all trouble,
+folded it out of sight and took up the serene old life again for a
+little space.
+
+"Aunt Maria," said Bessie, pushing aside her chair, "won't you take
+care of Mr. Munro for a little while? I have a letter to write that I
+want him to take to New York."
+
+Aunt Maria would be happy to entertain me, or rather to have me
+entertain her. If I would read to her, now, would I be so kind, while
+she washed up her breakfast cups?
+
+How people can do two things at once I am sure I cannot understand;
+and while the maid brought in the large wooden bowl, the steam of
+whose household incense rose high in the air, I watched impatient for
+the signal to begin. When the tea-cups were all collected, and Aunt
+Sloman held one by the handle daintily over the "boiling flood,"
+"Now," she said with a serene inclination of her head, "if you
+please."
+
+And off I started at a foot-pace through the magazine that had been
+put into my hands. Whether it was anything about the "Skelligs," or
+"Miss Sedgwick's Letters," or "Stanley-Livingstone," I have not the
+remotest idea. I was fascinated by the gentle dip of each tea-cup,
+and watched from the corner of my eye the process of polishing each
+glittering spoon on a comfortable crash towel.
+
+Then my thoughts darted off to Bessie. Was she indeed writing to her
+old trustee? Judge Hubbard was a friend of my father's, and would
+approve of me, I thought, if he did not agree at once to the hurried
+marriage and ocean journey.
+
+"What an unconscionable time it takes her! Don't you think so, Mrs.
+Sloman?" I said at last, after I had gone through three several papers
+on subjects unknown.
+
+I suppose it was scarcely a courteous speech. But Mrs. Sloman smiled a
+white-lipped smile of sympathy, and said, "Yes; I will go and send her
+to you."
+
+"Oh, don't hurry her," I said falsely, hoping, however, that she
+would.
+
+Did I say before that Bessie was tall? Though so slight that you
+always wanted to speak of her with some endearing diminutive, she
+looked taller than ever that morning; and as she stood before me,
+coming up to the fireplace where I was standing, her eyes looked
+nearly level into mine. I did not understand their veiled expression,
+and before I had time to study it she dropped them and said hastily,
+"Young man, I am pining for a walk."
+
+"In the rain?"
+
+"Pshaw! This is nothing, after all, but a Scotch mist. See, I am
+dressed for it;" and she threw a tartan cloak over her shoulder--a
+blue-and-green tartan that I had never seen before.
+
+"The very thing for shipboard," I whispered as I looked at her
+admiringly.
+
+Her face was flushed enough now, but she made no answer save to stoop
+down and pat the silly little terrier that had come trotting into the
+room with her.
+
+"Fidget shall go--yes, he shall go walking;" and Fidget made a gray
+ball of himself in his joy at the permission.
+
+Up the hill again we walked, with the little Skye terrier cantering in
+advance or madly chasing the chickens across the road.
+
+"Did you finish your letter satisfactorily?" I asked, for I was
+fretting with impatience to know its contents.
+
+"Yes. I will give it to you when you leave to-night."
+
+"Shall we say next Saturday, Bessie?" said I, resolving to plunge at
+once into the sea of our late argument.
+
+"For what? For you to come again? Don't you always come on Saturday?"
+
+"Yes, but this time I mean to carry you away."
+
+A dead pause, which I improved by drawing her hand under my arm and
+imprisoning her little gray glove with my other hand. As she did not
+speak, I went on fatuously: "You don't need any preparation of gowns
+and shawls; you can buy your _trousseau_ in London, if need be; and
+we'll settle on the ship, coming over, how and where we are to live in
+New York."
+
+"You think, then, that I am all ready to be married?"
+
+"I think that my darling is superior to the nonsense of other
+girls--that she will be herself always, and doesn't need any
+masquerade of wedding finery."
+
+"You think, then," coldly and drawing her hand away, "that I am
+different from other girls?" and the scarlet deepened on her cheek.
+"You think I say and do things other girls would not?"
+
+"My darling, what nonsense! You say and do things that other girls
+_cannot_, nor could if they tried a thousand years."
+
+"Thanks for the compliment! It has at least the merit of dubiousness.
+Now, Charlie, if you mention Europe once in this walk I shall be
+seriously offended. Do let us have a little peace and a quiet talk."
+
+"Why, what on earth can we talk about until this is settled? I can't
+go back to New York, and engage our passage, and go to see Judge
+Hubbard--I suppose you were writing to him this morning?"
+
+She did not answer, but seemed bent on making the dainty print of her
+foot in the moist earth of the road, taking each step carefully, as
+though it were the one important and engrossing thing in life.
+
+"--Unless," I went on, "you tell me you will be ready to go back with
+me this day week. You see, Bessie dear, I _must_ sail on the fixed
+day. And if we talk it over now and settle it all, it will save no end
+of writing to and fro."
+
+"Good-morning!" said a gay voice behind us--Fanny Meyrick's voice. She
+was just coming out of one of the small houses on the roadside. "Don't
+you want some company? I've been to call on my washerwoman, and I'm so
+glad I've met you. Such an English morning! Shall I walk with you?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+If I could have changed places with Fidget, I could scarce have
+expressed my disapproval of the new-comer more vehemently than he.
+Miss Meyrick seemed quite annoyed at the little dog's uncalled-for
+snapping and barking, and shook her umbrella at him in vain. I was
+obliged to take him in hand myself at last, and to stand in the road
+and order him to "Go home!" while the two young ladies walked on,
+apparently the best of friends.
+
+When I rejoined them Fanny Meyrick was talking fast and unconnectedly,
+as was her habit: "Yes, lodgings in London--the dearest old house in
+Clarges street. Such a butler! He looks like a member of Parliament.
+We stayed there once before for three days. I am just going to settle
+into an English girl. Had enough of the Continent. Never do see
+England now-a-days, nobody. All rush off. So papa is going to have a
+comfortable time. Embassy? Oh, I know the general well."
+
+I looked beseechingly at Bessie. Why wouldn't she say that we too
+would be there in London lodgings? Perhaps, then, Fanny Meyrick might
+take the hint and leave us soon.
+
+But Bessie gave no sign, and I relapsed into a somewhat impatient
+_r�sum�_ of my own affairs. Yes: married quietly on Saturday; leave
+here on Monday morning train; take, yes, Wednesday's steamer. I could
+arrange it with my law-partners to be absent a little longer
+perhaps, that there might be some little rest and romance about the
+wedding-journey.
+
+Two or three times in the course of that morning--for she stayed with
+us all the morning--Fanny Meyrick rallied me on my preoccupation and
+silence: "He didn't use to be so, Bessie, years ago, I assure you.
+It's very disagreeable, sir--not an improvement by any means."
+
+Then--I think without any malice prepense, simply the unreasoning
+rattle of a belle of two seasons--she plunged into a description of
+a certain f�te at Blankkill on the Hudson, the occasion of our first
+acquaintance: "He was so young, Bessie, you can't imagine, and blushed
+so beautifully that all the girls were jealous as could be. We were
+very good friends--weren't we?--all that summer?"
+
+"And are still, I hope," said I with my most sweeping bow. "What have
+I done to forfeit Miss Meyrick's esteem?"
+
+"Nothing, except that you used to find your way oftener to Meyrick
+Place than you do now. Well, I won't scold you for that: I shall make
+up for that on the other side."
+
+What did she mean? She had no other meaning than that she would have
+such compensation in English society that her American admirers would
+not be missed. She did not know of my going abroad.
+
+But Bessie darted a quick glance from her to me, and back again to
+her, as though some dawning suspicion had come to her. "I hope,"
+she said quietly, "that you may have a pleasant winter. It will be
+delightful, won't it, Charlie?"
+
+"Oh, very!" I answered, but half noting the under-meaning of her
+words, my mind running on deck state-rooms and the like.
+
+"Charlie," said Miss Meyrick suddenly, "do you remember what happened
+two years ago to-day?"
+
+"No, I think not."
+
+Taking out a little book bound in Russia leather and tipped with gold,
+she handed it to Bessie, who ran her eye down the page: it was open at
+September 28th.
+
+"Read it," said Fanny, settling herself composedly in her shawl, and
+leaning back against a tree with half-shut eyes.
+
+"'_September 28th_'" Bessie read, in clear tones which had a strange
+constraint in them, "'Charlie Munro saved my life. I shall love
+him for ever and ever. We were out in a boat, we two, on the
+Hudson--moonlight--I was rowing. Dropt my oar into the water. Leaned
+out after it and upset the boat. Charlie caught me and swam with me to
+shore.'"
+
+A dead silence as Bessie closed the book and held it in her hand.
+
+"Oh," said I lightly, "that isn't worth chronicling--that! It was
+no question of saving lives. The New York boat was coming up, if I
+remember."
+
+"Yes, it was in trying to steer away from it that I dropped my oar."
+
+"So you see it would have picked us up, any how. There was nothing but
+the ducking to remember."
+
+"Such a figure, Bessie! Imagine us running along the road to the gate!
+I could scarcely move for my dripping skirts; and we frightened papa
+so when we stepped up on the piazza out of the moonlight!"
+
+To stop this torrent of reminiscences, which, though of nothings, I
+could see was bringing the red spot to Bessie's cheek, I put out my
+hand for the book: "Let me write something down to-day;" and I hastily
+scribbled: "_September_ 28. Charles Munro and Bessie Stewart, to sail
+for Europe in ten days, ask of their friend Fanny Meyrick her warm
+congratulations."
+
+"Will that do?" I whispered as I handed the book to Bessie.
+
+"Not at all," said Bessie scornfully and coldly, tearing out the leaf
+as she spoke and crumpling it in her hand.--"Sorry to spoil your book,
+Fanny dear, but the sentiment would have spoiled it more. Let us go
+home."
+
+As we passed the hotel on that dreary walk home, Fanny would have
+left us, but Bessie clung to her and whispered something in a pleading
+voice, begging her, evidently, to come home with us.
+
+"If Mr. Munro will take word to papa," she said, indicating that
+worthy, who sat on the upper piazza smoking his pipe.
+
+"We will walk on," said Bessie coldly. "Come, Fanny dear."
+
+Strange, thought I as I turned on my heel, this sudden fond intimacy!
+Bessie is angry. Why did I never tell her of the ducking? And yet when
+I remembered how Fanny had clung to me, how after we had reached
+the shore I had been forced to remind her that it was no time for
+sentimental gratitude when we both were shivering, I could see why
+I had refrained from mentioning it to Bessie until our closer
+confidences would allow of it.
+
+No man, unless he be a downright coxcomb, will ever admit to one woman
+that another woman has loved him. To his wife--perhaps. But how much
+Fanny Meyrick cared for me I had never sought to know. After
+the dismal ending of that moonlight boat-row--I had been already
+disenchanted for some time before--I had scarce called at Meyrick
+Place more than civility required. The young lady was so inclined to
+exaggerate the circumstance, to hail me as her deliverer, that I felt
+like the hero of a melodrama whenever we met. And after I had met
+Bessie there were pleasanter things to think about--much pleasanter.
+
+How exasperating girls can be when they try! I had had my _cong�_ for
+the walk home, I knew, and I was vexed enough to accept it and stay at
+the hotel to dinner.
+
+"I will not be played upon in this way. Bessie knows that I stayed
+over the morning train just to be with her, and piled up for to-morrow
+no end of work, as well as sarcastic remarks from D. & Co. If she
+chooses to show off her affection for Fanny Meyrick in these few hours
+that we have together--Fanny Meyrick whom she _hated_ yesterday--she
+may enjoy her friendship undisturbed by me."
+
+So I loitered with my cigar after dinner, and took a nap on the sofa
+in my room. I was piqued, and did not care to conceal it. As the clock
+struck five I bethought me it was time to betake me to the Sloman
+cottage. A sound of wheels and a carriage turning brought me to the
+window. The two young ladies were driving off in Fanny Meyrick's
+phaeton, having evidently come to the hotel and waited while it was
+being made ready.
+
+"Pique for pique! Serves me right, I suppose."
+
+Evening found me at the Sloman cottage, waiting with Mrs. Sloman by
+the tea-table. Why do I always remember her, sitting monumental by the
+silver urn?
+
+"The girls are very late to-night."
+
+"Yes." I was beginning to be uneasy. It was nearing train-time again.
+
+"Such lovely moonlight, I suppose, has tempted them, or they may be
+staying at Foxcroft to tea."
+
+Indeed? I looked at my watch: I had ten minutes.
+
+A sound of wheels: the phaeton drove up.
+
+"Oh, Charlie," said Bessie as she sprang out, "you bad boy! you'll
+miss your train again. Fanny here will drive you to the hotel. Jump
+in, quick!"
+
+And as the moonlight shone full on her face I looked inquiringly into
+her eyes.
+
+"The letter," I said, "for Judge Hubbard?" hoping that she would go to
+the house for it, and then I could follow her for a word.
+
+"Oh! I had almost forgotten. Here it is;" and she drew it from her
+pocket and held it out to me in her gloved hand. I pressed the hand
+to my lips, riding-glove and all, and sprang in beside Fanny, who was
+with some difficulty making her horse stand still.
+
+"Good-bye!" from the little figure at the gate. "Don't forget, Fanny,
+to-morrow at ten;" and we were off.
+
+By the wretched kerosene lamp of the car, going down, I read my
+letter, for it was for me: "I will not go to Europe, and I forbid you
+to mention it again. I shall never, never forget that _I_ proposed
+it, and that you--_accepted_ it. Come up to Lenox once more before you
+go."
+
+This was written in ink, and was sealed. It was the morning's note.
+But across the envelope these words were written in pencil: "Go to
+Europe with Fanny Meyrick, and come up to Lenox, both of you, when you
+return."
+
+SARAH C. HALLOWELL.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+INSIDE JAPAN.
+
+
+A double pleasure rewards the pioneer who is the first to penetrate
+into the midst of a new people. Besides the rare exhilaration felt in
+treading soil virgin to alien feet, it acts like mental oxygen to look
+upon and breathe in a unique civilization like that of Japan. To feel
+that for ages millions of one's own race have lived and loved, enjoyed
+and suffered and died, living the fullness of life, yet without the
+religion, laws, customs, food, dress and culture which seem to us
+to be the vitals of our social existence, is like walking through a
+living Pompeii.
+
+I confess to a chronic desire to explore the Island Empire in which I
+dwell. Having already, in the central provinces of Japan, trodden many
+a path never before touched by foreign foot, I yearned to explore
+the twin provinces of Kadzusa and Awa, which form the peninsula lying
+between the Gulf of Yeddo and the Pacific Ocean. A timely holiday and
+a passport from the Japanese foreign office enabled me to start toward
+the end of March, the time when all Japan is glorious with blossoming
+plum trees, and the camellia trees in forests of bloom are marshaled
+by thousands on the mountain-slopes.
+
+I was glad to get away from Yeddo: I had a fit of anti-Caucasianism,
+and wished to dwell a while amidst things purely Japanese. There
+were too many foreigners in Yeddo. In that city of only eight hundred
+thousand Japanese there are now full two hundred foreigners of all
+nationalities; and of these, fifty or more are Americans. It was too
+much like home and too little like Japan. Should I go to Yokohama,
+the case was worse. Nearly twelve hundred of the sons of Japheth dwelt
+there, and to reach that upstart European city one must travel on a
+railway and see telegraph-poles all along the line. What _was_ the
+use of living in Japan? Every young Japanese, too, in the capital is
+brainful of "civilization," "progress," "reform," etc. I half suspect
+a few cracks in the craniums belonging to some of the youths who wish
+to introduce law, religion, steam, language, frock-coats and tight
+boots by edict and ordinance. There was too much civilization. I
+yearned for something more primitive, something more purely Japanese;
+and tramping into the country I should find it. I should eat Japanese
+food--profanely dubbed "chow-chow;" sleep in Japanese beds--on the
+floor; talk Japanese--as musical as Italian; and live so much like an
+old-time native that I should feel as one born on the soil. By that
+time, returning to Yeddo as a Japanese of the period, I should of
+course burn to adopt railways, telegraphs and balloons, codify the
+laws, improve upon United States postage, coinage and dress-coats, and
+finish off by annexing the English language after I had cut out all
+irregularities and made all the crooked spelling straight.
+
+So, resolving to be a heathen for a week at least, I left Yeddo one
+afternoon, though it took several hours to do so: the big city is one
+of distances more magnificent than those of Washington. I started in
+a _jin-riki-sha_, which baby-carriage on adult wheels has already been
+described, so as to be tolerably familiar to all American readers.
+The "team" of this "man-power carriage" consists of two men, pulling
+tandem--one in the shafts, the other running ahead with a rope over
+his shoulder, and, until the recent passage of a law commanding
+decency, attired only in his cuticle and a loin-cloth two inches wide.
+You take three coolies when you wish to be stylish, while four are
+not an unknown sensation in Yeddo. With these and fresh relays you can
+travel sixty, or even eighty, miles a day; and I have known one man to
+run thirty miles on the stretch.
+
+Of all the modes of traveling in Japan, the jin-riki-sha is the most
+pleasant. The _kago_ is excruciating. It is a flat basket, swung on
+a pole and carried on the shoulders of two men. If your neck does
+not break, your feet go hopelessly to sleep. Headaches seem to lodge
+somewhere in the bamboos, to afflict every victim entrapped in it. To
+ride in a kago is as pleasant as riding in a washtub or a coffin slung
+on a pole. In some mountain-passes stout native porters carry you
+pickapack. Crossing the shallow rivers, you may sit upon a platform
+borne on men's shoulders as they wade. Saddle-horses are not to be
+publicly hired, but pack-horses are pleasant means of locomotion.
+These animals and their leaders deserve a whole chapter of description
+for themselves. Fancy a brass-bound peaked pack-saddle rising a foot
+above the animal's back, with a crupper-strap slanting down to clasp
+the tail. The oft-bandied slur, that in Japan everything goes by
+contraries, has a varnish of truth on it when we notice that the most
+gorgeous piece of Japanese saddlery is the crupper, which, even on
+a pack-horse, is painted crimson and gilded gloriously. The man who
+leads the horse is an animal that by long contact and companionship
+with the quadruped has grown to resemble him in disposition and
+ejaculation: at least, the equine and the human seem to harmonize well
+together. This man is called in Japanese "horse side." He is dressed
+in straw sandals and the universally worn _kimono_, or blue cotton
+wrapper-like dress, which is totally unfitted for work of any kind,
+and which makes the slovens of Japan--a rather numerous class--always
+look as if they had just got out of bed. At his waist is the usual
+girdle, from which hangs the inevitable bamboo-and-brass pipe, the
+bowl of which holds but a pellet of the mild fine-cut tobacco of the
+country. The pipe-case is connected with a tobacco-pouch, in which
+are also flint, steel and tinder. All these are suspended by a cord,
+fastened to a wooden or ivory button, which is tucked up through the
+belt. On his head, covering his shaven mid-scalp and right-angled
+top-knot, is a blue cotton rag--not handkerchief, since such an
+article in Japan is always made of paper. This head-gear is usually
+fastened over the head by twisting the ends under the nose. With a
+rope six feet long he leads his horse, which trusts so implicitly
+to its master's guidance that we suspect the prevalence of blindness
+among the Japanese pack-horses arises from sheer lack of the exercise
+of their eyesight. These unkempt brutes are strangers to curry-combs
+and brushes, though a semi-monthly scrubbing in hot water keeps them
+tolerably clean. Their shoes are a curiosity: the hoofs are not shod
+with iron, but with straw sandals, tied on thrice or oftener daily.
+Grass is scarce in Japan, and oats are unknown. The nags live on
+beans, barley, and the stalks, leaves and tops of succulent plants,
+with only an occasional wisp of hay or grass.
+
+In certain districts horses of one or the other sex, as the law
+determines, are kept exclusively. Horses of the gentler sex in Japan
+are usually led by women. During part of my journey to the place which
+I am about to describe the leader of the mare I bestrode was a maiden
+of some forty summers--a neat, spare, vinegar-faced sylph, who had
+evidently long since left the matrimonial market, and had devoted
+herself to making one horse happy for the rest of her pilgrimage. That
+she was neither wife nor widow I discovered, not by asking questions,
+but by the manner in which her hair was dressed. Japanese virgins and
+wives have each distinct coiffures, by which, apart from the shaven
+eyebrows and the teeth dyed black of the married women, the _musume_
+or young maiden may be known. The widow who has resolved never to
+marry again (always too old or ugly) is distinguished by her smooth
+skull, every hair of which is shaved off. A lady of rank may also be
+known by her coiffure; and many other distinctions are thus noted.
+
+I waited three-quarters of an hour for my horse and its leader to
+appear at the post-relay at which I sat down, and was stared at during
+that time by about three hundred pairs of eyes. The populace of
+each village turned out _en masse_ to see the foreigner, and they
+diligently improved their time in examining him from crown to
+boot-sole. Like everything else in the rural districts of Japan, my
+guide was not in a hurry, and could not understand why a foreigner
+should be. But finally arriving, she bowed very low and invited me
+to climb up on the saddle, and off we started for a mountain ride of
+eight miles.
+
+A Japanese pack-horse, at his best, seems always swaying between two
+opinions: his affection for the bestower of his beans and that for the
+repose of the stable mutually attract him. On this occasion the little
+woman gently led the horse over the rough places and down the steep
+paths with the ejaculation, _Mite yo! Mite yo!_ but when the beast
+stopped too long to meditate or to chew the bit, as if vainly trying
+to pick its teeth, a lively jerk of the rope and a "You old beast!
+come on," started the animal on its travels. Finally, when the
+creature stopped to deliberate upon the propriety of going forward at
+all, the vials of the wrath of the Japanese spinster exploded, and I
+was tempted to believe her affections had been blighted. But when we
+met any of her friends on the road, or passed the wayside shops or
+farm-houses, the scolder of horses was the lady who wished all _Ohaio_
+("Good-morning"), or remarked that the weather was very fine; and when
+joked for carrying a foreigner, replied, "Yes, it is the first time I
+have had the honor."
+
+I need not trouble the reader with many details of geography. My
+trip lasted eight days, during which I passed over two hundred miles,
+two-thirds of the way on foot. I made the entire circuit of the lower
+half of the peninsula, but shall dwell only on my visit to Kanozan
+(Deer Mountain), famous for its lovely scenery, temple and Booddhist
+monastery. From the top of the mountain there are visible innumerable
+valleys, nearly the whole of the Gulf of Yeddo, and the white-throned
+Foosiyama, called the highest mountain in Japan and the most beautiful
+in the world. We spent the night previous in Kisaradzu, the capital
+of the now united provinces, and a neat little city, just beginning to
+introduce foreign civilization. Its streets were lighted with Yankee
+lamps and Pennsylvania petroleum. Postal boxes after the Yankee custom
+were erected and in use. Gingham umbrellas were replacing those made
+of oiled paper. Barbers' poles, painted white with the spiral red
+band, were set up, and within the shops Young Japan had his queue
+cut off and his hair dressed in foreign style. Ignorant of the
+significance of the symbolic relic of the old days, when the barber
+was doctor and dentist also, and made his pole represent a bandage
+wound around a broken limb, the Japanese barber has, in many cases,
+added a green or blue band. Not being an adept in the use of that
+refractory language which Young Japan would so like to flatten out and
+plane down for vernacular use, the Japanese barber is not always happy
+in executing the English legend for his sign-board. The following are
+specimens:
+
+                  "A HAIR-DRESSING SALOON FOR
+                    JAPANES AND FOREIGNER."
+
+                        "SHOP OF HAIR."
+
+                   "HAIRS CUT IN THE ENGLISH
+                      AND FRENCH FASHION."
+
+Passing out of Kisaradzu, and winding up to Kanozan over the narrow
+bridle-path, we pass the usual terraced rice-fields watered by
+descending rivulets, and the usual thatched and mud-walled cottages,
+which characterize every landscape in Japan, besides long rows of
+tall _tsubaki_ (camellia) trees, forty feet high and laden with their
+crimson and white splendors. Along the road are the little wayside
+shrines and sacred portals of red wood which tell where the worshipers
+of the Shintoo faith adore their gods and offer their prayers without
+image, idol or picture. The far more numerous images and shrines
+of Booddha the sage, Amida the queen of heaven, and hundred-armed
+Kuannon, tell of the popular faith of the masses of Japan in the
+gentle doctrines of the Indian sage. The student of comparative
+religions is interested in noticing how a code of morals founded
+upon atheistic humanitarianism, in its origin utterly destitute
+of theology, has developed into a colossal system of demonology,
+dogmatics, eschatology, myths and legends, with a pantheon more
+populous than that of old Rome. Many of the images by the wayside are
+headless, cloven by frost, overturned by earthquakes, and so pitted
+by time as to resemble petrified smallpox patients rather than
+divinities. Nature neither respects dogma nor worships the gods made
+by men, and the moss and the lichens have muffled up the idols and
+eaten the substance of the sacred stone. Here Booddha wears a robe
+of choicest green, and there the little saxafrage waves its white
+blossoms from the shoulder of Amida, rending asunder her stone body.
+Even the little stone columns which contain a guiding hand pointing
+out the road to Kanozan are dedicated to Great Shaka (Booddha).
+Passing one of the larger temples, we meet a company of pilgrims.
+Actual sight and reasoning from experience in other lands agree in
+telling me that they are women, and most of them old women. They
+return my salute, politely striving to conceal their wonder at the
+first _to-jin_ they have ever looked upon.
+
+I would wager that these people, like most of the rustics in Japan,
+have always believed the foreigners from Europe and America to be
+certainly ruffians, and most probably beasts. Many of them,
+without having heard; of Darwin or Monboddo, believe all the "hairy
+foreigners" to be descendants of dogs. Their first meeting with a
+foreigner sweeps away the cobwebs of prejudice, and they are ashamed
+of their former ignorance. In extorting from Japanese friends their
+first ideas about foreigners, I have been forcibly reminded of some
+popular ideas concerning the people of China and Japan which are still
+entertained at home, especially by the queens of the kitchen and the
+lords of the hod.
+
+After the fashion in Japan, I inquire of the pilgrims whence they came
+and whither they are going. Leaning upon their staves and unslinging
+their huge round, conical hats, they give me to know that they have
+come on foot from Muja, nearly one hundred and fifty miles distant,
+and that they will finish their pilgrimage at Kominato--where the
+great founder of the Nichiren sect (one of the last developments of
+Booddhism in Japan) was born--twenty-seven miles beyond the point
+at which we met. I inform them that I have come over seven thousand
+miles, and will also visit Nichiren's birthplace. "_Sayo de gozarimos!
+Naru hodo?_" ("Indeed, is it possible?")
+
+I have reached their hearts through the gates of surprise. A foreigner
+visiting Nichiren's birthplace! And coming seven thousand miles too!
+The old ladies become loquacious. They pour out their questions
+by dozens. Do you have Booddhist temples in America? Of course the
+Nichiren sect flourishes there? When I politely answer No to both
+questions, a look of disappointed surprise and pity steals over both
+the ruddy and the wrinkled faces. "Then he is a heathen!" says the
+expression on their faces. How strange that no Booddhist temples exist
+in the foreigner's country! Ah, perhaps, then, the Shintoo religion is
+the religion of the foreigner's country? "No? _Naru hodo!_ Then what
+_do_ you believe in?"
+
+It did not take long to answer that question. There is no country in
+the world in which Christianity has been more publicly and universally
+advertised. For three centuries, in every city, village and hamlet and
+on every highway, the names of Christianity and its Founder have been
+proclaimed on the edict-boards and in the public law-books of the
+empire as belonging to a corrupt and hateful doctrine; which should
+a man believe, he would be punished on earth by fines, imprisonment,
+perhaps death, and in _jigoku_ (hell) by torments eternal. "Whosoever
+believeth in Christ shall be damned--whosoever believeth not shall be
+saved," was the formula taught by the priests for centuries. I pointed
+to the board on which hung the edicts prohibiting Christianity, and
+told them I believed in that doctrine, and that Christ was the One
+adored and loved by us. A volley of _naru hodos_, spoken with bated
+breath, greeted this announcement, and I could only understand the
+whispered "Why, that is the sect whose followers will go to hell!"
+The old ladies could not walk fast, and we soon parted, after many
+a strange question concerning morals, customs and the details of
+civilization in the land of the foreigner. Be it said, in passing,
+that the present liberal and enlightened government of Japan, in spite
+of priestly intolerance and the bigotry of ignorance, resisting even
+to blood, has decided upon the recission of the slanderous falsehoods
+against the faith of Christendom; and Japan, though an Asiatic nation,
+will soon grant toleration to all creeds.
+
+The path wound up through higher valleys, revealing bolder scenery.
+Afar off, in the sheen of glorified distance, the water slanted to the
+sky. The white bosoms of the square-sailed junks heaved with breezy
+pulses, the mountains were thrones of stainless blue, the floods
+of sunny splendor and the intense fullness of light, for which the
+cloudless sky of Japan is remarkable, told the reason for the naming
+of Niphon, of which "Japan" is but the foreigner's corruption,
+"Great Land of the Fountain of Light." Anon we entered the groves
+of mountain-pines anchored in the rocks, and with girths upon which
+succeeding centuries had clasped their zones. They seemed like
+Nature's senators in council as they whispered together and murmured
+in the breeze that reached us laden with music and freighted with
+resinous aroma. Reaching a hamlet called Mute ("six hands"), I sit
+outside an inn on one of the benches which are ever ready for the
+traveler, and shaded overhead by a screen of boughs. A young girl
+brings me water, the ever-ready cup of tea, and fire for the pipe
+which I am supposed to smoke. A short rest, another hour's climb and
+walk, and we are in the village of Kanozan, which is scarcely more
+than a street of hotels. Situated on the ridge of the mountain, it
+rises like an island in a sea of pines.
+
+In imagining a Japanese hotel, good reader, please dismiss all
+architectural ideas derived from the Continental or the Fifth Avenue.
+Our hotels in Japan, outwardly at least, are wooden structures, two
+stories high, often but one. Their roofs are usually thatched, though
+the city caravansaries are tiled. They are entirely open on the front
+_ground_ floor, and about six feet from the sill or threshold rises a
+platform about a foot and a half high, upon which the proprietor may
+be seen seated on his heels behind a tiny railing ten inches high,
+busy with his account-books. If it is winter he is engaged in the
+absorbing occupation of all Japanese tradesmen at that time of
+year--warming his hands over a charcoal fire in a low brazier. The
+kitchen is usually just next to this front room, often separated
+from the street only by a latticed partition. In evolving a Japanese
+kitchen out of his or her imagination, the reader must cast away the
+rising conception of Bridget's realm. Blissful, indeed, is the thought
+as I enter the Japanese hotel that neither the typical servant-girl
+nor the American hotel-clerk is to be found here. The landlord comes
+to meet me, and, falling on his hands and knees, bows his head to the
+floor. One or two of the pretty girls out of the bevy usually seen
+in Japanese hotels comes to assist me and take my traps. Welcomes,
+invitations and plenty of fun greet me as I sit down to take off my
+shoes, as all good Japanese do, and as those filthy foreigners don't
+who tramp on the clean mats with muddy boots. I stand up unshod, and
+am led by the laughing girls along the smooth corridors, across an
+arched bridge which spans an open space in which is a rookery, garden,
+and pond stocked with goldfish, turtles and marine plants. The room
+which my fair guides choose for me is at the rear end of the house,
+overlooking the grand scenery for which Kanozan is justly famous all
+over the empire. Ninety-nine valleys are said to be visible from
+the mountain-top on which the hotel is situated, and I suspect that
+multiplication by ten would scarcely be an exaggeration. A world of
+blue water and pines, and the detailed loveliness of the rolling
+land, form a picture which I lack power to paint with words. The water
+seemed the type of repose, the earth of motion.
+
+Enjoying to the full that rapture of first vision which one never
+feels twice, I turned and entered the room, which made up in neatness
+what it lacked in luxury. Furniture in a Japanese house there is
+none. Like all the others, the floor of my room was covered with soft
+matting two inches thick, made into sections six feet long and three
+feet wide, and bound with a black border. The dimensions of a room may
+always be expressed by the number of mats. The inside of the mats is
+of rice straw, the outside is of the finest and smoothest matting.
+There are no chairs, stools, sofas or anything to sit down upon,
+though, having long since forgotten the fact, we find a ready seat on
+the floor. On one side of the room, occupying one-half of its space,
+is the _tokonoma_, a little platform anciently used for the bed, two
+feet wide and five or six inches high. In one corner is a large vase
+containing four or five boughs broken from a plum tree crowded with
+blossoms, and a large bunch of white, crimson and dappled camellias,
+both single and double. In the centre is the sword-rack, found in
+every samurai's house, yet now obsolete, since Japan's chivalry have
+laid aside their two swords. On the other half of the room, occupying
+the same side as the tokonoma, is a series of peculiar shelves like
+those of an open Japanese cabinet, though larger; and at the top of
+these is a little closet closed by sliding doors. The other three
+sides of the room are of sliding partitions six feet high, made of
+fine white wood, latticed in small squares and covered with paper,
+through which mellow, softened light fills the room. On the plastered
+wall above the latticed sliding doors hangs a framed tablet on which
+are written Chinese characters, which, having the Japanese letters
+at the side, tell in terse and poetical phrase that "This room is the
+chamber of peaceful meditation, into which the moonlight streams."
+Some of the lattice and other work is handsomely carved and wrought,
+and a paper screen along the wall which separates this room from the
+next is covered with verses of Japanese poetry. Were it cold weather,
+a brazier, with some live coals in it, would be brought for us to
+toast our hands and feet and to shiver over, as stoves and hard coal
+are not Japanese institutions. First of all, however, at present, one
+of the _musumes_ brings me a _tobacco-bon_ or tray, in which is fire
+to light my pipe, the Japanese scarcely having a conception of a man
+who does not smoke.
+
+My description of a Japanese room will answer, in the main, for any
+in Japan _as it was_--from the artisan's to the emperor's. Even
+the palaces of the mikado in Kioto never contained tables, chairs,
+bedsteads or any such inconvenient and space-robbing thing. The tables
+upon which they ate, played chess or wrote were six inches or a foot
+high. A Japanese of the old style thinks the cumbrous furniture in our
+Western dwellings impertinent and unnecessary. In the eye of aesthetic
+Japanese a room crowded with luxurious upholstery is a specimen of
+barbaric pomp, delighting the savage and unrefined eye of the hairy
+foreigners, but shocking to the purged vision and the refined taste
+of one born in great Niphon. No such tradesman as an upholsterer or
+furniture-dealer exists in Japan. The country is a paradise for young
+betrothed couples who would wed with light purses. One sees love in a
+cottage on a national scale here. That terrible lion of expense, the
+furnishing of a house, that stands ever in the way of so many loving
+pairs desirous of marriage and a home of their own, is a bugbear not
+known in Japan. A chest of drawers for clothing, a few mats, two or
+three quilts for a bed on the floor, some simple kitchen utensils,
+and the house is furnished. Why should we litter these neatly matted
+rooms, why cover with paint and gilding virgin wood of faultless
+grain, or mar the sweet simplicity and airy roominess of our
+(Japanese) chambers by loading them with all kinds of unnecessary
+luxuries?
+
+These reflections are broken in upon by Miss Cherry-blossom, one of
+the maids, who glides in, kneels upon the floor, and sets down a tiny
+round tray with a baby tea-pot and a cup the size of an egg. Pouring
+out some tea, enough to half fill one of these porcelain thimbles, she
+sets it in the socket of another yet tinier tray, and bowing her head
+coquettishly, begs me to drink. Having long since learned to quaff
+Japan's fragrant beverage guiltless of milk or sugar, I drain the cup.
+Miss Cherry-blossom, sitting upright upon her heels, folds her dress
+neatly under her knees, gives her loose robe a twitch, revealing to
+advantage her white-powdered neck, the prized point of beauty in a
+Japanese maiden, and then asks the usual questions as to whence
+I came, whither I am going, and to what country I belong. These,
+according to the Japanese code of etiquette, are all polite questions;
+and in return, violating no dictum which the purists of Kioto or Yeddo
+have laid down, I inquire her age ("Your honorable years, how many?").
+The answer, "_Ju-hachi_," makes known that she is eighteen years of
+age. Chatting further, I learn what things there are to be seen in the
+neighborhood, whether foreigners have been there before, the distance
+to the next village, the history of the old temple near by, etc. All
+this is told with many a laugh and a little pantomime--she naturally
+committing the mistake of speaking louder and faster to the foreigner
+who cannot fully understand her dialect or allusions--when a new
+character appears upon the scene.
+
+A very jolly, matronly-looking woman, evidently the landlady, pulls
+aside one of the sliding paper doors, and bowing low on her hands and
+knees, smiles cavernously with her jet-black teeth, which, like all
+correct and cleanly women in Japan, she dyes on alternate days. She
+asks concerning dinner, and whether it is the honorable wish of the
+visitor to eat Japanese food. The answer being affirmative, both
+matron and maiden disappear to prepare the meal, evidently thinking it
+a fine joke. No such thing as a common dining-room exists in Japanese
+hotels. Caste has hitherto been too strictly observed to allow of such
+an idea. Every guest eats in his own room, sitting on his calves and
+heels. The preparations are simple, though of course I speak now of
+every-day life.
+
+Miss Peach-blossom appears, bearing in her hand a table four inches
+high, one foot square, and handsomely lacquered red and black. Behind
+her comes a young girl carrying a rice-box and plate of fish. Most
+gracefully she sets it down with the apology, "I have kept you long
+waiting," and the invitation, "Please take up."
+
+On the table are four covered bowls, two very small dishes containing
+pickles and soy, and a little paper bag in which is a pair of
+chopsticks. The place of each article is foreordained by gastronomic
+etiquette, and rigidly observed. In the first bowl is soup, in the
+second a boiled mixture consisting of leeks, mushrooms, lotus-root
+and a kind of sea-weed. In a third are boiled buckwheat cakes or
+dumplings, and _tofu_ or bean-curd. In the porcelain cup is rice. In
+an oblong dish, brought in during the meal, is a broiled fish in soy.
+Lifting off the covers and adjusting my chopsticks deftly, I begin.
+The bowl of rice is first attacked, and quickly finished. The
+attendant damsel proffers her lacquered waiter, and uncovering the
+steaming tub of rice paddles out another cupful. It is etiquette to
+dispose of unlimited cups of rice and soup, but a deadly breach of
+good manners to ask to have the other two bowls replenished. Of course
+at the hotels whatever the larder affords can be ordered. Boiled eggs,
+cracked and peeled before you by the tapering fingers of the damsels,
+are considered choice articles of food. Raw fish, thinly sliced and
+eaten with radish, sauce, ginger sprouts, etc., is highly enjoyed by
+the Japanese, who are surprised to find the dish disliked by their
+foreign guests. A member of one of the embassies sent to Europe
+confessed that amid the luxuries of continental tables, he longed for
+the raw fish and grated radish of his native land. Some articles of
+our own diet, especially cheese and butter, are as heartily detested
+by the Japanese as their raw fish is by us. The popular idea at home,
+that the Japanese live chiefly on mice and crawfish, and that the
+foreigners are in chronic danger of starvation, is matched by that of
+some Japanese, who, finding that the "hairy foreigners" do not eat
+the food of human beings--_i.e._ Japanese--wonder what they do eat. A
+member of the present embassy in Europe, when first leaving his native
+land, was thus addressed by his anxious mother: "Now, Yazirobe, you
+are going to those strange countries, where I am afraid you will get
+very little to eat: do take some rice with you." I confess that on
+first landing in Japan I could not relish Japanese diet and cookery.
+Barring eggs and rice, everything tasted like starch or sawdust. The
+flavors seemed raw and earthy, or suggested dishcloths not too well
+scalded. I suspect that a good deal of Philadelphia and Caucasian
+pride lined the alimentary canal of the writer. Now, after a ten-mile
+tramp, a Japanese meal tastes very much as it does to one native and
+to the diet born.
+
+Besides the young damsel who presides, there is another, less neatly
+dressed. Her apron is suggestive of the kitchen, and altogether she
+seems a Cinderella by the fireplace. This damsel is evidently a supe
+or scullion. She is not so self-possessed as her superior companion,
+and while observing the foreigner with a mild stare, unskillfully
+concealing her mirth, she finally explodes when he makes a _faux pas_
+with the chopsticks and drops a bit of fish on the clean matting.
+Thereupon she is dispatched to the kitchen for a floor-cloth, and
+severely lectured for laughing aloud, and is told to stay among the
+pots and pans till she learns better manners.
+
+Dinner over, a siesta on the soft mats is next in order. These mats
+seem made for sleep and indolence. No booted foot ever defiles them.
+Every one leaves his clogs on the ground outside, and glides about in
+his mitten-like socks, which have each a special compartment for the
+great toe. My waiting damsel having gone out, and there being no such
+things as bells, I do as the natives and clap my hands. A far-off
+answer of _Hei--i--i_ is returned, and soon the shuffling of feet
+is heard again. The housewife appears with the usual low bow, and,
+smiling so as to again display what resembles a mouthful of coal, she
+listens to the request for a pillow. Opening the little closet before
+spoken of, she produces the desired article. It is not a ticking bag
+of baked feathers enclosed in a dainty, spotless case of white linen,
+but a little upright piece of wood, six inches high and long, and one
+wide, rounded at the bottom like the rockers of a cradle. On the
+top, lying in a groove, is a tiny rounded bag of calico filled with
+rice-chaff, about the size of a sausage. The pillow-case is a piece of
+white paper wrapped around the top, and renewed in good hotels daily
+for each guest. One can rest about four or six inches of the side of
+his _os occipitis_ on a Japanese pillow, and if he wishes may rock
+himself to sleep, though the words suggest more than the facts
+warrant. By sleeping on civilized feathers one gets out of training,
+and the Japanese pillows feel very hard and very much in one place.
+The dreams which one has on these pillows are characteristic. In my
+first some imps were boring gimlet-holes in the side of my skull,
+until they had honeycombed it and removed so much brain that I felt
+too light-headed to preserve my equilibrium. On the present occasion,
+after falling asleep, I thought that the pillow on which I lay pressed
+its shape into my head, and the skull, to be repaired, was being
+trepanned. My head actually tumbling off the pillow was the cause of
+the fancied operation being suddenly arrested. A short experience in
+traveling among the Japanese has satisfied me that they are one of
+the most polite, good-natured and happy nations in the world. By
+introducing foreign civilization into their beautiful land they may
+become richer: they need not expect to be happier.
+
+W.E. GRIFFIS.
+
+
+
+
+JASON'S QUEST.
+
+
+I.
+
+This is a story of love for love, and how it came to naught. In it
+there shall be no marrying from mercenary motives; the manoeuvering
+mother-in-law is suppressed; Nature takes her course; and in the
+climax I strive to prove how sad a thing it is that men are modest and
+women weak.
+
+Still, I do not lose faith in humanity, but hope for better things in
+the broad, bright future. I would respectfully call attention to
+the moral of this tale, and, as for the heroes and heroines of the
+hereafter, I cheerfully leave them to regulate their affairs upon a
+different basis; which basis, I devoutly believe, will be one of the
+inevitable results of time.
+
+But, lo! the heroine approaches and the story begins!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Life with some of us is but the grouping of a few brilliant or sombre
+tableaux, which are like the famous lines in an epic that immortalize
+the whole. Maud's life was such a one, and her years had been rather
+unpicturesque until now, when the shadows began to deepen and the
+lights to grow more intense. In fact, she seemed to be approaching
+some sort of a climax, and she began to grow nervous about it, being
+just woman enough to dwell somewhat anxiously upon her anticipated
+_d�but_, and to hope for at least a decent appearance in her
+extremity.
+
+The good-hearted, commonplace people of a pleasant country down the
+coast--which I will call Dreamland for convenience' sake--thought
+of Maud only as a gentle and humane little lady, with a comfortable
+income and a character above reproach. So Maud abode in peace with her
+maids at the seaside cottage, spending the still hours of Dreamland
+between her rose-garden on the sunny slope to the southward and the
+conservatory of lily-like nuns on the hill toward the sea.
+
+Maud was unhappy in a world which had treated her very kindly indeed,
+and it was simply because she had a dove's heart, that was always
+fluttering in a strange place, and the face of a nun, that was for
+ever getting looked at by all sorts of people, much as it disliked
+that kind of treatment from the best of them.
+
+The only reason why Maud preferred such a dull place as Dreamland to
+the splendid metropolis up the coast was that she might have a quiet
+time of it, and not be annoyed by the impudent metropolitans. In fact,
+she was tired of her lovers--all save one, a fine young fellow named
+Jason, but better known in Dreamland as John. I have mentioned, I
+believe, that Maud was in very good circumstances: I am sorry to
+add that Jason wasn't. He was rich only in his untried youth and the
+promises of a glorious manhood.
+
+Jason loved Maud, and she knew it as well as she ever knew anything in
+her life--she knew it without his having told her. Had she not divined
+it by the infallible intuition of the heart, she might have lived
+believing herself unloved, for Jason hadn't the remotest idea of
+mentioning the fact. He could barely live comfortably by himself,
+frugal as he was; and he would not go to her empty-handed, though
+Heaven knows she had enough for two, and was dying to share it with
+him. He went his way, and the way was tedious enough in those days.
+Like a mirage, happiness glimmered before him, but his upright and
+patient steps brought him no nearer to its alluring vista.
+
+Youth is impatient and sanguine, and Jason, in his impetuous and
+hopeful youth, besought the oracle, whose prophetic utterances seemed
+to imply that his future and his fortune lay in some distant land,
+and that it would be wise for him to seek it at once. Jason, like his
+illustrious predecessor, resolved to go over the sea in search of the
+golden fleece. It was the most adventurous thing he ever did, and Maud
+thought it a hopeless and a willful act; yet she could do nothing
+but hold her peace, while her poor heart was as near to breaking
+as possible--much nearer to breaking than it is usually safe for a
+maiden's heart to be.
+
+So Jason gathered his mates--a reckless lot they were, too--and,
+having laden his barque and swung into the stream, his men said their
+final adieux, receiving quantities of pincushions and bookmarks, so
+indispensable to Argonauts, as testimonials of eternal fidelity from
+the maids of Dreamland.
+
+Jason strode to the cottage and kissed the hand of Maud as if it
+were the hand of a princess; after which, with much embarrassment, he
+plucked a rose from her garden, while a pang pierced his heart till it
+ached again, and a thorn probed his finger till a drop of blood
+fell upon a myrtle leaf; which leaf Maud coveted, and keeps to this
+day--hugged to her in her grave-clothes.
+
+It is of course best that this life should not be perfect, for the
+life to come might suffer by comparison; yet it is one of the cruelest
+decrees of Nature--if Nature has really decreed what seems so wholly
+against her--that a woman's heart must bide its time and be silent in
+the presence of its natural mate while every attribute of her being
+implores his recognition; and that the truest men are too honorable
+or too proud to yield themselves, having no offering but their honest
+love to lay at the feet of their mistresses. If it were not so, the
+princess would not have mourned in her garden for her flown mate, and
+there would have been much happiness on short notice.
+
+Driven forth by the propitious winds, the barque fled from the shore,
+while Maud, seated among her roses, with weeping and wringing of
+hands, poured out upon the winds the burden of her love.
+
+Why didn't Jason catch a syllable of that fervent prayer, reef, and
+come home to her? Then I need not have written this history, and all
+would have been well in Dreamland. But he didn't. He heard nothing
+but the sibilant waters as they rushed under his keel: he thought of
+nothing but the rose that was withering in the secret locker of his
+cabin, and of the wound in his heart that was gaping and as fresh as
+ever. So the night-winds hurried him onward, and the darkness absorbed
+the outlines of the dear Dreamland coast.
+
+Maud watched the barque while it lessened and lessened in the
+distance, and the clouds blew over her, and it grew chilly and damp in
+the rose-garden--as chilly and damp as though it were not the abode of
+a princess who was beloved of the noblest of men. She watched the sail
+till it faded suddenly beyond the headland, and between it and her
+loomed the dark towers of the convent. Out on that troubled sea,
+seeking the golden fleece in some remote kingdom, tossed on the
+treacherous waves for her sake, in her white and radiant dreams she
+beheld Jason. Yet ever between him and her, hiding the lessening
+barque from the slope of the rose-garden, loomed the dark towers of
+the convent.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+Jason and his fellows coursed the seas, scanning with eager eyes
+the cloudy belt of the horizon, hopefully seeking some signs of the
+Fortunate Islands, of whose indescribable beauty and untold wealth
+they had heard many surmises. Day after day they pressed on between
+the same blank sky and the same blank sea, but there was no token to
+gladden the eyes of the watchers. Jason grew impatient at last: he had
+called upon nearly all the saints in the calendar, and was growing to
+be a very poor sort of a Catholic, inasmuch as he doubted the efficacy
+of his prayers and the ability of saints to answer them. He didn't
+realize that there might be good reasons for their not being answered
+under the existing circumstances; which is a matter worthy of the
+consideration of all of us.
+
+The fact was, the Fortunate Islands were not one-half so wonderful as
+had been represented; and the saints knew it well enough. Had Jason
+invested there, as he purposed doing at the time of his embarkment,
+he might have sunk all that he possessed--which was little enough
+to float, as one would think--and then Maud might have tended her
+rose-garden and carried fruit-offerings to the sweet-faced nuns
+till she was gray and limping, for all Jason's fine notions of
+independence--namely, a good income from the rise of stocks in the
+Fortunate Islands, and two souls and two hearts doing the same sort of
+thing at the same time, with complete and unqualified success, in that
+sweet rose-garden on the sunny slope to the southward.
+
+That was the way life went with Captain Jason of the Argonauts, called
+John, for short, in Dreamland, while the crew growled a good deal at
+their ill-luck, and began to fear that if things went on in that way
+much longer they would have more fasts than Fridays in the week. Those
+were trying times for all of them, and when land was made at last, and
+it proved to be a temptation and a snare, Jason ordered a special fast
+and a mass for the salvation of the souls in imminent peril. Out in
+the world at last, thousands of miles from the unsophisticated
+people of Dreamland, Jason beheld the dread Symplegades rocking their
+enormous bulks upon the waves, and liable at any moment to swing
+together with a terrific and deadly crash. Probably they were whales
+at play: it may have been two currents of the sea rushing into
+each other's arms: at all events, it was something deluding, though
+temporary, and perhaps the selfsame difficulty experienced by the
+original J. when he went after the original fleece.
+
+My hero was young and unschooled in the world's wickedness, but he
+knew that where two opposing elements come together with much force,
+whatever happens to lie between them must suffer. What should be done
+was a question of no little importance to the Argonauts. Most of
+them were in favor of running the risk of a collision and letting the
+vessel drive straight through. Jason thought this a judgment worthy
+of young men whose lady-loves give expression to their most sacred
+sentiments by gifts of pincushions and bookmarks. But he had something
+to consider more than they--yea, more than any other living man--in
+exemplification of the pleasing fallacy that besets all lovers in all
+ages. Blessed be God that it is so!
+
+The original Jason in the fable let loose a dove upon the waters, and
+the dove lost only a tail-feather or two when the clashing islands
+clashed their worst, and in the moment of the rebound the Argo swept
+through in safety. The modern J. thought of this in his predicament,
+and having turned it in his mind, he concluded that whereas the
+pioneer Argonaut did not meet his princess till after his encounter
+with the elements, he was not worthy of consideration; for had he
+known her and loved her as some one knew and loved some one else
+at that moment, most likely he would not have valued his life so
+slightly. He clewed up his canvas like a wise mariner, and lay to
+while the Symplegades butted one another with their foreheads of
+adamant, and the sea was white with terror all about them. Jason
+was no coward: he would have braved the passage had he alone been
+concerned in the result; but for Maud in her rose-garden and for the
+future, dear to him as his hope of heaven, he paused and trembled.
+
+It is a pity there should be so little pausing and trembling among
+the clashing islands when life hangs in the balance and the odds are
+against it. But there always has been and always will be this little,
+because we believe that nothing but experience is capable of teaching
+us, and experience invariably teaches it all wrong end to, so that we
+begin our lesson with a disaster and conclude it with a slow recovery.
+
+During Jason's hour of deliberation his guardian angel, who was the
+only one having his interests really at heart, and who loved him
+unselfishly,--this angel advised him in the similitude of a dream to
+"luff a little and go round the obstacles." Jason luffed, and passed
+on with colors flying; which was doubtless much better than trying to
+squeeze through the floating islands in the midst of an exceedingly
+disagreeable sea.
+
+Then came the land beyond, the long-sought kingdom, full of arts and
+wiles. Jason was beset with ten thousand temptations, and was more
+than once upon the point of falling into a snare, when, however, he
+seemed to behold the apparition of his withered rose, which bloomed
+and blushed again at such times, and gave out a faint fragrance, so
+like a breath from that Eden on the sunny slope that he paused and
+grew strong, and was saved.
+
+His troubles were not yet over. There was the bargaining for the
+golden fleece, and the tempting offer of the dragons' teeth which
+he was to sow. They were the lusts of the body, that, once planted,
+spring up an armed force of bloody and persistent accusers. But
+that precious rose! How it blossomed over and over for his especial
+benefit, a perpetual warning and an unfailing talisman--a very
+profitable sort of blossom to wear in one's button-hole in these
+times! But such blossoms are scarce indeed.
+
+In due course of time that potent charm got him the golden fleece in a
+very natural and business-like way, and, rejoicing in his possessions,
+Jason returned to his vessel and trimmed his sails for home.
+
+Merry the hearts that sailed with him, and fresh the winds that wafted
+them onward, while, as is usual at sea, nothing occurred during the
+voyage worth mentioning an hour after its occurrence. Jason in his new
+joy had almost forgotten that withered token. In deep remorse at his
+thoughtlessness, he sought his treasure, and, horror of horrors! every
+leaf had fallen from the stem, the blossom was annihilated for ever.
+He dwelt upon this episode morbidly, as upon a presentiment: he
+pictured in his mind the hill-slope cottage deserted, the rose-garden
+wasted and full of tares, and the bleak wind blowing whither it listed
+through those avenues of beauty, for desolation possessed them all. He
+groaned in spirit and wrestled with his new and invisible adversary,
+beseeching the Most Merciful, from the bitterness of his suspense, a
+speedy deliverance or a happy death.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+There were thistles and tares in the unkept rose-garden, and
+the cottage was abandoned to a sisterhood of doves, who mourned
+perpetually for their lost princess. The place was desolate, yet there
+had been no sudden desertion of it. For many months no news had been
+heard of the Argonauts. They were considerably overdue: the sages of
+Dreamland shook their grizzly heads. They were just as sage and shaky
+in those days as in these degenerate times. The maids of the hamlet
+wept for a season, then turned from sorrowing, dried their tears, took
+unto themselves new lovers, and the world wagged well in Dreamland.
+
+But Maud was a truer soul than any amongst them: she prayed hourly
+for Jason's prosperity, and was trusting and hopeful until it seemed
+almost that something had whispered to her the fate of the voyagers.
+Then she mourned night and day: she went into retirement with the
+sweet-faced nuns at the headland, whose secluded life had ever been
+very grateful to her. She gave out of her bounty to all who asked, and
+rested not then, but sought the sick and the suffering, and they were
+comforted, and blessed her who had blessed them. They began to think
+her half an angel in Dreamland, and it seemed as though she were not
+made for this world at all. The same thing happens now occasionally,
+and in this way we acknowledge our shortcomings before our fellow-men
+and women when we find some one considerably above the average who
+shames us into confessing it. I hope the Recording Angel is within
+hearing at these precious moments.
+
+The world certainly possessed no charms for one of Maud's temperament:
+it never did possess any for her. She was as out of place in it as a
+mourning dove in a city mob. Her spirit sought tranquillity, and she
+found it in the serene and changless convent life. You and I might
+seek in vain for anything like peace of spirit in such a place: we
+might find it a stale and profitless imprisonment; and perhaps it
+speaks badly for both of us that it is so. The violet finds its silent
+cell in the earth-crevice by the hidden spring a sufficient refuge,
+and rejoices in it, but the sea-grass that has all its life tossed in
+the surges would think that a very dull sort of existence. There are
+human violets in the world, and human sunflowers and poppies, and
+doves also, and apes and alligators; and some of them come within one
+of being inhuman; and sometimes that _one_ drops out, and the inhuman
+swallows up the human.
+
+Maud was the mourning dove seeking its bower of shade: she used to
+fancy herself a nun, and followed the prescribed duties of the house
+as faithfully as Sister Grace herself. She knelt in the little chapel
+of the convent till her back ached and her knees were lame, but it was
+a never-failing joy in time of trouble, and her time of tremble had
+come. Maud said many prayers before an altar of exceeding loveliness,
+where fresh flowers seemed to breathe forth an unusual fragrance.
+There was a statue of the Virgin, said to possess some miraculous
+qualities: tradition whispered that on two or three occasions the
+expression on the face of the statue had been seen to change visibly.
+Maud heard of this, and was very eager to witness the miracle, for it
+was thought to be nothing less than miraculous by the good Sisters.
+She bowed before the altar for hours, and dreamed of the marble face
+till she seemed to see its features smiling upon her and its small,
+slim hand beckoning her back to prayer. She grew nervous and pale and
+almost ill with watching and waiting, and at last was found prostrate
+and insensible at the foot of the statue, overcome with excitement
+and exhaustion. When she grew better she vowed she had seen the head
+bowing to her, and the hands spread over her in benediction: no one
+could deny it, for she was alone in the chapel. After that there was
+a feast of lilies at the convent, and Maud became Sister Somebody or
+other, and never again set foot beyond the great gates of the convent
+wall.
+
+The consecration was doubtless a blessing to her, for she was happy in
+her new home, and found a sphere of usefulness that employed her hours
+to the best advantage. Moreover, she grew to be a sensible nun, and
+ceased to look for supernatural demonstrations in the neighborhood of
+the chapel. She grew hearty, and was cheerful, and sang at her work,
+and prayed with more honesty and less sentiment. Her life was as
+placid as a river whose waters are untroubled by tempestuous winds,
+and upon her bosom light cares, like passing barges, left but a
+momentary wake.
+
+As Maud mused in her cell one day, through the narrow barred window
+she caught a glimpse of the burnished sea bearing upon its waves a
+weather-beaten barque inward bound. There was danger that her mind
+might wander off, piloted by her dreamy and worshipful eyes. She
+arose, drew across the opening a leathern curtain, and returned with
+undisturbed complacence to her prayers.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+Jason, having among his freights the veritable golden fleece, still
+coursed the seas, but beheld with rapture the fair outlines of the
+Dreamland coast traced in the far blue and mysterious horizon. The
+wind freshened: hour after hour they were nearing port, and as the
+whole familiar picture grew more and more distinct, Jason saw the
+convent towers looming like a great shadow, and afterward the sunny
+slope whereon the rose-garden grew.
+
+The manner of his quitting the barque before she was fairly within
+communication with the shore was hardly worthy of his calling. I
+forbear to dwell upon this exhibition of human weakness, for almost
+any one in Jason's shoes would have been equally regardless of the
+regulations, and in consequence proportionally unseamanlike.
+
+With soiled garments and unshorn beard Jason ran to the hill. No one
+of the idlers in port recognized the returned wanderer, and he assured
+himself of the fact before venturing upon his visit to the dove-cot
+where Maud dwelt, for he wished to gaze upon her from afar, and in
+silence to worship her, unknown and unregarded. When he reached the
+wicket, breathless with haste and excitement, he at once beheld the
+ruin of his hopes--the thistles in the paths, the roses overgrown and
+choked with weeds, the sad and general decay. Jason smote his breast
+in a paroxysm of despair, while the doves fluttered out from the porch
+of the cottage in amazement at the approach of a human foot to their
+domains.
+
+What could it mean? he asked himself again and again, while suspicions
+taunted him almost to madness. Up and down that disordered garden he
+paced like a ghostly sentinel; the doves fluttered to and fro, and
+were dismayed; the night-winds came in from the chilly sea, and the
+dews gathered in his beard. Through the deepening dusk he beheld the
+lights of the little town below him: across the solemn silence floated
+the clear notes of the vesper-bell. Jason turned toward the tower on
+the headland. A single ray of light stealing from one of the high,
+narrow windows shot through the mist toward heaven. "The ladder
+of Jacob's dream," said Jason: "on it the angels are ascending and
+descending in their visitations. Oh that I, like Jacob, might receive
+intelligence from these!"
+
+With the heaviest heart that ever burdened man he returned to the town
+and entered the open doors of the church, seeking a few moments of
+repose. An alien in his own land and unwelcomed of any, Jason sought
+the good priest and learned the fate of Maud. She was dead to the
+world and to him. It was but the realization of his fears, and he
+was in some measure prepared for it; yet the best part of the man was
+killed with the force of that blow. His only hope was gone. He set
+his house in order, like one about to leave it, never to return:
+his golden fleece was made over to enrich the convent, and, as the
+magnanimous offering of a homelesss and nameless voyager, it delights
+the happy creatures within those walls, and the shrine of the Virgin
+was made more wonderfully beautiful than it is possible to conceive.
+
+That night Jason walked in the shadow of the lofty walls and poured
+out his sorrowful prayers upon the winds that swept about them. Once
+in his agony he beat at the massive gates, demanding in the name of
+God and of mercy admittance for a lost soul that had no shelter save
+under that roof, and no salvation away from it; but his bleeding hands
+made no impression upon the ponderous doors, and the silent inmates
+at prayer heard nothing save their own whispers, or dreamed in their
+cells of heaven and of peace.
+
+So the cry of that hopeless soul rang up to the stars unanswered, and
+the night frowned down upon him with impenetrable darkness.
+
+End of the tragedy of Jason's Quest, which might easily have been a
+pleasant comedy if Maud had only spoken her mind in the right place.
+Will women never learn--since God has given them the same instincts
+with man, to love, to trust, to doubt, to hate and to make themselves
+at times disagreeable, even with a more complete success than men in
+each of these lines of dramatic business--that God must have intended
+also that they should have the equal right to choose the particular
+object upon which they may exercise those various offices of love,
+trust, etc., etc.? I shall never cease to wonder why they are
+persistently and stupidly silent through six thousand years, content
+to let their hearts wither and die within them, or surrender at
+last to the wretched apology for a lover who offers himself as a
+substitute, and is surprised at rinding himself accepted.
+
+To be sure, it is less dramatic. Jason might have come back and
+married Maud: there would have been a pretty wedding and some
+delightful hours before things grew dull and commonplace, as they must
+have done ultimately. That rose-garden would have come to grief
+when once the children got to playing in it; Jason, on some tedious
+afternoon, when overhauling old letters and the like, would have
+thrown out that withered rose (of precious memory), quite forgetful
+of its significance; Maud would have lost her myrtle leaf in
+house-cleaning. Yet what were the odds? A withered rose and a myrtle
+leaf are scarcely worth the keeping.
+
+You will remember how it turned out in the days of the gods: Jason
+wearied of Medea and the children; Medea was disgusted with such
+conduct, and behaved like a savage; there was general unhappiness in
+the family; and I blush for my sex--which is Jason's--whenever I think
+of it. Now, if my Jason had married his Maud, it would have scarcely
+been worth noticing beyond the simple register in the _Daily
+Dreamlander_, after having been thrice published from the pulpit
+between the Gospel and the Creed--"Jason to Maud."
+
+As Jason was not heard of after the windy night under the wall of the
+convent, there were many surmises concerning his disappearance. It was
+thought that he had again embarked upon some voyage of discovery.
+I believe he had, and it was a desperate one for him. The other
+Argonauts married such maids as were left unmarried, and they did
+well to do so. Some of the old sweethearts regretted their haste, and
+looked enviously upon the new brides of Dreamland; but most of them
+were satisfied with their children, and contented with such husbands
+as Heaven had sent them.
+
+Life grew slow in the little drowsy seaport; the old tales of
+the Symplegades were stale and tedious; the Argonauts had become
+spiritless and corpulent and lazy. One night a great gale swept in
+from the sea: the earth fairly trembled under the repeated shocks
+of the breakers. Old people looked troubled and young people looked
+scared, and on the worst night of all the convent bell was heard to
+toll, and then everybody feared something dreadful was happening to
+the nuns, and everybody lay still and hoped it would soon be over.
+The nuns wondered who rang the bell; and when every one had denied all
+knowledge of it, it was known that most likely the devil had rung it,
+for it was a dreadful night, and such a one as he best likes to be out
+in.
+
+In the morning, when the wind and the sea had gone down somewhat,
+the wreckers found a stark corpse among the rocks under the headland,
+lying with its face to the tower. It was dreadfully mangled: no
+one could identify it as being any one in particular, and it
+was impossible to know whether death had occurred by accident or
+intentionally; so it was shrouded and put away out of Christian burial
+in the common field of the unfortunate. The nuns sang a _requiem_, as
+was their custom, and Maud prayed earnestly for all followers of the
+sea; and the echo of her _miserere_ is the saddest line in the story
+of Jason's Quest.
+
+CHARLES WARREN STODDARD.
+
+
+
+
+FOREBODINGS.
+
+
+  What weight is this which presses on my soul?
+    Powerless to rise, I sink amidst the dust:
+  The days in solemn cycle o'er me roll,
+    While, praying, I can only wait and trust.
+
+  --Trust the dear Hand that all my life has led
+    Through pastures green, by waters pure and still:
+  If now He leads me through dark ways and dread,
+    Shall I dare murmur, whatsoe'er His will?
+
+
+
+
+DEER-PARKS.
+
+
+There is nothing in England at the present day much more distinctly
+an institution of that country than its deer-parks. Although it
+seems probable that the Saxons had some sort of enclosed or partially
+enclosed chases where deer were hunted or taken in the toils, the
+regular and systematic enclosure of parks would appear to have come
+in with the Normans. According to the old Norman law, no subject
+could form a park without a grant from the Crown, or immemorial
+prescription, which was held presumptive evidence of such a grant.
+
+On the Continent there would appear to have been much more strictness
+in this respect than in England. "In April, 1656," says Reresby in his
+travels, "I returned to Saumur, where I stayed two months: then I went
+to Thouars in Brittany, where the duke of Tr�mouille hath his best
+house. Thouars is looked upon as one of the best manors in all
+France, not so much for profit (a great extent of land there sometimes
+affording not much rent), but for greatness of tenure; five hundred
+gentlemen, it is said, holding their lands from it. Going to wait on
+the duke, I found him very kind when I told him my country, the late
+earl of Derby having married his sister. [1] He commanded me to dine
+with him, and the next time mounted me upon one of his horses to wait
+on him a-hunting in his park, which, not being two miles about, I
+thought of little compass to belong to so great a person, till I found
+that few are allowed to have any there save the princes of the blood.
+So true is it that there are more parks in England than in all Europe
+besides."
+
+A large park would appear to have been among the many luxuries of the
+princely Medici, for Reresby says: "Ten miles from Florence the duke
+hath another country-house, nothing so considerable in itself as in
+its situation, standing betwixt several hills on one side, covered
+with vines and olive trees, and a valley divided into many walks by
+rows of trees leading different ways: one leads to a park where the
+great duke hath made a paddock course by the direction of Signior
+Bernard Gascoigne, an Italian, who, having served our late king in
+his wars, carried the pattern from England. Near to this house,
+Poggio-Achaiano, is another park, the largest in Italy, or rather
+chase, said to be thirty miles in compass."
+
+Foremost amongst English parks is Windsor. The immense tracts by which
+Windsor was formerly surrounded consisted of park and forest. Windsor
+Forest has gradually diminished in size. In the time of Charles I. it
+contained twelve parishes, and probably covered not less than 100,000
+acres. According to a survey in 1789-92, it amounted to 59,600 acres,
+of which the enclosed property of the Crown amounted to 5454. Like all
+the other forests in England, it has been much encroached on, and now
+consists of only some 1450 acres adjoining Windsor Great Park. The
+rest of the land formerly composing it has been sold or leased. Enough
+of the forest remains, in conjunction with the park, to enable the
+visitor to make many delightful excursions. The most agreeable way
+of seeing this sylvan country is on horseback. Perhaps nowhere in the
+world can one get a more delicious canter. By a little management it
+is easy to take a ride of twenty-five miles without more than a couple
+of miles off the turf. In 1607 the Great Park was stated at 3650
+acres: it consists now of about one thousand acres less.
+
+The principal royal park in modern days, next to Windsor, is Richmond.
+This covers more than two thousand acres, and, thanks to the railway,
+may almost be regarded as a lung of London, being only eight miles
+distant from the city. Richmond Park is as replete as Windsor with
+historical association, and came into especial importance in the reign
+of Charles I. That king, who was excessively addicted to the sports of
+the field, had a strong desire to make a great park, for red as well
+as fallow deer, between Richmond and Hampton Court, where he had large
+wastes of his own, and great parcels of wood, which made it very fit
+for the use he designed it for; but as some parishes had rights of
+commonage in the wastes, and many gentlemen and farmers had good
+houses and farms intermingled with them which they had inherited or
+held on lease, and as, without including all these, the park would not
+be large enough for Charles's satisfaction, the king, who was willing
+to pay a very high price, expected people to gratify him by parting
+with their property. Many did so, but--like the blacksmith of Brighton
+who utterly refused to be bought out when George IV. was building his
+hideous pavilion, and the famous miller of Potsdam, that Mordecai at
+the gate of Sans Souci--"a gentleman who had the best estate, with a
+convenient house and gardens, would by no means part with it, and made
+a great noise as if the king would take away men's estates at his own
+pleasure." The case of this gentleman and his many minor adherents
+soon caused a regular row. The lord treasurer, Juxon, bishop of
+London, who accompanied Charles to the scaffold, and other ministers
+were very averse to the scheme, not only on account of the hostile
+feeling it had evoked, but because the purchase of the land and making
+a brick wall of ten miles around it, which was what the king wanted,
+was a great deal too costly for his depleted exchequer. However,
+Charles, with his usual fatal obstinacy, would not hear of abandoning
+the scheme, and told Lord Cottington, who did his utmost to dissuade
+him from it, "he was resolved to go through with it, and had already
+caused brick to be burned and much of the wall to be built." This
+beginning of the wall before people consented to part with their land
+or common rights, increased the public feeling on the subject, and,
+happening at a time when public opinion was growing strongly
+against arbitrary rule, was no doubt one of the circumstances which
+contributed to Charles's fall.
+
+George II. and Queen Caroline lived much at Richmond, and the
+interview between Jeanie Deans and Her Majesty took place here.
+Jeanie, it will be remembered, told her ducal friend that she thought
+the park would be "a braw place for the cows"--a sentiment similar
+to that of Mr. Black's Highland heroine, Sheila, who pronounced it "a
+beautiful ground for sheep."
+
+The practice of hunting deer in a park, now quite a thing of the past,
+appears to have been very prevalent at Richmond during this reign, and
+apparently was attended with considerable risk. In a chronicle of 1731
+we read:
+
+"_August_ 13, 1731. The royal family hunted a stag in Richmond new
+park: in the midst of the sport, Sir Robert Walpole's horse fell with
+him just before the queen's chaise, but he was soon remounted, and Her
+Majesty ordered him to bleed by way of precaution.
+
+"_Aug_. 28, 1731. The royal family hunted in Richmond Park, when the
+Lord Delaware's lady and Lady Harriet d'Auverquerque, daughter to the
+earl of Grantham, were overturned in a chaise, which went over them,
+but did no visible hurt. Mr. Shorter, one of the king's huntsmen, had
+a fall from his horse, and received a slight contusion in his head.
+
+"_Sept_. 13, 1731. Some of the royal family and persons of quality
+hunted a stag in Richmond Park. A stag gored the horse of Coulthorp
+Clayton, Esq., and threw him. The Lady Susan Hamilton was unhorsed.
+
+"_Sept_. 14, being Holy Rood Day, the king's huntsmen hunted their
+free buck in Richmond new park with bloodhounds, according to custom."
+
+It will be noted that this sport took place at a season when no
+hunting is now done in England.
+
+There are two other small royal parks within a walk of Richmond--Bushy
+and Hampton Court. Both contain magnificent trees.
+
+The New Forest is now the only royal appanage of the kind, and the
+House of Hanover has never made use of it for hunting purposes,
+although the Stuart kings were very fond of going there. It was to
+enjoy this territory that Charles II. commenced the magnificent
+palace at Winchester, the finished portions of which are now used as
+barracks. Nell Gwyn's quarters at the deanery are still shown. Up to
+1779 there was a great tract of royal forest-ground near London, on
+the Essex side, known as Enfield Chase, containing numbers of deer. If
+we remember rightly, it is alluded to in _The Fortunes of Nigel_.
+
+There are many more parks in the south than in the north of England--a
+circumstance which is remarkable, having regard to the wilder
+character of the ground in the former.
+
+According to a valuable work on parks published a few years ago by
+Mr. Shirley, a large landed proprietor, there are three hundred and
+thirty-four parks still stocked with deer in the different counties
+of England, and red deer are found in about thirty-one. It is
+supposed that the oldest is that attached to Eridge Castle, near that
+celebrated and most ancient of English watering-places, Tonbridge
+Wells, in Sussex. It is very extensive, and there are no less than
+ninety miles of grass drives cut through the park and woods. Almost
+the largest park is that attached to the present duke of Marlborough's
+famous seat, Blenheim. A large proportion of this magnificent demesne
+formed part of Woodstock Chase, a favorite hunting-seat of British
+sovereigns from an early date up to the time of Queen Anne. It was
+then granted by the Crown to the hero of Blenheim, far more fortunate
+in respect of the nation's gift than the hero of Waterloo, whose grant
+of lands lay in a swamp which it cost him a little fortune to drain.
+Next to Blenheim, in point of size, stands Tatton in Cheshire,
+the seat of Lord Egerton. It contains 2500 acres, and the portion
+appropriated to deer is far larger than at Blenheim. Tatton is from
+ten to eleven miles around.
+
+Another extensive park, 1500 acres, is that at Stowe, the duke of
+Buckingham's. When in 1848 the family misfortunes reached a climax
+which necessitated the sale of everything in Stowe House, the deer
+in the park were sold off. But twenty-five years have rolled by, and
+restored in a great degree the prosperity of the family. The duke is
+again living at his splendid ancestral seat, is by degrees restoring
+to their former home as the opportunity offers many of its scattered
+treasures, and has restocked the park with deer.
+
+Two parks pre-eminently famous for the magnificence of their oak
+timber are Keddleston, Lord Scarsdale's, in Derbyshire, and Bagot's
+Park, Lord Bagot's, in Staffordshire. The latter, which contains a
+thousand acres, is a very ancient enclosure. It contains, besides the
+deer, a herd of wild goats said to have been presented by Richard II.
+to an ancestor of the present owner.
+
+Parks vary from a paddock of twenty-one acres to twenty-eight hundred,
+but the most usual dimensions are from one hundred and fifty to four
+hundred acres. For a _multum in parvo_ of beautiful park scenery the
+traveler in search of these charming specimens of the picturesque may
+be advised to take a tour in Herefordshire and Worcestershire; and
+if he be a horseman he will do well to ride through the country.
+"Anyone," says Mr. Shirley, "who ascends the steep crest of the
+Malvern Hills in Worcestershire, and looks down from the summit of
+the ridge on the western side of the hills upon the richly wooded and
+beautifully undulating country which lies stretched beneath as far as
+the mountains of South Wales, would at once be struck with the 'bosky'
+nature of the scenery, and its perfect adaptation for the formation of
+deer-parks and sylvan residences."
+
+Grimsthorpe, Lady Aveland's (inherited from the dukes of Ancaster,
+extinct); Thoresby, Earl Manvers's, formerly the duke of Kingston's,
+father of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; and Knowsley, Lord Derby's, are
+also very large parks.
+
+A writer on Grimsthorpe in 1774 says: "On a former visit I was told
+that the park was sixteen miles and three quarters in circumference,
+and esteemed the largest in England: since then it has, nevertheless,
+been somewhat enlarged, but different spots in it are cultivated."
+
+A few parks have been created and others restocked during the present
+century. In Norfolk, Lord Kimberley, the present secretary of state
+for the colonies, has restored the deer which were removed during the
+present century, saying, it is reported, that "a place is not a place
+without deer"--a sentiment shared by many of his countrymen regarding
+an ancient grand-seigneur home. In the same county a new park has
+been created at Sandringham, the seat of the prince of Wales, the deer
+having been brought from Windsor. Sandringham Park and Woods were half
+a century ago a sandy waste, but fell into judicious hands and were
+admirably planted. The modern history of the place is remarkable.
+Toward the close of the century it became the property of a French
+refugee, Mr. Matou. This gentleman having been driven from his native
+country by the Revolution, conceived somehow the idea of importing
+from Sicily immense quantities of rabbit skins, which were used for
+making hats of a cheap kind which passed for beaver. In this way he
+acquired a large fortune. In England he mixed in the best society, and
+became very intimate with Earl Cowper, first husband of the well-known
+Lady Palmerston, and at his death bequeathed Sandringham to the
+Honorable Spencer Cowper, that nobleman's younger son, who married
+Lady Blessington's stepdaughter, Lady Harriet Gardiner, after her
+divorce from Count d'Orsay. When the prince of Wales was casting round
+for a country-seat, Sandringham was selected. Lord Palmerston was then
+in office, and some ill-natured things were said as to the sale of his
+stepson's place having been a much better thing for Mr. Cowper than
+for the prince of Wales. Vast sums have since been spent here.
+
+Where a deer-park has long existed on his paternal estate, it goes
+to an Englishman's heart to give it up. An incident in point occurred
+about twenty years ago. In a secluded part of Devonshire, approached
+by the narrow, high-hedged, tortuous lanes characteristic of that part
+of the country, stands a magnificent old Tudor mansion known as Great
+Fulford Hall. Here for upward of six hundred years have been seated
+the Fulfords, a family of Saxon origin, the rivals of the Tichbornes
+in antiquity. The mansion of Fulford was garrisoned by Charles I., and
+taken by a detachment of Cromwell's army in 1645. The marks they left
+behind them may be seen to this day. The Fulfords have supporters to
+their arms, a very rare circumstance in the case of commoners. These
+supporters are two Saracens, and were granted in consideration of
+services in the Crusades. "Sir Baldwin de Fulford fought a combat
+with a Saracen, for bulk and bigness an unequal match (as the
+representation of him cut in the wainscot at Fulford doth plainly
+shew), whom yet he vanquished, and rescued a lady." This gentleman's
+granddaughter was the mother of Henry VIII.'s favorite, Russell, first
+earl of Bedford, and the Fulfords are connected with a hundred other
+ancient and honorable houses. But for a long time the heads of the
+house have failed "to marry money;" and when this happens for two
+or three generations in the case of a country gentleman with a large
+family to portion off, the result must usually be impecuniosity. Thus,
+when the late Mr. Fulford succeeded to the family property in 1847,
+he found himself the owner of a majestic old dilapidated mansion,
+surrounded by a deer-park, which had been gradually growing less until
+the portion of the park devoted to this purpose was little more than a
+big field.
+
+Like his ancestor in the time of "the troubles," Mr. Baldwin Fulford
+was a Conservative, and had been very useful to his party. It was
+intended, therefore, to reward his services when the time came by a
+county office, which would have placed him at ease pecuniarily. When
+this office fell vacant the Tories were "in," and all seemed secure
+for Mr. Fulford's interest. But there's many a slip 'twixt cup and
+lip. A gentleman applied to the prime minister for the place for a
+friend of his, whose services to the party he duly dilated on.
+"I understood," said his lordship, "that Mr. Fulford's claims are
+considered paramount." "Mr. Fulford!" was the rejoinder. "I scarcely
+thought that such a place as this would be an object to Mr. Fulford--a
+gentleman of great position, with a deer-park and all that sort of
+thing." "A deer-park! You surprise me. I understood that Mr. Fulford's
+circumstances were extremely reduced. This alters the matter."
+Unfortunately, the, minister committed himself too far to draw back
+before making inquiries, when he learned that a deer-park having
+existed at Fulford for some four or five centuries, its owner had
+kept as a memento of grand old days a little remnant of the herd in
+a paddock, as before mentioned. He never recovered the blow of this
+disappointment. The heir to the property is, we believe, a son of the
+late bishop of Montreal. The family motto is "Bear up"--one eminently
+suited to its present condition, and we may hope that it will be
+followed so successfully that this ancient stock, which has held for
+so long a high place among the worthies of Devon, may once more win
+the smiles of Fortune.
+
+Many of the most picturesque parks are but little known, lying as
+they do remote from railway stations. Mr. Nesfield, the great
+landscape-gardener, considers that Longleat, the marquis of Bath's,
+near Warminster, has greater natural advantages than any park in
+England, and that these have been made the most of.
+
+Lord Stamford's park of Bradgate, in Leicestershire, is in the highest
+degree interesting. It is mostly covered with the common fern or
+brakes, and the projecting bare and abrupt rocks rising here and
+there, with a few gnarled and shivered oaks in the last stage of
+decay, present a scene of wildness and desolation in striking contrast
+to some of the beautiful adjoining valleys and fertile country.
+
+Another gem of its kind is Ugbrook. This is situated a few miles from
+the Newton-Abbot station of the South Devon Railway, and lies in a
+rocky nook on the confines of Dartmoor. Macaulay, whose brother was
+vicar of the neighboring parish of Bovey-Tracey, knew it well,
+and tells us in his _History_ that Clifford (a member of the Cabal
+ministry) retired to the woods of Ugbrook. He was a lucky man to have
+such paternal acres to retire to, but probably the visitor to-day sees
+this park in a condition which Charles's minister would indeed have
+enjoyed. There is no place in England where a man may feel more
+grateful to those who have gone before him for their taste and
+forethought in creating a sylvan paradise. Although not very large,
+this park contains almost every variety of scenery. There is a grove
+gloomy from the heavy shadows of the magnificent trees which compose
+it, glorious avenues of lime and beech, and monarch-like trees, which,
+standing alone amid an expanse of sward, show to the fullest advantage
+their superb proportions. Entering the park on one side, the road
+winds beside a river, to which the bank gently slopes on the one hand,
+whilst on the other it rises precipitately, clad with the greenest
+foliage. An especial feature of this place is what is known as "the
+riding park," a stretch of smooth turf extending some miles, from
+which you may get a view over thirty miles, with the rocky heights of
+Dartmoor Forest, where the autumn manoeuvres take place this year, on
+the one hand, and the Haldon Hills on the other. This ancient heritage
+is still the property of the Cliffords, the present peer being eighth
+baron in direct descent from the lord treasurer. The Cliffords have
+always remained constant to the Roman Catholic faith, and a Catholic
+chapel adjoins the mansion.
+
+A discriminating foreign tourist writes of Lord Hill's park,
+Hawkstone, in Shropshire, which, also lying rather off the beaten
+track, is comparatively little known: "I must in some respects give
+Hawkstone the preference over all I have seen. It is not art nor
+magnificence nor aristocratic splendor, but Nature alone to which it
+is indebted for this pre-eminence, and in such a degree that were I
+gifted with the power of adding to its beauty, I should ask, What can
+I add? Imagine a spot so commandingly placed that from its highest
+point you can let your eye wander over fifteen counties. Three sides
+of this wide panorama rise and fall in constant change of hill and
+dale like the waves of an agitated sea, and are bounded at the horizon
+by the strangely formed, jagged outline of the Welsh mountains, which
+at either end descend to a fertile plain shaded by thousands of lofty
+trees, and in the obscure distance, where it blends with the sky, is
+edged with a white misty line--the Atlantic Ocean."
+
+Moor Park, in Hertfordshire, is remarkable for the following tradition
+concerning it: In Charles II.'s reign it was bought by the duke of
+Monmouth, whose widow--she who
+
+  In pride of youth, in beauty's bloom,
+  Had wept o'er Monmouth's bloody tomb--
+
+is said to have ordered the heads of the trees in the park to be cut
+off on being informed of her husband's execution. This tradition is
+strengthened by the condition of many of the oaks here, which are
+decayed from the top. The duchess sold the place in 1720, thirty-five
+years after the duke's death. This is the Moor Park of apricot fame,
+but not the one where Sir William Temple lived when Swift was his
+secretary.
+
+Most of the oldest and finest trees in England are naturally to be
+found in the deer-parks. At Woburn, the duke of Bedford's, is the
+largest ash--ninety feet high and twenty-three feet six inches in
+circumference at the base. The Abbot's Oak, on which the last abbot
+was hung, stands, or lately stood, here. It is remarkable that oaks
+are more often struck by lightning than any other trees. At Tortworth,
+Lord Ducie's, in Gloucestershire, is a chestnut asserted to have been
+a boundary tree in the time of King John. So late as 1788 it produced
+great quantities of chestnuts. At five feet from the ground this tree
+measured fifty feet in circumference.
+
+The lover of fine trees should wander through the glades of Lord
+Leigh's park at Stoneleigh, in Warwickshire, where tall and shapely
+oaks grow with such symmetry that you do not guess their size, and are
+surprised to discover on measuring them how great it is.
+
+  Oh, how I love these solitudes
+    And places silent as the night--
+  There where no thronging multitudes
+    Disturb with noise their sweet delight!
+  Oh, how mine eyes are pleased to see
+    Oaks that such spreading branches bear,
+  Which, from old Time's nativity,
+    And th' envy of so many years,
+  Are still green, beautiful and fair
+  As at the world's first day they were!
+
+Writing of the confines of the ancient forest of Sherwood, Mr. Howitt
+says of those sylvan delights: "The great woods have fallen under the
+axe, and repeated enclosures have reduced the open forests, but at
+the Clipstone end still remains a remnant of its ancient woodlands,
+unrifled except of deer--a specimen of what the whole once was, and a
+specimen of consummate beauty and interest. The part called Bilhaghe
+is a forest of oaks, and is clothed with the most impressive aspect
+of age that can be presented to the eye in these kingdoms. Stonehenge
+does not give you a feeling of greater eld, because it is not composed
+of a material so easily acted on by the elements. But the hand of Time
+has been on these woods, and has stamped them with a most imposing
+character. The tempests, lightnings, winds and wintry violence of a
+thousand years have flung their force on these trees, and there they
+stand, trunk after trunk, scathed, hollow, gray, gnarled, stretching
+out their bare, sturdy arms, or their mingled foliage and ruin, a life
+in death. All is gray and old. The ground is gray beneath, the trees
+are gray with clinging lichens--the very heather and fern that spring
+beneath them have a character of the past. If you turn aside and step
+amongst them, your feet sink in a depth of moss and dry vegetation
+that is the growth of ages, or rather that ages have not been able to
+destroy. You stand and look round, and in the height of summer all
+is silent: it is like the fragment of a world worn out and forsaken.
+These were the trees under which King John pursued the red deer six
+hundred years ago, these were the oaks beneath which Robin Hood led
+up his bold band of outlaws.... Advance up this long avenue, which the
+noble owner of the forest tract has cut through it, and, looking right
+and left as you proceed, you will not be able long to refrain from
+turning into the tempting openings that present themselves. Enter
+which you please, you cannot be wrong. These winding tracks, just
+wide enough for a couple of people on horseback or in a pony phaeton,
+carpeted with a mossy turf which springs under your feet with a
+delicious elasticity, and closed in with shadowy trunks and flowery
+thickets--are they not lovely?"
+
+In the time of Elizabeth the largest park in Warwickshire, and one
+of the very finest in England, was that which surrounded the castle
+rendered classic ground by the immortal limning of Scott--Kenilworth.
+In a survey taken in the time of James I. it is stated that "the
+circuit of the castle mannours, parks and chase lying round together
+contain at least nineteen or twenty miles in a pleasant country, the
+like both for strength, state and pleasure not being within the realme
+of England." Kenilworth came to an end in Cromwell's time, a period
+very unfavorable to these sylvan paradises. He had the park cut up and
+divided amongst various grantees. How much damage was done to the
+park interest by the civil wars the following extract from the Life of
+Margaret, duchess of Newcastle, attests: "Of eight parks which my
+lord had before the wars, there was but one left that was not quite
+destroyed--viz. Welbeck Park of about four miles compass; for my
+lord's brother, Sir Charles Cavendish, who bought out the life of my
+lord in that lordship, saved most part of it from being cut down; and
+in Blore Park there were some few deer left. The rest of the parks
+were totally defaced and destroyed, both wood, pales and deer; amongst
+which was also Clipston Park of seven miles compass, wherein my lord
+had taken much delight formerly, it being rich of wood, and containing
+the greatest and tallest timber trees of all the woods he shad;
+insomuch that only the pale-row was valued at two thousand pounds. It
+was watered by a pleasant river that runs through it, full of fish and
+otters; was well stocked with deer, full of hares, and had great
+store of partridges, poots, pheasants, etc., besides all sorts of
+water-fowl; so that this park afforded all manner of sports, for
+hunting, hawking, coursing, fishing, etc., for which my lord esteemed
+it very much. And although his patience and wisdom is such that
+I never perceived him sad or discontented for his own losses and
+misfortunes, yet when he beheld the ruins of that park I observed him
+troubled, though he did little express it, only saying he had been
+in hopes it would not have been so much defaced as he found it, there
+being not one timber tree in it left for shelter."
+
+The number of deer-parks in Scotland and Ireland is small. The
+principal park in the former is that of the duke of Buccleuch at
+Dalkeith Palace, near Edinburgh. At Hamilton, belonging to the duke of
+that ilk, are wild cattle similar to those at Chillingham.
+
+A wonderfully picturesque Irish park is Rockingham, the Hon. L. King
+Harinan's, in the county Roscommon. The traveler will observe this
+beautiful and very extensive demesne as he goes from Boyle to Sligo.
+It is at the foot of the Curlew Mountains, and contains a magnificent
+sheet of water surrounding an island on which stands an ancient
+castle, still inhabitable. At Strokestown, in the same county, is a
+small park, where Mr. Mahon, its former owner, planted many years ago
+all sorts of forest trees, to see how far the deer would eat them: the
+only tree they entirely avoided was the beech.
+
+There is nothing grander in the three kingdoms than Lord Waterford's
+seat, Curraghmore. Taken with the adjoining woods, the demesne
+contains five thousand acres. The special feature of this superb place
+is grandeur; "not that arising from the costly and laborious exertions
+of man, but rather the magnificence of Nature. The beauty of
+the situation consists in the lofty hills, rich vales and almost
+impenetrable woods, which deceive the eye and give the idea of
+boundless forests. The variety of the scenery is calculated to please
+in the highest degree, and to gratify every taste."
+
+At Lyme Park, the splendid old seat of the Leghs in Cheshire, "a very
+remarkable custom," says Lysons, "of driving the red deer, which has
+not been practiced in any other park, either in England or abroad, was
+established about a century ago by an old park-keeper, who occupied
+that position for seventy years, dying at over one hundred years of
+age. It was his custom in May and June, when the animals' horns were
+tender, to go on horseback, with a rod in his hand, round the hills
+of this extensive park, and, having collected the deer, to drive them
+before him like a herd of common horned cattle, sometimes even opening
+a gate for them to pass through. When they came to a place before the
+hall called the Deer-Clod, they would stand in a collected body as
+long as the spectators thought fit; the young ones following their
+dams, and the old stags rising one against another and combating with
+their fore feet, not daring at this season of the year to make use of
+their horns. At the command of the keeper they would then move forward
+to a large piece of water and swim through the whole length of it,
+after which they were allowed to disperse."
+
+Following the example of the abbots, many of the bishops formerly had
+deer-parks, and up to 1831 the bishop of Durham, a prince-palatine
+in his diocese, had a park at his country-seat, still his residence,
+Bishops-Auckland; but now the only prelate enjoying this distinction
+is the bishop of Winchester, at Farnham Castle, in Hampshire.
+
+"There are some," says a writer in an early number of the _Westminster
+Review_, "who enclose immense possessions with walls and gates, and
+employ keepers with guns to guard every avenue to the vast solitudes
+by which they choose to be surrounded. Let such men pitch their
+tents in the deserts of Sahara or the wild prairies of America. What
+business have they here in the midst of a civilized community,
+linked together by chains of mutual obligation and dependence?" These
+observations apply to few private parks now-a-days. Permission to
+drive, ride or walk through them is rarely refused. Almost the only
+cases where there is much strictness in this respect are those of
+parks situated near a great watering place, such as Brighton or
+Tonbridge Wells. Thus, at the former, Lord Chichester's rule is that
+all persons on horseback or in carriages may pass through his ground,
+but foot-passengers are not allowed. The late Lord Abergavenny, a man
+of very shy and retiring disposition, was the least liberal park-owner
+in England. The gates of his superb demesne of Eridge very rarely
+revolved on their hinges; and this was the more remarkable, inasmuch
+as he did not reside there more than three months in the year. The
+story was told that at his accession to the property he had been
+more liberal, but that one day he was seated at luncheon alone when,
+suddenly looking up, he observed to his horror three proletarians
+flattening their noses against the window-pane, and gaping with
+exasperating interest at the august spectacle of a live lord at
+luncheon. To pull the bell and issue an order for the immediate
+removal of the intruders was, in the graphic language of the dime
+novel, the work of a moment; and from that hour the gates of Eridge
+were so rigorously sealed that it was often a matter of difficulty
+even for invited guests to obtain admittance.
+
+It may seem very ill-natured sometimes to refuse admittance on
+easy terms to such places, and to act apparently in a sort of
+dog-in-the-manger spirit. But it should be borne in mind that the
+privilege when accorded has not unfrequently been abused, more
+especially by the "lower middle class" of the English people, whose
+manners are often very intrusive. Such persons will approach close
+to the house, peer into the windows of private apartments, or push
+in amongst the family and guests while engaged in croquet or other
+out-door amusements. Another common offence is leaving a disgusting
+_d�bris_ lying about after a picnic in grounds which it costs the
+owners thousands of pounds yearly to keep in order. The sentiment from
+which such places are kept up is not that of vulgar display. They
+are hallowed by associations which are well depicted by the late Lord
+Lytton in an eloquent passage in _Earnest Maltravers_:
+
+"It is a wild and weird scene, one of those noble English parks at
+midnight, with its rough forest-ground broken into dell and valley,
+its never-innovated and mossy grass overrun with fern, and its
+immemorial trees, that have looked upon the birth, and look yet upon
+the graves, of a hundred generations. Such spots are the last proud
+and melancholy trace of Norman knighthood and old romance left to the
+laughing landscapes of cultivated England. They always throw something
+of shadow and solemn gloom upon minds that feel their associations,
+like that which belongs to some ancient and holy edifice. They are the
+cathedral aisles of Nature, with their darkened vistas, and columned
+trunks, and arches of mighty foliage. But in ordinary times the gloom
+is pleasing, and more delightful than all the cheerful lawns and sunny
+slopes of the modern taste."
+
+REGINALD WYNFORD.
+
+[Footnote 1: This was the famous Charlotte de la Tr�mouille, so
+admirably portrayed by Scott in _Peveril of the Peak_. Her direct
+male heirs terminated in her grandson, the tenth earl, and she is now
+represented in the female line by the duke of Atholl, who through her
+claims descent from the Greek emperors.]
+
+
+
+
+RAMBLES AMONG THE FRUITS AND FLOWERS OF THE TROPICS.
+
+TWO PAPERS.--I.
+
+
+"Well, Abdallah, what have you in view that can tempt one to a ramble
+on such a breezeless morning as this?" was my question of the turbaned
+exquisite who had just presented himself on the balcony where we sat
+at sunrise inhaling the fragrant breath of a thousand flowers. We
+were at Singapore, that little ocean gem at the foot of the Malayan
+peninsula, where, fair as a pearl, she nestles in the crested coronet
+of the deep blue sea. The whole island is but twenty-seven miles long,
+with a width varying from three to twelve; but in no other area of
+such limited dimensions can the tourist find so much of enchanting
+beauty and picturesqueness, or such a variety of tropical products, as
+in this "garden of the East." Without mountains, but with its central
+peak of Bookit Tim� rising about six hundred feet above the sea, the
+scenery is diversified with richly-wooded hills, evergreen dales,
+and luxuriant jungle-growth drooping over and reflecting its graceful
+fringes in many a little babbling brook. The fruits of the island are
+varied and luscious, the foliage perennial, and its myriads of flowers
+so gorgeously tinted, so redolent of balmy odors, that one is fairly
+bewildered with the superabundance of sweets. Of course we were
+nothing loath to tarry a few weeks on this fairy isle, and we gladly
+availed ourselves of the opportunity thus afforded to enrich our
+herbariums and sketchbooks with new specimens by making occasional
+excursions to the jungles, and now and then a picnic to some of the
+thirty smaller islands that surround Singapore. But as the foreign
+tourist in those enervating tropical regions is not slow to acquire
+the Oriental love of ease and inveterate aversion to fatigue even in
+pleasure-seeking, we usually left our Mussulman comprador to seek out
+objects of interest and report to us beforehand, thus saving us from
+the weariness of many a bootless expedition, and catering to the
+precise tastes and desires of each of us in the way of adding to our
+treasures.
+
+On the morning in question Abdallah had just brought in the invariable
+morning coffee, served in the purest and tiniest of porcelain cups;
+and while we listlessly sipped the fragrant Mocha he seemed scanning
+our faces with more than usual interest, evidently expecting just such
+a question as I had asked. What a picture he was as he stood there
+in flowing robes and huge turban, with his jet black moustache and
+bronze-brown complexion, one small hand placed over the heart in token
+of his absolute devotion to the foreign sahibs, and his lithe, supple
+form leaning forward in the most obsequious attitude imaginable! His
+answer was characteristic:
+
+"Well, Madam Sahib, I find much beautiful flower, but not all where
+lady sahib can go, unless she can ride in samp�n. Some roads too small
+for palanquin, and lady sahib's satin slipper must not be soiled with
+dust or mud. But I engage one big samp�n with six men to pull, and, if
+the foreign sahibs all please, we make one grand picnic to Pulo N�nas
+(Pineapple Island) and Pulo Panjan. They can ride first to where boat
+is waiting, visit Pulo N�nas, take breakfast under orange tree, see
+much fine fruit trees, and then go to Pulo Panjan, where I gave orders
+for dinner to be served for the sahibs."
+
+"But pray tell us who is to serve it," laughingly responded one of our
+party. "Are we to have monkeys or wild squirrels for caterers? It must
+be one or the other, as I am sure I have been informed that neither of
+those islands are inhabited by human beings."
+
+"No man there, true, sahib," was our Mussulman's ready rejoinder.
+"But I send small boat with two men to pull, and two cooks, with rice,
+fowls, and everything wanted for breakfast and dinner. I believe they
+already at Pulo N�nas, cooking breakfast; the palanquins are also at
+the door; and so, if it be the sahibs' pleasure, it is better to start
+before the sun gets very high."
+
+All this certainly promised well for us pleasure-seekers, and was no
+doubt quite as satisfactory an arrangement for our scheming comprador,
+who always took care to add to every charge a very liberal commission
+for his own valuable services. We well knew that he was cheating us
+on a grand scale, but of what avail was such knowledge? We should
+gain nothing by discharging one who had at least the merit of being
+good-looking, well-mannered and pleasant-speaking, only to engage
+another less civil and probably no more honest. And in India all
+disbursements for personal and household expenses are made through
+these compradors or stewards--not of necessity, but because it is
+the custom of the country, and in the East one never rebels against
+established usage.
+
+Our preparations were soon made: sketchbooks, drawing materials and
+covered baskets for specimens were transferred to the keeping of
+our faithful Mussulman, and we set out, anticipating a day of rare
+enjoyment. We were fortunate in securing the company of Mr. M----,
+the accomplished president of the Anglo-Chinese College, who had
+spent some thirty years in Singapore, and was well acquainted with its
+localities and objects of interest. He was like a complete volume with
+illustrations on everything pertaining to the East, could answer all
+manner of unheard-of questions about things that everybody else had
+forgotten, and had always ready an appropriate anecdote or story just
+to the point. His very dress was characteristic. It consisted of loose
+trousers of gray linen, and an old-fashioned white hunting-coat with
+Quaker collar, and huge pockets that would have answered very well
+for the saddle-bags of an itinerant surgeon. These were designed
+as receptacles for such stray "specimens" in botany, geology or
+conchology as he might chance to discover _en route_; while thrust
+into a smaller breast-pocket he carried a brace of huntsman's pistols,
+with antique powder-horn and shot-pouch slung over the shoulder. His
+hat was a Panama with low, round crown and a rim nearly as large as
+an ordinary umbrella. A Chinese youth, an orphan adopted by Mr. M----
+years before, accompanied his patron in a full suit of yellow nankin
+made _� la Chinoise_, with broad-brimmed straw hat, long, braided
+queue, and the inevitable Chinese fan. The rest of us donned our white
+linen "fatigue suits," and leghorn hats of such vast dimensions as
+bade the wearers have no thought for umbrellas. Thus equipped, we
+were ready for all sorts of emergencies--climbing rocks, diving into
+jungles or wading through muddy creeks.
+
+The drive was for the most part through spice plantations and groves
+of orange and palm, and, without delays, would have brought us in an
+hour's time to the coast. But we could not consent to press onward
+to the goal ahead without pausing for at least a glimpse of the many
+objects of interest on the way. First we strolled over a plantation
+of black pepper cultivated by Chinamen. The vine is a creeper with
+a knotty stem that if unpruned will reach the height of near thirty
+feet, but in order to render the vines more productive they are kept
+down to about a dozen or fifteen feet, and each is trained over a
+separate pole or prop. At each joint of the stem the plant puts out
+its fibrous tendrils, grasping the prop, and so climbing to the top.
+Whenever a vine happens to trail on the ground these tendrils, like
+strawberry "runners," shoot into the earth, but then they bear no
+fruit. The branches are short, brittle and easily broken, the leaves
+deep-green, heart-shaped and very abundant, and the blossom a cluster
+of small white flowers, almost destitute of odor. The fruit hangs in
+long clusters of some forty or fifty grains each, somewhat after the
+fashion of the wild grape, though much more diminutive in size. Until
+after it has reached its full size it is green, when at maturity of
+a bright red, and black only after it has become thoroughly dry. When
+the berries begin to redden the bunches are gathered and spread upon
+mats in the sun to dry: then the corns soon wither, turn black and
+drop from the stems, becoming thus the shriveled black pepper known in
+commerce. What is known among us as white pepper was formerly supposed
+to be a different species from the black; but the sole difference is
+in the curing, that intended for white pepper being placed in baskets
+under water until sufficiently swollen for the exterior pellicle to
+rub off by rolling in the hands after being again dried in the sun.
+The plants are propagated by cuttings, which are generally placed some
+six feet apart, sometimes being trained over the trunk of an old tree,
+and at others over a strong stake. The vines commence bearing the
+third year, and continue to do so for a dozen or more, when they
+are rooted up, new ones having been previously planted to take their
+places.
+
+We next called at two gambier plantations, both owned and conducted by
+Chinamen who came to the island a few years before as common coolies.
+The gambier (_Funis uncatis_) was formerly called terra japonica, from
+being supposed to be an earth and to come from Japan. It is grown
+on sandy soil or dry hills, and requires very little labor in
+cultivation. It is a slender-stemmed, vine-like shrub with oval-shaped
+leaves and pale purplish flowers in clusters. The seeds germinate in
+forty days, and the seedlings are transplanted when about nine inches
+high. When full grown they reach a height of ten feet or more, and
+after the first year the leaves and branches are regularly gathered
+and prepared for the market. Men and boys were engaged in plucking
+the leaves and conveying them, in mat-bags suspended on each end of a
+bamboo staff, to the boiling-ground. Here they were boiled until the
+water was evaporated, and the inspissated juice deposited, which we
+afterward saw drying in little squares. It is a powerful astringent,
+having one-tenth more tannin than any other substance known. It is
+used by the natives as a dye, also as a salve for wounds and for
+chewing with betel-nut and tobacco, besides being largely exported
+to Europe for tanning leather and for dyeing. All through the gambier
+plantations, and in every department of the labor of preparing it
+for the boiler, I observed that not a female was to be seen, and on
+inquiring the reason was gravely told that gambier plants would not
+flourish if touched by a woman! "Sensitive plants" indeed, so readily
+to discern the difference between the handling of the two sexes!
+
+Our next call was at a coffee plantation, where we saw sixty thousand
+young and healthy coffee trees, and two-thirds of them in a bearing
+condition, yielding in the aggregate not less than fifty thousand
+pounds of dry coffee per annum. The trees are beautifully formed, and
+rise naturally to the height of sixteen feet or more, but when under
+culture are kept at five or six feet for the convenience of collecting
+the ripe fruit. They are planted in rows, the leaves grow opposite
+each other, and many sessile flowers are produced at their insertion.
+The blossoms are pure white, and when the plants are in full bloom
+nothing can exceed their beauty or fragrance, the branches looking
+as if frosted with snow, while the air is filled with the delicate
+perfume. But the scene is brief as enchanting: the flowers fade a few
+hours after they are full blown, to be succeeded by tiny berries that
+are at first green, then a yellowish red, and finally ripen into a
+rich crimson or purple; after which, unless gathered at once, they
+shrivel and drop from the tree. This is about seven months after the
+blooms make their appearance. The pulp is torn off and separated
+from the seeds by means of a machine, and the grains, after being
+thoroughly washed, are dried in the sun and put up in bags. Chek
+Kongtwau, the Chinese proprietor of the plantation, not only walked
+with us over his grounds, and answered all our questions with
+exemplary patience, but insisted that we should go into the house, be
+presented to his wife and partake of a lunch. He regaled us with tea
+and coffee of his own growing and curing, excellent turtle steaks,
+boiled rice, and curry made of shrimps and cucumbers stewed together.
+For vegetables there were the Malay lobak, a tender white radish, and
+the cocoa-nut bud stewed in the milk of the ripe fruit; and as dessert
+we had placed before us, for the first time, the far-famed durian, so
+universal a favorite among Orientals as to command a higher price than
+any other fruit in market, yet so abominably disgusting in smell that
+the olfactories of few strangers can tolerate its approach. To me the
+odor seemed precisely that supposed to be produced by the admixture of
+garlic and assafoetida; and as a plate piled with the rich golden pulp
+was placed before me by our hostess, I came so near fainting as to be
+compelled to seek the open air. The old Chinaman followed me, and
+when he had learned the cause of my indisposition, laughed heartily,
+saying, "Wait a year or two. You have not been in the country long
+enough to appreciate this rare luxury. But when you have become
+initiated into a knowledge of its surpassing excellences, never an
+orange, pineapple or other fruit will you touch when a durian can be
+had."
+
+Just as we were re-entering our palanquins, Chek Kongtwau inquired
+whether we had yet seen the anoo palm or sago tree, of which he said
+there was but a solitary specimen in the island, most of the sago
+manufactured at Singapore being brought in its crude state from the
+swamps of Sumatra. He told us the famous tree was several miles from
+his house, out of our direct route, but if we had time to visit it he
+would undertake to guide us safely through the jungle to and from the
+tree. We found it standing in solitary grandeur in a low swamp, and
+lifting its long pinnated leaves from the extreme top of a trunk full
+thirty feet high and twenty-eight inches in diameter. Its general
+appearance is not unlike the cocoa-nut palm. Our conductor called the
+sago tree _sibla_, but the Malays give it the name of _rumbiga_. They
+say that each tree, if kept properly pruned down, will produce at
+least five hundred pounds of pith per annum; but it soon degenerates
+if suffered to grow to any considerable height. The pith is soaked
+in large troughs of running water until it dissolves and afterward
+settles, the sand and heavy dirt sinking beneath it, and the fibres
+and scum floating on top. After being separated from these impurities
+the sago is dried, and then granulated by passing it through
+perforated plates till it becomes smooth and polished like so many
+pearls, when it is packed in boxes and bags for sale. We did not see
+the process that day, of course, but afterward at the large factory on
+the river a few miles above the settlement.
+
+One more plantation, a grove of the stately areca-nut or betel trees,
+we determined to visit before taking the boat. The smooth road was
+bordered everywhere with the beautiful melastoma or Singapore rose, of
+perennial foliage and always in bloom, underneath acacias and palms;
+and the very earth was carpeted with beauty and fragrance enough to
+have formed the bridal-couch of a fairy queen. Over such a highway
+three miles were quickly made, and we alighted at the entrance of a
+narrow lane that led to the abode of Cassim Mootoo, the Malay owner
+and cultivator of the betel-nut plantation. At the outer door a stone
+monster of huge proportions and uncouth features kept guard against
+the uncanny spirits that are supposed to frequent out-of-the-way lanes
+and dreary passages. The planter received us pleasantly, accepted our
+apologies for troubling him, and offered to show us over the grounds.
+He was far less courtly in manners than the Chinese coffee-cultivator,
+to whom we should scarcely have ventured to offer a fee, while out of
+the Malay's cunning eyes there gleamed the evident expectation of a
+snug bonus of silver rupees, which he received as a matter of course
+when we bade him adieu, and having counted them over and jingled
+them for a moment in his fingers, he thrust them into his pouch as he
+re-entered the house.
+
+We found the areca trees planted in rows, and growing to the height of
+some forty feet, with straight, branchless trunks, terminated at the
+top with ten or twelve pinnated leaves, each of which is full five
+feet long. The fruit grows in clusters immediately below the tuft
+of leaves. The outer shell is of a bright golden hue, that gradually
+deepens to crimson as the fruit matures, and when opened shows a
+brown, astringent nut about the size of a nutmeg. This is the portion
+chewed with chun�m and tobacco all over the East; and its use is so
+universal that one seldom meets a man, woman or child of any Oriental
+nation whose mouth is not filled, always and everywhere, with the
+execrable mixture. Pepper leaves are sprinkled with chun�m (lime) and
+rolled up: a slice of betel-nut with a quid of tobacco is placed in
+the mouth first, and then the rolled-up leaf is bitten off, and all
+masticated together. When a visitor calls the betel-box is immediately
+passed to him; and as in regard to the eating of salt in Western Asia,
+so, in the eastern and southern portions, those who have once partaken
+of betel-nut together are ever after sworn to faithful and undying
+friendship. The use of the areca-nut preserves the teeth from decay,
+but keeps them stained of a disgusting brick-red color.
+
+On the outer edge of Cassim's plantation, where the soil was damp, we
+noticed several long rows of the nepah palm, generally known as attap,
+and extensively used for thatching houses in the East. It has the same
+huge pinnated leaves as most of the other palms, but is destitute of
+the long straight trunk, the leaves commencing from near the root, and
+the entire height being seldom more than twelve or fourteen feet. We
+saw also a few specimens of the hutan, a strange-looking palmate shrub
+with leaves fifteen feet long, which are generally used by the Malays
+for sails, in lieu of canvas, for their piratical proas. But the
+strangest of all the palms we saw was the talip�t, so called from the
+Bali word _talipoin_, a priest; and the name was originally derived
+from the fact that the sacred fans used by Booddhist priests in
+their religious ceremonies are formed of its leaves. This fan is a
+prescribed item of clerical costume, and no conscientious Booddhist
+priest ever appears without this long-handled fan held directly in
+front of his face, to prevent the sacred countenance from coming in
+contact with anything unclean. The sacred books of the Booddhists and
+Brahmins are also written on the talip�t palm leaves, as are many
+of their historical records and scientific works. This mammoth tree
+sometimes reaches the height of nearly two hundred feet, and its trunk
+the circumference of twelve feet. It lives to the age of nearly a
+century, but blossoms only a single time; during the whole period of
+its existence. The flower, some thirty feet in length, bursts with a
+loud explosion at maturity, and in dying scatters the seeds that are
+to produce the next generation of trees. A single leaf will sometimes
+measure forty feet in circumference; and it is no unusual sight on the
+Malabar coast, where storms are so fierce and sudden, to see ten or
+fifteen men finding shelter in a boat over which is spread a single;
+palm leaf, which effectually shields all from both wind and rain. When
+the storm has subsided the huge leaf may be folded up like a lady's
+fan, and is so light as to be readily carried by a man under one arm.
+The talip�t never grows wild, it is said, as do most of the other
+palms; and it reaches its greatest perfection in the island of Ceylon.
+All that I ever met with were under cultivation, being tended and
+nursed with the utmost care. Indeed, half a dozen talip�t palm trees
+are a fortune in themselves, the leaves being very profitable as
+merchandise, while a crop may be gathered every year during a long
+life, and then the tree be of sufficient value to be bequeathed to the
+heirs of the owner.
+
+Bidding adieu to our Malayan host, we once more entered the
+palanquins, and in a little while were set down on the coast, where
+lay our samp�n with flag hoisted and pennons gayly flaunting in the
+breeze. First we passed Battu Bliah, "the sailing rock"--so called
+from its fancied resemblance to a ship under widespread canvas; then
+around an abrupt projection of Erskine's Hill, in a narrow passage
+between Singapore and Baltan M�teo, we came in full view of
+the promontory upon the highest point of which is built the
+palace-bungalow of the old sultan-rajah who held sway over the island
+previous to its purchase by Sir Stamford Raffles for the British
+government, in 1819. The old rajah has passed away, but the bungalow
+is still occupied by his son, a pensioner on the English Crown, and
+one of the most daring pirates in all that region--successful enough
+to have achieved a fame for prowess, but too crafty ever to be caught.
+
+At Pulo N�nas, where we were to lunch, we found the cloth was already
+laid on the green grass under the protecting shadow of a huge orange
+tree, whose ripe golden fruit offered a dainty dessert. We took our
+seats with the "professor" at the head, and were soon discussing the
+merits of boiled chicken, fried fish, omelette, oysters, turtle eggs
+and sundry fruits and confections with the zest created by seven hours
+of active exercise in the open air. Then came the reaction, inclining
+every one more to repose than research, and the hours would probably
+have been dreamed away barren of adventures, had it not been for our
+indomitable professor. We had missed him but a moment, when suddenly
+he reappeared, holding at arm's length what seemed in the distance
+about a dozen brown, scaly snakes a yard long, all strung together.
+Simultaneously the entire company sprang to their feet and started for
+a race as this regiment of frightful reptiles was thrust into their
+midst by the radiant "dominie," whose face was fairly aglow with
+mischief. "Where did they come from? What are you going to do with
+them?" exclaimed everybody at once, turning to look at the monsters as
+they lay passive and motionless where the professor had thrown them.
+"Give them to Saint Patrick, to keep company with those he drove out
+of the Emerald Isle; or we'll have them for dinner if you prefer,"
+was the laughing response. Reassured by the non-combatant air of the
+dreaded reptiles, we ventured a nearer approach, and our astonishment
+may readily be imagined when we found not snakes, but simply a cluster
+of the pendent blossoms of the rattan tree (_Arundo bambos_), one of
+the strangest of all the floral products of the tropics. They hang
+from the tree in clusters usually of ten or twelve, each a yard or
+more in length, looking like a soldier's aigrettes suspended among the
+green leaves, or perhaps still more like a string of chestnut-colored
+scales threaded through the centre. Waving to and fro in the summer
+breeze, as I afterward saw them, intertwined with the graceful
+tendrils of the beautiful passion-flower with its rare feathery
+chalice of purple and gold, and flanked on every side by ferns of
+exquisite symmetry, reflecting their dainty fringes in the clear
+waters, the _tout ensemble_ is one of radiant loveliness, seemingly
+too fair to be hidden away among lonely jungles.
+
+Consigning our newly acquired treasure to the keeping of the
+comprador, we sauntered forth in search of other discoveries, and were
+richly rewarded by finding several perfect specimens of the monkey-cup
+or pitcher-plant (_Nepenthes distillatoria_). This plant is found in
+moist places, such as are suited to the growth of ferns, mangroves
+and palmate shrubs. It has pendent from each leaf a natural pitcher or
+elongated cup, growing perfectly upright and capable of holding a pint
+or more of liquid. It is provided also with a natural cover, which
+when closed prevents the ingress of leaves or rubbish falling from
+other trees. The most curious circumstance connected with this strange
+plant is, that it is nearly always found full of pure, sparkling
+water, and that the lid closes of itself as soon as the receptacle is
+full, and opens whenever it is empty. The water is thus protected from
+dust, and kept always fit for the use of thirsty travelers, as well as
+of the immense troops of monkeys that inhabit tropical jungles. When
+the dainty cup has been drained of its refreshing contents, this
+wonderful little plant again throws wide the portals of its exhausted
+receptacle for the free entrance of rain or dew. Another plant, one
+we had often heard of, and sought for without success, the so-called
+oyster tree, was found, and proved to be nothing very wonderful after
+all. It is simply an ordinary oyster or other shell-fish, that, tired
+of lying in the mud, concludes by way of variety to try swinging
+in the air for a while, and so fastens itself to the long, pendent
+branches of the mangroves that grow luxuriantly on the shores of most
+tropical islands.
+
+There seeming to be no more objects of interest to detain us at Pulo
+N�nas, and our chuliahs having already gone on to prepare dinner at
+Pulo Panjan, we rallied our forces and followed suit. It was already
+four o'clock, and so near the equinoctial line, where there is no
+twilight, it is dark soon after six; but then Pulo Panjan was on our
+route homeward, and we should have time at least to dine and gather
+some of the beautiful flowers for which the island is famous, as well
+as to taste the white pineapple, a rare and exquisite variety that
+grows here in great abundance. Both rind and pulp are of a pale
+straw-color; hence the name, to distinguish this species from the
+ordinary golden-colored fruit, which is far inferior to the white.
+Those we obtained were magnificent specimens--large and juicy, with a
+flavor to tempt the appetite of the veriest epicure. Abdallah peeled
+them in such a way as to remove the bur entire, and brought them
+to our grassy "board" on pure white porcelain plates garnished with
+wreaths of fragrant flowers. Never were the gods feasted on nectar
+and ambrosia more divinely luscious than the white pines and golden
+mangoes, the rich juicy grapes and sparkling sherbet, with which
+we were regaled on that bright summer eve at the base of the old
+flagstaff towering above our heads.
+
+We had not much time for roaming, but gathered whole handfuls of the
+lotus or water-lily, with its pale-blue, golden or rose-tinted blooms
+gleaming up from the sparkling waters like the fabled charms of
+mermaid or sea-nymph. There are many varieties of this exquisite
+flower--blue, pink, carnation, bright yellow, royal purple fringed
+with gold, and, more beautiful than all, pure, virgin white, with
+the faintest possible rose tinge in the centre of each section of the
+corolla, a just perceptible blush, as of its own conscious loveliness.
+This last variety is the royal flower of Siam: it is borne before
+the king at weddings, funerals and all state festivals, and the royal
+reception-rooms are always beautifully decorated with the young buds
+arranged in costly vases of exquisite workmanship. The costly silk and
+lace canopies over the cradles of the infants of the king's family
+are also made in the form of a lotus reversed; and it is said that in
+cases of fever or eruptive diseases the leaves of the fresh lotus are
+spread over the royal couches, as being not only sanitary, but more
+agreeable to the invalid than the ordinary linen or silk bedding.
+Guided by the rare rich perfume of its waxen buds, we found a choice
+specimen of the bride-like moon-creeper, and bore if off, vine, blooms
+and all, to a place among the floral adornments of our own home.
+
+We reached home at eight o'clock, after a cruise, by sea and by land,
+of thirteen hours; but the day had been so replete with enjoyment that
+we scarcely felt conscious of fatigue, and were off again the next
+morning, soon after sun-rise, for a ride to Bookit Tim� ("hill of
+tin"), the central and loftiest peak of Singapore Island. It is nine
+miles from the city, with a smooth road to the very summit, so that
+we might go either in pony palanquins or on horseback. We chose the
+latter, as affording us better opportunity for observation and
+the collection of "specimens," and, as we could readily gain the
+mountain-top in season for a nine o'clock breakfast, the heat would
+not be oppressive. Abdallah despatched the chuliahs, each with a stout
+load of provisions, table-ware and cooking-utensils, at dawn, and
+when we arrived our _d�jeuner_ was ready to be served. The viands were
+tempting and the cookery faultless, but we could scarce do justice to
+either, so eager were we to begin our explorations on the summit and
+sides of this beautiful hill, or rather hills, for there are twin
+peaks closely connected, and each presenting an enchanting view of
+verdant fields and fertile valleys, of the neighboring city, the wide
+expanse of blue waters beyond, and the shipping in the harbor. Having
+satisfied ourselves with gazing at the distant prospect, we began to
+descend in search of adventures, sending our ponies ahead to await
+us at the base of the mountain, where we were to dine. Onward
+we strolled, gradually descending, every step marked by
+novelties--flowers, grasses, weeds and shrubs vieing with each other
+in varied and glad-some beauty. At length we sat down to rest beneath
+a huge bombax or cotton tree (_Bombax ceiba_), its widespread branches
+and thick foliage shielding us effectually from the noonday sun, a
+fragrant blossom falling occasionally into our laps or pelting us over
+head and shoulders, while with every passing zephyr the fleecy down
+from the ripe bolls floated hither and thither, looking for all the
+world like a snow-storm, except that the sun was shining luminously
+in the clear heavens. This tree must have been sixty feet in height,
+a grand, noble type of a green old age after scores of years well
+and usefully spent, still vigorous and productive. We met specimens
+afterward even taller and larger than this, and they are said
+sometimes to reach the height of a hundred feet. The timber is light
+and porous, and is in great demand for boats. Lower down, the various
+palms, especially the cocoa-nut and cabbage, were all about us. The
+former is found in nearly every tropical clime, and is of all trees
+the one most indispensable to the East Indian, furnishing him with
+meat, drink, medicine, clothing, lodging and fuel. The ripe kernel of
+the nut, besides being eaten, has expressed from it an excellent oil,
+that feeds all the lamps in an Oriental house, supplies the table with
+a most palatable substitute for butter, and the belle with a choice
+article of perfumery; the green nut affords a delicious beverage
+to the thirsty traveler; the fibrous covering of the nut is readily
+converted into strong and durable cordage, and the polished shells
+into drinking-cups, ladles and spoons; the leaves are frequently used
+for thatch, the wood for lathing and musical instruments, and the sap
+for toddy, an intoxicating drink very common in the East. The tree is
+graceful and pretty, with a tuft of large pinnated leaves at the top,
+and nestled cosily in their midst are the clusters of fruit. It grows
+to the height of forty or fifty feet, is long-lived, and bears fruit
+nearly the whole year round. The cabbage palm is much less common in
+a wild state, and few planters will take the trouble to cultivate
+it, since a whole tree must be destroyed to obtain a single dish. The
+edible part consists of snow-white flakes found just inside the bark
+near the top of the tree. When stewed in the expressed juice of the
+cocoa-nut it constitutes one of the most luscious dishes I have ever
+eaten. The tree is tall and large, and the pinnated leaves very long.
+
+In the moist portions of the jungle toward the foot of the hill were
+whole groves of the fragrant pandanus, ferns of infinite variety, and
+a species of wild mignonette with a perfume like that of commingled
+strawberries and lemon. Now and then we paused beneath the thick
+green foliage of the _Magnolia grandiflora_, as it towered in stately
+grandeur above its sister flowers, acknowledged queen of the parterre,
+and dispensing with genuine Oriental profusion its rare and delicious
+perfume. A step farther and our gaze was riveted by the modest purity
+of the spotless japonica, the fragrant tuberose and Cape jessamine,
+the graceful passion-flower, with its royal beauty and storied
+reminiscences, the peerless dauk-m�l�, fragrant and fair, the _Kalla
+Indica_, with its five long petals of heavenly blue, the gold-plant
+of the Chinese, and crimson boon-gah-riah of the Malays, the last two
+consecrated symbols in the religious rites of those nations. What a
+medley of sweets, flaunting their gay colors in the bright tropical
+sunshine! Then the innumerable company of roses--tea, moss, perpetual,
+cluster, climbing, variegated, and a score of others--how fair, fresh
+and fragrant they are, peerless, queen-like still, even amid such a
+gorgeous array of ripe floral charms! These, and a thousand others for
+which we have no names in our language, are scattered profusely over
+those sunny lands of dreamy beauty, vieing with each other in rare,
+rich perfume, exquisite grace of form and matchless blending of their
+warm, ripe colors.
+
+The next day we dined at Dr. Almeida's, and in his magnificent garden
+found several choice specimens of both the _Victoria regia_ and the
+_Rafflesia Arnoldi_, the two largest flowers in the world, each bloom
+measuring two feet in diameter. But the rarest of all the doctor's
+treasures was the night-blooming cereus. There were six blooms in full
+maturity--four on one stalk and two on another--creamy, waxen flowers
+of exquisite form, the leaves of the corolla of a pale golden hue
+and the petals intensely white. The calyx rises from a long, hollow
+footstalk, which is formed of rough plates overlapping each other like
+tiles on a roof. From the centre of this footstalk rises a bundle of
+filaments that encircle the style, stamens springing also from the
+insertion of the leaves of the corolla, lining it with delicate beauty
+and waving their slender forms with exquisite grace. But the
+real charm of the cereus is its wondrous perfume, exhaled just at
+night-fall, and readily discernible over the circuit of a mile. The
+peculiar odor cannot be understood by mere description, but partakes
+largely of that of sweet lilies, violets, the tuberose and vanilla.
+After the bud appears the growth is very rapid, often two or three
+inches a day--that is, in the height of the stalk, the flower
+expanding proportionately. When fully grown it begins to unfold
+its charms as the twilight deepens into night, and reaches perfect
+maturity about an hour before midnight: at three o'clock its glory is
+already beginning to wane, though scarcely perceptibly; but at dawn
+it is fading rapidly, and by sun-rise only a wilted, worthless wreck
+remains, good for nothing but to be "cast out and trodden under foot
+of men."
+
+FANNIE R. FEUDGE.
+
+
+
+
+A PRINCESS OF THULE.
+
+BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF "THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON."
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+TRANSFORMATION.
+
+
+Had Sheila, then, Lavender could not help asking himself, a bad
+temper, or any other qualities or characteristics which were apparent
+to other people, but not to him? Was it possible that, after all,
+Ingram was right, and that he had yet to learn the nature of the girl
+he had married? It would be unfair to say that he suspected something
+wrong about his wife--that he fancied she had managed to conceal
+something--merely because Mrs. Lavender had said that Sheila had a bad
+temper; but here was another person who maintained that when the days
+of his romance were over he would see the girl in another light.
+
+Nay, as he continued to ask himself, had not the change already begun?
+He grew less and less accustomed to see in Sheila a beautiful wild
+sea-bird that had fluttered down for a time into a strange home in
+the South. He had not quite forgotten or abandoned those imaginative
+scenes in which the wonderful sea-princess was to enter crowded
+drawing-rooms and have all the world standing back to regard her and
+admire her and sing her praises. But now he was not so sure that that
+would be the result of Sheila's entrance into society. As the date of
+a certain dinner-party drew near he began to wish she was more like
+the women he knew. He did not object to her strange sweet ways of
+speech, nor to her odd likes and dislikes, nor even to an unhesitating
+frankness that nearly approached rudeness sometimes in its scorn
+of all compromise with the truth; but how would others regard these
+things? He did not wish to gain the reputation of having married an
+oddity.
+
+"Sheila," he said on the morning of the day on which they were going
+to this dinner-party, "you should not say _like-a-ness_. There are
+only two syllables in _likeness_. It really does sound absurd to hear
+you say _like-a-ness_."
+
+She looked up to him with a quick trouble in her eyes. When had he
+spoken to her so petulantly before? And then she cast down her eyes
+again, and said submissively, "I will try not to speak like that. When
+you go out I take a book and read aloud, and try to speak like you;
+but I cannot learn all at once."
+
+"_I_ don't mind," he said. "But you know other people must think it
+so odd. I wonder why you should always say _gyarden_ for _garden_ now,
+when it is just as easy to say _garden_?"
+
+Once upon a time he had said there was no English like the English
+spoken in Lewis, and had singled out this very word as typical of one
+peculiarity in the pronunciation. But she did not remind him of that.
+She only said in the same simple fashion, "If you will tell me my
+faults I will try to correct them."
+
+She turned away from him to get an envelope for a letter she had been
+writing to her father. He fancied something was wrong, and perhaps
+some touch of compunction smote him, for he went after her and took
+her hand, and said, "Look here, Sheila. When I point out any trifles
+like that, you must not call them faults, and fancy I have any serious
+complaint to make. It is for your own good that you should meet the
+people who will be your friends on equal terms, and give them as
+little as possible to talk about."
+
+"I should not mind their talking about me," said Sheila with her eyes
+still cast down, "but it is your wife they must not talk about; and if
+you will tell me anything I do wrong I will correct it."
+
+"Oh, you must not think it is anything so serious as that. You will
+soon pick up from the ladies you will meet some notion of how you
+differ from them; and if you should startle or puzzle them a little at
+first by talking about the chances of the fishing or the catching of
+wild-duck, or the way to reclaim bogland, you will soon get over all
+that."
+
+Sheila said nothing, but she made a mental memorandum of three things
+she was not to speak about. She did not know why these subjects should
+be forbidden, but she was in a strange land and going to see strange
+people, whose habits were different from hers. Moreover, when her
+husband had gone she reflected that these people, having no fishing
+and no peat-mosses and no wild-duck, could not possibly be interested
+in such affairs; and thus she fancied she perceived the reason why she
+should avoid all mention of those things.
+
+When in the evening Sheila came down dressed and ready to go out,
+Lavender had to admit to himself that he had married an exceedingly
+beautiful girl, and that there was no country gawkiness about her
+manner, and no placid insipidity about her proud and handsome face.
+For one brief moment he triumphed in his heart, and had some wild
+glimpse of his old project of startling his small world with this
+vision from the northern seas. But when he got into the hired
+brougham, and thought of the people he was about to meet, and of the
+manner in which they would carry away such and such impressions of the
+girl, he lost faith in that admiration. He would much rather have
+had Sheila unnoticeable and unnoticed--one who would quietly take her
+place at the dinner-table, and attract no more special attention than
+the flowers, for example, which every one would glance at with some
+satisfaction, and then forget in the interest of talking and dining.
+He was quite conscious of his own weakness in thus fearing social
+criticism. He knew that Ingram would have taken Sheila anywhere in her
+blue serge dress, and been quite content and oblivious of observation.
+But then Ingram was independent of those social circles in which a
+married man must move, and in which his position is often defined for
+him by the disposition and manners of his wife. Ingram did not know
+how women talked. It was for Sheila's own sake, he persuaded himself,
+that he was anxious about the impression she should make, and that he
+had drilled her in all that she should do and say.
+
+"Above all things," he said, "mind you take no notice of me. Another
+man will take you in to dinner, of course, and I shall take in
+somebody else, and we shall not be near each other. But it's after
+dinner, I mean: when the men go into the drawing-room don't you come
+and speak to me or take any notice of me whatever."
+
+"Mayn't I look at you, Frank?"
+
+"If you do you'll have half a dozen people all watching you, saying
+to themselves or to each other, 'Poor thing! she hasn't got over her
+infatuation yet. Isn't it pretty to see how naturally her eyes turn
+toward him?'"
+
+"But I shouldn't mind them saying that," said Sheila with a smile.
+
+"Oh, you mustn't be pitied in that fashion. Let them keep their
+compassion to themselves."
+
+"Do you know, dear," said Sheila very quietly, "that I think you
+exaggerate the interest people will take in me? I don't think I can be
+of such importance to them. I don't think they will be watching me as
+you fancy."
+
+"Oh, you don't know," he said. "I know they fancy I have done
+something romantic, heroic and all that kind of thing, and they are
+curious to see you."
+
+"They cannot hurt me by looking at me," said Sheila simply. "And they
+will soon find out how little there is to discover."
+
+The house being in Holland Park they had not far to go; and just as
+they were driving up to the door a young man, slight, sandy-haired and
+stooping, got out of a hansom and crossed the pavement.
+
+"By Jove!" said Lavender, "there is Redburn, I did not know he knew
+Mrs. Lorraine and her mother. That is Lord Arthur Redburn, Sheila:
+mind, if you should talk to him, not to call him 'my lord.'"
+
+Sheila laughed and said, "How am I to remember all these things?"
+
+They got into the house, and by and by Lavender found himself, with
+Sheila on his arm, entering a drawing-room to present her to certain
+of his friends. It was a large room, with a great deal of gilding and
+color about it, and with a conservatory at the farther end; but the
+blaze of light had not so bewildering an effect on Sheila's eyes as
+the appearance of two ladies to whom she was now introduced. She had
+heard much about them. She was curious to see them. Many a time had
+she thought over the strange story Lavender had told her of the woman
+who heard that her husband was dying in a hospital during the war, and
+started off, herself and her daughter, to find him out; how there was
+in the same hospital another dying man whom they had known some years
+before, and who had gone away because the girl would not listen to
+him; how this man, being very near to death, begged that the girl
+would do him the last favor he would ask of her, of wearing his name
+and inheriting his property; and how, some few hours after the strange
+and sad ceremony had been performed, he breathed his last, happy in
+holding her hand. The father died next day, and the two widows were
+thrown upon the world, almost without friends, but not without means.
+This man Lorraine had been possessed of considerable wealth, and the
+girl who had suddenly become mistress of it found herself able to
+employ all possible means in assuaging her mother's grief. They began
+to travel. The two women went from capital to capital, until at
+last they came to London; and here, having gathered around them
+a considerable number of friends, they proposed to take up their
+residence permanently. Lavender had often talked to Sheila about
+Mrs. Lorraine--about her shrewdness, her sharp sayings, and the odd
+contrast between this clever, keen, frank woman of the world and the
+woman one would have expected to be the heroine of a pathetic tale.
+
+But were there two Mrs. Lorraines? That had been Sheila's first
+question to herself when, after having been introduced to one
+lady under that name, she suddenly saw before her another, who was
+introduced to her as Mrs. Kavanagh. The mother and daughter were
+singularly alike. They had the same slight and graceful figure, which
+made them appear taller than they really were, the same pale, fine
+and rather handsome features, the same large, clear gray eyes, and
+apparently the same abundant mass of soft fair hair, heavily plaited
+in the latest fashion. They were both dressed entirely in black,
+except that the daughter had a band of blue round her slender waist.
+It was soon apparent, too, that the manner of the two women was
+singularly different; Mrs. Kavanagh bearing herself with a certain
+sad reserve that almost approached melancholy at times, while her
+daughter, with more life and spirit in her face, passed rapidly
+through all sorts of varying moods, until one could scarcely tell
+whether the affectation lay in a certain cynical audacity in her
+speech, or whether it lay in her assumption of a certain coyness and
+archness, or whether there was any affectation at all in the matter.
+However that might be, there could be no doubt about the sincerity of
+those gray eyes of hers. There was something almost cruelly frank
+in the clear look of them; and when her face was not lit up by some
+passing smile the pale and fine features seemed to borrow something
+of severity from her unflinching, calm and dispassionate habit of
+regarding those around her.
+
+Sheila was prepared to like Mrs. Lorraine from the first moment she
+had caught sight of her. The honesty of the gray eyes attracted her.
+And, indeed, the young widow seemed very much interested in the young
+wife, and, so far as she could in that awkward period just before
+dinner, strove to make friends with her. Sheila was introduced to
+a number of people, but none of them pleased her so well as Mrs.
+Lorraine. Then dinner was announced, and Sheila found that she was
+being escorted across the passage to the room on the other side by the
+young man whom she had seen get out of the hansom.
+
+This Lord Arthur Redburn was the younger son of a great Tory duke;
+he represented in the House a small country borough which his father
+practically owned; he had a fair amount of ability, an uncommonly high
+opinion of himself, and a certain affectation of being bored by the
+frivolous ways and talk of ordinary society. He gave himself credit
+for being the clever member of the family; and if there was any
+cleverness going, he had it; but there were some who said that his
+reputation in the House and elsewhere as a good speaker was mainly
+based on the fact that he had an abundant assurance and was not easily
+put out. Unfortunately, the public could come to no decision on
+the point, for the reporters were not kind to Lord Arthur, and the
+substance of his speeches was as unknown to the world as his manner of
+delivering them.
+
+Now, Mrs. Lorraine had intended to tell this young man something about
+the girl whom he was to take in to dinner, but she herself had been
+so occupied with Sheila that the opportunity escaped her. Lord Arthur
+accordingly knew only that he was beside a very pretty woman, who was
+a Mrs. Somebody--the exact name he had not caught--and that the few
+words she had spoken were pronounced in a curious way. Probably, he
+thought, she was from Dublin.
+
+He also arrived at the conclusion that she was too pretty to know
+anything about the Deceased Wife's Sister bill, in which he was, for
+family reasons, deeply interested, and considered it more likely that
+she would prefer to talk about theatres and such things.
+
+"Were you at Covent Garden last night?" he said.
+
+"No," answered Sheila. "But I was there two days ago, and it is
+very pretty to see the flowers and the fruit; and then they smell so
+sweetly as you walk through."
+
+"Oh yes, it is delightful," said Lord Arthur. "But I was speaking of
+the theatre."
+
+"Is there a theatre in there?"
+
+He stared at her, and inwardly hoped she was not mad.
+
+"Not in among the shops, no. But don't you know Covent Garden
+Theatre?"
+
+"I have never been in any theatre, not yet," said Sheila.
+
+And then it began to dawn upon him that he must be talking to Frank
+Lavender's wife. Was there not some rumor about the girl having come
+from a remote part of the Highlands? He determined on a bold stroke:
+"You have not been long enough in London to see the theatres, I
+suppose."
+
+And then Sheila, taking it for granted that he knew her husband very
+well, and that he was quite familiar with all the circumstances of the
+case, began to chat to him freely enough. He found that this Highland
+girl of whom he had heard vaguely was not at all shy. He began to feel
+interested. By and by he actually made efforts to assist her frankness
+by becoming equally frank, and by telling her all he knew of the
+things with which they were mutually acquainted. Of course by this
+time they had got up into the Highlands. The young man had himself
+been in the Highlands--frequently, indeed. He had never crossed to
+Lewis, but he had seen the island from the Sutherlandshire coast.
+There were very many deer in Sutherlandshire, were there not? Yes, he
+had been out a great many times, and had had his share of adventures.
+Had he not gone out before daylight, and waited on the top of a hill,
+hidden by some rocks, to watch the mists clear along the hillsides and
+in the valley below? Did not he tremble when he fired his first shot,
+and had not something passed before his eyes so that he could not see
+for a moment whether the stag had fallen or was away like lightning
+down the bed of the stream? Somehow or other, Lord Arthur found
+himself relating all his experiences, as if he were a novice begging
+for the good opinion of a master. She knew all about it, obviously,
+and he would tell her his small adventures if only that she might
+laugh at him. But Sheila did not laugh. She was greatly delighted to
+have this talk about the hills and the deer and the wet mornings.
+She forgot all about the dinner before her. The servants whipped off
+successive plates without her seeing anything of them: they received
+random answers about wine, so that she had three full glasses standing
+by her untouched. She was no more in Holland Park at that moment than
+were the wild animals of which she spoke so proudly and lovingly. If
+the great and frail masses of flowers on the table brought her any
+perfume at all, it was a scent of peat-smoke. Lord Arthur thought that
+his companion was a little too frank and confiding, or rather that she
+would have been had she been talking to any one but himself. He rather
+liked it. He was pleased to have established friendly relations with
+a pretty woman in so short a space; but ought not her husband to give
+her a hint about not admitting all and sundry to the enjoyment of
+these favors? Perhaps, too, Lord Arthur felt bound to admit to himself
+there were some men who more than others inspired confidence in women.
+He laid no claims to being a fascinating person, but he had had his
+share of success, and considered that Sheila showed discrimination
+as well as good-nature in talking so to him. There was, after all,
+no necessity for her husband to warn her. She would know how to guard
+against admitting all men to a like intimacy. In the mean time he
+was very well pleased to be sitting beside this pretty and agreeable
+companion, who had an abundant fund of good spirits, and who showed no
+sort of conscious embarrassment in thanking you with a bright look
+of her eyes or by a smile when you told her something that pleased or
+amused her.
+
+But these flattering little speculations were doomed to receive
+a sudden check. The juvenile M.P. began to remark that a shade
+occasionally crossed the face of his fair companion, and that she
+sometimes looked a little anxiously across the table, where Mr.
+Lavender and Mrs. Lorraine were seated, half hidden from view by a
+heap of silver and flowers in the middle of the board. But though they
+could not easily be seen, except at such moments as they turned to
+address some neighbor, they could be distinctly enough heard when
+there was any lull in the general conversation. And what Sheila heard
+did not please her. She began to like that fair, clear-eyed young
+woman less. Perhaps her husband meant nothing by the fashion in which
+he talked of marriage and the condition of a married man, but she
+would rather have not heard him talk so. Moreover, she was aware that
+in the gentlest possible fashion Mrs. Lorraine was making fun of her
+companion, and exposing him to small and graceful shafts of ridicule;
+while he seemed, on the whole, to enjoy these attacks.
+
+The ingenuous self-love of Lord Arthur Redburn, M.P., was severely
+wounded by the notion that, after all, he had been made a cat's-paw
+of by a jealous wife. He had been flattered by this girl's exceeding
+friendliness; he had given her credit for a genuine impulsiveness
+which seemed to him as pleasing as it was uncommon; and he had, with
+the moderation expected of a man in politics who hoped some day to
+assist in the government of the nation by accepting a junior lordship,
+admired her. But was it all pretence? Was she paying court to him
+merely to annoy her husband? Had her enthusiasm about the shooting of
+red-deer been prompted by a wish to attract a certain pair of eyes at
+the other side of the table? Lord Arthur began to sneer at himself for
+having been duped. He ought to have known. Women were as much women
+in a Hebridean island as in Bayswater. He began to treat Sheila with a
+little more coolness, while she became more and more preoccupied with
+the couple across the table, and sometimes was innocently rude in
+answering his questions somewhat at random.
+
+When the ladies were going into the drawing-room, Mrs. Lorraine
+put her hand within Sheila's arm and led her to the entrance to the
+conservatory. "I hope we shall be friends," she said.
+
+"I hope so," said Sheila, not very warmly.
+
+"Until you get better acquainted with your husband's friends you will
+feel rather lonely at being left as at present, I suppose."
+
+"A little," said Sheila.
+
+"It is a silly thing altogether. If men smoked after dinner I could
+understand it. But they merely sit, looking at wine they don't drink,
+talking a few common-places and yawning."
+
+"Why do they do it, then?" said Sheila.
+
+"They don't do it everywhere. But here we keep to the manners and
+customs of the ancients."
+
+"What do you know about the manners of the ancients?" said Mrs.
+Kavanagh, tapping her daughter's shoulder; as she passed with a sheet
+of music.
+
+"I have studied them frequently, mamma," said the daughter with
+composure, "--in the monkey-house at the Zoological Gardens."
+
+The mamma smiled, and passed on to place the music on the piano.
+Sheila did not understand what her companion had said; and indeed
+Mrs. Lorraine immediately turned, with the same calm, fine face and
+careless eyes, to ask Sheila whether she would not, by and by, sing
+one of those northern songs of which Mr. Lavender had told her.
+
+A tall girl, with her back hair tied in a knot and her costume copied
+from a well-known pre-Raphaelite drawing, sat down to the piano and
+sang a mystic song of the present day, in which the moon, the stars
+and other natural objects behaved strangely, and were somehow mixed up
+with the appeal of a maiden who demanded that her dead lover should be
+reclaimed from the sea.
+
+"Do you ever go down to your husband's studio?" said Mrs. Lorraine.
+
+Sheila glanced toward the lady at the piano.
+
+"Oh, you may talk," said Mrs. Lorraine, with the least expression of
+contempt in the gray eyes. "She is singing to gratify herself, not
+us."
+
+"Yes, I sometimes go down," said Sheila in as low a voice as she could
+manage without falling into a whisper, "and it is such a dismal place.
+It is very hard on him to have to work in a big bare room like that,
+with the windows half blinded. But sometimes I think Frank would
+rather have me out of the way."
+
+"And what would he do if both of us were to pay him a visit?" said
+Mrs. Lorraine. "I should so like to see the studio! Won't you call for
+me some day and take me with you?"
+
+Take her with her, indeed! Sheila began to wonder that she did not
+propose to go alone. Fortunately, there was no need to answer the
+question, for at this moment the song came to an end, and there was a
+general movement and murmur of gratitude.
+
+"Thank you," said Mrs. Lorraine to the lady who had sung, and who was
+now returning to the photographs she had left--"thank you very much.
+I knew some one would instantly ask you to sing that song: it is the
+most charming of all your songs, I think, and how well it suits your
+voice, too!"
+
+Then she turned to Sheila again: "How did you like Lord Arthur
+Redburn?"
+
+"I think he is a very good young man."
+
+"Young men are never good, but they may be very amiable," said
+Mrs. Lorraine, not perceiving that Sheila had blundered on a wrong
+adjective, and that she had really meant that she thought him honest
+and pleasant.
+
+"You did not speak at all, I think, to your neighbor on the right:
+that was wise of you. He is a most insufferable person, but mamma
+bears with him for the sake of his daughter, who sang just now. He is
+too rich. And he smiles blandly, and takes a sort of after-dinner view
+of things, as if he coincided with the arrangements of Providence.
+Don't you take coffee? Tea, then. I have met your aunt--I mean, Mr.
+Lavender's aunt: such a dear old lady she is!"
+
+"I don't like her," said Sheila.
+
+"Oh, don't you, really?"
+
+"Not at present, but I shall try to like her."
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Lorraine calmly, "you know she has her
+peculiarities. I wish she wouldn't talk so much about Marcus Antoninus
+and doses of medicine. I fancy I smell calomel when she comes near.
+I suppose if she were in a pantomime, they'd dress her up as a phial,
+tie a string round her neck and label her 'POISON.' Dear me, how
+languid one gets in this climate! Let us sit down. I wish I was as
+strong as mamma."
+
+They sat down together, and Mrs. Lorraine evidently expected to be
+petted and made much of by her new companion. She gave herself pretty
+little airs and graces, and said no more cutting things about anybody.
+And Sheila somehow found herself being drawn to the girl, so that she
+could scarcely help taking her hand, and saying how sorry she was to
+see her so pale and fine and delicate. The hand, too, was so small
+that the tiny white fingers seemed scarcely bigger than the claws of
+a bird. Was not that slender waist, to which some little attention was
+called by a belt of bold blue, just a little too slender for
+health, although the bust and shoulders were exquisitely and finely
+proportioned?
+
+"We were at the Academy all the morning, and mamma is not a bit tired.
+Why has not Mr. Lavender anything in the Academy? Oh, I forgot" she
+added, with a smile. "Of course, he has been very much engaged. But
+now I suppose he will settle down to work."
+
+Sheila wished that this fragile-looking girl would not so continually
+refer to her husband; but how was any one to find fault with her when
+she put a little air of plaintiveness into the ordinarily cold gray
+eyes, and looked at her small hand as much as to say, "The fingers
+there are very small, and even whiter than the glove that covers them.
+They are the fingers of a child, who ought to be petted."
+
+Then the men came in from the dining-room. Lavender looked round to
+see where Sheila was--perhaps with a trifle of disappointment that she
+was not the most prominent figure there. Had he expected to find all
+the women surrounding her and admiring her, and all the men going up
+to pay court to her? Sheila was seated near a small table, and Mrs.
+Lorraine was showing her something. She was just like anybody else. If
+she was a wonderful sea-princess who had come into a new world, no one
+seemed to observe her. The only thing that distinguished her from
+the women around her was her freshness of color and the unusual
+combination of black eyelashes and dark blue eyes. Lavender had
+arranged that Sheila's first appearance in public should be at a very
+quiet little dinner-party, but even here she failed to create any
+profound impression. She was, as he had to confess to himself again,
+just like anybody else.
+
+He went over to where Mrs. Lorraine was, and sat down beside her.
+Sheila, remembering his injunctions, felt bound to leave him there;
+and as she rose to speak to Mrs. Kavanagh, who was standing by,
+that lady came and begged her to sing a Highland song. By this time
+Lavender had succeeded in interesting his companion about something or
+other, and neither of them noticed that Sheila had gone to the piano,
+attended by the young politician who had taken her in to dinner. Nor
+did they interrupt their talk merely because some one played a few
+bars of prelude. But what was this that suddenly startled Lavender to
+the heart, causing him to look up with surprise? He had not heard the
+air since he was in Borva, and when Sheila sang
+
+  Hark, hark! the horn
+  On mountain-breezes borne!
+  Awake, it is morn,
+      Awake, Monaltrie!--
+
+all sorts of reminiscences came rushing in upon him. How often had
+he heard that wild story of Monaltrie's flight sung out in the small
+chamber over the sea, with a sound of the waves outside and a scent of
+sea-weed coming in at the door and the windows! It was from the shores
+of Borva that young Monaltrie must have fled. It must have been in
+Borva that his sweetheart sat in her bower and sang, the burden of all
+her singing being "Return, Monaltrie!" And then, as Sheila sang now,
+making the monotonous and plaintive air wild and strange--
+
+  What cries of wild despair
+  Awake the sultry air?
+  Frenzied with anxious care,
+      She seeks Monaltrie--
+
+he heard no more of the song. He was thinking of bygone days in Borva,
+and of old Mackenzie living in his lonely house there. When Sheila had
+finished singing he looked at her, and it seemed to him that she was
+still that wonderful princess whom he had wooed on the shores of the
+Atlantic. And if those people did not see her as he saw her, ought he
+to be disappointed because of their blindness?
+
+But if they saw nothing mystic or wonderful about Sheila, they at all
+events were considerably surprised by the strange sort of music she
+sang. It was not of a sort commonly heard in a London drawing-room.
+The pathos of its minor chords, its abrupt intervals, startling
+and wild in their effect, and the slowly subsiding wail in which it
+closed, did not much resemble the ordinary drawing-room "piece." Here,
+at least, Sheila had produced an impression; and presently there was
+a heap of people round the piano, expressing their admiration, asking
+questions and begging her to continue. But she rose. She would rather
+not sing just then. Whereupon Lavender came out to her and said,
+"Sheila, won't you sing that wild one about the farewell--that has the
+sound of the pipes in it, you know?"
+
+"Oh yes," she said directly.
+
+Lavender went back to his companion.
+
+"She is very obedient to you," said Mrs. Lorraine with a smile.
+
+"Yes, at present," he said; and he thought meanly of himself for
+saying it the moment the words were uttered.
+
+  Oh, soft be thy slumbers, by Tigh-na-linne's waters;
+  Thy late-wake was sung by Macdiarmid's fair daughters;
+  But far in Lochaber the true heart was weeping
+  Whose hopes are entombed in the grave where thou'rt sleeping.
+
+So Sheila sang; and it seemed to the people that this ballad was even
+more strange than its predecessor. When the song was over, Sheila
+seemed rather anxious to get out of the crowd, and indeed walked away
+into the conservatory to have a look at the flowers.
+
+Yes, Lavender had to confess to himself, Sheila was just like anybody
+else in this drawing-room. His sea-princess had produced no startling
+impression. He forgot that he had just been teaching her the necessity
+of observing the ways and customs of the people around her, so that
+she might avoid singularity.
+
+On one point, at least, she was resolved she would attend to his
+counsels: she would not make him ridiculous by any show of affection
+before the eyes of strangers. She did not go near him the whole
+evening. She remained for the most part in that half conservatory,
+half ante-room at the end of the drawing-room; and when any one talked
+to her she answered, and when she was left alone she turned to the
+flowers. All this time, however, she could observe that Lavender and
+Mrs. Lorraine were very much engrossed in their conversation; that
+she seemed very much amused, and he at times a trifle embarrassed;
+and that both of them had apparently forgotten her existence. Mrs.
+Kavanagh was continually coming to Sheila and trying to coax her back
+into the larger room, but in vain. She would rather not sing any more
+that night. She liked to look at flowers. She was not tired at all,
+and she had already seen those wonderful photographs about which
+everybody was talking.
+
+"Well, Sheila, how did you enjoy yourself?" said her husband as they
+were driving home.
+
+"I wish Mr. Ingram had been there," said Sheila.
+
+"Ingram! He would not have stopped in the place five minutes, unless
+he could play the part of Diogenes and say rude things to everybody
+all round. Were you at all dull?"
+
+"A little."
+
+"Didn't somebody look after you?"
+
+"Oh yes, many persons were very kind. But--but--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Nobody seemed to be better off than myself. They all seemed to be
+wanting something to do; and I am sure they were all very glad to come
+away."
+
+"No, no, no, Sheila. That is only your fancy. You were not much
+interested, that is evident; but you will get on better when you know
+more of the people. You were a stranger--that is what disappointed
+you--but you will not always be a stranger."
+
+Sheila did not answer. Perhaps she contemplated with no great hope or
+longing the possibility of her coming to like such a method of getting
+through an evening. At all events, she looked forward with no great
+pleasure to the chance of her having to become friends with Mrs.
+Lorraine. All the way home Sheila was examining her own heart to try
+to discover why such bitter feelings should be there. Surely that girl
+was honest: there was honesty in her eyes. She had been most kind to
+Sheila herself. And was there not at times, when she abandoned the
+ways and speech of a woman of the world, a singular coy fascination
+about her, that any man might be excused for yielding to, even as any
+woman might yield to it? Sheila fought with herself, and resolved that
+she would cast forth from her heart those harsh fancies and indignant
+feelings that seemed to have established themselves there. She would
+_not_ hate Mrs. Lorraine.
+
+As for Lavender, what was he thinking of, now that he and his young
+wife were driving home from their first experiment in society? He
+had to confess to a certain sense of failure. His dreams had not been
+realized. Every one who had spoken to him had conveyed to him, as
+freely as good manners would admit, their congratulations and their
+praises of his wife. But the impressive scenes he had been forecasting
+were out of the question. There was a little curiosity about her on
+the part of those who knew her story, and that was all. Sheila bore
+herself very well. She made no blunders. She had a good presence, she
+sang well, and every one could see that she was handsome, gentle and
+honest. Surely, he argued with himself, that ought to content the most
+exacting. But, in spite of all argument, he was not content. He did
+not regret that he had sacrificed his liberty in a freak of romance;
+he did not even regard the fact of a man in his position having dared
+to marry a penniless girl as anything very meritorious or heroic; but
+he had hoped that the dramatic circumstances of the case would be
+duly recognized by his friends, and that Sheila would be an object of
+interest and wonder and talk in a whole series of social circles. But
+the result of his adventure was different. There was only one married
+man the more in London, and London was not disposed to pay any
+particular heed to that circumstance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON.
+
+
+If Frank Lavender had been told that his love for his wife was in
+danger of waning, he would have laughed the suggestion to scorn. He
+was as fond of her and as proud of her as ever. Who knew as well as
+himself the tenderness of her heart, the delicate sensitiveness of her
+conscience, the generosity of self-sacrifice she was always ready to
+bestow? and was he likely to become blind, so that he should fail to
+see how fair and frank and handsome she was? He had been disappointed,
+it is true, in his fancies about the impression she would produce on
+his friends; but what a trifle was that! The folly of those fancies
+was his own. For the rest, he was glad that Sheila was not so
+different from the other women whom he knew. He hit upon the profound
+reflection, as he sat alone in his studio, that a man's wife, like
+his costume, should not be so remarkable as to attract attention.
+The perfection of dress was that you should be unconscious of its
+presence: might that not be so with marriage? After all, it was better
+that he had not bound himself to lug about a lion whenever he visited
+people's houses.
+
+Still, there was something. He found himself a good deal alone. Sheila
+did not seem to care much for going into society; and although he did
+not much like the notion of going by himself, nevertheless one had
+certain duties toward one's friends to perform. She did not even
+care to go down to the Park of a forenoon. She always professed her
+readiness to go, but he fancied it was a trifle tiresome for her; and
+so, when there was nothing particular going on in the studio, he would
+walk down through Kensington Gardens himself, and have a chat with
+some friends, followed generally by luncheon with this or the other
+party of them. Sheila had been taught that she ought not to come so
+frequently to that studio. Bras would not lie quiet. Moreover, if
+dealers or other strangers should come in, would they not take her
+for a model? So Sheila stayed at home; and Mr. Lavender, after having
+dressed with care in the morning--with very singular care, indeed,
+considering that he was going to his work--used to go down to his
+studio to smoke a cigarette. The chances were that he was not in a
+humor for working. He would sit down in an easy-chair and kick his
+heels on the floor for a time, watching perhaps the sunlight come in
+through the upper part of the windows and paint yellow squares on
+the opposite wall. Then he would go out and lock the door behind him,
+leaving no message whatever for those crowds of importunate dealers
+who, as Sheila fancied, were besieging him with offers in one hand and
+purses of gold in the other.
+
+One morning, after she had been indoors for two or three days, and had
+grown hopelessly tired of the monotony of watching that sunlit square,
+she was filled with an unconquerable longing to go away, for however
+brief a space, from the sight of houses. The morning was sweet and
+clear and bright, white clouds were slowly crossing a fair blue sky,
+and a fresh and cool breeze was blowing in at the open French windows.
+
+"Bras," she said, going down stairs and out into the small garden, "we
+are going into the country."
+
+The great deer-hound seemed to know, and rose and came to her with
+great gravity, while she clasped on the leash. He was no frisky animal
+to show his delight by yelping and gamboling, but he laid his long
+nose in her hand, and slowly wagged the down-drooping curve of his
+shaggy tail; and then he placidly walked by her side up into the hall,
+where he stood awaiting her.
+
+She would go along and beg of her husband to leave his work for a day
+and go with her for a walk down to Richmond Park. She had often heard
+Mr. Ingram speak of walking down, and she remembered that much of the
+road was pretty. Why should not her husband have one holiday?
+
+"It is such a shame," she had said to him that morning as he left,
+"that you will be going into that gloomy place, with its bare walls
+and chairs, and the windows so that you cannot see out of them!"
+
+"I must get some work done somehow, Sheila," he said, although he did
+not tell her that he had not finished a picture since his marriage.
+
+"I wish I could do some of it for you," she said.
+
+"You! All the work you're good for is catching fish and feeding ducks
+and planting things in gardens. Why don't you come down and feed the
+ducks in the Serpentine?"
+
+"I should like to do that," she answered. "I will go any day with
+you."
+
+"Well," he said, "you see, I don't know until I get along to the
+studio whether I can get away for the fore-noon; and then if I were to
+come back here, you would have little or no time to dress. Good-bye,
+Sheila."
+
+"Good-bye," she had said to him, giving up the Serpentine without much
+regret.
+
+But the forenoon had turned out so delightful that she thought she
+would go along to the studio, and hale him out of that gaunt and dingy
+apartment. She should take him away from town: therefore she might put
+on that rough blue dress in which she used to go boating in Loch Roag.
+She had lately smartened it up a bit with some white braid, and she
+hoped he would approve.
+
+Did the big hound know the dress? He rubbed his head against her
+arm and hand when she came down, and looked up and whined almost
+inaudibly.
+
+"You are going out, Bras, and you must be a good dog and not try to
+go after the deer. Then I will send a very good story of you to Mairi;
+and when she comes to London after the harvest is over, she will bring
+you a present from the Lewis, and you will be very proud."
+
+She went out into the square, and was perhaps a little glad to get
+away from it, as she was not sure of the blue dress and the small hat
+with its sea-gull's feather being precisely the costume she ought to
+wear. When she got into the Uxbridge road she breathed more freely,
+and in the lightness of her heart she continued her conversation
+with Bras, giving that attentive animal a vast amount of information,
+partly in English, partly in Gaelic, which he answered only by a low
+whine or a shake of his shaggy head.
+
+But these confidences were suddenly interrupted. She had got down to
+Addison Terrace, and was contentedly looking at the trees and chatting
+to the dog, when by accident her eye happened to light on a brougham
+that was driving past. In it--she beheld them both clearly for a brief
+second--were her husband and Mrs. Lorraine, so engaged in conversation
+that neither of them saw her. Sheila stood on the pavement for a
+couple of minutes absolutely bewildered. All sorts of wild fancies and
+recollections came crowding in upon her--reasons why her husband was
+unwilling that she should visit his studio, why Mrs. Lorraine never
+called on her, and so forth and so forth. She did not know what to
+think for a time; but presently all this tumult was stilled, and she
+had resolved her doubts and made up her mind as to what she should do.
+She would not suspect her husband--that was the one sweet security
+to which she clung. He had made use of no duplicity: if there were
+duplicity in the case at all, he could not be the author of it. The
+reasons for his having of late left her so much alone were the true
+reasons. And if this Mrs. Lorraine should amuse him and interest him,
+who ought to grudge him this break in the monotony of his work? Sheila
+knew that she herself disliked going to those fashionable gatherings
+to which Mrs. Lorraine went, and to which Lavender had been accustomed
+to go before he was married. How could she expect him to give up all
+his old habits and pleasures for her sake? She would be more generous.
+It was her own fault that she was not a better companion for him; and
+was it for her, then, to think hardly of him because he went to the
+Park with a friend instead of going alone?
+
+Yet there was a great bitterness and grief in her heart as she turned
+and walked on. She spoke no more to the deer-hound by her side. There
+seemed to be less sunlight in the air, and the people and carriages
+passing were hardly so busy and cheerful and interesting as they had
+been. But all the same, she would go to Richmond Park, and by herself;
+for what was the use in calling in at the studio? and how could she go
+back home and sit in the house, knowing that her husband was away at
+some flower-show or morning concert, or some such thing, with that
+young American lady?
+
+She knew no other road to Richmond than that by which they had driven
+shortly after her arrival in London; and so it was that she went down
+and over Hammersmith Bridge, and round by Mortlake, and so on by East
+Sheen. The road seemed terribly long. She was an excellent walker,
+and in ordinary circumstances would have done the distance without
+fatigue; but when at length she saw the gates of the Park before her,
+she was at once exceedingly tired and almost faint from hunger. Here
+was the hotel in which they had dined: should she enter? The place
+seemed very grand and forbidding: she had scarcely even looked at it
+as she went up the steps with her husband by her side. However, she
+would venture, and accordingly she went up and into the vestibule,
+looking rather timidly about. A young gentleman, apparently not a
+waiter, approached her and seemed to wait for her to speak. It was a
+terrible moment. What was she to ask for? and could she ask it of this
+young man? Fortunately, he spoke first, and asked her if she wished to
+go into the coffee-room, and if she expected any one.
+
+"No, I do not expect any one," she said; and she knew that he would
+perceive the peculiarity of her accent; "but if you will be kind
+enough to tell me where I may have a biscuit--"
+
+It occurred to her that to go into the Star and Garter for a biscuit
+was absurd; and she added wildly, "--or anything to eat."
+
+The young man obviously regarded her with some surprise; but he was
+very courteous, and showed her into the coffee-room and called a
+waiter to her. Moreover, he gave permission for Bras to be admitted
+into the room, Sheila promising that he would lie under the table
+and not budge an inch. Then she looked round. There were only three
+persons in the room--one, an old lady seated by herself in a far
+corner, the other two being a couple of young folks too much engrossed
+with each other to mind any one else. She began to feel more at home.
+The waiter suggested various things for lunch, and she made her choice
+of something cold. Then she mustered up courage to ask for a glass of
+sherry. How she would have enjoyed all this as a story to tell to her
+husband but for that incident of the morning! She would have gloried
+in her outward bravery, and made him smile with a description of
+her inward terror. She would have written about it to the old man in
+Borva, and bid him consider how she had been transformed, and what
+strange scenes Bras was now witnessing. But all that was over. She
+felt as if she could no longer ask her husband to be amused by her
+childish experiences; and as for writing to her father, she dared
+not write to him in her present mood. Perhaps some happier time would
+come. Sheila paid her bill. She had heard her husband and Mr. Ingram
+talk about tipping waiters, and knew that she ought to give something
+to the man who had attended on her. But how much? He was a very
+august-looking person, with formally-cut whiskers and a severe
+expression of face. When he had brought back the change to her she
+timidly selected a half crown and offered it to him. There was a
+little glance of surprise: she feared she had not given him enough.
+Then he said "Thank you!" in a vague and distant fashion, and she
+knew that she had not given him enough. But it was too late. Bras was
+summoned from under the table, and again she went out into the fresh
+air.
+
+"Oh, my good dog!" she said to him as they together walked up to the
+gates and into the Park, "this is a very extravagant country. You have
+to pay half a crown to a servant for bringing you a piece of cold pie,
+and then he looks as if he was not paid enough. And Duncan, who will
+do everything about the house, and will give us all our dinners, it
+is only a pound a week he will get, and Scarlett has to be kept out of
+that. And wouldn't you like to see poor old Scarlett again?"
+
+Bras whined as if he understood every word.
+
+"I suppose now she is hanging out the washing on the gooseberry
+bushes, and you know the song she always used to sing then? Don't you
+know that Scarlett carried me about long before you were born, for you
+are a mere infant compared with me? and she used to sing to me--
+
+  Ged' bheirte mi' bho'n bhas so,
+      Mho Sheila bheag �g!
+
+And that is what she is singing just now in the garden; and Mairi
+she is bringing the things out of the washing-house. Papa is over in
+Stornoway this morning, arranging his accounts with the people there;
+and perhaps he is down at the quay, looking at the Clansman, and
+wondering when she is to bring me into the harbor. The castle is all
+shut up, you know, with cloths over all the wonderful things, and the
+curtains all down, and most of the shutters shut. Do you think papa
+has got my letter in his pocket, and does he read it over and over
+again, as I read all his letters to me over and over again? Ah--h! You
+bad dog!"
+
+Bras had forgotten to listen to his mistress in the excitement of
+seeing in the distance a large herd of deer under certain trees.
+She felt by the leash that he was trembling in every limb with
+expectation, and straining hard on the collar. Again and again she
+admonished him in vain, until she had at last to drag him away down
+the hill, putting a small plantation between him and the herd. Here
+she found a large, umbrageous chestnut tree, with a wooden seat round
+its trunk, and so she sat down in the green twilight of the leaves,
+while Bras came and put his head in her lap. Out beyond the shadow
+of the tree all the world lay bathed in sunlight, and a great silence
+brooded over the long undulations of the Park, where not a human
+being was within sight. How strange it was, she fell to thinking, that
+within a short distance there were millions of men and women, while
+here she was absolutely alone! Did they not care, then, for the
+sunlight and the trees and the sweet air? Were they so wrapped up in
+those social observances that seemed to her so barren of interest?
+
+"They have a beautiful country here," she said, talking in a rambling
+and wistful way to Bras, and scarcely noticing the eager light in his
+eyes, as if he were trying to understand. "They have no rain and no
+fog; almost always blue skies, and the clouds high up and far away.
+And the beautiful trees they have too! you never saw anything like
+that in the Lewis, not even at Stornoway. And the people are so rich
+and beautiful in their dress, and all the day they have only to think
+how to enjoy themselves and what new amusement is for the morrow. But
+I think they are tired of having nothing to do; or perhaps, you know,
+they are tired because they have nothing to fight against--no hard
+weather and hunger and poverty. They do not care for each other as
+they would if they were working on the same farm, and trying to save
+up for the winter; or if they were going out to the fishing, and very
+glad to come home again from Caithness to find all the old people very
+well and the young ones ready for a dance and a dram, and much joy and
+laughing and telling of stories. It is a very great difference there
+will be in the people--very great."
+
+Bras whined: perhaps he understood her better now that she had
+involuntarily fallen into something of her old accent and habit of
+speech.
+
+"Wouldn't you like, Bras, to be up in Borva again--only for this
+afternoon? All the people would come running out; and it is little
+Ailasa, she would put her arms round your neck; and old Peter
+McTavish, he would hear who it was, and come out of his house groping
+by the wall, and he would say, 'Pless me! iss it you, Miss Sheila,
+indeed and mir-over? It iss a long time since you hef left the Lewis.'
+Yes, it is a long time--a long time; and I will be almost forgetting
+what it is like sometimes when I try to think of it. Here it is always
+the same--the same houses, the same soft air, the same still sunlight,
+the same things to do and places to see--no storms shaking the windows
+or ships running into the harbor, and you cannot go down to the
+shore to see what has happened, or up the hill to look how the sea
+is raging. But it is one day we will go back to the Lewis--oh yes, we
+will go back to the Lewis!"
+
+She rose and looked wistfully around her, and then turned with a sigh
+to make her way to the gates. It was with no especial sort of gladness
+that she thought of returning home. Here, in the great stillness, she
+had been able to dream of the far island which she knew, and to fancy
+herself for a few minutes there: now she was going back to the dreary
+monotony of her life in that square, and to the doubts and anxieties
+which had been suggested to her in the morning. The world she was
+about to enter once more seemed so much less homely, so much less full
+of interest and purpose, than that other and distant world she had
+been wistfully regarding for a time. The people around her had neither
+the joys nor the sorrows with which she had been taught to sympathize.
+Their cares seemed to her to be exaggerations of trifles--she could
+feel no pity for them: their satisfaction was derived from sources
+unintelligible to her. And the social atmosphere around her seemed
+still and close and suffocating; so that she was like to cry out at
+times for one breath of God's clear wind--for a shaft of lightning
+even--to cut through the sultry and drowsy sameness of her life.
+
+She had almost forgotten the dog by her side. While sitting under the
+chestnut she had carelessly and loosely wound the leash round his neck
+in the semblance of a collar, and when she rose and came away she let
+the dog walk by her side without undoing the leash and taking proper
+charge of him. She was thinking of far other things, indeed, when she
+was startled by some one calling to her, "Look out, miss, or you'll
+have your dog shot!"
+
+She turned and caught a glimpse of what sent a thrill of terror to her
+heart. Bras had sneaked off from her side--had trotted lightly over
+the breckans, and was now in full chase of a herd of deer which were
+flying down the slope on the other side of the plantation. He rushed
+now at one, now at another: the very number of chances presented to
+him proving the safety of the whole herd. But as Sheila, with a swift
+flight that would have astonished most town-bred girls, followed the
+wild chase and came to the crest of the slope, she could see that the
+hound had at length singled out a particular deer--a fine buck with
+handsome horns that was making straight for the foot of the valley.
+The herd, that had been much scattered, were now drawing together
+again, though checking nothing of their speed; but this single buck
+had been driven from his companions, and was doing his utmost to
+escape from the fangs of the powerful animal behind him.
+
+What could she do but run wildly and breathlessly on? The dog was now
+far beyond the reach of her voice. She had no whistle. All sorts of
+fearful anticipations rushed in on her mind, the most prominent of all
+being the anger of her father if Bras were shot. How could she go back
+to Borva with such a tale? and how could she live in London without
+this companion who had come with her from the far North? Then what
+terrible things were connected with the killing of deer in a royal
+park! She remembered vaguely what Mr. Ingram and her husband had been
+saying; and while these things were crowding in upon her, she felt
+her strength beginning to fail, while both the dog and the deer had
+disappeared altogether from sight.
+
+Strange, too, that in the midst of her fatigue and fright, while she
+still managed to struggle on with a sharp pain at her heart and a
+sort of mist before her eyes, she had a vague consciousness that her
+husband would be deeply vexed, not by the conduct or the fate of Bras,
+but by her being the heroine of so mad an adventure. She knew that he
+wished her to be serious and subdued and proper, like the ladies
+whom she met, while an evil destiny seemed to dog her footsteps
+and precipitate her into all sorts of erratic mishaps and "scenes."
+However, this adventure was likely soon to have an end. She could go
+no farther. Whatever had become of Bras, it was in vain for her to
+think of pursuing him. When she at length reached a broad and smooth
+road leading through the pasture, she could only stand still and press
+her two hands over her heart, while her head seemed giddy, and she did
+not see two men who had been standing on the road close by until they
+came up and addressed her.
+
+Then she started and looked round, finding before her two men who were
+apparently laborers of some sort, one of them having a shovel over his
+shoulder.
+
+"Beg your pardon, miss, but wur that your dawg?"
+
+"Yes," she said eagerly. "Could you get him? Did you see him go by? Do
+you know where he is?"
+
+"Me and my mate saw him go by, sure enough; but as for getting
+him--why the keepers'll have shot him by this time."
+
+"Oh no!" cried Sheila, almost in tears, "they must not shoot him. It
+was my fault. I will pay them for all the harm he has done. Can't you
+tell me which way he will go past?"
+
+"I don't think, miss," said the spokesman quite respectfully, "as you
+can go much furder. If you would sit down and rest yourself, and keep
+an eye on this 'ere shovel, me and my mate will have a hunt arter the
+dawg."
+
+Sheila not only accepted the offer gratefully, but promised to give
+them all the money she had if only they would bring back the dog
+unharmed. She made this offer in consequence of some talk between her
+husband and her father which she had overheard. Lavender was speaking
+of the civility he had frequently experienced at the hands of Scotch
+shepherds, and of the independence with which they refused to accept
+any compensation even for services which cost them a good deal of
+time and trouble. Perhaps it was to please Sheila's father, but at any
+rate, the picture the young man drew of the venality and the cupidity
+of folks in the South was a desperately dark one. Ask the name of a
+village, have your stick picked up for you from the pavement, get into
+a cab or get out of it, and directly there was a touch of the cap and
+an unspoken request for coppers. Then, as the services rendered
+rose in importance, so did the fees--to waiters, to coachmen, to
+game-keepers. These things and many more sank into Sheila's heart. She
+heard and believed, and came down to the South with the notion that
+every man and woman who did you the least service expected to be paid
+handsomely for it. What, therefore, could she give those two men if
+they brought back her deer-hound but all the money she had?
+
+It was a hard thing to wait here in the greatest doubt and uncertainty
+while the afternoon was visibly waning. She began to grow afraid.
+Perhaps the men had stolen the dog, and left her with this shovel as
+a blind. Her husband must have come home, and would be astonished and
+perplexed by her absence. Surely, he would have the sense to dine
+by himself, instead of waiting for her; and she reflected with some
+glimpse of satisfaction that she had left everything connected with
+dinner properly arranged, so that he should have nothing to grumble
+at.
+
+"Surely," she said to herself as she sat there, watching the light
+on the grass and the trees getting more and more yellow--"surely I am
+very wicked or very wretched to think of his grumbling in any case.
+If he grumbles, it is because I will attend too much to the affairs of
+the house, and not amuse myself enough. He is very good to me, and I
+have no right to think of his grumbling. And I wish I cared to amuse
+myself more--to be more of a companion to him; but it is so difficult
+among all those people."
+
+The reverie was interrupted by the sound of footsteps on the grass
+behind, and she turned quickly to find the two men approaching her,
+one of them leading the captive Bras by the leash. Sheila sprang to
+her feet with a great gladness. She did not care even to accuse the
+culprit, whose consciousness of guilt was evident in his look and
+in the droop of his tail. Bras did not once turn his eyes to his
+mistress. He hung down his head, while he panted rapidly, and she
+fancied she saw some smearing of blood on his tongue and on the side
+of his jaw. Her fears on this head were speedily confirmed.
+
+"I think, miss, as you'd better take him out o' the Park as soon as
+may be, for he's got a deer killed close by the Robin Hood Gate, in
+the trees there; and if the keepers happen on it afore you leave the
+Park, you'll get into trouble."
+
+"Oh, thank you!" said Sheila, retaining her composure bravely, but
+with a terrible sinking of the heart; "and how can I get to the
+nearest railway station?"
+
+"You're going to London, miss?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, I suppose the nearest is Richmond; but it would be quieter for
+you--don't you see, miss?--if you was to go along to the Roehampton
+Gate and go to Barnes."
+
+"Will you show me the gate?" said Sheila, choosing the quieter route
+at once.
+
+But the men themselves did not at all like the look of accompanying
+her and this dog through the Park. Had they not already condoned a
+felony, or done something equally dreadful, in handing to her a dog
+that had been found keeping watch and ward over a slain buck? They
+showed her the road to the Roehampton Gate, and then they paused
+before continuing on their journey.
+
+The pause meant money. Sheila took out her purse. There were three
+sovereigns and some silver in it, and the entire sum, in fulfillment
+of her promise, she held out to him who had so far conducted the
+negotiations.
+
+Both men looked frightened. It was quite clear that either good
+feeling or some indefinite fear of being implicated in the killing of
+the deer caused them to regard this big bribe as something they could
+not meddle with; and at length, after a pause of a second or two, the
+spokesman said with great hesitation, "Well, miss, you've kep' your
+word; but me and my mate--well, if so be as it's the same to you--'d
+rather have summut to drink your health."
+
+"Do you think it is too much?"
+
+The man looked at his neighbor, who nodded.
+
+"It was only for ketchin' of a dawg, miss, don't you see?" he remarked
+slowly, as if to impress upon her that they had had nothing to do with
+the deer.
+
+"Will you take this, then?" and she offered them half a crown each.
+
+Their faces lightened considerably: they took the money, and with a
+formal expression of thanks moved off, but not before they had taken a
+glance round to see that no one had been a witness of this interview.
+
+And so Sheila had to walk away by herself, knowing that she had been
+guilty of a dreadful offence, and that at any moment she might be
+arrested by the officers of the law. What would the old King of Borva
+say if he saw his only daughter in the hands of two policemen? and
+would not all Mr. Lavender's fastidious and talkative and wondering
+friends pass about the newspaper report of her trial and conviction?
+A man was approaching her. As he drew near her heart failed her, for
+might not this be the mysterious George Ranger himself, about whom her
+husband and Mr. Ingram had been talking? Should she drop on her knees
+at once and confess her sins, and beg him to let her off? If Duncan
+were with her or Mairi, or even old Scarlett Macdonald, she would not
+have cared so much, but it seemed so terrible to meet this man alone.
+
+However, as he drew near he did not seem a fierce person. He was an
+old gentleman with voluminous white hair, who was dressed all in black
+and carried an umbrella on this warm and bright afternoon. He regarded
+her and the dog in a distant and contemplative fashion, as though he
+would probably try to remember some time after that he had really
+seen them; and then he passed on. Sheila began to breathe more freely.
+Moreover, here was the gate, and once she was in the high road, who
+could say anything to her? Tired as she was, she still walked rapidly
+on; and in due time, having had to ask the way once or twice, she
+found herself at Barnes Station.
+
+By and by the train came in: Bras was committed to the care of the
+guard, and she found herself alone in a railway-carriage for the first
+time in her life. Her husband had told her that whenever she felt
+uncertain of her where-abouts, if in the country, she was to ask for
+the nearest station and get a train to London; if in town, she was to
+get into a cab and give the driver her address. And, indeed, Sheila
+had been so much agitated and perplexed during this afternoon that
+she acted in a sort of mechanical fashion, and really escaped the
+nervousness which otherwise would have attended the novel experience
+of purchasing a ticket and of arranging about the carriage of a dog in
+the break-van. Even now, when she found herself traveling alone, and
+shortly to arrive at a part of London she had never seen, her crowding
+thoughts and fancies were not about her own situation, but about the
+reception she should receive from her husband. Would he be vexed
+with her? Or pity her? Had he called with Mrs. Lorraine to take her
+somewhere, and found her gone? Had he brought home some bachelor
+friends to dinner, and been chagrined to find her not in the house?
+
+It was getting dusk when the slow four-wheeler approached Sheila's
+home. The hour for dinner had long gone by. Perhaps her husband had
+gone away somewhere looking for her, and she would find the house
+empty.
+
+But Frank Lavender came to meet his wife in the hall, and said, "Where
+have you been?"
+
+She could not tell whether there was anger or kindness in his voice,
+and she could not well see his face. She took his hand and went into
+the dining-room, which was also dusk, and standing there told him all
+her story.
+
+"This is too bad, Sheila!" he said in a tone of deep vexation. "By
+Jove! I'll go and thrash that dog within an inch of his life."
+
+"No," she said, drawing herself up; and for one brief second--could he
+but have seen her face--there was a touch of old Mackenzie's pride and
+firmness about the ordinarily gentle lips. It was but for a second.
+She cast down her eyes and said meekly, "I hope you won't do that,
+Frank. The dog is not to blame. It was my fault."
+
+"Well, really, Sheila," he said, "you are very thoughtless. I wish you
+would take some little trouble to act as other women act, instead of
+constantly putting yourself and me into the most awkward positions.
+Suppose I had brought any one home to dinner, now? And what am I to
+say to Ingram? for of course I went direct to his lodgings when I
+discovered you were nowhere to be found. I fancied some mad freak had
+taken you there; and I should not have been surprised. Indeed, I don't
+think I should be surprised at anything you do. Do you know who was in
+the hall when I came in this afternoon?"
+
+"No," said Sheila.
+
+"Why that wretched old hag who keeps the fruit-stall. And it seems you
+gave her and all her family tea and cake in the kitchen last night."
+
+"She is a poor old woman," said Sheila humbly.
+
+"A poor old woman!" he said impatiently. "I have no doubt she is a
+lying old thief, who would take an umbrella or a coat if only she
+could get the chance. It is really too bad, Sheila, your having all
+those persons about you, and demeaning yourself by amending on them.
+What must the servants think of you?"
+
+"I do not heed what any servants think of me," she said.
+
+She was now standing erect, with her face quite calm.
+
+"Apparently not," he said, "or you would not go and make yourself
+ridiculous before them."
+
+Sheila hesitated for a moment, as if she did not understand; and then
+she said, as calmly as before, but with a touch of indignation about
+the proud and beautiful lips, "And if I make myself ridiculous by
+attending to poor people, it is not my husband who should tell me so."
+
+She turned and walked out, and he was too surprised to follow her. She
+went up stairs to her own room, locked herself in and threw herself on
+the bed. And then all the bitterness of her heart rose up as if in a
+flood--not against him, but against the country in which he lived, and
+the society which had contaminated him, and the ways and habits that
+seemed to create a barrier between herself and him, so that she was
+a stranger to him, and incapable of becoming anything else. It was a
+crime that she should interest herself in the unfortunate creatures
+round about her--that she should talk to them as if they were human
+beings like herself, and have a great sympathy with their small hopes
+and aims; but she would not have been led into such a crime if she
+had cultivated from her infancy upward a consistent self-indulgence,
+making herself the centre of a world of mean desires and petty
+gratifications. And then she thought of the old and beautiful days up
+in the Lewis, where the young English stranger seemed to approve of
+her simple ways and her charitable work, and where she was taught to
+believe that in order to please him she had only to continue to be
+what she was then. There was no great gulf of time between that period
+and this; but what had not happened in the interval? She had not
+changed--at least she hoped she had not changed. She loved her husband
+with her whole heart and soul: her devotion was as true and constant
+as she herself could have wished it to be when she dreamed of the
+duties of a wife in the days of her maidenhood. But all around her was
+changed. She had no longer the old freedom--the old delight in living
+from day to day--the active work, and the enjoyment of seeing where
+she could help and how she could help the people around her. When,
+as if by the same sort of instinct that makes a wild animal retain
+in captivity the habits which were necessary to its existence when
+it lived in freedom, she began to find out the circumstances of such
+unfortunate people as were in her neighborhood, some little solace was
+given to her; but these people were not friends to her, as the poor
+folk of Borvabost had been. She knew, too, that her husband would be
+displeased if he found her talking with a washerwoman over her family
+matters, or even advising one of her own servants about the disposal
+of her wages; so that, while she concealed nothing from him, these
+things nevertheless had to be done exclusively in his absence. And was
+she in so doing really making herself ridiculous? Did he consider her
+ridiculous? Or was it not merely the false and enervating influences
+of the indolent society in which he lived that had poisoned his mind,
+and drawn him away from her as though into another world?
+
+Alas! if he were in this other world, was not she quite alone? What
+companionship was there possible between her and the people in this
+new and strange land into which she had ventured? As she lay on the
+bed, with her head hidden down in the darkness, the pathetic wail of
+the captive Jews seemed to come and go through the bitterness of her
+thoughts, like some mournful refrain: "By the rivers of Babylon, there
+we sat down; yea we wept when we remembered Zion." She almost heard
+the words, and the reply that rose up in her heart was a great
+yearning to go back to her own land, so that her eyes were filled with
+tears in thinking of it, and she lay and sobbed there in the dusk.
+Would not the old man living all by himself in that lonely island be
+glad to see his little girl back again in the old house? And she would
+sing to him as she used to sing, not as she had been singing to those
+people whom her husband knew. "For there they that carried us away
+captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us
+mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion." And she had sung in
+the strange land, among the strange people, with her heart breaking
+with thoughts of the sea and the hills and the rude and sweet and
+simple ways of the old bygone life she had left behind her.
+
+"Sheila!"
+
+She thought it was her father calling to her, and she rose with a
+cry of joy. For one wild moment she fancied that outside were all the
+people she knew--Duncan and Scarlett and Mairi--and that she was once
+more at home, with the sea all around her, and the salt, cold air.
+
+"Sheila, I want to speak to you."
+
+It was her husband. She went to the door, opened it, and stood there
+penitent and with downcast face.
+
+"Come, you must not be silly," he said with some kindness in his
+voice. "You have had no dinner. You must be hungry."
+
+"I do not care for any: there is no use troubling the servants when I
+would rather lie down," she said.
+
+"The servants! You surely don't take so seriously what I said about
+them, Sheila? Of course you don't need to care what the servants
+think. And in any case they have to bring up dinner for me, so you may
+as well come and try."
+
+"Have you not had dinner?" she said timidly.
+
+"Do you think I could sit down and eat with the notion that you might
+have tumbled into the Thames or been kidnapped, or something?"
+
+"I am very sorry," she said in a low voice, and in the gloom he felt
+his hand taken and carried to her lips. Then they went down stairs
+into the dining-room, which was now lit up by a blaze of gas and
+candles.
+
+During dinner of course no very confidential talking was possible,
+and indeed Sheila had plenty to tell of her adventures at Richmond.
+Lavender was now in a more amiable mood, and was disposed to look
+on the killing of the roebuck as rather a good joke. He complimented
+Sheila on her good sense in having gone in at the Star and Garter for
+lunch; and altogether something like better relations was established
+between them.
+
+But when dinner was finally over and the servants dismissed, Lavender
+placed Sheila's easy-chair for her as usual, drew his own near hers,
+and lit a cigarette.
+
+"Now, tell me, Sheila," he said, "were you really vexed with me when
+you went up stairs and locked yourself in your room? Did you think I
+meant to displease you or say anything harsh to you?"
+
+"No, not any of those things," she said calmly: "I wished to be
+alone--to think over what had happened. And I was grieved by what you
+said, for I think you cannot help looking at many things not as I
+will look at them. That is all. It is my bringing up in the Highlands,
+perhaps."
+
+"Do you know, Sheila, it sometimes occurs to me that you are not quite
+comfortable here? And I can't make out what is the matter. I think you
+have a perverse fancy that you are different from the people you meet,
+and that you cannot be like them, and all that sort of thing. Now,
+dear, that is only a fancy. There need be no difference if only you
+will take a little trouble."
+
+"Oh, Frank!" she said, going over and putting her hand on his
+shoulder, "I cannot take that trouble. I cannot try to be like those
+people. And I see a great difference in you since you have come back
+to London, and you are getting to be like them and say the things they
+say. If I could only see you, my own darling, up in the Lewis again,
+with rough clothes on and a gun in your hand, I should be happy. You
+were yourself up there, when you were helping us in the boat, or when
+you were bringing home the salmon, or when we were all together at
+night in the little parlor, you know--"
+
+"My dear, don't get so excited. Now sit down, and I will tell you all
+about it. You seem to have the notion that people lose all their finer
+sentiments simply because they don't, in society, burst into raptures
+over them. You mustn't imagine all those people are selfish and
+callous merely because they preserve a decent reticence. To tell you
+the truth, that constant profession of noble feelings you would like
+to see would have something of ostentation about it."
+
+Sheila only sighed. "I do not wish them to be altered," she said by
+and by, with her eyes grown pensive: "all I know is, that I could
+not live the same life. And you--you seemed to be happier up in the
+Highlands than you have ever been since."
+
+"Well, you see, a man ought to be happy when he is enjoying a holiday
+in the country along with the girl he is engaged to. But if I had
+lived all my life killing salmon and shooting wild-duck, I should have
+grown up an ignorant boor, with no more sense of--"
+
+He stopped, for he saw that the girl was thinking of her father.
+
+"Well, look here, Sheila. You see how you are placed--how we are
+placed, rather. Wouldn't it be more sensible to get to understand
+those people you look askance at, and establish better relations with
+them, since you have got to live among them? I can't help thinking
+you are too much alone, and you can't expect me to stay in the house
+always with you. A husband and wife cannot be continually in each
+other's company, unless they want to grow heartily tired of each
+other. Now, if you would only lay aside those suspicions of yours, you
+would find the people just as honest and generous and friendly as any
+other sort of people you ever met, although they don't happen to be
+fond of expressing their goodness in their talk."
+
+"I have tried, dear--I will try again," said Sheila.
+
+She resolved that she would go down and visit Mrs. Lavender next day,
+and try to be interested in the talk of such people as might be there.
+She would bring away some story about this or the other fashionable
+woman or noble lord, just to show her husband that she was doing her
+best to learn. She would drive patiently round the Park in that close
+little brougham, and listen attentively to the moralities of Marcus
+Aurelius. She would make an appointment to go with Mrs. Lavender to
+a morning concert; and she would endeavor to muster up courage to ask
+any ladies who might be there to lunch with her on that day, and go
+afterward to this same entertainment. All these things and many more
+Sheila silently vowed to herself she would do, while her husband sat
+and expounded to her his theories of the obligations which society
+demanded of its members.
+
+But her plans were suddenly broken asunder.
+
+"I met Mrs. Lorraine accidentally to-day," he said.
+
+It was his first mention of the young American lady. Sheila sat in
+mute expectation.
+
+"She always asks very kindly after you."
+
+"She is very kind."
+
+He did not say, however, that Mrs. Lorraine had more than once made
+distinct propositions, when in his company, that they should call in
+for Sheila and take her out for a drive or to a flower-show, or some
+such place, while Lavender had always some excuse ready.
+
+"She is going to Brighton to-morrow, and she was wondering whether you
+would care to run down for a day or two."
+
+"With her?" said Sheila, recoiling from such a proposal instinctively.
+
+"Of course not. I should go. And then at last, you know, you would see
+the sea, about which you have been dreaming for ever so long."
+
+The sea! There was a magic in the very word that could, almost at
+any moment, summon tears into her eyes. Of course she accepted
+right gladly. If her husband's duties were so pressing that the
+long-talked-of journey to Lewis and Borva had to be repeatedly and
+indefinitely postponed, here at least would be a chance of looking
+again at the sea--of drinking in the freshness and light and color of
+it--of renewing her old and intimate friendship with it that had been
+broken off for so long by her stay in this city of perpetual houses
+and still sunshine.
+
+"You can tell her you will go when you see her to-night at Lady
+Mary's. By the way, isn't it time for you to begin to dress?"
+
+"Oh, Lady Mary's!" repeated Sheila mechanically, who had quite
+forgotten about her engagement for that evening.
+
+"Perhaps you are too tired to go," said her husband.
+
+She was a little tired, in truth. But surely, just after her promises,
+spoken and unspoken, some little effort was demanded of her; so she
+bravely went to dress, and in about three-quarters of an hour was
+ready to drive down to Curzon street. Her husband had never seen her
+look so pleased before in going out to any party. He flattered himself
+that his lecture had done her good. There was fair common sense in
+what he had said, and although, doubtless, a girl's romanticism was
+a pretty thing, it would have to yield to the actual requirements of
+society. In time he should educate Sheila.
+
+But he did not know what brightened the girl's face all that night,
+and put a new life into the beautiful eyes, so that even those who
+knew her best were struck by her singular beauty. It was the sea that
+was coloring Sheila's eyes. The people around her, the glare of the
+candles, the hum of talking, and the motion of certain groups dancing
+over there in the middle of the throng,--all were faint and visionary,
+for she was busily wondering what the sea would be like the next
+morning, and what strange fancies would strike her when once more
+she walked on sand and heard the roar of waves. That, indeed, was
+the sound that was present in her ears while the music played and
+the people murmured around her. Mrs. Lorraine talked to her, and was
+surprised and amused to notice the eager fashion in which the girl
+spoke of their journey of the next day. The gentleman who took her in
+to supper found himself catechised about Brighton in a manner which
+afforded him more occupation than enjoyment. And when Sheila drove
+away from the house at two in the morning she declared to her husband
+that she had enjoyed herself extremely, and he was glad to hear it;
+and she was particularly kind to himself in getting him his slippers,
+and fetching him that final cigarette which he always had on reaching
+home; and then she went off to bed to dream of ships and flying clouds
+and cold winds, and a great and beautiful blue plain of waves.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+GOLD.
+
+
+  A day of bright reflections on the pond,
+  And wavering shadows over moss and frond:
+  A wayward breeze, the summer's latest born,
+  Teased the stiff grain and bent the stately corn,
+  Or rocked the bird-nests in the prickly thorn.
+
+  Above, the lavish sun filled air with gold;
+  Again, below, on mimic waves it rolled,
+  And hid in lily cups. Her netted hair
+  Gleamed in the splendor, bright beyond compare,
+  Forming about her head a nimbus rare.
+
+  The velvet mullen raised its yellow head,
+  The buttercups like precious ore were spread:
+  Like golden shuttles flung by spirit hands,
+  Weaving invisible their magic strands,
+  Darted quick orioles in joyous bands.
+
+  Fond helianthus turned her fervent face,
+  Meek antirrhinum paled and grew apace;
+  Late dandelions, robed in cloth of gold,
+  With golden-rod, upsprung from out the mould,
+  And pensive, gold-eyed daisies pranked the wold.
+
+  As snowy, gold-rimmed cloudlets hide the sky,
+  So hid her eyelid's golden fringe her eye:
+  As every growing beauty of the earth
+  But figures forth great Nature's hidden worth,
+  So my love's charms from her pure heart had birth.
+
+  Pure heart of gold to me that day was given,
+  And promise true as gold made earth a heaven;
+  Then far away fled every doubt forlorn;
+  We felt for us the Golden Age reborn,
+  And envied none their gold from labor torn.
+
+ITA ANIOL PROKOP.
+
+
+
+
+GLIMPSES OF GHOST-LAND.
+
+
+It is no longer the fashion to scoff at tales of the supernatural.
+On the contrary, there is a growing tendency to investigate subjects
+which were formerly pooh-poohed by most persons claiming to be well
+informed and capable of reasoning. It is, however, without propounding
+any theory or advancing any opinion that I record a few instances of
+apparently supernatural, or at least inexplicable, occurrences. I can
+vouch for the truth of nearly all the stories I am about to relate,
+one of them only not being either my personal experience or narrated
+to me by some one of the actors in the scene.
+
+My first story shall be one that was told to me by an aged lady who
+was one of the friends of my youth, and who often mentioned this
+strange incident of her placid, yet busy life. She was a sensible,
+practical woman, the last person in the world likely to be led astray
+by an overheated imagination or deceived by hallucinations. Her early
+youth had been passed in the country, her father being a wealthy
+farmer. She had formed a close intimacy with the daughter of a
+gentleman living at some distance from her father's farm, and the two
+were seldom apart. An invitation given to my friend (whom I shall call
+Mrs. L----) to visit some relatives in a neighboring city caused a
+brief separation between the two girls, and they parted with many
+protestations of enduring affection. On the day appointed for Mrs.
+L----'s return she set out at the prescribed hour. The latter part
+of her journey was to be performed on horseback. On a bright sunny
+afternoon in June she found herself, about five o'clock, drawing
+near her father's house. Suddenly in the broad road before her she
+perceived a female form walking rapidly toward her, and, to her
+delight, recognized her friend coming, as she thought, to meet her.
+
+"I will make her go back with me and take tea," was Mrs. L----'s
+thought as she whipped up her horse in her haste to greet the dear
+one, who was all the more beloved on account of their temporary
+separation. But as she approached the figure, and before she had had
+time to speak, or indeed to do more than notice that her friend looked
+very pale and ill, her horse, an unusually quiet, steady animal,
+seemed struck with sudden terror, reared, shied, and finally plunged
+into a hollow by the roadside, from which she had some difficulty
+in extricating him. When she did succeed in bringing him back to the
+level road she found, to her astonishment, that the young girl had
+disappeared. Around her lay the open fields, before her and behind
+her the road--all in the bright lustre of the summer afternoon--but no
+trace of the figure could she see. Completely mystified, she hastened
+home, there to learn that her friend had died suddenly that very
+morning.
+
+The next incident I shall narrate was told me by a German gentleman
+whose mother was the heroine of the tale. His father had been
+appointed to some public office in a small German town, and among
+the emoluments of the place was the privilege of residing in a large,
+old-fashioned, but very handsome mansion. The husband and wife set off
+in high spirits to inspect their new abode, to which some portion of
+their furniture had already been transferred. They went from room
+to room, inspecting and planning, till they came to an apartment
+the ceiling of which was elaborately decorated with plaster Cupids,
+baskets of flowers, etc., modeled in high relief, and with a
+centre-piece of unusual size and magnificence. A small table, the only
+article of furniture the room contained, was placed directly under
+this centre-piece. The young wife, rather weary of her researches, was
+standing beside this table, and was leaning on it while she went on
+talking with her husband, when suddenly a loud, imploring voice called
+from down stairs, "Caroline! Caroline! come down to me--come!"
+
+"Who can that be?" asked the husband in amazement. "I fastened all the
+doors and windows before we left the lower rooms."
+
+Again came the loud call, this time with an accent of agonized
+entreaty: "Caroline! oh, Caroline! come down--_do_ come!"
+
+The young couple hesitated no longer, but hastened down stairs. There
+was no one there. Doors and windows were securely fastened, and the
+old house looked as solitary as when they had first entered it.
+
+"Very strange!" said the gentleman. "But now that we _are_ down here,
+Caroline, suppose we take a look at the garden?" So they sallied forth
+to examine that portion of their new domain, but scarcely had they
+entered it when they were startled by a loud crash within the house.
+Looking up, they saw volumes of what appeared to be smoke issuing from
+the window of the room they had just quitted, and fearing that the
+room was on fire, they quickly returned to it. There was no fire: what
+had appeared to be smoke was only a cloud of dust, for the massive and
+elaborately ornamented ceiling had fallen, and the heavy centre-piece
+had crushed to fragments the table against which the young wife had so
+lately been leaning. But for the warning voice her destruction would
+have been inevitable. My informant went on to state that the pieces
+of the shattered table were preserved as sacred relics by his parents,
+and that his mother always declared that she had recognized in the
+mysterious voice that of a dear relative long before deceased.
+
+It was once my fortune to pass some weeks in a "haunted house." I was
+quite young then, a mere school-girl in fact, and the friend whom I
+came to visit was also very young; and both of us were too gay and
+frolicsome to care much for whatever was strange or startling in our
+surroundings. Not that we ever saw anything--my friend herself, the
+daughter of the house, had never done so--but the sounds we heard were
+sufficiently odd and inexplicable to fill us with astonishment, if not
+with terror. Twice during my visit I was roused from a sound slumber
+by a loud, heavy crash, resembling that which might be caused by
+the overthrow of a marble-topped washstand or bureau, or some other
+equally ponderous piece of furniture. The room actually vibrated, and
+yet a close scrutiny of that and the adjoining apartments failed to
+reveal any cause for the peculiar noise. It was a sound which could
+not possibly have been produced by cracking furniture, falling bricks,
+scampering rats, or any other of the numerous causes of supposed
+ghostly sounds. The room overhead was used as a linen-room, and was
+always kept locked; and besides, the noise (which I afterward heard
+on another occasion in broad daylight, when I was wide awake) was
+unmistakably _in_ the room where we found ourselves. My friend told me
+that she had heard it very often--so often, in fact, that she had
+got quite used to it, and no longer felt any emotion save that of
+curiosity.
+
+There was another room in which (also in broad daylight) I heard a
+strange crackling sound like the rustling of a large sheet of stiff
+paper or parchment turned slowly in the reader's hands. This noise
+also was one of frequent occurrence. Among the things seen by other
+members of the family was a light that glided over walls and ceiling
+in points inaccessible to outside light or reflection. Then there was
+a lady in black silk who had more than once been seen gliding about
+the house, but who always disappeared when accosted or followed. Three
+slow, solemn raps sometimes sounded at dead of night at the door of
+one member of the family, a skeptical and irascible old gentleman.
+
+But, strange to say, all these uncanny sights and sounds portended
+nothing, and seemed to be utterly without a purpose or a cause. The
+house was a cheerful modern one, and the father of my friend was
+its first occupant; so there was nothing in the past to which these
+unearthly occurrences could refer. Nor were they warnings of coming
+misfortune. Neither death nor disaster ever followed in their train,
+and in due course of time the family ceased to trouble their heads
+about them--were not at all frightened, and scarcely even annoyed.
+There were other sounds which I did not myself hear, but of which I
+was told--stealthy footsteps that paced a certain corridor at dead
+of night; a sharp, rattling noise like hail dashing against the
+window-panes, and one or two other trifling yet equally unaccountable
+occurrences. Once, too, a young lady visiting the house heard in the
+next room to that in which she was loud and lamentable sounds, as of
+a woman weeping bitterly and in sore distress. She listened in
+considerable perplexity for some time, fearing to intrude on the
+sorrows of some member of the family; but at last she resolved to go
+and proffer aid, if not consolation. As he approached the door between
+the two rooms the sound suddenly ceased, and, to her amazement, she
+found the adjoining apartment not only empty, but with the door locked
+and bolted on the inside.
+
+I once knew a young lady who, on going to pay a visit to a friend who
+had recently moved into a new house, was asked to walk up stairs,
+and on complying saw an old woman preceding her up the staircase.
+Supposing her to be one of the servants, she took but little notice
+of her, though struck by the peculiarity of her gait, a sort of jerky
+limp, as though one leg was shorter than the other. In the course of
+conversation with her friend she mentioned the old woman, and asked if
+she was the housekeeper. "Housekeeper? no," said the lady: "we have no
+such person about our house. You must have been mistaken." The visitor
+then described the person she had seen, and when she mentioned the
+peculiar limp her hostess seemed startled. After a pause she said:
+"No such person lives here _now_, but the woman who took care of this
+house before we rented it was exactly such a person as you describe,
+and was lame in just such a manner. But she died here about six weeks
+ago--I think in this very room--so your eyes must certainly have
+deceived you." The lady still persisted that she had seen the old
+woman; so the servants were called and the house thoroughly searched,
+but no intruder was discovered.
+
+I have known several instances of persons who have seen the "fetch" or
+apparition of a living person, called in Germany the "Doppelg�nger;"
+yet, though such appearances are usually supposed to portend the death
+or illness of the person thus strangely "doubled," I have never
+yet heard of a case where any unpleasant consequences followed. For
+instance, an old friend of mine, a gentleman of undoubted veracity,
+once told me that on one occasion he entered his house about
+five o'clock in the afternoon, and ran up stairs to his mother's
+bed-chamber, where he saw her standing near the centre of the room,
+clad in a loose white gown and engaged in combing out her long black
+hair. He remained looking at her for some moments, expecting that
+she would speak to him, but she did not take notice in any way of his
+presence, and neither spoke nor looked at him. He then addressed her,
+but, receiving no reply, became indignant and went down stairs, where,
+to his amazement, he found his mother seated by the parlor window,
+dressed and _coiff�e_ as usual. It was some years before he would
+trust himself to tell her of what he had seen, fearing that she might
+consider it an omen of approaching death, and indeed, though not a
+superstitious man, he was inclined so to view it himself; but his
+mother lived for many years after the appearance of her wraith. I also
+knew a young gentleman to whom the unpleasant experience of beholding
+his own double was once vouchsafed. He had been spending a quiet
+evening with some young ladies, and returned home about eleven
+o'clock, let himself into the house with his latch-key and proceeded
+to his own room, where he found the gas already lighted, though turned
+down to a mere blue spark. He turned it up, and the full light of the
+jet shone on his bed, which stood just beside the burner, and there,
+extended at full length, lay--himself. His first idea was of a
+burglar or some such intruder. But his second glance dispelled that
+impression. He stood for some moments gazing at the prostrate figure
+with feelings which must have been anything but agreeable: he noticed
+little peculiarities of his own dress and features, and marked the
+closed eyelids and easy respiration of slumber. At length, plucking up
+courage, he attempted to pass his hand under the pillow to draw out a
+small revolver which he usually kept there, and as he did so he felt
+the pressure of the pillow as though weighed down by a reclining head.
+This completely unnerved him. He went out of the room, locking the
+door on the outside, and spent the remainder of the night on a sofa in
+the parlor. He did not re-enter his chamber till broad daylight, when,
+to his delight, he found that his ghostly visitor had vanished.
+
+The next story on my list was narrated to me by one of the most
+sensible and intelligent women I ever met--a lady of great strength
+of character, joined to a fine and highly cultivated mind. During
+her childhood my friend (whom I shall call Mrs. X----) dwelt with her
+parents in a large, roomy house in the vicinity of one of our inland
+cities. The house was a double one, a solid, substantial structure
+built of stone, and had been purchased by her father a short time
+before the occurrences which I am about to relate. A wide lawn at the
+back of the mansion sloped down to the bank of a small stream,
+along the verge of which, without intervening bank or path, ran the
+terminating wall of the grounds. The stables were also situated at the
+foot of this lawn, and the back windows of these stables looked out on
+the water. Mrs. X---- had several brothers and sisters, all of whom,
+as well as herself, were still children at the period of which she
+spoke.
+
+One summer evening her parents accepted an invitation to take tea with
+a friend, and went out, leaving the children at play in the library, a
+room which opened on the main hall on the ground floor. The front
+door was open, and as it grew dark a large hanging lamp which fully
+illuminated the hall was lighted, so that every part of it, as well as
+the staircase, was fully illuminated. Late in the evening the children
+were disturbed at their play in the library by the sound of heavy
+footsteps ascending the outer steps and then pacing along the hall.
+Imagining that it was their parents who had returned earlier than
+they expected, they rushed to the door to greet them, but to their
+astonishment they could see no one, though the heavy steps were
+still heard traversing the hall, ascending the staircase, and finally
+resounding on the floor of a room overhead. The children summoned the
+servants, who merely laughed at their story, till one of the maids,
+who had been busy up stairs, came down and said that her master and
+mistress must surely have returned, as she had heard them walking
+along the entry and afterward entering one of the rooms. Upon this,
+one of the men-servants went up stairs and made a careful search, but
+without rinding any one. In the midst of the excitement the lady and
+gentleman of the house returned home, and upon hearing the story the
+gentleman himself instituted a second and more vigorous search, which,
+like the first, was wholly without result.
+
+Some time after this the children were playing under their nurse's
+care on the lawn at the back of the house one gray, dismal afternoon
+in the early autumn. The attention of the whole party was suddenly
+attracted by the figure of a man passing slowly outside of the
+stone wall that stretched along the foot of the lawn, and finally
+disappearing behind the stable. As he did so a tremendous uproar arose
+among the horses in the stable, and on examination one of them, a
+remarkably fine and docile animal, whose stall happened to be next the
+window that opened on the water, was found to be in a perfect ecstasy
+of terror, plunging, rearing and struggling to get loose in a manner
+that rendered the task of releasing and removing him anything but an
+easy or even a safe one. After the horse was got out of the stable and
+led away, the question arose, What had frightened him? Could the man
+they had seen passing behind the stable have done anything to terrify
+him? Then, for the first time, it dawned on the minds of the whole
+party that no human being could have walked where they had seen the
+passing figure, as the wall rose straight from the verge of the water,
+and there was no pathway between the wall and the stream, which in
+that spot was deep, though not very wide. Strange to say, the horse
+could never be induced to re-enter that stable, but always manifested
+signs of wild alarm and excitement when brought even to the door,
+though in all other respects he was perfectly gentle and tractable.
+
+Owing to the size of the family, one of the large garret-rooms
+had been fitted up as a bed-room for one of the younger boys, who
+preferred having a chamber of his own to sharing the apartment of
+one of his brothers. He had not occupied it long before he began to
+complain of frightful dreams, and more than once he came trembling
+down stairs and took refuge in his mother's room, terrified by
+something horrible--_what_, he could not define, but something that
+came into his room at night and roused him from his slumbers. Thinking
+that the child was merely nervous and excitable, she changed the
+arrangements, put him to sleep in the bed-room of one of his brothers,
+and gave up the apartment in the garret to one of the servants. But
+in a very short time the complaints were renewed: the girl could not
+sleep on account of that vague, strange horror, which often drove her
+shrieking and half awakened from her bed. So the lady had the room
+dismantled, and used it as a lumber-room, and during the remaining
+years of her occupancy of the house was troubled no more.
+
+As time passed on, the increasing exigencies of his growing family
+induced Mrs. X----'s father to purchase a house in town, and he
+accordingly rented his country-mansion to a childless pair, a
+clergyman and his wife. The new residents had not been long installed
+when a series of ghostly disturbances began in real earnest. I believe
+that nothing more was ever _seen_, but the kitchen at night, when all
+the family had retired, would at times become the seat of an appalling
+uproar of inarticulate voices and clashing dishes and dragging
+furniture. If any one was bold enough to venture down stairs, the
+noise would suddenly cease, and the kitchen itself never showed any
+trace of these unearthly revels, every plate, dish, cup and chair
+remaining in its accustomed place. Then, too, the footsteps of the
+invisible intruder were heard again, and often while the minister was
+writing in his study the steps would be heard coming through the door
+and across the room, and the unseen visitor would seat himself in
+the chair that usually stood opposite to that of the clergyman at the
+writing-table, when a sound as of the pages of a large book with stiff
+paper leaves being slowly turned would usually ensue. The minister
+often addressed his invisible companion, but never received any reply
+to his questions or his appeals.
+
+On hearing these strange stories, Mrs. X----'s father determined upon
+trying to trace out the history of the house before it came into his
+possession. He learned that it had originally been occupied by the
+person who built it, a man of low origin, who, being looked upon as
+a pillar of the Church by the congregation to which he belonged,
+had been entrusted with the task of collecting certain sums due to
+it--whether actual income or subscriptions I do not now recollect. At
+all events, he never paid over the money, but launched out into sundry
+extravagances rather unusual for a man in his station of life, amongst
+which was the erection of this large and handsome house. But from the
+time the house was finished a blight seemed to fall upon his life. He
+gave up all his religious and regular habits, frequented evil company,
+took to drinking, and finally, in a fit of delirium tremens, hanged
+himself in the very garret room of which I have before spoken. The
+scenes at his funeral were said to baffle description. The corpse
+was laid out in the kitchen, and thither all his late boon-companions
+repaired and turned the sad ceremonial into a hideous orgy. Among
+other horrible deeds, they took the corpse from the coffin, propped it
+up in a chair and poured whisky down its throat.
+
+The incidents which I have related happened when Mrs. X---- was a
+child, and she is now in the prime of womanhood. When she finished
+her story I recollected that scarce a year ago I had read in a
+Philadelphia paper an extract from one of the journals of the town
+near which this house stood, giving an account of an investigation
+which was then taking place of the cause of sundry strange
+disturbances occurring in this very house. The extract closed with the
+history of its builder and first occupant, tallying exactly with what
+she related to me, though with fewer details. So, after all these
+years, the perturbed spirit still refuses to rest.
+
+The narrative with which I shall conclude this chapter of ghostly
+experiences is one for the truth of which I am not prepared to vouch,
+as I was neither an actor in its scenes nor was it related to me by
+one who was. Yet were the incidents of any other than a supernatural
+nature I should consider the authority from which I learned them as
+unquestionable.
+
+A few years ago a lady in quest of summer lodgings for herself, her
+sister and her children (her husband being absent) was offered a
+large, old-fashioned house in the vicinity of one of our seashore
+resorts on highly advantageous terms. Having inspected the house and
+found it, though old, in good repair, she engaged it joyfully, and
+a few weeks after the date of her first negotiations she was settled
+there with her family. For some time nothing occurred to mar the peace
+of the household. The children enjoyed the fresh sea-breezes, their
+pleasant sports on the beach and the large airy rooms, while the
+ladies sewed and read and looked after household matters and took long
+walks after the fashion of most people during the summer season by the
+seaside. One night, when the mother was about to retire to rest, one
+of her younger children, a bright little boy, called to her from his
+sleeping-room. Fearing that he was ill, she hastened to him.
+
+"Mamma," he said very earnestly, "I wish you would tell that strange
+woman to keep out of my room."
+
+"What woman, dear?" asked his mother, convinced that he had been
+dreaming.
+
+"I don't know her name, and I can't see her face because she wears a
+big sun-bonnet, but she comes and stands at the foot of my bed, and
+she frightens me."
+
+"Well, never mind, dear. Go to sleep, and if ever she troubles you
+again, come into my room and sleep with me," answered the mother,
+still thinking that the child had been wakened by an uneasy dream. The
+little fellow, thus soothed and consoled, soon fell asleep, and
+slept soundly till morning. But a few nights afterward the child
+came running into his mother's room at dead of night, panting and
+terrified, and exclaiming, "Mamma! mamma! she has come again!" His
+mother took him into her arms, and soon caressed away his fears, but
+thinking that the child's uneasiness was caused by his sleeping alone,
+she had his bed moved into her own chamber, and fitted up the vacant
+apartment as a guest-chamber. Soon after this the servants began
+to complain of strange sights and sounds for which they could not
+account, and one burning July day the sister, who was seated by the
+parlor window, happened to say, "Oh, I am so warm!" when a voice,
+seemingly from the cellar, made answer, "And _I_ am so cold!" Struck
+with amazement, she called, but no one replied, and subsequent
+investigation proved that there was no one in the cellar at that
+moment, nor could there have been, as its only door was always kept
+locked.
+
+I cannot now recall the details of various strange occurrences which
+afterward took place, but will pass on to the final one, which may be
+considered as the d�no�ment of the whole story. The lady of the house,
+a strong-minded, practical woman, had always sternly rejected the
+theory that the odd incidents that annoyed her had any supernatural
+origin; so, disregarding them wholly, she sent an invitation to an
+old friend of hers, a clergyman, to pay her a visit of some weeks'
+duration. Her invitation was accepted, and in due time her guest
+arrived and was put in possession of the spare bed-room. Night coming
+on, the whole household retired to rest. Early in the morning the
+active hostess rose to see that all was in order for the further
+entertainment of her guest, when, on going into the parlor to unfasten
+the shutters, what was her amazement to find him there extended on the
+sofa, and looking very ill, as though he had passed a wretched night!
+In answer to her anxious questioning he stated that on retiring to
+rest he had fallen into a profound slumber, from which he suddenly
+woke, and saw a woman wearing a large sun-bonnet, which completely
+concealed her face, standing beside his bed, the moonlight which shone
+into the room rendering every detail of her figure distinctly visible.
+Supposing that she was one of the servants who had come to his room to
+see that he was perfectly comfortable and wanted nothing, he spoke to
+her. What she replied, or how he first became convinced that the Thing
+before him was no form of flesh and blood, I cannot now remember; but
+I recollect two particulars of the interview: one was, that she told
+him to look for her in the cellar; the other, that he asked her why
+she wore a sun-bonnet, and she answered, "Because the lime has
+spoilt my face." At this his failing senses forsook him, and when
+consciousness returned his ghostly visitor had disappeared.
+
+His hostess heard him in silence. As soon as breakfast was over she
+requested him to accompany her to the cellar. Careful examination soon
+revealed a spot where some of the stones with which it was paved had
+been removed and afterward replaced. Assistants with proper tools were
+procured, the stones were lifted, and after a few minutes of vigorous
+digging a mass of lime was disclosed, in which was found imbedded
+a quantity of calcined fragments of bone, which medical authority
+afterward pronounced to be portions of a human skeleton. These poor
+remains were carefully removed, placed in a box and interred in a
+neighboring cemetery, and the "woman in a sun-bonnet" was seen no
+more.
+
+Subsequent investigation into the history of the old house revealed
+the following facts. It had originally been occupied by a retired
+sea-captain and his only son, the latter a wild, reckless youth of
+evil character and confirmed bad habits. A young girl went to live
+there as a servant, and for some months seemed well contented with her
+place, but afterward she became gloomy and unhappy, and was frequently
+seen in tears by the neighbors. At last she disappeared, and it was
+given out by her employers that she had gone to visit some friends at
+a distance, but she did not return, and suspicion was already directed
+toward the old man and his son, when one morning the house was found
+to be shut up, its inhabitants having found it expedient to remove
+as silently and secretly as possible. The girl was never heard of
+afterward. The discovery of the bones led to the supposition that the
+younger man had seduced her, had afterward murdered her to conceal his
+original crime, and that he had then buried the body in the cellar,
+taking the precaution to cover it with quicklime.
+
+As I said at the beginning of this article, I neither wish to propound
+any theories nor to deduce any conclusions from the relations I have
+given. I can only reiterate my statement that they came to me from
+sources the reliability of which I cannot question. I have carefully
+excluded everything relating to the supernatural which I ever heard
+from the lips of ignorant and superstitious persons, and have only
+recorded such incidents as bore an added weight of evidence in the
+shape of the sense, intelligence and unquestionable veracity of their
+relators.
+
+LUCY H. HOOPER.
+
+
+
+
+AFTERNOON.
+
+
+        Small, shapeless drifts of cloud
+  Sail slowly northward in the soft-hued sky,
+    With blue half-tints and rolling summits bright,
+  By the late sun caressed; slight hazes shroud
+    All things afar; shineth each leaf anigh
+        With its own warmth and light.
+
+        O'erblown by Southland airs,
+  The summer landscape basks in utter peace:
+    In lazy streams the lazy clouds are seen;
+  Low hills, broad meadows, and large, clear-cut squares
+    Of ripening corn-fields, rippled by the breeze,
+        With shifting shade and sheen.
+
+        Hark! and you may not hear
+  A sound less soothing than the rustle cool
+    Of swaying leaves, the steady wiry drone
+  Of unseen crickets, sudden chirpings clear
+    Of happy birds, the tinkle of the pool,
+        Chafed by a single stone.
+
+        What vague, delicious dreams,
+  Born of this golden hour of afternoon,
+    And air balm-freighted, fill the soul with bliss,
+  Transpierced like yonder clouds with lustrous gleams,
+    Fantastic, brief as they, and, like them, spun
+        Of gilded nothingness!
+
+        All things are well with her.
+  'Tis good to be alive, to see the light
+    That plays upon the grass, to feel (and sigh
+  With perfect pleasure) the mild breezes stir
+    Among the garden roses, red and white,
+        With whiffs of fragrancy.
+
+        There is no troublous thought,
+  No painful memory, no grave regret,
+    To mar the sweet suggestions of the hour:
+  The soul, at peace, reflects the peace without,
+    Forgetting grief as sunset skies forget
+        The morning's transient shower.
+
+EMMA LAZARUS.
+
+
+
+
+OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
+
+WASHINGTON'S BIRTHPLACE IN 1873.
+
+
+Was George Washington born in Great Britain or America? Absurd as
+this question must sound to an American, it has been gravely discussed
+within the last few months by a writer in the London _Notes and
+Queries_, who has the effrontery to say that Washington's own brief
+assertion in a letter to the effect that he was born in Virginia
+cannot be conclusive. "No man's unsupported testimony," he adds, "as
+to the place of his birth would be taken in evidence in a court of
+justice, for his knowledge of the event must necessarily be from
+hearsay or from records." This is silly enough. I did not see the
+whole article, or learn by what arguments the writer endeavored
+to substantiate his doubts, if he really had any, as to the true
+birthplace of the _Pater Patriae_, but, feeling some interest in the
+matter, I cut out the slip containing the quotation just given,
+and enclosed it in a letter to a prominent gentleman living in
+Westmoreland not far from Wakefield, the estate on which the
+birthplace--or rather the site of it--is situated, with a request that
+he would reply to it. He did so promptly and almost indignantly.
+
+"I am amazed," says he, "at the contents of the printed slip you send
+me. That any man of ordinary intelligence, living within the bounds
+of civilization, could be ignorant of or doubt the fact that General
+Washington was born in America, I did not for a moment suppose." He
+goes on to say that if Washington's biography, written by so many
+competent hands, and founded upon sources the most authentic, and
+particularly the Lives of Marshall, Sparks and Irving, were not
+sufficient to convince incredulity itself, he is at a loss to know
+what would. Certainly, he would not attempt the task himself. In
+addition to the well-known biographies, traditions and memoranda
+attest the fact beyond the possibility of enlightened doubt.
+Other credible and corroborative records are not wanting. "Had the
+question," he concludes, "been asked of Dr. Livingstone by some
+savage in the depths of the African jungles, it would not have been
+surprising; but to come from a writer in _London_, it is inexpressibly
+marvelous, and looks like a relapse into barbarism."
+
+Among the memoranda alluded to is a fac-simile of the entry of the
+birth of Washington in the Bible of his mother, which is given in
+Howe's _Historical Collections of Virginia_, as follows:
+
+"_George Washington son to Augustine and Mary his Wife was Born 11'th
+Day of February_ 173-1/2 _about_ 10 _in the Morning and was Baptized
+the_ 3'th (sic) _of April following M'r Beverley Whiting and Cap'n
+Christopher Brooks godfathers and M'rs Mildred Gregory God-mother."_
+
+There are no marks of punctuation, and Howe states that the original
+entry is supposed to have been made by Washington's mother. If so, the
+handwriting, not very unlike Washington's own, is unusually masculine,
+compact, even and clear for a woman's. Howe's book was published in
+1836. At that time the old family Bible, a much dilapidated quarto
+with the title-page missing, and covered with the striped Virginia
+cloth so common in old days, was in the possession of George
+W. Bassett, Esq., of Farmington, Hanover county, who married a
+grand-niece of Washington. At that time, too, the birthplace, which
+had been destroyed previous to the Revolution, was much more plainly
+marked than it is now. From its associations, and from its natural
+beauties as well, the place was doubly interesting. Standing half
+a mile from the junction of Pope's Creek with the Potomac River,
+it commanded a view of the Maryland shore and of the course of the
+Potomac for many miles. The house was a low-pitched, single-storied
+frame dwelling, with four rooms on the first floor, and a huge chimney
+at each end on the outside--the style of the better class of houses of
+those days. A stone, placed there to mark its site by G.W.P. Custis,
+bore the simple inscription:
+
+"HERE, ON THE 11TH OF FEBRUARY (O.S.), 1732, GEORGE WASHINGTON WAS
+BORN."
+
+Such was its appearance in 1834 or '35, when Howe visited it. Its
+present condition may be gathered from what the writer of the letter
+in response to the London querist has to say about the site itself,
+that being all that is left of a place so memorable and so deserving
+of perpetuation:
+
+"I have had no opportunity to obtain the sketch I promised you.
+Indeed, there is virtually no material to make a sketch of. The
+birthplace is now simply an old field lying waste, with indistinct
+vestiges of a human habitation. An old chimney stands which belonged
+to an outhouse (kitchen or laundry), some remains of a cellar, and the
+foundations of a house in which tradition states Washington was born.
+There was a stone slab, with a simple inscription, placed on the spot
+some sixty years ago by G. W: P. Custis, to denote the place, but it
+was long ago removed from its original position, mutilated and broken,
+so that only a fragment remains."
+
+That a place of such interest--one might call it sacred--should be
+left to decay and obliteration is no new thing in Virginia. Enemies
+might well declare that neglect of her mighty dead is characteristic
+of the old commonwealth. The truth is, she has a great many dead to
+care for, and of late years all her time has been absorbed in the care
+of her living. But something has been done, or attempted to be done,
+to rescue Washington's birthplace from oblivion. As far back as 1858
+an act was passed by the General Assembly of Virginia, accepting from
+Lewis Washington a grant of the "site of the birthplace of George
+Washington, and the home and graves of his progenitors in America,"
+and appropriating five thousand dollars "to enclose the same in an
+iron fence," etc. Hon. Henry A. Wise, governor of Virginia at the time
+this act was passed, entered with zeal and alacrity upon the work, the
+execution of which was entrusted to him by the Legislature--went in
+person to Westmoreland, examined carefully the sites, negotiated with
+the owner of the adjacent farm for right of way, adopted a plan for
+the enclosures and tablets, and began a correspondence with mechanics
+and artisans at the North with a view to the speedy completion of the
+work, and--just then his term expired, the war soon followed, and the
+matter was of course dropped.
+
+The money appropriated, together with the accrued interest, is now
+in the treasury of Virginia, and although Governor Walker in his late
+message did not bring the subject to the attention of the Legislature,
+the long-delayed work will be consummated sooner or later, and "a neat
+iron fence" with a few plain slabs will be erected on the hallowed
+spot. But it strikes the present writer that five thousand dollars, or
+even ten thousand dollars, form rather a small sum for such an object,
+and that "a neat iron fence" is not exactly the thing that the place
+and its memories demand. But not a dollar more may be expected of
+Virginia at this time. She owes too much, and has too little. If one
+of the many Northern gentlemen who are lavishing their hundreds of
+thousands on colleges and other charities would come to Westmoreland
+and put something a little better than a "neat iron fence" around the
+birthplace of Washington, he would do a noble deed for himself and for
+both sections of his lately estranged country.
+
+R.B.E.
+
+
+
+
+VICISSITUDES IN HIGH LIFE.
+
+
+The London papers lately recorded the death of a lady who was the
+representative and last descendant, save one sister, of a house famous
+in English history. This was Lady Langdale, widow of Bickersteth,
+first and last Lord Langdale, and sister of Harley, last earl of
+Oxford. Lady Langdale had but one child, who married Count Teleki, a
+Hungarian nobleman, and pre-deceased her mother, dying childless. Lord
+Langdale was the son of Mr. Bickersteth, surgeon, of Kirby-Lonsdale,
+Westmoreland. He was brought up to his father's vocation, and
+traveled, as physician, with the earl of Oxford.
+
+Impressed, no doubt, with Mr. Bickersteth's extraordinary abilities,
+Lord Oxford advised him to go to college and read for the law, which
+offered greater prizes than the medical profession. Accordingly,
+he entered at Cambridge, and in 1808 graduated as senior wrangler.
+Twenty-seven years later, in 1835, he married the daughter and heiress
+of his friend and patron, and the year following was created a peer.
+
+His brother Edward was the celebrated evangelical leader in the Church
+of England. Bred to the law, he abandoned that profession for holy
+orders. Their nephew, son of their brother John, is the present bishop
+of Ripon.
+
+The Harleys have been seated for six or seven centuries in
+Herefordshire, at Brampton-Bryan and Egwood, properties which in part
+remained in Lady Langdale's possession. By marriage! with the heiress
+of the Vaughans in the fifteenth century, they became possessed of
+Wigmore Castle, the ancient heritage of the extinct earls of Mortimer,
+and great estates which added to their consequence.
+
+When Charles II. made a batch of peers on his restoration, the
+Harley of that day displayed a rare modesty. The king offered him a
+viscounty, but he declined the honor, "lest his zeal and services
+for the restoration of the ancient government should be reproached as
+proceeding from ambition, and not conscience;" and so scrupulous was
+he that his being made a knight of the Bath even was done without his
+knowledge, he being then at Dunkirk, and Charles inserting with his
+own hand his name in the list. But his son was destined for a higher
+dignity, for he it was who became in the tenth year of the reign of
+Charles II.'s niece, Queen Anne, earl of Oxford and Mortimer, being
+the famous Harley of that reign, linked in our memories with St. John
+Lord Bolingbroke, the Mashams, Marlboroughs, Swift, Addison, Pope, and
+the host of brilliant men which makes the reign of one of the feeblest
+women who ever sat on a throne a period of almost pre-eminent interest
+in English annals to men of cultivated mind subject to the influence
+of association. By Elizabeth Foley, daughter of the first Lord Foley,
+of Witley Court (sold, about thirty-five years ago, with the bulk
+of the Foley estates, for �990,000 to Lord Dudley, who married Lady
+Mordaunt's sister), the famous lord treasurer, Oxford, had one
+son, the second earl. He was the friend of Swift, to whom the dean
+addressed so many letters. A man of literary tastes, he spent a
+portion of his immense fortune in forming the finest library of the
+period, and it is to him the student is indebted for the magnificent
+collection known as the "Harleian," which subsequently became, by
+purchase, the property of the nation, and is deposited in the British
+Museum. He married the greatest heiress of the day, Lady Henrietta
+Cavendish-Holies, only daughter and heir of the duke of Newcastle (of
+the Holies creation--the present duke, a Pelham-Clinton, derives from
+a different descent). He left but one daughter. She married the second
+duke of Portland, grandson of Dutch William's pet page Bentinck, whom
+he imported into England, and loaded with honors and emolument until
+even the House of Commons of _that_ day cried out loudly, "Enough!
+stop!" Through this lady the Bentincks got Welbeck, the duke of
+Portland's chief seat to-day.
+
+Meanwhile, the Oxford honors and patrimonial estates in Herefordshire
+passed to the second earl's first cousin, and so on, in regular
+succession, until the earldom became extinct by the death of Lady
+Langdale's brother a few years ago. One of Lady Langdale's sisters
+married a General Bacon. At the time of the marriage he was but a poor
+captain, and his wealth did not much increase, whilst his family did,
+and his wife, the once beautiful Lady Charlotte, Byron's "Ianthe"--to
+whom he addressed the famous lines which form the prelude of _Childe
+Harold_, beginning,
+
+  Not in those climes where I have late been straying--
+
+had to see her daughter a governess in the family of a Cornishman,
+once a common miner! One of her daughters is now married to the son
+of Lord Mount Edgecumbe's agent. It seems that the sisters could not
+forgive the mesalliance, as they deemed it, for Lady Langdale's will
+shows no bequest to the Bacons.
+
+Lady Langdale had another sister, who married a son of Doctor
+Vernon-Harcourt, long archbishop of York, grandfather of "Historicus,"
+the well-known political letter-writer of the London _Times_. This
+lady died about the same time as Lady Langdale. One sister only, the
+wife of a foreign nobleman, survives. She is the last of the Harleys
+of the great minister's line.
+
+
+
+
+A GLASS OF OLD MADEIRA.
+
+
+We had met in Europe some dozen years ago--I from Massachusetts,
+he from Carolina. We both looked grave for an instant as a friend
+presented us to each other, naming our respective residences, and then
+both laughed cheerily, and were good friends ever after. We enjoyed
+_Tartuffe_ and the _Mariage de Figaro_ in company with each other at
+the Theatre Francois, heard Mario, Grisi, Gratiano and Borghi Mamo in
+Verdi's _Trovatore_ at the Op�ra Italien, danced with _les filles
+de l'Op�ra_ at Cellarius's saloons, and had many a midnight
+carouse afterward at the Maison Dor�. Nor had our time always been
+unprofitably spent. Toward Easter we journeyed together to Rome, and
+stood side by side before the masterpieces of Raphael and Domenichino
+in the Vatican, strolled by moonlight amid the ruins of the Coliseum,
+and drank out of the same cup from the Fountain of Trevi; often
+visited Crawford's studio, where then stood the famous group which
+now adorns the frieze of the Capitol at Washington, and by actual
+observation agreed in thinking his Indian not unworthy of comparison
+with the famous statue of the Dying Gladiator. We stood together on
+the Tarpeian Rock, and, looking down upon the mutilated Column of
+Trajan and all the ruins of ancient Rome, read out of the same copy of
+Horace the famous ode beginning, "Exegi monumentum aere perennius."
+We were both passionately fond of sculpture and of painting, and often
+sat for hours before the glorious Descent from the Cross of Daniel da
+Volterra in the Chiesa della Trinit� dei Monti, the principal figure
+in which is said to have been sketched by Michael Angelo, and which,
+although less widely known, appeared to our minds equal in execution
+and superior in grandeur to any other painting in the world.
+
+After our return to this country I happened to go South one winter,
+and spent a month with my friend on his plantation in the low country
+of Carolina. It seemed to be our fate to meet amid the ruins of
+the past. But the war had not then occurred, and we had many a hunt
+together, in which, after a glorious burst of the hounds through the
+open savannas, I brought down more than one noble buck. On other days
+we would drive with the ladies along the broad beach upon which stood
+the summer residences of the neighboring planters. And sometimes we
+would stroll lazily about the lanes of his estate, basking in the
+mellow sunshine in the midst of February, and chatting of Capri and
+Sorrento in a climate equal to that of Italy.
+
+And we met again the other day in the streets of a Northern city. He
+looked older certainly, and very careworn, but his eye was as bright
+as ever and his voice as cheery.
+
+"Come and dine with me," he said after we had given each other a
+hurried account of our present abodes and occupations. "You will find
+me in rather modest and decidedly airy lodgings, and I cannot offer
+you either wild-ducks or venison. A rasher of bacon and a glass of
+madeira as we chat over old times: what say you to the bill-of fare?
+You remember the old French adage, 'Quand on n'a pas ce que l'on aime,
+faut bien aimer ce que l'on a.'"
+
+"A quelle heure, mon ami?"
+
+"Four o'clock."
+
+And at five that afternoon we were seated together, the remnants
+of our frugal repast removed, and on the scrupulously polished old
+mahogany table which separated us stood a cut-glass decanter of
+old Carolina madeira, the bouquet of which filled the room with its
+fragrance.
+
+"Fill your glass, Harry: 'tis not the fragrance of the wine, but the
+sentiment connected with it, which prevents me from offering you a
+pipe. The odor of the best Virginia would seem to me a desecration.
+There are only a dozen bottles left in that cupboard. I never uncork
+one except for a near friend. 'Tis out of fashion now: hock and
+champagne have taken its place; but, do you know, I like it the better
+on that account. It reminds me of the past, and, though still a young
+man, it is one of my greatest pleasures to dwell on the picture which
+a glass of it never fails to recall to my imagination. You remember
+Woodlawn? For five-and-twenty years, during the whole of a long
+minority and subsequent travels abroad, those old bottles stood
+wreathed with cobwebs in the garret of the old mansion. You drank one
+with me in 1859. The rest were buried at the commencement of the war,
+and this is one of the few which survived it. There are not many of
+your compatriots to whom I would tell the story of its preservation,
+for it illustrates a feature of feudal attachment which they
+persistently refuse to believe possible.
+
+"You remember the stately old negro who occupied the porter's lodge at
+Woodlawn, and who told you with such pride that he and his ancestors
+had always occupied a favored post near the great house? You remember,
+too, his grand air, fashioned after the gentlemen of the olden time,
+the contemporaries of Washington, Rutledge and Pinckney? And in what
+awe and reverence his fellow-servants stood of him! Well, when the war
+fairly began, and all hope of amicable adjustment was exhausted, I did
+what every true man on either side was bound to do--raised a company
+for the service, removed my family to an up-country farm, and left Old
+John in charge of my residence and interests in the low country. The
+Federal gunboats soon appeared upon the coast, entered the bay and
+ran up the rivers. Many of the younger people went off with them, but
+during the long and dreary four years which ensued Old John remained
+staunch at his post, cultivating the land as best he might, and
+sending constantly supplies of money and provisions to his mistress.
+At last the whole thing broke down: Lee surrendered, Johnston
+surrendered. Troops as well as gunboats swarmed in all directions. Not
+only regular soldiers, but raw negro levies, occupied the towns and
+were posted through the country. Stories were circulated that I was
+killed, that I was captured; and the latter statement was true. There
+were rumors that the land was to be divided among the negroes, and one
+dark night in the early summer of 1865 some drunken sailors, escaped
+from the gunboats lying in the bay, raised a mob of negroes from the
+various plantations and gutted nearly every house in the parish. Among
+others they came to mine eager for wine, and John was pointed out by
+some of the neighboring negroes as knowing where it was concealed. The
+sailors threatened his life: he refused to tell. They held a pistol to
+his head, but the old man remained staunch in his refusal. Provoked by
+his fidelity, at length they brutally beat him with the butts of their
+pistols until his gray hairs were dabbled in gore, and went off to
+other plunder, telling their followers to take what they wanted from
+my residence. But, bruised, bleeding and crippled though he was, Old
+John still defended his master's property, and sitting on the front
+steps of the house kept the whole crowd at bay by the firmness and
+dignity of his attitude. I heard of the affair first from a white man
+who lived in the neighborhood, and it was not until I asked him about
+it that he told me himself. The next day he gave to my own people
+the furniture remaining in the house to keep until I came back, but
+positively refused to allow them to take of the crops that had been
+gathered any more than was required for their subsistence, and this
+he regularly shared out to them at stated intervals. And when, after
+a long imprisonment and much enfeebled myself, I landed one evening at
+the wharf which leads up to the house, the first figure which met my
+sight was the old man faithfully guarding the barns. His eyesight was
+too dim for him to see me, but as soon as he heard my voice he seized
+my hand with passionate fervor, pressing it repeatedly to his lips and
+bedewing it with tears. Can you wonder if he has shared my fortunes
+ever since? But not at Woodlawn. The negroes generally were wild with
+the notion of freedom, and utterly ignorant of the practical meaning
+of the term. To me they were always civil and affectionate, but I
+preferred that some other than myself should teach them its rugged
+lesson, and immediately leased the place for a term of years to one
+better fitted than I to derive profit from it under the new system.
+The gentlemen and the negroes are the two classes upon whom the first
+results of the fearful revolution in society caused by the war fell
+with heaviest weight. Both were totally unprepared for it, and both
+have so far suffered cruelly. A year ago Old John died, faithful
+and cared for to the last. A few months ago the lease I had executed
+expired, and I visited the estate again. All the glamour of the past
+had disappeared. The home of my fathers knew me no more, and I have
+sold it. Cuffee, whom you remember as my body-servant, who followed
+me through the war, and bore me on his back from the battlefield upon
+which I was severely wounded, and who would have come with me here
+had circumstances permitted of my retaining his services,--Cuffee has
+taken to politics, and now represents the county in the Legislature
+of the State; and the last figure that I remember seeing as I left
+the place was that of old Sary, the sick nurse, her long black hair
+streaming in the wind (you remember she was an Indian half-breed), her
+feet bare, her petticoat ragged and limp, standing in the lane
+which leads from the house--her arms akimbo, a sort of miniature Meg
+Merrilies--screaming out to me, 'You left you own plantashun.' Yes,
+I have left my own plantation, and am grubbing out a modest and
+sometimes a rather precarious existence elsewhere. But for all that,
+it is more wholesome than mouldering among the ruins of a past that
+can never return. The fight has been fairly fought, and New England
+has won the day. Germany is up, France is down; Italy united, the pope
+existing on sufferance in the palace where erstwhile emperors did him
+homage. I don't quarrel with Fortune. Nay, in many things I dare say
+the world has benefited by the change. And so, when I take my children
+sometimes to look at Crawford's famous group, I even enjoy the spirit
+of pride with which they look upon the figure of America, and the zest
+with which they enjoy the vigorous onslaught of the pioneer on the
+forest tree; but my own eyes seek the Indian chieftain reclining in
+mute despair on the right of the group, and I have a strange sympathy
+with the fortune which his very attitude so forcibly indicates. Our
+battle of Dorking has been fought, and, whatever may be the fate of
+the next generation, all that is left to me of home or of country are
+the golden drops which sparkle in this tiny glass."
+
+RAMBLER.
+
+
+
+
+AT A MATIN�E: A MONOLOGUE.
+
+
+Oh Dear! I meant to be very early, people do look so cross when you
+squeeze by them. I don't think it is exactly proper, either, when
+they are men. Here is my seat, No. 10: that girl has piled all her
+waterproofs on it. Why don't she take them away quicker? and I wish
+she wouldn't grope about my feet for her overshoes.
+
+I never sat right next to the orchestra before. What a convenient
+railing to hang my umbrella on! Provoking it should rain so to-day.
+There now! my waterproof is all disposed of, and I know my dress is
+all right, so I shall enjoy myself.
+
+What a ridiculous girl beside me! _Such_ a bunch of curls! The two
+young men on the other side look like gentlemen: the one this way
+especially nice--lovely eyes and moustache. I'll look round the house
+as far as I can without moving. Can't see much, though, for I'm so
+near the front. Why on earth didn't brother Bob put me where I could
+see the people?
+
+Why, there's Lucy Morris! I can't bear that girl: her hair is almost
+the color of mine. A vacant seat beside her, too; so she came with
+some one. Wonder who it is? I hope she won't see me.
+
+Oh, how funny! The musicians come up out of a hole just like the tame
+rats at the Museum, nasty things!--the rats, I mean. The man right
+in front of me has a trombone. I know what it is, because the name
+is written on his music. I'm so glad, for I never knew exactly what a
+trombone was until now. And what a funny instrument! He doesn't blow
+at all for ever so long, and then suddenly comes in with two or three
+toots.
+
+But, good gracious! there's Dick Livingstone! I saw him come in at
+that door. I'm so glad I came! He asked me night before last at Mrs.
+Harris's if I was coming to the matin�e, and of course I said "Yes,"
+though I didn't have the slightest idea of doing so until he spoke.
+But what--! He has taken the seat by that Lucy Morris, and has given
+her a programme. I hate that girl!
+
+There goes the curtain. What a stupid play! Why did I come? The damp
+will ruin my dress. Oh, that horrid girl! Well, of all the ridiculous
+acting I ever saw, this is the worst! I should think they would be
+ashamed to put such people on the stage. He is opening her fan. A fan
+to-day! absurd! I _won't_ look again. How that man rants! I'm sure I
+don't know why I came: I might have known how poor it would be.
+Even _I_ can see that Leicester and Mortimer have dresses at least
+a hundred years apart. I wonder if their legs are stuffed? Oh dear!
+that's hardly proper. What Dick can see to admire in that girl is
+beyond my comprehension. Such airs and graces!--all put on; and how
+she makes eyes at him! I can feel it behind my back.
+
+How absurdly Queen Elizabeth is dressed! and what a fright she is! And
+I wore my new hat, too: he said he liked blue so much. I could just
+cry, I am so provoked. It's all her fault, I know. Oh! the play! Yes,
+Dudley is making love. Ridiculous! There, the curtain's down at
+last, and--what--! Dick is getting up: he looks as if he were saying
+good-bye. There's Lucy's uncle: he sits down beside her--he must have
+brought her. Oh, what a relief! After all, it was very natural for
+Dick to take the vacant seat, he is so thoughtful always. Lucy can
+talk pretty well sometimes, too. If she only had some idea of dress!
+There! I'm sure Dick saw me, but of course I shall take no notice.
+
+Upon my word, the young man next me is admiring the girl's hair on the
+other side of me. It's hideous--red as a carrot, and stuck on at that.
+Thank Goodness! my hair hasn't a tinge of red in it--pure _blonde
+cendr�_--but I have to pay awfully to match it. Wish I could tell that
+young fellow her hair is all stuck on. Hark! the nice one says,
+
+"Why, it is all her own--I see it growing" "S-s-s-h!" says the other:
+"she'll hear you." "Loveliest hair I ever saw," continues No. 1: "pure
+gold, not a tinge of red--" It's _my_ hair they are discussing. What a
+nice fellow he is! I'll just turn a little away, so he can study
+that curl which really does grow out of my head. It is worth all
+the trouble it gives me, for it makes the others seem so natural. I
+declare, he is looking right at me: suppose he should speak? I should
+_die_! Nonsense! he is bowing to a lady in the dress-circle. I know
+he'd like to do something for me. Brother Bob says girls can't be too
+careful. I might drop something. Not my handkerchief--that _would_ be
+improper--but my opera-glass case: nothing could be said against that.
+Oh my! I haven't used my glasses yet, I'm so near the stage. I'll
+look round the house; so here goes. "Thank you, sir," with my sweetest
+smile and such a nice flutter. I saw him nudge his friend.
+
+There goes the curtain again. Mary queen of Scots: I thought she was
+prettier. Oh, the act is really over; I actually forgot everything but
+the stage. My eyes are all wet. But it won't do to cry: they would be
+red. I don't quite like some of the words they use, though--they make
+one feel queer. Now, why couldn't they say "illegitimate child"? It
+means just the same; besides, it's longer.
+
+I wonder how Dick Livingstone liked it? _Mr_. Livingstone, I should
+say. Brother Bob doesn't think it nice for girls to speak of young men
+by their first names. But then brothers are so particular about their
+own sisters, though, Goodness knows, they flirt enough with other
+people's. Bob and Kate Harris, for example, and yet he preaches at
+_me_!
+
+Oh, the young men are going out. They push by as well as they can,
+but still they crowd unpleasantly. I am sure I've seen that nice one
+somewhere. They are going to stay away, too, I think, for they have
+taken their over-coats. If only Dick--Mr. Livingstone, I mean--
+
+Oh, there's the curtain again. It's really quite interesting. I was
+mistaken about the actors: they do very well indeed. Queen Elizabeth
+is excellent, and so are they all. It shows how careful one ought to
+be not to judge too hastily. That's what mother always says. I won't
+do so again.
+
+Well, that play is over--now for the comedy. Some one says it is still
+raining. I hate a waterproof, my figure looks so well in this suit.
+I might carry my cloak over my arm, but then I'm afraid the rain will
+ruin my dress. I _must_ wear the waterproof and be a dowdy. I don't
+believe, after all, that it would hurt the underskirt, and then, with
+the umbrella up, I should have to take his arm. I shouldn't like
+to get this dress spoiled, either. I know mother wouldn't give me
+another. Brother Bob says men don't care so much about women's dress:
+they like to see a sensible girl. I don't believe that; besides, I
+have thick boots, and I'm sure that's sensible. I don't care: I won't
+wear the waterproof unless it is a perfect deluge. My goodness! I
+don't see Dick anywhere! Suppose, after all, he didn't come to meet
+me? and I gave him that flower at Mrs. Leslie's, too! I wish the thing
+was over.
+
+But oh, what a pretty dress! and how sweet she is! I had no idea she
+could be so cunning, after being such a tragedy queen. The man on the
+stage actually kissed her. Bob says they don't really kiss, though.
+
+I'm sorry it's over. Oh dear! I don't like being alone in such a
+crowd. Brother Bob wouldn't have let me come, I know, only he thought
+I should meet the Davidsons. No matter: I'll never tell him. I do
+believe Dick hasn't stayed, after all. I'll just put on my waterproof
+and thick veil, and go home and have a good cry.
+
+Oh, Mr. Livingstone, how you startled me! I had no idea you were here.
+Yes, I am by myself: certainly you may escort me home. Take a walk in
+this pouring rain? Why, it's all sunshine!
+
+C.A.D.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES.
+
+
+Wellnigh half a century has elapsed since the discovery of the
+beautiful Venus of Milo (the exact year was 1825), and yet now, for
+the first time, the endless discussions regarding two doubtful and
+interesting points in its history have been set at rest. These two
+points are--first, the original pose of the statue; and, secondly, the
+reason of its being armless. After so many years of dispute over
+these questions, it occurred at length to M. Jules Ferry to do what of
+course ought to have been done long ago--namely, go to the very spot
+whence the statue was exhumed, and there talk with all the surviving
+witnesses of the exhumation. M. Ferry not long since put his idea into
+execution, went to Milo, took into consultation with him M. Brest,
+son of the consul who procured the statue for France, and found and
+cross-questioned two Greeks who were present at the unearthing of
+the statue. M. Ferry has collected the details of his labors in an
+elaborate communication to the Acad�mie des Beaux Arts, but a brief
+indication of the results obtained may be made as follows:
+
+First, then, the Venus was found in 1825 at the foot of a little hill,
+where it had been covered up by successive crumblings of the earth
+above. The proprietor of the ground, wishing to clear a little more
+of the soil for his planting, chanced to strike the statue with his
+shovel. "It was on its base, erect," said the two Greek peasants to
+the French minister. "With one hand she held together her draperies,
+and in the other an apple"--the same, doubtless, that Paris had just
+given her. Such, very briefly, is the clear, short, definite, decisive
+story which puts an end to ten thousand disquisitions and hypotheses
+about the pose. The evidence thus given is that of people who actually
+saw what they describe. But, secondly, what of those "long-lost arms"?
+and how came they to be lost? The body of the Venus was formed of
+two blocks, and the arms were afterward fastened upon the trunk. When
+discovered, it was intact. M. Brest, the French consul, instantly
+bought the Venus for five hundred dollars, while the Turkish
+government on its part hurried off a small vessel to bring it away,
+offering the owner of the farm fivefold the French price, or something
+like two thousand five hundred dollars. A French _aviso_, sent by M.
+de Rivi�re, the ambassador at Constantinople, arrived on the scene at
+the very moment when the Turks had got possession of the statue, and
+were embarking it on their vessel. A dispute arose at once, and in the
+material as well as legal confusion the arms of the Venus, which had
+been detached for safer transportation, were missed. The people of
+the neighborhood got up a story that the arms were carried off by the
+Turkish vessel out of chagrin and spite, but this seems to be mere
+surmise where all else is clear.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The story of Demosthenes and the pebbles is familiar. Less familiar,
+we venture to say, is the theory that declamation is sometimes the
+cause of stammering; or, rather, that stuttering impels a man to
+talkativeness, and the yielding to this tendency fixes the habit of
+stammering and makes it worse. Hence it might plausibly be argued that
+it is the rostrum, or the very emotion of speaking in public, which
+makes some orators become stammerers. At all events, in Paris an
+institution has been founded expressly to remedy stuttering; and M.
+Chervin, its director, not long ago presented before a meeting of the
+learned societies at the Sorbonne some interesting statistics on his
+specialty. These statistics seem to show that stuttering is in direct
+proportion with the habit of speaking, and that the more one speaks
+the more one stutters. This is certainly an unexpected result of the
+restoration of freedom of speech in France. M. Chervin mentions a
+village of eighteen hundred souls where everybody, without exception,
+undeniably stutters. What strange dialogues, says Jules Claretie (who
+cites these points in _l'Ind�pendance Belge_), must take place there!
+A very curious fact is, that stammering is less frequent in the north
+of France than in the south. In the north-east it is least known, and
+most in the south-east. For example, all things being equal, for six
+stammerers in Paris there would be twenty-five in Lyons and seventy in
+Marseilles. The admitted garrulity or fluency of southern speaking
+is often the cause or the preface to stammering. Thus, comically
+concludes M. Claretie, oratorical habits threaten to make stammering
+become the order of the day, and for one Vergniaud there will be ten
+stutterers, and ten more stutterers for one General Foy. Nevertheless,
+in earlier days, Camille Desmoulins stammered, and yet spoke but
+little at the Convention. It does not appear that Charles Lamb was
+a garrulous person, and in the familiar experience of daily life we
+rarely find stutterers to be rapid talkers. Still, this latter
+fact really helps M. Chervin's theory, since we may conclude it
+is precisely because stammerers find that a very rapid utterance
+increases their defect that they force themselves to speak
+deliberately, and also not to tire the vocal muscles. Hence, apart
+from the jesting inference which M. Claretie, in French journalist's
+fashion, is bent son twisting out of the scientific statistics, there
+would appear to be a mutual influence, perfectly comprehensible,
+of rapidity in utterance and a tendency to stammering. We could not
+safely go on to generalize that only voluble people become stutterers,
+or that all stutterers are unusually garrulous and unusually eager in
+enunciation; but we may conclude that if they are thus careless and
+rattling in delivery, their peculiarity will be likely to grow more
+marked, and that accordingly a natural tendency to the same defect is
+developed by the same habits or necessities of much and rapid talking.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two illustrations of nineteenth-century precocity, rather superior
+to the generality of anecdotes regarding the wisdom of the rising
+generation, we find in recent French papers. One of them is originated
+by the _Moulin-�-Parole_. Madame de B. was visiting, with her baby,
+her friend Madame X. After chattering three-quarters of an hour,
+without giving anybody else a chance to put in a word, Madame X.
+pauses, when Baby immediately takes up the burden of conversation.
+Madame X., getting tired at last, says, "Why do you talk so much,
+mignonne? It isn't nice for a little girl like you to do so." "Oh,"
+replies Baby very graciously, "it is only so that mamma may rest!" A
+little lad furnishes the other instance of the premature sagacity of
+modern childhood. A famous merchant has four children, three daughters
+and a boy named Arthur. Two of the former die successively of
+consumption, and at the funeral of the second a friend of the family
+comes to offer his compliments of condolence, and, patting little
+Arthur's head, tells the poor lad the house must seem lonely to him
+now. "Yes," briskly replies Arthur, whom his father has brought up
+to accurate ideas, "here we children are reduced _fifty per cent_."
+Worthy to take charge of these children would have been the prudent
+bonne of whom _Charivari_ speaks. The morning after engaging herself
+to Madame R. she hastened to that lady with her finger wrapped in a
+handkerchief, and in an agitated voice asked if the _converts_ were
+real silver. "Why so, Nannette?" "Because, I just pricked my finger
+with a fork, and I know that if it is plated copper I ought to take
+the precaution of having the place bled." "Don't be alarmed," replies
+the lady, smiling despite herself at the young girl's innocence, "my
+plate is all solid." "Ah," says the bonne with a sigh of relief, "I
+am so glad!" The day after, the simple young lady disappeared with all
+the silver. It is not every bonne that would take such precautions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Paris has always been famous among modern cities for its genius and
+industry in adding variety to its cuisine, either by the audacious
+invention of new dishes or the felicitous combination of old
+ones--either by discovering new sources of food or new methods of
+preparing it. It was a curious incident in the late history of
+the city that what had been a fashionable whim became a hard
+necessity--that after Saint-Hilaire and the hippophagists had
+struggled to introduce horseflesh as regular provender, the siege of
+Paris made horseflesh a prized rarity. But the zest resulting from
+the enforced diet of dogs, cats, rats and monkeys in bombardment days
+appears to have been so great that we now hear of an enterprise worthy
+to have a Brillat-Savarin to celebrate it--namely, the formation of
+a society under the presidency of the naturalist Lespars, designed to
+bring into vogue as eatable a great class of living creatures whose
+presence now inspires ordinary persons only with disgust. A naturalist
+who devotes himself to eating such creatures with a motive so
+philanthropic deserves our praise, though we may not be able to
+personally imitate his heroic example. Among the choice dishes
+mentioned by one paper as selected to figure at the first public
+banquet of M. Lespars are a plate of white worms, a bushel of
+grasshoppers, and a broil of magpies seasoned with the slugs that
+infest certain green berries. One regards this announcement with more
+or less incredulity; but little doubt seems to hang over the assertion
+that the dormouse has just been introduced into the list of French
+game-dishes. The puzzle for the cooks seems to be with regard to the
+proper sauce for the new delicacy; but this matter does not trouble
+the little chimney-sweeps, who find the animal so long associated in
+poetry and in fact chiefly with their own humble career, now rising
+to the dignity of game, and commanding a price for the table. Piedmont
+has thus far furnished the larger part of the displays of _marmottes_
+in Paris stalls. The chief trouble in making rats, magpies and other
+delicacies of that sort really popular amongst the poorer classes is
+that the latter do not possess adroit cooks to disguise the original
+flavor under aromatic adjuncts, nor yet the money to buy the necessary
+spices and side-dishes, nor the high grade of champagne wines with
+which the wealthy and noble patrons of "food reform" commonly wash
+down unpalatable viands.
+
+
+
+
+LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
+
+
+Rousseau. By John Morley. 2 vols. London: Chapman & Hall.
+
+It was in the natural course of things that modern criticism,
+ever aiming at a wider comprehension, a keener analysis, a greater
+independence of judgment and expression, should test itself anew on a
+subject affording so full a scope and so sure a touchstone as the life
+and writings of Rousseau. The character of Rousseau, with its strange
+blending of delicate beauty and repulsive infirmity, requires to be
+handled with the firm but tender and sympathetic touch which the nurse
+or the physician lays upon a child afflicted with sores. His career,
+with its alternations of obscurity and conspicuousness, of tumult and
+torpidity, of wretchedness and rapture, must be followed with an
+eye keen to detect the springs and alive to the subtle play of
+circumstance and impulse. His influence, if not more profound, more
+varied, extensive and direct than that of any thinker and writer since
+Luther, is to be traced in the whole history of his own and of later
+times, under manifold aspects and amid momentous changes of spirit and
+of form. In the case of most men who have helped to mould the
+ideas and direct the tendencies of an age, it would be difficult to
+determine what each has contributed to the general result, or to say
+with certainty that the work performed by one would not, if he had
+been wanting, have been equally accomplished by others. On the other
+hand, there are a few master-spirits--men not of an age but for
+all time--whose power has been so deeply infused, so generally
+and silently absorbed, that it would be vain to inquire how it has
+operated in detail. We cannot indicate the course or fix the limits
+of its action: we perceive only that without it our intellectual life
+must have been dormant or extinct. Rousseau belongs to neither of
+these classes. His power was not general but specific, not creative
+but stimulative, not a source of perennial light but the torch of
+a conflagration; yet it was original and independent, it did not
+co-operate but clashed with that of his contemporaries, and while it
+acted upon minds far higher and broader than his own, it received no
+aid except from disciples and imitators. Of the French Revolution
+we may say with precision and confidence that it owed primarily its
+peculiar character--its austere ideals and wild distortions, its
+illimitable aspirations and chaotic endeavors--to the extent to which
+the nation had become imbued with his spirit and theories. In regard
+to literature, it is not sufficient to point to a long list of
+celebrated writers, from Chateaubriand and De Sta�l to Lamartine and
+George Sand, whose works have reflected the characteristic hues of
+his sentiment and style; or to adduce particular instances of his
+influence upon writers of higher and more contrasted genius, such
+as Goethe and Byron, Schiller and Richter: what is to be noted, as
+underlying all such examples and illustrations, is the fact that a
+literature distinguished from that which had immediately preceded
+it by earnestness, simplicity and depth, by spontaneous and vivid
+conceptions and freedom from conventional restraints, had its
+beginning with him, appealing to emotions and ideas which he was the
+first to call into renewed and general activity. In education, in art,
+in modifications of religious opinion and of social life, the same
+force, if less measurable and distinct, is everywhere apparent either
+as an active participant or a strong original impulse.
+
+It need hardly be said that, as productions of genius, the writings of
+Rousseau cannot hold any rank proportionate to the effect which they
+thus produced. They are not among the treasures that constitute our
+intellectual capital, the possessions which we could not lose without
+becoming bankrupt. They are rather among the instruments which,
+having served their purpose, may be laid aside, however interesting as
+mementoes or admirable as curiosities. Their highest qualities--their
+fervor, simplicity and grace--do not of themselves disclose the secret
+of their power. From the point of view of mere literary criticism we
+are apt to be more observant of their defects than their beauties. By
+the side of earlier and later models they are seen to be deficient in
+the very qualities--force of passion and depth of thought--by which
+they startled or enthralled contemporary readers.
+
+If we turn to the man himself, we might imagine at the first glance
+that none could have been less fitted for the position of a leader of
+thought, a founder of systems and schools, the apostle of a new era.
+The career for which Nature seemed to have destined him, and which, in
+truth, he may almost be said to have followed, was that of a vagabond,
+or at the best a recluse. Of all the advantages we desire and
+anxiously seek for our children, Rousseau enjoyed none. Poverty,
+degradation and neglect weighed upon him from his birth. The evil
+in him was unchecked, the good unfostered, by any training hand. The
+opportunity and the faculty of acquiring any substantial nutriment
+from books seemed alike denied him. His intercourse with mankind
+through all his earlier and the greater part of his later life was
+confined to the ignorant, and with these alone was he ever able
+to hold any harmonious relations or any grateful interchange of
+sentiment. Physically, mentally and morally diseased, weak yet stern,
+sensitive but unpliant, equally devoid of courage and of tact, he
+could not come in contact with the world without suffering a shock
+and swift recoil that drove him back to the refuge of solitude--to the
+mute companionship of external Nature or the brooding contemplation of
+himself. Even the ideals which, despite his practical aberrations
+from them, he yet intensely worshiped, had, in his conception of them,
+little connection with the activities of life: truth, simplicity,
+order, purity and peace were ideas that occupied his soul only to fill
+it with a horror of reality, with yearnings for an idyllic repose,
+with dreams of a state which he persuaded himself had been the
+original condition of the race, in which virtue and right must prevail
+through the mere absence of occasion for wrong or temptation to evil.
+
+Yet it is not in some radiance breaking through this cloudy
+environment, it is not in this or that faculty overcoming all
+obstacles, it is in the entirety of his nature as originally formed,
+and as moulded or marred by circumstance and fate, that we shall find
+the secret of that spell which he exercised over men of all classes
+and characters. The culture which might have sweetened and perhaps
+ennobled his life would have unfitted him for his mission. It would
+have brought him more or less into harmony with his age; and it was by
+his utter and vehement opposition to its habits and opinions that
+he turned the stream into a different channel. Not only his finer
+intuitions and purer tastes, but his unsatisfied desires, his errors,
+his remorse, urged him to make war upon it, as the step-mother that
+had sought to enervate or brutalize his mind while defrauding him of
+his inheritance. He held up the image of its corruption, shallowness
+and false refinement, and that of a life of simple manners and
+unperverted instincts. That he depicted this as the real life of
+a primitive epoch only gave greater pungency to the contrast.
+The eighteenth century, aroused to the consciousness of its own
+degeneracy, its false and artificial existence, readily accepted an
+idealized Geneva, an idealized Sparta, as the type of a primitive
+community, the model on which society was to be refashioned. What the
+"pure word of God" had been to the Reformers, that "Nature" became to
+the revolutionists in all departments of thought and action, in poetry
+and music as in philosophy and politics--a shibboleth to rally and
+unite all the elements of discontent and aspirations for change, a
+universal test by which to try all doctrines and systems. In either
+case, as was soon discovered, the test would itself admit of diverse
+interpretations; but in the mean while the solvent had taken effect,
+the authority of custom and tradition had been overthrown, old
+organizations had crumbled into dust.
+
+That the agitation thus evoked should have produced many grotesque,
+many frightful results, cannot seem strange. Long before the lower
+strata had been reached the surface was in a state of ebullition.
+Polite society was delightfully thrilled with a feeling of its own
+depravity, and found in the novel sensation the zest that had been
+wanting to its jaded powers of enjoyment. Nor was it awakened from its
+illusions by the first eruption from below. In a transport of delirium
+it threw away, as if they had been idle gems, of use only when cast
+into the public treasury, the privileges and prerogatives that had
+formed the basis of the monarchy. Thenceforth the only effort was to
+secure a _tabula rasa_ on which to rear that new and perfect state
+of which the model was at hand, if only the proper materials could be
+found and the foundations be laid. Of the men who acquired a temporary
+mastery, three only, by the massive force of practical genius, were
+able to free themselves from the fascination of the common ideal. But
+Mirabeau and Danton were overborne by the full tide, and Napoleon,
+when he arrested it in its languor, turned it into depths from
+which it emerged the other day to sweep away his column in the Place
+Vend�me.
+
+In thus glancing at the vast proportions of the subject, we have
+wandered far from the range of Mr. Morley's work, which has a special
+purpose with well-defined limits. It is not a complete biography of
+Rousseau, much less a history of his times. It gives no full or vivid
+portraiture of character, no adequate narrative of events, no summary
+even of results. It is an analytical study, an examination of the life
+and works of Rousseau with a view to determine their precise nature
+and quality, rather than their relative value or bearings. Within
+these limits it exhibits ample knowledge and skill, combined with
+a searching but tolerant judgment. Without labored discussion or
+passionate apology, it clears away entangling prejudices and current
+misconceptions, to assume a position from which undistorted views may
+be obtained. At times, indeed, Mr. Morley carries his impartiality
+to the verge of indifference. His certificate of Grimm's "integrity"
+rests on very slender grounds, and the Memoirs of Madame d'�pinay
+are subjected to no such scrutiny as the circumstances of their
+composition and preservation call for, before their statements can be
+accepted as authority. But whatever minor defects may be found in the
+book, the general spirit and execution are admirable. It is full of
+interest and suggestiveness both for readers to whom the subject may
+not be unfamiliar, and for those who may hitherto have neglected to
+explore it. Above all, it is valuable as marking the line to which
+English criticism has advanced, its capacity for treating complicated
+and delicate questions with clearness, frankness and entire fairness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pascarel: Only a Story. By "Ouida," author of "Tricotrin,"
+"Folle-Farine," "Under Two Flags," etc. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott
+& Co.
+
+The genius of "Ouida" is _sui generis_, and must in part create the
+standards by which it is to be judged. Her works are so different from
+the common type of modern novels that they demand to be looked at from
+a different point of view. The present standard of excellence in prose
+fiction seems to be the conformity of character and incident to what
+is actually seen in life. It is a good test for all mere stories, but
+is manifestly _not_ the test by which to gauge the recent works of
+"Ouida." She does not aim at this pre-Raphaelite delineation of men
+and things as they are. Her characters are idealizations: her later
+books are prose-poems, not only in the affluence and rhythm of their
+style, but in the allegoric form and purpose which, pervade them. This
+characteristic is plain enough in _Tricotrin_ and _Folle-Farine_, but
+finds its most marked expression in _Pascarel_. "Only an Allegory"
+would be a more expressive sub-title for the book than "Only a Story,"
+for the story is the mere thread which sustains and binds together a
+series of parables and crystallized truths. Most of these, indeed,
+she has embodied in former works, but nowhere as in _Pascarel_ is the
+author's design to teach them made so manifest.
+
+The book is almost wholly free from that extravagance of expression
+and recklessness of all established codes of taste which have diverted
+attention from her purpose, and led to a false estimate of the
+character and tendency of her writings. It has none of the hindrances,
+for instance, which prevent many from seeing the magnificence of the
+conception in _Folle-Farine_. Its object is to enforce the lesson that
+the only true greatness is that which loses sight of self--that Love,
+and Love alone, is, both in its insight and its purpose, divine.
+"Love sees as God sees, and with infinite wisdom has infinite pardon."
+"Laughter and love are all that are really worth having in the world,"
+but to gain them "one must seek them first for others, with a wish
+pure from the greed of self." "The world owes nothing to so personal
+a passion as ambition." "The first fruits of a man's genius are always
+pure of greed." What makes a great artist is the "vital, absolute
+absorption of personality in his love of art." The experience of the
+donzella (which constitutes what there is of the story), a nobler,
+and, we think, a _truer_, type of womanhood than Viva, yet with a like
+over-estimate of the advantages of wealth and position, brings her
+to the conviction that Pascarel is right. These truths, however, find
+their most effective illustration in the wealth of Italian tradition
+and history with which the pages abound. "Here is the secret of
+Florence, sublime aspiration--the aspiration which gave her citizens
+force to live in poverty and clothe themselves in simplicity, so as
+to give up their millions of florins to bequeath miracles in stone
+and metal and color to the future." "In her throes of agony she kept
+always within her that love of the ideal, impersonal, consecrate, void
+of greed, which is the purification of the individual life and
+the regeneration of the body politic." "Her great men drew their
+inspiration from the very air they breathed, and the men who knew they
+were not great had the patience and unselfishness to do their minor
+work for her zealously and perfectly." The workmen who chiseled the
+stones and the boys who ground the colors "did their part mightily
+and with reverence." The unrivaled works of art which are the true
+greatness of Italy owe their existence to the self-forgetfulness of
+their makers. So the love of Italy is in its essence a love for that
+which is best and noblest in human nature--"the consecration of self
+to an object higher than self." This love, however, to be true, must
+be more than perception or sentiment--it must bear fruit in _likeness_
+to that which it admires. "Each gift which men receive imposes a
+corresponding duty." "We are Italians," says Pascarel after recounting
+the glories of Italian achievement: "great as the heritage is, so
+great the duty likewise." As a companion-book of Italian travel,
+_Pascarel_ has a special value, suffused as it is throughout with
+the blended charm of picturesque beauty and magical associations that
+belongs to the country and the people.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Books Received_.
+
+The Great Events of History, from the Creation of Man till the Present
+Time. By William Francis Collier, LL.D., Trinity College, Dublin.
+Edited by an experienced American Teacher, New York: J.W. Schermerhorn
+& Co.
+
+Words and their Uses, Past and Present: A Study of the English
+Language. By Richard Grant White. New edition, revised and corrected.
+New York: Sheldon & Co.
+
+Manual of Land Surveying, with Tables. By David Murray, A.M.,
+Ph.D., Professor of Mathematics in Rutgers College. New York: J.W.
+Schermerhorn & Co.
+
+The Greatest Plague of Life; or, The Adventures of a Lady in Search of
+a Good Servant. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers.
+
+Snatches of Song. By Jeanie Morison (Mrs. Campbell of Ballochyle).
+London: Longmans, Green & Co.
+
+The Life and Times of Philip Schuyler. By Benson J. Lossing, LL.D. New
+York: Sheldon & Co.
+
+Lewis Arundel: A Novel. By Frank E. Smedley. Philadelphia: T.B.
+Peterson & Brothers.
+
+Our Forest Home. By the author of "Robert Joy's Victory." Illustrated.
+Boston: Henry Hoyt.
+
+Philip Earnscliffe: A Novel. By Mrs. Annie Edwards. New York: Sheldon
+& Co.
+
+Heart's Delight. By Mrs. Caroline E.K. Davis. Illustrated. Boston:
+Henry Hoyt.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular
+Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873., by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE ***
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+  <title>LIPPINCOTT&#39;S MAGAZINE, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873.</title>
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature
+and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873., by Various
+
+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: Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873.
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: October 22, 2004 [EBook #13828]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Patricia Bennett and the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
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+</pre>
+
+  <h1>LIPPINCOTT&#39;S MAGAZINE</h1>
+
+  <h3>OF</h3>
+
+  <h2><i>POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.</i></h2>
+  <hr class="short" />
+
+  <h4>AUGUST, 1873.<br />
+  Vol XII, No. 29.</h4>
+  <hr class="short" />
+  <br />
+  <br />
+
+  <h3>TABLE OF CONTENTS</h3>
+
+  <div class="toc">
+    <a href="#illustrations">ILLUSTRATIONS.</a>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#hyperion">THE NEW HYPERION</a>
+    [Illustrated] By EDWARD STRAHAN.</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#twochickens">II.&#8212;The Two Chickens.</a>
+    (129)</p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#tyrol">OUR HOME IN THE TYROL</a>
+    [Illustrated] By MARGARET HOWITT.</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#tyrolchvii">CHAPTER VII.</a> (146)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#tyrolchviii">CHAPTER VIII.</a> (152)</p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#churchsteps">ON THE CHURCH STEPS</a> By
+    SARAH C. HALLOWELL.</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#churchstepschi">CHAPTER I.</a> (161)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#churchstepschii">CHAPTER II.</a> (163)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#churchstepschiii">CHAPTER III.</a>
+    (166)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#churchstepschiv">CHAPTER IV.</a> (168)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#churchstepschv">CHAPTER V.</a> (170)</p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#insidejapan">INSIDE JAPAN</a> By W.E.
+    GRIFFIS. (174)</p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#jason">JASON&#39;S QUEST</a> By CHARLES
+    WARREN STODDARD.</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#jasoni">I.</a> (182)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#jasonii">II.</a> (184)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#jasoniii">III.</a> (185)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#jasoniv">IV.</a> (186)</p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#forebodings">FOREBODINGS.</a> (188)</p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#deerparks">DEER-PARKS</a> By REGINALD
+    WYNFORD. (189)</p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#rambles">RAMBLES AMONG THE FRUITS AND
+    FLOWERS OF THE TROPICS</a> By FANNIE R. FEUDGE.</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#2H_4_0036">TWO PAPERS.&#8212;I.</a>
+    (197)</p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#thule">A PRINCESS OF THULE</a> By WILLIAM
+    BLACK.</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#thulechxii">CHAPTER
+    XII.&#8212;Transformation.</a> (206)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#thulechxiii">CHAPTER XIII.&#8212;By The
+    Waters Of Babylon.</a> (214)</p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#gold">GOLD</a> By ITA ANIOL PROKOP.
+    (226)</p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#glimpses">GLIMPSES OF GHOST-LAND</a> By
+    LUCY H. HOOPER. (227)</p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#afternoon">AFTERNOON</a> By EMMA LAZARUS.
+    (234)</p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#gossip">OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#washington">Washington&#39;s Birthplace In
+    1873</a> By R.B.E. (235)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#vicissitudes">Vicissitudes In High
+    Life.</a> (236)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#madeira">A Glass Of Old Madeira.</a>
+    (238)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#matinee">At A Matin�e: A Monologue.</a> By
+    C.A.D. (240)</p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#notes">NOTES.</a> (242)</p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#literature">LITERATURE OF THE DAY.</a>
+    (245)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#books">Books Received.</a> (248)</p><br />
+    <hr />
+    <br />
+    <a name="illustrations" id="illustrations"></a>
+
+    <h4>ILLUSTRATIONS</h4>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0001">The Flowers of War.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0002">The Invaders of
+    Romiainville.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0003">Story of an Old Man and An
+    Elder.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0004">Merchandise in the
+    Temple.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0005">Father Joliet.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0006">The Two Chickens.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0007">Love Left Alone.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0008">&quot;Fond of
+    Chicken.&quot;</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0009">The Wife.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0010">The Lone Crusade.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0011">Tender Charity.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0012">Necessity Knowing Law.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0013">The Ferry.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0014">Jove&#39;s Thunder.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0015">School.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0016">On With the Dance!</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0017">Endymion.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0018">How the Modern Dog Treats
+    Lazarus.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0019">The Laughing Lackey.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0020">The Present.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0021">The Convalescent.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0022">The Divided Burden.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0023">Share My Cup.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0024">Breaking Stones.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0025">Sickness and
+    Courtship.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0026">The Wagon.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0027">Dinner-time!</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0028">Fidelity.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0029">A Little Visitor.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0030">Francine.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0031">&quot;Don&#39;t Wring My
+    Heart!&quot;</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0032">View of Taufers
+    Valley.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0033">Schloss Taufers.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0034">Happy Souls in
+    Paradise.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0035">Crossing the Torrent.</a></p>
+    <hr />
+  </div><span class="pagenum">[pg 129]</span> <a name="hyperion" id=
+  "hyperion"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>THE NEW HYPERION.</h2>
+
+  <h3>FROM PARIS TO MARLY BY WAY OF THE RHINE.</h3>
+
+  <h3><a name="twochickens" id="twochickens"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+  II.&#8212;THE TWO CHICKENS.</h3><a name="image-0001" id="image-0001">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0001_1.jpg"><img width="100%" src=
+    "images/0001_1.jpg" alt="THE FLOWERS OF WAR." /></a> THE FLOWERS OF
+    WAR.
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>&quot;Thou art no less a man because thou wearest no hauberk nor
+  mail sark, and goest not on horseback after foolish
+  adventures.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>So I said, reassuring myself, thirty years ago, when, as Paul
+  Flemming the Blond, I was meditating the courageous change of cutting
+  off my soap-locks, burning my edition of Bulwer and giving my satin
+  stocks to my shoemaker: I mean, when I was growing up&#8212;or, in
+  the more beauteous language of that day, when Flemming was passing
+  into the age of bronze, and the flowers of Paradise were turning to a
+  sword in his hands.</p>
+
+  <p>Well, I say it again, and I say it with boldness, you can wear a
+  tin botany-box as bravely as a hauberk, and foolish adventures can be
+  pursued equally well on foot.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg
+  130]</span>
+
+  <p>Stout, grizzled and short winded, I am just as nimble as ever in
+  the pretty exercise of running down an illusion. Yet I must confess,
+  as I passed the abattoirs of La Villette, whence blue-smocked
+  butcher-boys were hauling loads of dirty sheepskins, I could not but
+  compare myself to the honest man mentioned in one of Sardou&#39;s
+  comedies: &quot;The good soul escaped out of a novel of Paul de
+  Kock&#39;s, lost in the throng on the Boulevard Malesherbes, and
+  asking the way to the woods of Romainville.&quot;</p><a name=
+  "image-0002" id="image-0002"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0002_1.jpg"><img width="100%" src=
+    "images/0002_1.jpg" alt="THE INVADERS OF ROMIAINVILLE." /></a> THE
+    INVADERS OF ROMIAINVILLE.
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Romainville! And hereabouts its tufts of chestnuts should be, or
+  were wont to be of old. I am in the grimy quarter of Belleville.
+  Scene of factories, of steam-works and tall bleak mansions as it is
+  to-day, Belleville was once a jolly country village, separated on its
+  hilltop from Paris, which basked at its feet like a city millionaire
+  sprawling before the check apron and leather shoes of a rustic
+  beauty. Inhabited by its little circle of a few thousand souls, it
+  looked around itself on its eminence, seeing the vast diorama of the
+  city on one side, and on the other the Pr�s-Saint-Gervais, and the
+  woods of Romainville waving off to the horizon their diminishing
+  crests of green. A jolly old tavern, the Ile d&#39;Amour, hung out
+  its colored lamps among the trees, and the orchestra sounded, and the
+  feet of gay young lovers, who now are skeletons, beat the floor. The
+  street was a bower of lilacs, and opposite the Ile d&#39;Amour was
+  the village church.</p>
+
+  <p>Then the workmen of the Paris suburbs were invaders: they besieged
+  the village on Sundays in daring swarms, to be beaten back
+  successfully by the duties of every successive Monday. Now they are
+  fixed there. They are the colorless inhabitants of these many-storied
+  houses. The town&#39;s long holiday is over. Where the odorous
+  avenues of lilacs stretched along, affording bouquets for maman and
+  the children and toothpicks for ferocious young warriors from the
+  garrisons, are odious lengths of wall. Everything is changed, and
+  from the gardens the grisettes of Alfred de Musset are with sighing
+  sent. Their haunts are laboratories now, and the Ile d&#39;Amour is a
+  mayor&#39;s office.</p>
+
+  <p>I, to whom the beer-scandals of the Rhine and the students&#39;
+  holidays of the Seine were among the Childe-Harold enormities of a
+  not over-sinful youth, was sadly disappointed. Thinking of the groves
+  of an Eden, I ran against the furnaces of a Pandemonium. For a stroll
+  back toward my adolescence, Belleville was a bad beginning. I
+  determined to console myself with the green meadows of Saint-Gervais
+  and the pretty woods of Romainville. Attaining the latter was half an
+  hour&#39;s affair among long walls and melancholy houses: at
+  Saint-Gervais, a double file of walls and houses&#8212;at
+  Romainville, houses and walls again. In the latter, where formerly
+  there were scarcely three watches distributed amongst the whole
+  village, I was incensed to find the shop of a clockmaker: it was
+  somewhat consoling, <span class="pagenum">[pg 131]</span> though, to
+  find it a clockmaker&#39;s of the most pronounced suburban kind, with
+  pairs of wooden shoes amongst the guard-chains in the window, and
+  pots of golden mustard ranged alternately with the antiquated silver
+  turnips.</p>
+
+  <p>Before the church I found yet standing a knotty little elder tree,
+  a bewitched-looking vegetable. A beadle in a blouse, engaged in
+  washing one of the large altar-candles with soap and water at the
+  public pump, gave me the following history of the elder tree. I am
+  passionately fond of legends, and this is one quite hot and fresh,
+  only a hundred years old. Hear the tale of the elder of
+  Romainville.</p>
+
+  <p>The excellent cur� of Romainville in the last century was a man of
+  such a charitable nature that his all was in the hands of the poor.
+  The grocer of the village, a potentate of terrific powers and
+  inexorable temper, finally refused to trust him with the supply of
+  oil necessary for the lamp in the sanctuary. Soon the sacred flame
+  sputtered, palpitated, flapped miserably over the crusted wick: the
+  cur�, responsible before Heaven for the life of his lamp, tottered
+  away from the altar with groans of anguish. Arrived in the garden, he
+  threw himself on his knees, crying <i>Me� culp�</i>, and beating his
+  bosom. The garden contained only medicinal plants, shaded by a linden
+  and an elder: completely desperate, the unhappy priest fixed his
+  moist eyes on the latter, when lo! the bark opened, the trunk parted,
+  and a jet of clear aromatic liquid spouted forth, quite different
+  from any sap yielded by elder before. It was oil. A miracle!</p>
+
+  <p>The report spread. The grocer came and humbly visited the priest
+  in his garden, his haughty hat, crammed with bills enough to have
+  spread agony through all the cottages of Romainville, humbly carried
+  between his legs. He came proposing a little speculation. In exchange
+  for a single spigot to be inserted in the tree, and the hydraulic
+  rights going with the same, he offered all the bounties dearest to
+  the priestly heart&#8212;unlimited milk and honey, livers of fat
+  geese and pies lined with rabbit. The priest, though
+  hungry&#8212;hungry with the demoniac hunger of a fat and paunchy
+  man&#8212;turned his back on the tempter.</p><a name="image-0003" id=
+  "image-0003"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0003_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0003_1.jpg" alt="STORY OF AN OLD MAN AND AN ELDER." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">STORY OF AN OLD MAN AND AN ELDER.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>One day a salad, the abstemious relish yielded by his garden
+  herbs, was set on the table by Jeanneton. At the first mouthful the
+  good cur� made a terrible face&#8212;the salad tasted of lamp-oil.
+  The unhappy girl had filled a cruet with the sacred fluid. From that
+  day the bark closed and the flow ceased.</p>
+
+  <p>There is one of the best oil-stories you ever heard, and one of
+  the most recent of attested miracles. For my part, I am half sorry it
+  is so well attested, and that I have the authority of that beadle in
+  the blouse, who took my little two-franc piece with an expression of
+  much intelligence. I love the Legend.</p><a name="image-0004" id=
+  "image-0004"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0003_2.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0003_2.jpg" alt="MERCHANDISE IN THE TEMPLE." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">MERCHANDISE IN THE TEMPLE.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>The environs of Paris are but chary of Legend. I treasure this
+  specimen, then, <span class="pagenum">[pg 132]</span> as if it had
+  been a rare flower for my botany-box.</p>
+
+  <p>But the botany-box indeed, how heavy it was growing! The umbrella,
+  how awkward! The sun, how vigorous and ardent! Who ever supposed it
+  could become so hot by half-past eight in the morning?</p><a name=
+  "image-0005" id="image-0005"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0004_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0004_1.jpg" alt="FATHER JOLIET." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">FATHER JOLIET.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Certainly the ruthless box, which seemed to have taken root on my
+  back, was heavier than it used to be. Had its rotundity developed,
+  like its master&#39;s? I stopped and gathered a flower, meaning to
+  analyze it at my next resting-place. I opened my box: then indeed I
+  perceived the secret of its weightiness. It revealed three small
+  rolls of oatmeal toasted, a little roast chicken, a bit of ham, some
+  mustard in a cleaned-out inkstand! This now was the treachery of
+  Josephine. Josephine, who never had the least sympathy for my
+  botanical researches, and who had small comprehension of the nobler
+  hungers and thirsts of the scientific soul, had taken it on her to
+  convert my box into a portable meat-safe!</p>
+
+  <p>Bless the old meddler, how I thanked her for her treason! The
+  aspect of the chicken, in its blistered and varnished brown skin,
+  reminded me that I was clamorously hungry. Shade of Apicius! is it
+  lawful for civilized mortals to be so hungry as I was at eight or
+  nine in the morning?</p>
+
+  <p>At last I saw the end of that dusty, featureless street which
+  stretches from the barrier to the extremity of Romainville. I saw
+  spreading before me a broad plain, a kind of desert, where, by
+  carefully keeping my eyes straight ahead, I could avoid the sight of
+  all houses, walls, human constructions whatever.</p>
+
+  <p>My favorite traveler, the celebrated Le Vaillant, to whom I am
+  indebted for so many facts and data toward my great theory of
+  Comparative Geography, says that in first reaching the solitudes of
+  Caffraria he felt himself elated with an unknown joy. No traced road
+  was before him to dictate his pathway&#8212;no city shaded him with
+  its towers: his fortune depended on his own unaided instincts.</p>
+
+  <p>I felt the same delight, the same liberty. Something like the
+  heavy strap of a slave seemed to break behind me as I found myself
+  quite clear of the metropolis. Mad schemes of unanticipated journeys
+  danced through my head; I might amble on to Villemonble, Montfermeil,
+  Raincy, or even to the Forest of Bondy, so dear to the experimental
+  botanist. Had I not two days before me ere my compact with Hohenfels
+  at Marly? And in two days you can go from Paris to Florence.
+  Meantime, from the effects of famine, my ribs were sinking down upon
+  the pelvic basin of my frame.</p>
+
+  <p>The walk, the open air, the sight of the fowl, whose beak now
+  burned into my bosom&#39;s core, had sharpened my appetite beyond
+  bearing. Yet how could I eat without some drop of cider or soft white
+  wine to drink? Besides, slave of convention that I have grown, I no
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 133]</span> longer understand the business
+  of eating without its concomitants&#8212;a shelter and something to
+  sit on.</p>
+
+  <p>The plain became wearisome. There are two things the
+  American-born, however long a resident abroad, never forgives the
+  lack of in Europe. The first I miss when I am in Paris: it is the
+  perpetual street-mending of an American town. Here the boulevards,
+  smeared with asphaltum or bedded with crunched macadam, attain
+  smoothness without life: you travel on scum. But in the dear old
+  American streets the epidermis is vital: what strength and mutual
+  reliance in the cobbles as they stand together in serried ranks, like
+  so many eye-teeth! How they are perpetually sinking into prodigious
+  ruts, along which the ponderous drays are forced to dance on one
+  wheel in a paroxysm of agony and critical equipoise! But the
+  perpetual state of street-mending, that is the crowning interest.
+  What would I not sometimes give to exchange the Swiss sweeping-girls,
+  plying their long brooms desolately in the mud, for the paviors&#39;
+  hammers of America, which play upon the pebbles like a carillon of
+  muffled bells? As for the other lack, it is the want of wooden
+  bridges. Far away in my native meadows gleams the silver Charles: the
+  tramp of horses&#39; hoofs comes to my ear from the timbers of the
+  bridge. <i>Here</i>, with a pelt and a scramble your bridge is
+  crossed: nothing addresses the heart from its stony causeway. But the
+  low, arched tubes of wood that span the streams of my native land are
+  so many bass-viols, sending out mellow thunders with every passing
+  wagon to blend with the rustling stream and the sighing woods. Shall
+  I never hear them again?</p>
+
+  <p>A reminiscence more than ten years old came to give precision to
+  my ramblings in the past. Beyond the rustic pathway I was now
+  following I could perceive the hills of Trou-Vassou. Hereabouts, if
+  memory served me, I might find a welcome, almost a home, and the
+  clasp of cordial if humble hands. Here I might find folks who would
+  laugh when I arrived, and would be glad to share their luncheon with
+  me But&#8212;ten years gone by!</p><a name="image-0006" id=
+  "image-0006"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0005_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0005_1.jpg" alt="THE TWO CHICKENS." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">THE TWO CHICKENS.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>This computation chilled my hopes. What family remains ten years
+  in a spot&#8212;above all, a spot on that fluctuating periphery of
+  Paris, where the mighty capital, year after year, bursts belt after
+  belt? Where might they have gone? Francine!&#8212;Francine must be
+  twenty-two. Married, of course. Her husband, no doubt, has dragged
+  her off to some other department. Her parents have followed. March,
+  volunteer, and disentangle yourself from these profitless
+  speculations!</p>
+
+  <p>Ten minutes farther on, in the shade of the fort at Noisy-le-Sec,
+  I saw a red gable and the sign of a tavern. As a tourist I have a
+  passion for a cabaret: in practice, I find V�fours to unite perhaps a
+  greater number of advantages.</p><a name="image-0007" id=
+  "image-0007"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0005_2.jpg"><img width="30%" src=
+    "images/0005_2.jpg" alt="LOVE LEFT ALONE." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">LOVE LEFT ALONE.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Some soldiers of the Fortieth were drinking and laughing in a
+  corner. I took a table not far off, and drew my cold victuals out of
+  my box of japanned tin, which they doubtless took for a new form of
+  canteen. The red-fisted gar�on, without waiting for orders, set up
+  before me, like ten-pins, a castor in wood with two enormous bottles,
+  and a litre of that rinsing of the vats which, under the name
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 134]</span> &quot;wine of the
+  country,&quot; is so distressingly similar in every neighborhood.
+  Resigned to anything, I was about drawing out my slice of ham, the
+  chicken seeming to me just there somewhat too proud a bird and out of
+  harmony with the local color, when my glance met two gray eyes
+  regarding my own in the highest state of expansion. The lashes, the
+  brows, the hair and the necklace of short beard were all very thick
+  and quite gray. The face they garnished was that of the
+  tavern-keeper.</p><a name="image-0008" id="image-0008"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0006_1.jpg"><img width="50%" src=
+    "images/0006_1.jpg" alt="&#39;FOND OF CHICKEN.&#39;" /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">&#39;FOND OF CHICKEN.&#39;</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>&quot;Why, it is you, after all, Father Joliet!&quot; I said,
+  after a rapid inspection of his figure.</p><a name="image-0009" id=
+  "image-0009"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0006_2.jpg"><img width="40%" src=
+    "images/0006_2.jpg" alt="THE WIFE" /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">THE WIFE.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>&quot;Ah, it is Monsieur Flemming, the Am�ricain-flamand!&quot;
+  cried the host, striking one hand into the other at the imminent risk
+  of breaking his pipe. In a trice he trundled off my bottle of
+  rinsings, and replaced it by one of claret with an orange seal, set
+  another glass, and posted himself in front of me.</p>
+
+  <p>I asked the waiter for two plates, and with a slight blush evoked
+  the chicken from my box. The soldiers of the Fortieth opened a
+  battery of staring and hungry eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And how came you here?&quot; asked I of Joliet.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It is I who am at the head of the hotel,&quot; he replied,
+  proudly pointing out the dimensions of the place by spreading his
+  hands. &quot;My old establishment has sunk into the fosses of the
+  fort: it was a transaction between the government and
+  myself.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And was the transaction a good one for you?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Not so bad, not so bad,&quot; said he, winking his honest
+  gray eyes with a world of simple cunning. &quot;It cannot be so very
+  bad, since I owe nothing on the hotel, and the cellar is full, and I
+  am selling wholesale and retail.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The vanity which a minute since had expanded his hands now got
+  into his legs, and set them upright under his body. He stood upon
+  them, his eyes proudly lowered upon the seal of the claret. A pang of
+  envy actually crossed my mind. I, simple <i>rentier</i>, with my two
+  little establishments pressing more <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  135]</span> closely upon my resources with every year&#39;s increase
+  of house-rates, how could I look at this glorious small freeholder
+  without comparisons?</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;So, then, Father Joliet,&quot; said I, &quot;you are
+  rich?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;At least I depend no longer on my horse, and that thanks to
+  you and the government.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;To me! What do you mean?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why, have you forgotten the two chickens?&quot;</p><a name=
+  "image-0010" id="image-0010"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0007_1.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0007_1.jpg" alt="THE LONE CRUSADE." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">THE LONE CRUSADE.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>At the allusion to the chickens we caught each other&#39;s eye,
+  and laughed like a pair of augurs. But the mysterious fowls shall be
+  explained to the reader.</p><a name="image-0011" id="image-0011">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0007_2.jpg"><img width="40%" src=
+    "images/0007_2.jpg" alt="TENDER CHARITY." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">TENDER CHARITY.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0012" id="image-0012"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0007_3.jpg"><img width="40%" src=
+    "images/0007_3.jpg" alt="NECESSITY KNOWING LAW." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">NECESSITY KNOWING LAW.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>I need not explain that I have cast my lot with the Colonial
+  Americans of Paris, and taken their color. It is a sweet and
+  luxurious mode of life. The cooks send round our dinners quite hot,
+  or we have faultless servants, recommended from one colonist to
+  another: these capital creatures sometimes become so thoroughly
+  translated into American that I have known them shift around from
+  flat to flat in colonized households of the second and third stories
+  without ever touching French soil for the best part of a lifetime. At
+  our receptions, dancing-teas and so on we pass our time in not giving
+  offence. Federals and Confederates, rich cotton-spinners from Rhode
+  Island and farmers from thousand-acre granges in the West, are
+  obliged to mingle and please each other. Naturally, we can have no
+  more political opinions than a looking-glass. We entertain just such
+  views as <i>Galignani</i> gives us every morning, harmonized with
+  paste from a dozen newspapers. Our grand national effort, I may say,
+  the common principle that binds us together as a Colony, is to forget
+  that we are Americans. We accordingly give our whole intellects to
+  the task of <span class="pagenum">[pg 136]</span> appearing like
+  Europeans: our women succeed in this particularly well. Miss Yuba
+  Sequoia Smith, whose father made a fortune in water-rights, is now
+  afraid to walk a single block without the attendance of a chambermaid
+  in a white cap, though she came up from California quite alone by the
+  old Panama route. Everybody agrees that our ladies dress well. Shall
+  I soon forget how proud Mrs. Aquila Jones was when a gentleman of the
+  emperor&#39;s body-guard took her for Marguerite Bellanger in the
+  Bois? Our men, not having the culture of costume to attend to, are
+  perhaps a little in want of a stand-point. Still, we can play
+  billiards in the Grand H�tel and buy fans at the Palais Royal. We go
+  out to Saint-Cloud on horseback, we meet at the minister&#39;s; and I
+  contend that there was something conciliatory and national in a
+  Southern colonel offering to take Bigelow to see Menken at the Ga�t�,
+  or when I saw some West Pointers and a nephew of Beauregard&#39;s
+  lighting the pipe of peace at a handsome tobacconist&#39;s in the Rue
+  Saint-Honor�. The consciousness that we have no longer a nationality,
+  and that nobody respects us, adds a singular calm, an elevation, to
+  our views. Composed as our cherished little society is of crumbs from
+  every table under heaven, we have succeeded in forming a way of life
+  where the crusty fortitude and integrity of patriotism is
+  unnecessary. Our circle is like the green palace of the magpies in
+  Musset&#39;s <i>Merle Blanc</i>, and like them we live &quot;de
+  plaisir, d&#39;honneur, de bavardage, de gloire et de
+  chiffons.&quot;</p><a name="image-0013" id="image-0013">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0008_1.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0008_1.jpg" alt="THE FERRY." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">THE FERRY.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0014" id="image-0014"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0008_2.jpg"><img width="40%" src=
+    "images/0008_2.jpg" alt="JOVE&#39;S THUNDER." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">JOVE&#39;S THUNDER.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>I confess that there was a period, between the fresh alacrity of a
+  stranger&#39;s reception in the Colony and the settled habits I have
+  now fallen into, when I was rather uneasy. A society of migrators, a
+  system woven upon shooting particles, like a rainbow on the rain, was
+  odd. Residents of some permanency, like myself, were constantly
+  forming eternal friendships with people who wrote to them in a month
+  or two from Egypt. In this way a quantity of my friendships were
+  miserably lacerated, until I learned by practice just how much
+  friendship to give. At this period I was much occupied with vain
+  conciliations, concessions and the reconciling of inconsistencies. A
+  brave American from the South, an ardent disciple of Calhoun, was a
+  powerful advocate of State Rights, and advocated them so well that I
+  was almost convinced; when it appeared one day that the right of
+  States to individual action was to cease in cases where a living
+  chattel was to escape from the South to the North.</p><a name=
+  "image-0015" id="image-0015"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0009_1.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0009_1.jpg" alt="SCHOOL." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">SCHOOL.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>In this case the State, in violation of its own <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 137]</span> laws unrecognizant of that kind of
+  ownership, was to account for the property and give it back, in
+  obedience to general Congressional order and to the most advanced
+  principles of Centralization. Before I had digested this pill another
+  was administered to me in that small English section of our circle
+  which gave us much pride and an occasional son-in-law. This was by no
+  less a person than my dear old friend Berkley, now grown a ruddy
+  sexagenarian, but still given to eating breakfast in his bath-tub.
+  The wealthy Englishman, who had got rich by exporting china ware, was
+  sound on the subject of free commerce between nations. That any
+  industry, no matter how young might be the nation practicing it, or
+  how peculiar the difficulties of its prosecution, should ever be the
+  subject of home protection, he stamped as a fallacy too absurd to be
+  argued. The journals venturing such an opinion were childish
+  drivelers, putting forth views long since exploded before the whole
+  world. He was still loud in this opinion when his little book of
+  epigrams, <i>The Raven of Zurich and Other Rhymes</i>, came out, and
+  being bright and saucy was reprinted in America. The knowledge that
+  he could not tax on a foreign soil his own ideas, the plastic pottery
+  of his brain, was quite too much for his mental balance, and he took
+  to inveighing against free trade in literary manufactures without the
+  slightest perception of inconsistency, and with all the warmth, if
+  not the eloquence, of Mr. Dickens on the same theme. The gradual
+  accumulation of subjects like these&#8212;subjects <i>taboo</i> in
+  gentle society&#8212;soon made it apparent that in a Colony of such
+  diverse colors, where every man had a sore spot or a grievance, and
+  even the Cinderellas had corns in their little slippers, harmony
+  could only be obtained by keeping to general considerations of honor,
+  nobility, glory, and the politics of Beloochistan; on which points we
+  all could agree, and where Mr. Berkley&#39;s witty eloquence was a
+  wonder.</p><a name="image-0016" id="image-0016"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0009_2.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0009_2.jpg" alt="ON WITH THE DANCE!" /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">ON WITH THE DANCE!</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>It is to my uneasy period, when I was sick with private griefs and
+  giddy with striving to reconcile incompatibilities, that the episode
+  of the Chickens belongs. I was looking dissatisfied out of one of my
+  windows. Hohenfels, disappointed of a promenade by an afternoon
+  shower, was looking dissatisfied out of the other. Two or three
+  people, waiting for four o&#39;clock lunch, were lounging about. I
+  had just remarked, I believe, that I was a melancholy man, for ever
+  drinking &quot;the sweet wormwood of my sorrows.&quot; A dark
+  phantom, like that of Adamastor, stood up between me and the
+  stars.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Nonsense, you ingrate!&quot; responded <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 138]</span> the baron from his niche, &quot;you are
+  only too happy. You are now in the precise position to define my old
+  conception of the Lucky Dog. The Lucky Dog, you know, in my
+  vocabulary, is he who, free from all domestic cares, saunters up and
+  down his room in gown and slippers, drums on the window of a rainy
+  afternoon, and, as he stirs his evening fire, snaps his fingers at
+  the world, saying, &#39;I have no nor children, good or bad, to
+  provide for.&#39;&quot;</p><a name="image-0017" id="image-0017">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0010_1.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0010_1.jpg" alt="ENDYMION." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">ENDYMION.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>I replied that I did not willingly give way to grief, but that the
+  main-spring of my life was broken.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Did you ever try,&quot; spoke up a buxom lady from a
+  sofa&#8212;it was the Frau Kranich, widow of the Frankfort banker,
+  the same who used to give balls while her husband was drugged to
+  sleep with opium, and now for a long time in Paris for some
+  interminable settlement with Nathan Rothschild&#8212;&quot;Did you
+  ever try the tonic of a good action? <i>I</i> never did, but they
+  actually say it rejuvenates one considerably.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>I avowed that I had more faith in the study of Geography.
+  Nevertheless, to oblige her, I would follow any
+  suggestion.</p><a name="image-0018" id="image-0018"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0010_2.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0010_2.jpg" alt="HOW THE MODERN DOG TREATS LAZARUS." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">HOW THE MODERN DOG TREATS LAZARUS.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>&quot;Benefit the next person who applies to you.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Madame, I will obey.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>At this moment a wagon of singular appearance drew up before my
+  windows. I knew it well enough: it was the vehicle of a handy,
+  convenient man who came along every other morning to pick up odd jobs
+  from me and my neighbors. He could tinker, carpenter, mend harness:
+  his wife, seated in the wagon by his side, was good at a button, or
+  could descend and help Josephine with her ironing. A visit at this
+  hour, however, was unprecedented.</p>
+
+  <p>As Charles was beginning a conversation under the hood of the
+  wagon, I opened the window. &quot;Come into the room,&quot; I
+  said.</p>
+
+  <p>Hohenfels maliciously opened his. &quot;Come in,&quot; he added
+  &quot;Monsieur Flemming is especially anxious to do you a
+  benefit.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The man, uncovering, was now standing in the little garden before
+  the house&#8212;a man with a face at once intelligent and candid,
+  which is unfortunately rare among the poor rascals of his grade.
+  Although still young, he was growing gray: his blouse, patched and
+  re-sewed at all the seams, was clean and whole. Poverty had tested
+  him, but had as yet picked no flaws in him. By this time my windows
+  were alive with faces.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 139]</span>
+
+  <p>The man, humble but not awkward, made two or three respectful
+  bows. &quot;Monsieur,&quot; he said to me, &quot;I hope you are fond
+  of chickens. I am desirous to sell you a fine pair.&quot;</p><a name=
+  "image-0019" id="image-0019"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0011_1.jpg"><img width="40%" src=
+    "images/0011_1.jpg" alt="THE LAUGHING LACKEY." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">THE LAUGHING LACKEY.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Chickens for me! and what was it supposed I should do with them?
+  At this point the voice of the Frau Kranich was heard, clear and
+  malicious: &quot;It is a bargain: bring them in.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>At the same time the canvas cover of the wagon puffed outward,
+  giving issue to a heavy sigh.</p>
+
+  <p>The man went to a sort of great cage in lattice-work occupying the
+  back of the vehicle. Then he backed his wagon up to the sidewalk, and
+  we saw, sitting on the cage and framed by the oval of the
+  wagon-cover, a young woman of excellent features, but sadly pale. She
+  now held the two chickens in her lap, caressing them, laying their
+  heads against her cheek, and enwreathing them in the folds of her
+  great shawl. I could only close the bargain with the utmost speed, to
+  be safe from ridicule.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Your price?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Fix it yourself, sir,&quot; said the man, determined to
+  confuse me. &quot;You are doubtless thoroughly acquainted with
+  poultry.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;The nankeen&#8212;colored one,&quot; spoke up again the
+  bell-like and inexorable voice from the other window, &quot;is a
+  yellow Cr�vecoeur, very well formed and lively-looking: the
+  slate-colored one is a Cochin-China, with only a few of the white
+  feathers lacking from the head. They are chef-d&#39;oeuvres, and are
+  worth fully forty francs apiece.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Only look, sir, at their claws and bills, see their tongues,
+  and observe under their wings: they are young, wholesome and of fine
+  strain&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He was running on when I stopped him: &quot;Here are a hundred
+  francs for you, brave man.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The patchwork blouse cut a caper, a look of lively joy shot from
+  the man&#39;s eyes, where a tear was gathering, and the wagon, from
+  its bursting cover, gave utterance to a sob.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why sell them,&quot; I asked, touched in spite of myself,
+  &quot;if you are so attached to them? Is the money indispensable to
+  you? I might possibly make an advance.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Ah, you are a real Christian&#8212;you are now,&quot; said
+  the honest Joliet, polishing his eyeball with his coat-cuff.
+  &quot;The good woman holds by them, it is true. Holy Virgin! it&#39;s
+  she that has raised them, and I may say brooded over them in the
+  coop. The eggs were for our salad when we had nothing better than
+  nettles and sorrel. But, day in and night in, we have no other
+  lodging than our wagon, and the wife is promising to give me a dolly;
+  and if we don&#39;t take out the cage, where will the cradle go,
+  sir?&quot;</p><a name="image-0020" id="image-0020"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0011_2.jpg"><img width="40%" src=
+    "images/0011_2.jpg" alt="THE PRESENT." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">THE PRESENT.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 140]</span>
+
+  <p>The calculation appeared reasonable. I received the birds, and
+  they were the heroes, in their boudoir under the piano, of that
+  night&#39;s conversazione.</p><a name="image-0021" id="image-0021">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0012_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0012_1.jpg" alt="THE CONVALESCENT." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">THE CONVALESCENT.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0022" id="image-0022"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0012_2.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0012_2.jpg" alt="THE DIVIDED BURDEN." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">THE DIVIDED BURDEN.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>How hard it is for a life cast upon the crowded shores of the Old
+  World to regain the place once lost is shown by the history of my
+  honest friend Joliet. Born in 1812, of an excellent family living
+  twenty miles from Versailles, the little fellow lost his mother
+  before he could talk to her. When he was ten years old, his father,
+  who had failed after some land speculations, and had turned all he
+  had into money, tossed him up to the lintel of the doorway, kissed
+  him, put a twenty-franc gold-piece into his little pocket, and went
+  away to seek his fortune in Louisiana: the son never heard of him
+  more. The lady-president of a charitable society, Mademoiselle Marx,
+  took pity on the abandoned child: she fed him on bones and
+  occasionally beat him. She was an ingenious and inventive creature,
+  and made her own cat-o&#39;-nine-tails: an inventor is for ever
+  demonstrating the merits of his implement. Soon, discovering that he
+  was thankless and unteachable, she made him enter, as youngest clerk,
+  the law-office of her admirer and attorney, Constabule. This
+  gentleman, not finding enough engrossing work to keep the lad out of
+  mischief, allowed him to sweep his rooms and blacken his boots.
+  Little Joliet, after giving a volatile air to a great many of his
+  employer&#39;s briefs by making paper chickens of them, showed his
+  imperfect sense of the favors done him by absconding. In fact, proud
+  and independent, he was brooding over boyish schemes of an honorable
+  living and a hasty fortune. He soon found that every profession
+  required an apprenticeship, and that an apprenticeship could only be
+  bought for money. He was obliged, then, to seek his grand fortune
+  through somewhat obscure avenues. If I were to follow my poor Joliet
+  through all his transmigrations and metempsychoses, as I have learned
+  them by his hints, allusions and confessions, I should show him by
+  turns working a rope ferry, where the stupid and indolent cattle,
+  whose business it is to draw men, were drawn by him; then
+  letter-carrier; supernumerary and call-boy in a village theatre;
+  road-mender on a vicinal route; then a beadle, a bell-ringer, and a
+  sub-teacher in an infant school, where he distributed his own
+  ignorance impartially amongst his little patrons at the end of a
+  stick; after this, big drum in the New Year&#39;s festivals, and
+  ready at a moment&#39;s opportunity to throw down the drumstick
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 141]</span> and plunge among the dancers,
+  for Joliet was a well-hinged lad, and the blood of nineteen years was
+  tingling in his heels. After fluttering thus from branch to branch,
+  like the poor birdling that cannot take its flight, discouraged by
+  his wretched attempts at life, he plunged straight before him, hoping
+  for nothing but a turn of luck, driving over the roads and fields,
+  lending a hand to the farmers, sleeping in stables and garrets, or
+  oftener in the open air; sometimes charitably sheltered in a kind
+  man&#39;s barn, and perhaps&#8212;oh bliss!&#8212;honestly employed
+  with him for a week or two; at others rudely repulsed as a
+  good-for-nothing and vagabond. Vagabond! That truly was his
+  profession now. He forgot the charms of a fixed abode. He came to
+  like his gypsy freedom, the open air and complete independence. He
+  laughed at his misery, provided it shifted its place
+  occasionally.</p><a name="image-0023" id="image-0023"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0013_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0013_1.jpg" alt="SHARE MY CUP." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">SHARE MY CUP.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0024" id="image-0024"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0013_2.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0013_2.jpg" alt="BREAKING STONES." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">BREAKING STONES.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>One day, when Hazard, his ungenerous guardian, seemed to have
+  quite forgotten him, he walked&#8212;on an empty stomach, as the
+  doctors say&#8212;past the lofty walls of a ch�teau. A card was
+  placed at the gate calling for additional hands at a job of digging.
+  Each workman, it was promised, had a right to a plate of soup before
+  beginning. This article tempted him. At the gate a lackey, laughing
+  in his face, told him the notice had been posted there six months:
+  workmen were no longer wanted. &quot;Wait, though,&quot; said the
+  servant, and in another minute gave the applicant a horse!&#8212;a
+  real, live horse in blood and bones, but in bones especially.
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 142]</span> &quot;There,&quot; said the
+  domestic, &quot;set a beggar on horseback and see him ride to the
+  devil!&quot; And, laughing with that unalloyed enjoyment which
+  one&#39;s own wit alone produces, he retired behind his
+  wicket.</p><a name="image-0025" id="image-0025"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0013_3.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0013_3.jpg" alt="SICKNESS AND COURTSHIP." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">SICKNESS AND COURTSHIP.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>The horse thus vicariously fulfilling the functions of a plate of
+  soup was a wretched glandered beast&#8212;not old, but shunned on
+  account of the contagious nature of his disease. Having received the
+  order to take him to be killed at the abattoir, monsieur the valet,
+  having better things to do, gave the commission to Joliet, with all
+  its perquisites.</p>
+
+  <p>Joliet did not kill the steed: he cured it. He tended it, he
+  drenched it, he saved it. By what remedy? I cannot tell. I have never
+  been a farrier, though Joliet himself made me perforce a poulterer.
+  Many a bit of knowledge is picked up by those who travel the great
+  roads. The sharp Bohemian, by playing at all trades, brushing against
+  gentry of all sorts and scouring all neighborhoods, becomes at length
+  a living cyclopaedia.</p><a name="image-0026" id="image-0026">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0014_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0014_1.jpg" alt="THE WAGON." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">THE WAGON.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Joliet, like Democritus and Plato, saw everything with his own
+  eyes, learned everything at first hand. He was a keen observer, and
+  in our interviews subsequent to the affair of the chickens I was more
+  than once surprised by the extent of his information and the subtlety
+  of his insight. His wits were tacked on to a number of remote
+  supports. In our day, when each science has become so complicated, so
+  obese, that a man&#39;s lifetime may be spent in exercising round one
+  of them, there are hardly any generalizers or observers fit to
+  estimate their relativity, except among the two classes called by the
+  world idlers and ignorants&#8212;the poets and the Bohemians.</p>
+
+  <p>Joliet, now having joined the ranks of the cavalry, found his
+  account in his new dignity. He became an orderly, a messenger. He
+  carried parcels, he transported straw and hay. If the burden was too
+  heavy for the poor convalescent, the man took his own portion with a
+  good grace, and the two mutually aided each other on the errand.
+  Thanks to his horse, the void left by his failure to learn a trade
+  was filled up by a daily and regular task: what was better, an
+  affection had crept into his heart. He loved his charge, and his
+  charge loved him.</p>
+
+  <p>This great hotel, the world, seemed to be promising entertainment
+  then for both man and beast, when an epoch of disaster came
+  along&#8212;a season of cholera. In the villages where Joliet&#39;s
+  business lay the doors just beginning to be <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  143]</span> hospitable were promptly shut against him. Where the good
+  townsmen had recognized Assistance in his person, they now saw
+  Contagion.</p><a name="image-0027" id="image-0027"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0015_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0015_1.jpg" alt="DINNER-TIME!" /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">DINNER-TIME!</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>If he had been a single man, he could have lain back and waited
+  for better times. But he now had two mouths to feed. He kissed his
+  horse and took a resolution.</p>
+
+  <p>He had never been a mendicant. &quot;Beggars don&#39;t go as
+  hungry as I have gone,&quot; said he. &quot;But what will you have?
+  Nobility obliges. My father was a gentleman. I have broken stones,
+  but never the <i>devoirs</i> of my order.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He left the groups of villages among which his new industry had
+  lain. The cholera was behind him: trouble, beggary perhaps, was
+  before him. As night was coming on, Joliet, listlessly leading his
+  horse, which he was too considerate to ride, saw upon the road a
+  woman whom he took in the obscurity for a farmer&#39;s wife of the
+  better class or a decent villager. For an introduction the
+  opportunity was favorable enough. On her side, the <i>quasi</i>
+  farmer&#39;s wife, seeing in the dusk an honest fellow dragging a
+  horse, took him for a &quot;gentleman&#39;s gentleman&quot; at the
+  least, and the two accosted each other with that easy facility of
+  which the French people have the secret. Each presented the other
+  with a hand and a frank smile.</p><a name="image-0028" id=
+  "image-0028"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0015_2.jpg"><img width="40%" src=
+    "images/0015_2.jpg" alt="FIDELITY." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">FIDELITY.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Joliet, whom I have erred perhaps in comparing to Democritus, was
+  nevertheless a laugher and a philosopher. But his grand ha-ha!
+  usually infectious, was not shared on this occasion. The wanderer
+  could not show much merriment. A sewing-woman with a capacity for
+  embroidery, her needle had given <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  144]</span> her support, but now a sudden warning of paralysis, and
+  symptoms of cholera added to that, had driven her almost to despair.
+  She was without home, friend or profession.</p><a name="image-0029"
+  id="image-0029"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0016_1.jpg"><img width="40%" src=
+    "images/0016_1.jpg" alt="A LITTLE VISITOR." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">A LITTLE VISITOR.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Joliet set her incontinently on horseback, and walked by her side
+  to a good village cur�&#39;s two miles off&#8212;the same who had
+  assisted him to his first communion, and for whom he subsequently
+  became a beadle. The kind priest opened his arms to the man, his
+  heart to the woman, his stable to the horse. For his second patient
+  my Bohemian set in motion all his stock of curative ideas. In a month
+  she was well, and the cur� no longer had three pensioners, for of two
+  of them he made one.</p>
+
+  <p>Two poverties added may make a competence. Monsieur and Madame
+  Joliet were good and willing. The man began to wear a strange not
+  unbecoming air of solidity and good morals. The girls now saluted him
+  respectfully when he passed through a village.</p>
+
+  <p>One thing, however, in the midst of his proud honeymoon perplexed
+  him much. Hardly married, and over head and ears in love, he knew not
+  how to invite his bride to some wretched garret, himself deserting
+  her to resume his former life in the open air. To give up the latter
+  seemed like losing existence itself.</p>
+
+  <p>One morning, as he asked himself the difficult question, a pair of
+  old wheels at the door of a cartwright seemed of their own accord to
+  resolve his perplexity. He bought them, the payment to be made in
+  labor: for a week he blew the wheelwright&#39;s bellows. The wheels
+  were his own: to make a wagon was now the affair of a few old boards
+  and a gypsy&#39;s inventiveness.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus was conceived that famous establishment where, for several
+  years, lived the independent monarch and his spouse, rolling over the
+  roads, circulating through the whole belt of villages around Paris,
+  and carrying in their ambulant home, like the Cossacks, their
+  utensils, their bed, their oven, their all.</p>
+
+  <p>From town to town they carried packages, boxes and articles of
+  barter. At dinner-time the van was rolled under a tree. The lady of
+  the house kindled a fire in the portable stove behind a hedge or in a
+  ditch. The hen-coop was opened, and the sage seraglio with their
+  sultan prudently pecked about for food. At the first appeal they
+  re-entered their cage.</p><a name="image-0030" id="image-0030">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0016_2.jpg"><img width="40%" src=
+    "images/0016_2.jpg" alt="FRANCINE." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">FRANCINE.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>At the same appeal came flying up the dog of the establishment, a
+  most <span class="pagenum">[pg 145]</span> piteous-looking griffin,
+  disheveled, moulted, staring out of one eye, lame and wild. For
+  devotion and good sense his match could be found nowhere. Like his
+  horse, his wife, his house and the pins in his sleeve, Joliet had
+  picked the collie up on the road.</p>
+
+  <p>The arrival of a tiny visitor to the Bohemian&#39;s address made a
+  change necessary. Little Francine&#39;s dowry was provided by my
+  humorous acquisition of the yellow and slate-colored chickens.</p>
+
+  <p>With his savings and my banknote Joliet determined to have a fixed
+  residence. He succeeded of course. The walls, the windows, the doors,
+  everything but the garden-patch, he picked up along the
+  roads.</p><a name="image-0031" id="image-0031"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0017_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0017_1.jpg" alt=
+    "&#39;DON&#39;T WRING MY HEART!&#39;" /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">&#39;DON&#39;T WRING MY HEART!&#39;</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Buried in eglantine and honeysuckle, soon no one would suspect the
+  home-made character of Joliet&#39;s ch�teau. It became the centre of
+  my botanizing excursions. Francine grew into a fair, slim girl, like
+  the sweetest and most innocent of Gavarni&#39;s sketches, and sold
+  flowers to the passers-by.</p>
+  <hr />
+
+  <p>Such were the souvenirs I had of this brave tavern-keeper in his
+  old capacity of roadster and tramp. Now, after an hiatus of years, I
+  found him before me in a different character at the beginning of my
+  roundabout trips to Marly.</p>
+
+  <p>But what had become of my favorite little rose-merchant?</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Francine?&quot; asked Joliet briskly, as if he was wondering
+  whom I could mean by such a name. &quot;You mean my wife? Poor thing!
+  She is dead.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am speaking of your daughter, Father Joliet.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, my daughter, my girl Francine? She went to live with her
+  godmother. It was ten years ago.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And you have not seen her since?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes&#8212;yes&#8212;two years back. She has gone
+  again.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;To her godmother?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why so?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Her godmother would not receive her. Don&#39;t wring my
+  heart so, sir!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p class="author">EDWARD STRAHAN.</p>
+
+  <p class="center">[TO BE CONTINUED.]</p><a name="tyrol" id="tyrol">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>OUR HOME IN THE TYROL.</h2><span class="pagenum">[pg 146]</span>
+  <a name="image-0032" id="image-0032"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0018_1.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0018_1.jpg" alt="VIEW OF TAUFERS VALLEY." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">VIEW OF TAUFERS VALLEY.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="tyrolchvii" id="tyrolchvii"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER VII.</h3>
+
+  <p>We left the Hof one August Friday&#8212;we were not
+  superstitious&#8212;a goodly company, sufficient to freight the
+  rumbling old stage-wagon which jolted daily between Bruneck and
+  Taufers, a distance of nine miles. At this village the sedater
+  portion of the party were to settle down with books, pencils and
+  drawing-paper until the Alpine visit should have been paid.</p>
+
+  <p>The valley of Taufers, running northward with a grand vista to the
+  north-west of the vast Zillerthal snow-fields, suggests at a distance
+  the idea of a stern, joyless district. When in the broader Pusterthal
+  the sunshine floods upland plain and slope, this important but narrow
+  tributary valley lies steeped in its gloomy shade, the dark sides of
+  the Sambock frowning grimly on the opposite shadowy Tesselberg.
+  Great, therefore, was the surprise of some of the party to find, as
+  we drove along, instead of melancholy solitude, prosperous villages
+  basking in sunshine, whilst little children skipped merrily, and men
+  and women worked amongst the golden stooks as if enjoying the labor
+  of their hands. Yes, strange to say, effulgent sunshine everywhere on
+  acre and meadow, and slanting down upon a wayside cottage garden,
+  where a freshly-painted Christ lay drying between tall sunflowers.
+  This cottage seemed the only shadow in this unexpectedly bright
+  picture, for, occupied by a religious image-maker, crucifixes and
+  wooden saints peeped wholesale out of the windows. Is it a want of
+  sensibility in these poor Tyrolese peasants which causes them to
+  cling tenaciously to such frightful material forms of religion,
+  making them give prominence to every conceivable sign of sacred
+  sorrow and suffering? But the jolting stage-wagon allowed us no time
+  to analyze this painful, ever-recurring feature of the Tyrol. When we
+  next looked up we saw above us, on a wooded crag, a square gray
+  tower, which, once a stronghold, appears, as if exhausted with old
+  age, to be tottering into the midst of lesser ruins.</p>
+
+  <p>It was Neuhaus, once a fortress of the rigid old barons of Tuvers.
+  Hugo, the sixth lord, died there in 1309, and in the chapel, which
+  still stands, mass is said at stated periods for the salvation of his
+  soul and the souls of his relations. The whole place would
+  undoubtedly have been given over to the owls and the bats had not two
+  adjacent springs&#8212;one of iron, the other of chalk and
+  alum&#8212;been considered, a quarter of a century since, either as
+  preventives or as cures for the cholera, then raging. A chalet was
+  therefore planted on the rocks between the chapel and the castle, and
+  a bath-house opened, which would probably be still much frequented on
+  account of the beauty of the situation were the bath-owner only a
+  little more attentive to the comfort of his humble guests.</p>
+
+  <p>The valley, apparently so gloomy, proved not only cheerful, but
+  full of romance and old-world memories. Other castles there were,
+  perched gracefully on their crags; and thus, much sooner than we had
+  anticipated, we found ourselves stopping at the Post in Taufers.
+  Rather Sand in Taufers, the single appellation being used chiefly for
+  the parent church, which, with a mortuary chapel and a house for the
+  &quot;young and sick,&quot; stands apart. Sand and Moritz, two
+  prosperous villages, cluster with this group of buildings at the head
+  of the valley, gathering like fiefs at the foot of the fine old
+  castle, still one of the grandest feudal remains in ruin-bestrewn
+  Tyrol. A third village, M�klen, though quite distinct, lies
+  sufficiently near to deserve being included in the circle.</p>
+
+  <p>The Post, in prospect of the increase of custom occasioned by the
+  Pusterthal railway, had enlarged its borders during the past winter.
+  Nor had it been deceived in the speculation, for, although only one
+  up-and-down train in the day crawls along the valley, the news of the
+  comfortable inn in the midst of beautiful scenery had already brought
+  custom enough. Thus all our powers of persuasion were lost upon the
+  handsome sister of the young wirth, a noted beauty of the
+  neighborhood. &quot;Their house was full already. Nine guests, who
+  had never sent word beforehand, were quite out of the question, but
+  the Herrschaft could be accommodated at the <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  147]</span> Elephant opposite, which was related to the
+  Post.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>So, crossing over to the Elephant, the house being entirely empty,
+  we found space and cleanliness, and might have found perfect comfort
+  withal, had not the landlord and landlady proved in a perpetual state
+  of somnolency, their few waking intervals being barely sufficient for
+  the supply of the simplest wants. In spite of these and other
+  unsatisfactory auspices, such as the tea being served in a
+  soup-tureen, the stayers voted to remain at the Elephant in our
+  absence, making up for all inward deficiencies by outdoor
+  enjoyment.</p>
+
+  <p>A country clown with an honest face, Ignaz by name, agreed for a
+  trifle to carry our bundles and ample provision of food to the Olm.
+  He made a serious matter of it, however, when he pertinaciously
+  insisted on four in the morning being the hour for starting. The
+  dispute finally ended by the agreement to allow Ignaz to carry our
+  belongings at the hour he chose, seeing that all the village was
+  ready to take an affidavit as to his honesty, and we being allowed
+  the same freedom of choice for ourselves. All having thus been
+  comfortably arranged, we sallied forth for an evening stroll.</p>
+
+  <p>A turn in the quiet village street soon revealed the great massive
+  castle on its plateau of rock&#8212;shattered towers, broken
+  battlements, oriel and bay windows jutting out here and there, its
+  bulwarks running down the precipice, but not, as formerly, shutting
+  in the narrow gorge leading into the Ahrnthal, a busy, populous
+  valley, closed in its turn by the snow-clad bulk of the Tauern, down
+  which, on the farther side, the noted Kriml waterfall plunges.
+  Remembering, from a visit paid to the castle in the former year, that
+  an easy winding road, shaded by trees and commanding splendid
+  mountain-views, led through the fortifications by the back of the
+  castle to the great gateway, we chose it in preference to the steep,
+  perpendicular path, which, always taken by the natives, led equally
+  to the drawbridge and main entrance. To our extreme regret, however,
+  we soon found <span class="pagenum">[pg 148]</span> our course
+  impeded by the huge trunks of mighty pine trees lying in a perfect
+  pell-mell above and on both sides of us. A glance up the hillside
+  showed scores more of these slain giants. To proceed was almost
+  hopeless, and we were forced to rest upon some timber and mark our
+  future course between piles oozing with turpentine.</p>
+
+  <p>Whilst we were engaged in our calculations, an old crone, who had
+  been groping about in the crevices for chips and sticks, stopped, and
+  seeing us thus penned in by tree boles, eyed us with a compassionate
+  look. &quot;Ja, ja!&quot; said she, &quot;with fallen trees all
+  jumbled together it is hard for the Herrschaft to move on; but
+  it&#39;s harder for us poor folks, who have seen the trees growing
+  here ever since we were born, to hear day and night the axe going
+  hack, hack, and the trees come thudding down. Sixteen strong
+  Welschers from a distance do the work: they knew well enough a
+  Taufern would have looked long at the sixers (ten-kreuzer pieces)
+  before he would have shorn the mighty forests. Look you!&quot; and
+  she pointed to the sky. &quot;As far as you can see they are
+  felling.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>We looked, and sure enough the vast woods that clothed the lofty
+  mountainsides were being ruthlessly cleared away. We suggested that a
+  protest should be made.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, na, na! The woods are none of ours. The graf de Ferraris
+  too has sold the estate to a gesellschaft from Vienna. They care
+  nothing for the castle, but are hungry for timber. The count lives a
+  long way off, and does not feel it, but it must eat the heart of his
+  aged lady mother to the fibres&#8212;she lives in the
+  village&#8212;to know that foreigners are sweeping down masses of
+  trees by wholesale&#8212;trees that have always kept the poor
+  man&#39;s noodles boiling. And where are the planks to come from for
+  our houses, our barns, our stables? And how can the cattle be kept
+  from straying without fences of wood? Then, too, avalanches of snow
+  and of stones will fall, and maybe overwhelm the village. Thanks to
+  the Mother of God! they will drop on my grave, but, Lord Jesus, the
+  children and the children&#39;s children!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Having given us these sad scraps of information, and heaving a big
+  sigh, the poor old soul lifted up her bundle of chips and went
+  fumbling forward over her stumbling-blocks.</p>
+
+  <p>Sad and true was the picture which she had drawn. Nor does it,
+  alas! belong exclusively to Taufers, but to the whole Tyrol. In many
+  instances the people are themselves eager for this reckless clearing.
+  They hope thereby to secure more pasturage, the feeding and rearing
+  of cattle being the great idea of wealth to the Tyroler. So they make
+  ready money of their timber, which now in the form of masts floats on
+  the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal. The Venetians, requiring
+  timber, have turned the once beautiful, richly-wooded Dalmatia into a
+  dreary, barren land. In the Tyrol it is not generally foreigners, but
+  the natives, who unhesitatingly sweep away woods, which, causing
+  grass and plants to grow, have enabled human habitations to be
+  erected on spots that would otherwise be but dreary wildernesses, the
+  battle-fields of chilling winds and scorching sunshine. The precious
+  timber, which like refuse they cart into the clumsy yawning craters
+  called stoves, or else sell out of the country for economy so called,
+  might not only supply the land for centuries with a proper amount of
+  fuel, either as wood or charcoal, but bring prosperity to many a
+  sequestered village if turned into tools and kitchen utensils, whilst
+  still leaving thousands of trees for export. &quot;The supply has
+  never failed yet,&quot; say the Tyrolese: &quot;why should we replant
+  forests to have to cut them down again, when the ground, too, is good
+  for grass or corn?&quot; So the axe lies ruthlessly at the root of
+  every tree, for a heavy reckoning hereafter to the Tyroler.</p>
+
+  <p>With a weighing and balancing over every step which we took worthy
+  of a diplomatist, we finally stood upon the drawbridge of the castle.
+  Here the savage customs of the rude days in which it was built
+  immediately impress the beholder. Traces remain of the ponderous iron
+  portcullis, heavy wooden bars, arrow-holes, and slits in the masonry
+  for the pouring of boiling water or oil upon adverse knight or lordly
+  freebooter. A steep path leads through two great entrance-gates into
+  the large inner court, which is erected upon the virgin rock. A roof
+  of old wooden shingles shelters the well, and ancient rotting timber
+  mingles everywhere with the impervious stone in the massive buildings
+  of the castle, conveying a sense of weakness and decay in the midst
+  of the strongest durability.</p>
+
+  <p>Not only was the old castle dismantled, but apparently entirely
+  abandoned this summer evening. We were preparing to return without
+  seeing the interior when a little maiden arrived from the village,
+  who with flushed face and timid mien drew the castle key from under a
+  big stone, stood on tiptoe and turned the heavy lock, and the door
+  creaking on its hinges we were left to wander at our will through old
+  wainscoted rooms in the dreamy twilight. No spirit of modern
+  restoration had ever reached them: they were allowed to remain just
+  as inconvenient, but also just as quaint, as on the day of their
+  erection. There were gloomy recesses enough, but there were likewise
+  graceful carvings, mottoes, rare tracery and wood-work; while,
+  strange to say, in several chambers grotesque wooden birds were
+  suspended from the ceiling like malformed ducks, conveying at first
+  no idea of the Holy Dove which the old lords had desired to
+  symbolize, yet probably in those unquiet days their best conception
+  of this emblem of peace.</p>
+
+  <p>The barons not only fought, squabbled and feasted, but prayed too
+  in their fashion; so we came upon the chapel, disfigured by barbaric
+  effigies, tawdry ornamentation and flimsy modern artificial flowers.
+  It is still used for the weekly mass which, as at Neuhaus, is read
+  here for the peace of the turbulent lords of Tuvers. Still, within
+  the memory of man a hermit occupied some narrow chambers adjoining
+  the chapel. He had retired amongst these ruins of transitory
+  greatness to warn his fellow-creatures against carnal passions,
+  prayed <span class="pagenum">[pg 149]</span> for the dead and shrived
+  the living. The old anchorite has passed, we hope, into heavenly
+  repose, but cinders, which may almost be called holy ashes, still lie
+  scattered on his deserted little hearth.</p>
+
+  <p>The banqueting-hall, a fine though low room, supported on solid
+  rounded arches, contains innumerable flour-and corn-bins, which,
+  though dating from the Middle Ages, are still in perfect condition.
+  Here knight and baron caroused, here mummers have played and bears
+  have danced, whilst sword and spur clanked upon the rude stone floor.
+  In the ladies&#39; bower above many a minne-singer has struck his
+  lyre. Nay, Oswald von Wolkenstein, a prince amongst troubadours,
+  wearing his golden chain and brilliant orders, has brought tears from
+  many a gentle eye as he sang to his harp his pathetic elegies, the
+  cruelty of Sabina his lady, and his adventures in England, Spain and
+  Persia. He was a noble, courtly knight, conversing in French,
+  Moorish, Catalonian, Castilian, German, Latin, Wendisch, Lombardic
+  and Russian; and his bones lie in the great cloister of Neustift, not
+  half a day&#39;s journey from Taufers.</p>
+
+  <p>How often, too, has the shrill sound of the bugle called to feats
+  of arms in the court, to hawking and hunting in valley and
+  mountain-forest! How many a crusader against Turk, infidel,
+  <i>Prussian</i> and <i>Hussite</i> has crossed the wooden drawbridge
+  upon his war-horse! Yes, and what an excitement in the noble Catholic
+  household when in the adjoining Ahrnthal the peasants, becoming
+  enamored of Lutheranism, rose in the peasant war of 1525! How darkly,
+  too, must they have painted the fanatical bauer Barthlm� Duregger of
+  St. Peter&#39;s in the Ahrnthal, who, after being taken prisoner,
+  escaped near their postern gate to circulate threats of fire and
+  murder throughout the neighborhood, vowing to reduce Bruneck to
+  ashes! Reappearing with a band of twelve poachers and twenty-six
+  laborers, and accompanied by Peter Baszler of Antholz, he robbed and
+  plundered the clergy, stripping the worthy priest Andreas Spaat of
+  all his worldly goods, so that <span class="pagenum">[pg 150]</span>
+  he died in the utmost poverty. Although much blood was shed in their
+  pursuit, this lawless, misguided man and his band were never taken.
+  Great as their sin would naturally seem to the noble family at the
+  castle, no less lamentable and equally worthy of torture and death
+  would the heretics of Bruneck appear. About the same time the
+  sacrilegious books, as they were called, of Zwingli and Luther were
+  sold there openly, conventicle hymns were sung in the streets, and
+  the priest Stephan Gobi preached against the holy doctrine of
+  confession and the invocation of saints; whilst the schoolmaster
+  Bartholomew Huber, though he could not find time to teach the
+  children the catechism, puzzled their innocent minds with
+  Virgil&#39;s <i>Georgics</i> and Cicero&#39;s <i>Letters</i>. Toward
+  the end of the sixteenth century the heresy was suppressed, when the
+  lords and ladies of Taufers Castle sang no doubt a triumphant Te Deum
+  in their chapel. The inmates were not then barons of Tuvers proper,
+  for the title having early become extinct the castle passed into many
+  noble hands, sometimes reaching those of royalty. Such a booty never
+  remained unoccupied, until, coming into the possession of Hieronymus,
+  count of Ferraris, in 1685, his descendants gradually permitted it to
+  fall into ruin, its evil days culminating under the present count,
+  who sold the estate a few years since to a speculating company, who
+  merely value it for the timber. The rooms which still remain
+  habitable are tenanted by peasants and by the sixteen pitiless
+  wood-cutters.</p>
+
+  <p>Seven o&#39;clock the next morning found Frau Anna,
+  E&#8212;&#8212;, the two Margarets and our good Moidel bound full of
+  life and spirits for the Eder Olm. We had soon left the village of
+  Moritz behind us, and were climbing a shady wood-path, when we met a
+  peasant-woman with her daughter, and she exclaimed, &quot;What!
+  Herrschaft going to Rein! What big eyes they will make over the
+  stones!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Sure enough, very big eyes were made by some of the Herrschaft.
+  After ascending to a meadow amphitheatre, then resting in a sunny
+  wood, redolent of pine odors, near the foundations of a ruined
+  stronghold, the Burgkofel, we came upon a realm of gigantic boulders.
+  Some, in the shape of huge granite slabs, formed a rude, continuous
+  broadway; others, scarred and furrowed, but softened and beautified
+  by golden and silver lichen, torn by storms and snow from the
+  cyclopean mountain-walls, were scattered topsy-turvy on either hand;
+  many had become lodged in the river, where they carried on a steady
+  defence against the tumultuous Giessbach, which, having its rise in
+  mountains ten thousand feet high, leapt, foaming milky white, over
+  and between them, forming a long series of bold cascades for a
+  distance of half a dozen miles. The road continued by the boisterous
+  rapids, hemmed in on the other hand by woods and threatening
+  mountain-walls. The thunder of the waters prevented continuous
+  conversation: we therefore admired in silence the grandeur of the
+  scene and the magnificent glimpses which slight curves in the road
+  afforded ever and anon of neighboring mountain-peaks and wooded
+  valleys below.</p>
+
+  <p>No carriage of any kind can ascend this road. It would be
+  difficult indeed for horses; nevertheless, the herds of cattle
+  traverse it in the journey to and from the Olm, their hoofs being
+  able to find foothold on the rock. Moidel said that the cattle were
+  so delighted to go to the Alps for the summer after the winter&#39;s
+  confinement in the stall that they made the journey with a kind of
+  joyful impatience, going on still more eagerly as they approached the
+  end. &quot;Not so, however,&quot; added Moidel, &quot;with the pigs.
+  I have often sat and cried on these rocks at their perverse ways when
+  I have had to bring them up. They would only stand still and grunt
+  while I begged and prayed and pushed. When they reached the top a new
+  spirit soon seized them: they were here, there and
+  everywhere&#8212;in a week&#39;s time leaping like goats, as if they
+  had taken to wine.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>We made the climb slowly, and noon was long passed when we
+  reached the saw-mills, the first houses in the mountain parish of St.
+  Wolfgang or Rein. The busy, purring mills stood on the edge of the
+  Sarine at the extremity of a flat mountain-valley intersected by
+  innumerable brooks, which, continually overflowing, turn it
+  constantly into a lake. The grass had been under water a week
+  previously, but was now sufficiently dry for us to sit and rest.
+  Whilst we were so doing, Ignaz, our <i>tr�ger</i>, stood before us,
+  his empty basket on his back.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;The barn is swept and garnished in readiness for the
+  Herrschaft, and their bundles and parcels are arranged there in
+  beautiful order&#8212;many bundles, and far heavier than they looked
+  last night.&quot; Ignaz, however, was of opinion that though the pay
+  was small the gentry meant well by him, and therefore he had not
+  scrupled to take the food the worthy farmer&#39;s wife had offered
+  him, leaving the Christian soul to be repaid by the gentlefolks when
+  they came. And, moreover, he had advised the landlord at Rein that
+  the gentry were passing through, so that they should not fail to find
+  eatables ready, seeing hunger and weariness were best consoled by
+  food.</p>
+
+  <p>After which communication we regarded Ignaz as much less a clown
+  than he looked. Pushing forward, we soon saw the little inn shining
+  forth a mile farther up the valley&#8212;a small white chalet, with
+  the pink-checked feather beds hanging to air in the upper
+  gallery.</p>
+
+  <p>Moidel looked grave over the dinner which the interposition of
+  Ignaz had prepared for us. &quot;The place is called Rein
+  (clean),&quot; she said, &quot;but it is none of the cleanest. A Graf
+  once reached Rein, and he thought it so pastoral that he asked at the
+  inn for a drink of new milk, but the landlord shook his head and
+  asked for other orders, seeing there was none in the house. Then the
+  Graf said he would take cream, but the landlord shook his head and
+  asked for other orders. Fresh eggs? Yes, the landlord said there were
+  eggs, and begged him to step into the zechstube until they were
+  boiled. When they came they made the very room smell, and the Graf in
+  disgust ordered wine. This was speedily forthcoming, but with so
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 151]</span> dirty a glass that the Graf,
+  making a long face, angrily called for the reckoning and
+  departed.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>After Moidel&#39;s tale, and certain recollections of our own
+  concerning the little hostel last year, we all approached the house
+  with very humble expectations. The wirth, already on the lookout,
+  received Moidel and two of the party as old friends, and hearing no
+  nay he marshaled us up stairs, and flinging open a bed-room door,
+  looked proudly triumphant as even Moidel uttered an exclamation of
+  surprise.</p>
+
+  <p>Whether constant reminders from his neighbors of the Graf&#39;s
+  unfortunate visit, or a wave of civilization from the Pusterthal had
+  reached this secluded mountain-inn, certain it is that twelve months
+  had wrought a marvelous change here. Whilst the rest of the house
+  remained rough, dirty and primitive, the landlord had devoted all his
+  powers of taste and judgment upon this upper chamber. Leaning
+  complacently against the door, he received our congratulations on the
+  pretty ceiling and walls of carved deal wainscot, on the grand new
+  bed, and the bouquet of fresh Edelweiss in a wash-basin, but showed
+  surprise that the fiery tigers and gliding serpents which in a couple
+  of gilt frames adorned the walls received no flattering comments from
+  our lips. He next displayed a visitors&#39; book, containing already
+  some half dozen names, watching closely the astonishment it should
+  produce in us as he prepared the table for our meal. But even the
+  study of the names had to be interrupted, for he had purchased some
+  steel knives and forks, which were, he considered, to bring him great
+  credit and reputation; nor could he complete his work without hinting
+  at the superiority of his table-cloth and napkins. Fortunately, a
+  call from below that the pancakes were ready enabled us to have a
+  little laugh to ourselves. Linen being used in all peasant houses, he
+  had discarded it as vulgar, wearing himself an unbleached cotton
+  shirt with an incipient frill, and supplying his guests with a
+  table-cloth and napkins of the same material from an empty
+  wash-basin.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 152]</span>
+
+  <p>We had already discussed two dishes of hot pancakes&#8212;really
+  worthy of commendation&#8212;enjoyed an hour&#39;s rest, taken
+  coffee, and were rising to depart, when the landlady appeared with a
+  hop, skip and jump. She was a lively, voluble little woman, who,
+  though she had attired herself for us in two enormous cloth
+  petticoats, a stuff bodice and yards of Bohemian lace in frills and
+  ruffles, by way of displaying the wealth of her wardrobe, bobbed and
+  curtseyed as if set on wires. Great was the difficulty, between the
+  amusing, friendly wife and the husband proud of her and his inn,
+  either to pay our bill or get away. They declared there was no hurry
+  about the reckoning, and pressed us still to stay. Seeing our
+  resolution, the wirth with a sigh produced a brown painted board from
+  under his arm, a piece of chalk from his pocket, made the bill, gave
+  us change out of a tea-cup, and amidst reiterated invitations to
+  return if not satisfied with the barn, we tore ourselves away, their
+  friendly good-byes and good wishes floating after us.</p><a name=
+  "tyrolchviii" id="tyrolchviii"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER VIII.</h3>
+
+  <p>We now left the Reinthal and turned into the side-valley of
+  Bachernthal. It was the 17th of August, but the little plots of corn
+  still waved long and green, giving a feeling of early summer. We were
+  in a perfect paradise of an Alpine valley. Before us the great
+  near-lying mountains, the princely Hoch Gall and the Gross Lengstein
+  Glacier, shone like molten silver against the intense blue sky,
+  whilst the Schnebige Nock rose pure and isolated across the narrow
+  valley, suggesting to one of the party the simile of the
+  swan-breasted maiden of Northern mythology.</p>
+
+  <p>After passing several chalets we came to that of the Eder Olm. It
+  belonged to the Hofbauer, and was occupied by his <i>p�chter</i> or
+  bailiff the year round. Here, too, was the barn which we were to use
+  as our night-quarters during our stay. It was a great wooden
+  building, divided into three compartments, one being two-thirds
+  filled with hay, on which we were intended to sleep. It was true that
+  Josef the p�chter had succeeded by means of sweeping and a little
+  arrangement in making the barn really attractive; but, alas! alas! we
+  had hardly begun preparing our beds when the horrible discovery was
+  made that under the surface the hay was soaking wet. Josef could
+  hardly be blamed for not telling us, as in the Tyrol the people
+  regard lying on wet or dewy grass as a natural system of
+  hydropathy.</p>
+
+  <p>We had not shawls and cloaks enough to construct beds upon the
+  barn floor, and the p�chter&#39;s house, though substantial, was but
+  a dark den, already stuffed full with wife and children. Must we,
+  then, really return to the inn at Rein with its ornamental snakes and
+  lions?</p>
+
+  <p>It was dusk out of doors, but pitch dark within, save for the dim,
+  uncertain light of a horn lantern, and, all regularly worn out with
+  our ten miles&#39; climb, we sighed for bed. It was futile, however,
+  simply to exchange expressions of dismay; so, groping about, to our
+  joy we alighted suddenly upon several bundles of clean, fresh straw
+  stowed away in the farthest recess of the opposite division. In a
+  trice a dangerous corn-chopping machine had been removed, the straw
+  loosened and spread out, and, covered with shawls and water-proof, it
+  formed as comfortable a great bed of Ware as ever weary bones could
+  desire. Forming a row, the tired wanderers were soon sleeping the
+  sleep of five just persons, the sound of several neighboring
+  waterfalls soothing rather than disturbing slumber.</p>
+
+  <p>In the early morning it was put to the vote and carried that eider
+  down and spring mattresses were useless innovations after luxurious
+  straw, and that whilst some benighted people might regard us as
+  having been in purgatory, we had been in paradise, and hoped to be
+  there again within twenty-four hours. And the barn, too! How poor in
+  comparison seemed a conventional house on this sweet Sunday morning!
+  We had prudently filled all the large apertures in the eaves and
+  wooden sides the night before <span class="pagenum">[pg 153]</span>
+  with hay, but there were plenty of crevices for the sun to peep in
+  by, whilst with wafts of mountain-air it entered freely by the
+  folding barn door as Moidel gently passed in and out, on breakfast
+  matters intent. Corn- and grain-bins, sieves, flails and ladders
+  pleased us better for the nonce than formal furniture, although none
+  the less convenient did we find the great square wooden table and the
+  benches which the p�chter had thoughtfully placed on the
+  threshing-floor which formed the central division.</p><a name=
+  "image-0033" id="image-0033"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0031_1.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0031_1.jpg" alt="SCHLOSS TAUFERS." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">SCHLOSS TAUFERS.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>On one side of the barn a small room had been boarded off. It
+  contained empty milk-pans, ox-bells, old ropes and cords, together
+  with two chests and two pairs of men&#39;s strong leather boots.
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 154]</span> This, Moidel suggested, should
+  be used as joint store-room and dressing-room. Fortunately, however,
+  we had applied it to neither requirement, when a singular occurrence
+  took place which might be classed as a ghost-story at night or an
+  optical delusion by day. The great barn-door quietly opened, Moidel
+  having gone out and shut it, and two figures&#8212;one in soiled
+  homespun shirt and <i>loden</i> trousers, wooden clogs, with a little
+  black leather skull-cap on his head and a pipe in his mouth; the
+  other older, in leather breeches, brown knitted worsted jacket, and
+  an old black silk handkerchief tied round his neck&#8212;glided in.
+  We could have sworn that they were Jakob and the old senner Franz,
+  but no response came to our exclamation of recognition, and in a
+  second they had vanished into the said little room, where all
+  remained, however, as silent as before. Two of us now began even to
+  doubt, but the other two were positive, that figures had floated in.
+  Ten minutes later the mystery was solved by the identical Jakob,
+  attended by Franz, reappearing from the chamber, not, however, in the
+  hard-working dress in which they had entered, but in full Sunday
+  array, the leather boots upon their feet and broad-brimmed,
+  flower-bedecked beavers in their hands. Poor Jakob! sore must have
+  been his perplexity when, in the hope of slinking into his
+  wardrobe-room unobserved, we had come open-eyed upon him in his
+  soiled array. At the cost of apparent rudeness, arising chiefly from
+  shyness, he had silently disappeared, the old servant following his
+  example. Now, however, they could both freely welcome us to the Olm,
+  expressing the pleasure it would give them to accompany us to the
+  senner huts on their return with Moidel at ten o&#39;clock from
+  church.</p>
+
+  <p>This was Jakob&#39;s first introduction to Frau Anna and
+  E&#8212;&#8212;. He eyed them closely and silently for some minutes;
+  then said, &quot;I like them: they look good!&quot; and so they went
+  to mass.</p>
+
+  <p>The barn and chalet called Eder formed part of the Hofbauer&#39;s
+  lower Alp, where a little later in the season the cattle were brought
+  down for several weeks of pasturage before they descended to their
+  winter home. We were now bound in company with the returning
+  church-goers for the group of senner huts belonging to the larger
+  still more elevated tract, which the Hofbauer rented in company with
+  five other bauers. Leaving the meadows very shortly after quitting
+  our night-quarters, where we seemed already in the very bosom of the
+  snow-mountains, we began again to ascend through a wood of primeval
+  pines and fir trees, long gray moss hanging from their hoary branches
+  like patriarchs&#39; beards, whilst round their stems, amidst a chaos
+  of rocks, were spread the softest carpets of moss and lichen. In the
+  centre of the wood, where an opening covered with the finest turf
+  afforded an agreeable resting-place, as usual a cross&#8212;that most
+  familiar object in a Tyrolese landscape&#8212;had been erected. In
+  this instance, more striking and melancholy than ever, for this
+  general point of attraction to peasants seemed here, in the very
+  heart of the mountains, to be forgotten and despised. Small in size,
+  as if wood had been grudged in this land of wood, the writing on the
+  cross erased by storms, the dissevered arms and limbs were painfully
+  scattered on the sward below&#8212;type indeed as of a powerless
+  Saviour unable to save or to bless. Indeed, so offensive and
+  discordant did this pitiable emblem appear, and in such mocking
+  contrast to the sublimity of the scene, that we spoke of it to
+  Moidel, as, laden with our eatables, she came slowly up behind.
+  &quot;Ah,&quot; she replied, &quot;it is not that the cross is left
+  unregarded, nor is it age which has thus damaged it, but the wild
+  storms and lasting snows. A new cross is often erected, but it has
+  not long been exposed before it is again utterly defaced. The
+  herdsmen and senners, however, see the meaning under it, and it keeps
+  them straight, Fr�ulein.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Well-intentioned but slow of apprehension, these poor peasants
+  cling to a carved Christ, and feel a horrible alarm, as if you were
+  offering them a vacant creed, when you touch upon anything
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 155]</span> higher. Thus Moidel, though
+  very intelligent, looked somewhat grave and quiet until the woods
+  opened and she had to point out the senner huts. These were rude but
+  very picturesque log cabins, built in a clearing amongst a steep
+  chaos of rocks, with the glaciers and the majestic peak of the Hoch
+  Gall shining above all. Five were dwelling-houses, the rest
+  cattle-sheds and barns: our people&#39;s hut was the highest of the
+  group, and we had a long climb over the boulders before we reached
+  it.</p>
+
+  <p>Seeing us approaching, good old Franz, who had gone forward in
+  advance, fastened on his apron and fried marvelous monograms and
+  circles of cream batter, of which we, the guests, were soon partaking
+  in the best room, otherwise the store-room and dairy. The hut was
+  divided into two compartments, both entered by adjoining doors from
+  the outside. Seated on milking-stools in somewhat dangerous proximity
+  to pans of rich cream, balls of butter and cheeses, the salt and
+  meal-bin served as our dining table. In the kitchen, Franz, resting
+  from his successful culinary labors, sat with Moidel and Jakob by the
+  hearth, where huge blocks of stone kept the fire in compass, the
+  smoke curling out of the door, and enjoyed in return some of our ham,
+  wine and almond cake.</p><a name="image-0034" id="image-0034">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0034_1.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0034_1.jpg" alt="HAPPY SOULS IN PARADISE." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">HAPPY SOULS IN PARADISE.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>The hut was close quarters, even for the two ordinary inmates:
+  there were, however, innumerable contrivances for stowing away all
+  kinds of useful things, besides notches in the thick wooden partition
+  for hands and feet when at night they crept to their burrow of hay
+  under the low eaves. Everything with the exception of the old stone
+  floor was scrupulously clean: without, the pigs dabbled in the mire
+  between the rugged rocks, and nettles grew, but beyond, mountains,
+  woods and illimitable space were spread in uninterrupted
+  fullness.</p>
+
+  <p>Resting after dinner at a little distance from the huts, we
+  learned from Jakob, who was full of excitement on the subject, that
+  shortly after we left the inn at Rein the preceding evening a
+  gentleman from Bohemia arrived. He immediately communicated to the
+  wirth his intention of ascending one of the three great mountains
+  rising from the Bachernthal, either the Hoch Gall (11,283 feet high),
+  the Wild Gall or the Schnebige Nock, both some thousand feet lower,
+  but perhaps even more attractive, as still possessing the charm of
+  untrodden summits. The wirth consequently sent for a fine, clever
+  young fellow, Johann Ausserkofer, <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  156]</span> a friend of Jakob&#39;s, and whose home we had passed on
+  the previous night before reaching the Eder Olm. He had ascended the
+  Hoch Gall with two gentlemen in the August of the former year, and
+  now recommended an attempt at the still virgin Wild Gall. The
+  arrangement being speedily made, for extra help and security Johann
+  fetched his younger brother, Josef, as a companion, and the little
+  party started by torchlight at two o&#39;clock in the morning.</p>
+
+  <p>Jakob now produced a telescope, through which he hoped we might
+  detect moving figures amongst the snow of the Wild Gall. In vain we
+  strained our eyes through the greasy old telescope, for neither
+  moving figures nor stationary black dots were visible. Even Jakob
+  with his eagle eye confessed to seeing no trace of man either amongst
+  the irregular ash-colored rocks or upon the snowy curves of the Wild
+  Gall, which, like a huge white-crested breaker at sea, upheaved
+  itself in the air as in the very act of turning. Quite as solitary
+  and untrodden did it look as its still more stately sister, the Hoch
+  Gall, a mountain deservedly the especial pride of the district, its
+  lofty pinnacle piercing the sky, whilst a vast sheet of thick, pure
+  snow hung straight and smooth down its concave sides, a huge
+  mountain-buttress linking the lower portion of this snow pyramid to
+  the white, glittering expanse of the Gross Lengstein Glacier&#8212;a
+  buttress of many thousand feet, standing prominently forth like an
+  antediluvian monster, on whose gigantic pachydermatous flanks the
+  shattered, blasted stems of dead uniform fir trees shone out a
+  silvery gray, mingling in color with the loose, glittering d�bris
+  which had slidden into the upland valley just below. Two silver
+  threads descending from the glaciers of the Hoch Gall wound through
+  these fallen stones into the green turf of the Bachernthal, but
+  whether formed of snow or water it would have been difficult to
+  decide, had not ever and anon a sound as of a distant train been
+  borne upon the breeze, proving them to be brooks, which helped to
+  swell the roaring, tumbling Giessbach, whose boisterous acquaintance
+  we had already made.</p>
+
+  <p>The Hoch Gall, which has been twice ascended, was first attempted
+  in 1869 by a very adventurous, clever young Alpine climber, Karl
+  Hofmann, the only son of a well-known physician of Munich&#8212;a
+  youth of whom it is said that no study was too difficult, no danger
+  too great, no peak too high for him. Innumerable were the mountains
+  which he scaled between 1866 and 1870, and of which he wrote
+  excellent, accurate descriptions: then laying down his young
+  life&#8212;he was but twenty-three&#8212;on September 2, 1870, in the
+  fierce battle of Sedan, his spirit passed away to mightier slopes, to
+  more delectable mountains.</p>
+
+  <p>Again, in the August of 1871, after our first visit to the Olm,
+  the ascent was repeated by two other members of the Tyrolese Alpine
+  Club, Herr Richter and Herr Str�dl. They brought with them two
+  experienced men&#8212;one the chief guide of the Gross Glockner, the
+  other of the Venediger Spitze&#8212;and, except for Hofmann&#39;s
+  written description, had to plan and calculate for themselves, there
+  being no local knowledge of the mountain attainable, as the two
+  guides who accompanied the young explorer were also dead.</p>
+
+  <p>Although well provided with their own guides, they thought it
+  right to take some active young man of the neighborhood with them, in
+  order that he in his turn might help future climbers. At the
+  recommendation of the landlord of Rein&#8212;who on this important
+  occasion commenced his visitors&#39; book&#8212;they chose for the
+  purpose Jakob&#39;s friend, Johann Ausserkofer. They started by
+  torchlight one Monday morning, and after a steep climb through a wild
+  mountain-forest on the opposite side of the Bachernthal, crossing a
+  vast glacier and the crevasse between the Hoch Gall and the Wild
+  Gall, began the real ascent, which proved so perpendicular as to be
+  achieved principally with the aid of ropes. After a toilsome nine
+  hours and a quarter they had the good fortune to reach the summit in
+  safety. The weather was favorable, and the view, in Richter&#39;s
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 157]</span> opinion, far surpassed the
+  much-vaunted panorama from the Kriml Tauern. A long rest, and raising
+  a cromlech in memory of their bold achievement, and then the steep
+  descent over snow and glaciers was effected, and St. Wolfgang reached
+  after fourteen hours of toil and great danger.</p><a name=
+  "image-0035" id="image-0035"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0037_1.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0037_1.jpg" alt="CROSSING THE TORRENT." /></a>
+
+    <p class="center">CROSSING THE TORRENT.</p>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>At half-past four, Jakob, having crossed the valley in search of
+  his oxen, came upon the Bohemian gentleman&#8212;whose name afterward
+  proved to be Dr. Hecht&#8212;with the two Ausserkofers, and learned
+  their adventures in the ascent of the Wild Gall. After clambering
+  over steep, slippery glaciers they had begun the climb proper at five
+  o&#39;clock in the morning, Dr. Hecht pushing forward in order to be
+  the first human being who had ever placed his foot upon the summit of
+  the mountain. He had indeed almost reached the highest point when a
+  dark, terrific chasm suddenly yawned beneath him, entirely cutting
+  off all farther progress. The three explorers, although considerably
+  dejected by the disagreeable check and the waste of labor and time
+  which it had involved, determining not to be baffled, resolved to
+  make a considerable d�tour. After having, with much trouble, reached
+  a lower plateau, they attacked the precipitous, almost invincible
+  mountain from another side, the still early hour of the day alone
+  permitting the renewal of the attempt. Leaving their telescope and
+  provisions to await their return, they boldly scrambled, crept and
+  worked their way up the scaly side, and finally reached the summit in
+  safety. The view thence they declared to be magnificent. They too
+  raised a cromlech, and then a giddy descent followed. However, all
+  three were full of spirits when Jakob met them, and the Ausserkofers
+  declared that they were ready henceforth to pilot any other tourist
+  to the summit for a moderate four or five gulden apiece.</p>
+
+  <p>Jakob, as herdsman, had left us at three o&#39;clock to look after
+  the cattle, we strolling with him as far as a wild old wood which
+  formed a strange contrast to this Sunday afternoon, as lovely an
+  August day as ever rejoiced the earth. The near yet unattainable Hoch
+  Gall glittered coldly white between the stems and branches of
+  gigantic pines, which, scathed and bleached by lightning and storm,
+  rose in the form of ruined towers or lay tumbled about in the
+  wildest, dreariest confusion amongst the rugged enormous rocks, fit
+  emblems of the forest in the Inferno inhabited by the souls of the
+  lost. Nor was this stern, <span class="pagenum">[pg 158]</span>
+  forbidding scene enlivened when a melancholy man, carrying the dead
+  body of a goat across his shoulders, crossed the torrent on a fallen
+  tree and advanced slowly up the craggy path, followed by a little boy
+  timidly picking his way behind.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Ach, Mathies, in God&#39;s name, another goat!&quot; said
+  Moidel, lifting her eyes from a little book, the life of the odd,
+  humane Joseph II., which, bought for a few kreuzers at a fair, was
+  worth as many guldens in the pleasure which it gave her.</p>
+
+  <p>The man glanced from under his eyebrows, and answered with a sigh,
+  &quot;<i>Gott hat&#39;s so w�lln, Diendl</i>&quot; (&quot;God would
+  have it so, maiden&quot;); and then he added in dialect, &quot;It was
+  a beautiful creature. I missed it in the reckoning last night. After
+  mass I strode far and wide searching it, until an hour since I found
+  the body hanging by a hind hoof from a cleft in the Auvogl Nock. See,
+  it has broken its leg in its struggles. Ah, poor beast! A solitary,
+  cruel death, <i>und hast ma g&#39;nomma mei Ruah</i>&quot; (&quot;and
+  it has taken my rest from me&quot;).</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Poor Mathies! his half dozen goats are all that he has in
+  the world. He rents one of father&#39;s huts, but since he has
+  brought them to the Olm two or three are already dead.&quot; This
+  Moidel explained to us as he moved dejectedly forward. &quot;Father,
+  however, told him that our Olm was bad for goats. They not only slip
+  from the rocks, but grow thin and weakly. Just the reverse of the
+  cattle. Onkel Johann&#8212;there is no one so deep as he in
+  cattle&#8212;says that every blade of grass on our Olm is worth half
+  a pint of milk. And it&#39;s not the air, nor the water, nor the
+  winds that make it wholesome, but some law that he cannot understand.
+  Who can? There is Jagdhaus, a wonderfully fertile <i>sennerei</i> an
+  hour beyond Rein. It is far finer than our Olm, which is so
+  mountainous that timid new-comers amongst the cattle must first teach
+  themselves to walk about; but at Jagdhaus, which is as large as a
+  village, all the land is smooth, fat pasturage for miles. Yet a curse
+  rests on the place for which neither priests nor farmers can account.
+  Some seasons, it is true, all goes well, but in others the cattle are
+  suddenly bitten, fall dead, and their flesh then turns black and
+  rustles like paper. Some say that it is an insect or animal that
+  attacks them; others, that it is caused by the grass which they eat;
+  and there are again others who are sure that it is a phantom which,
+  touching them, blasts them. And there seems reason in the idea,
+  because when the priest of Taufers, who has an Olm there, goes and
+  says mass and prays for the cattle, or when the <i>Sterniwitz</i>
+  (landlord of the Stern), who has acres of pasturage and many heads of
+  cattle at Jagdhaus, pays a Capuchin to go thither and pray, the
+  murrain ceases.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>In Moidel&#39;s tale we had almost forgotten our long walk back to
+  the barn and the arrangement for supper previously at the huts. Now,
+  it curiously happened that whilst waiting for the
+  tea-pan&#8212;rather than tea-kettle&#8212;to boil, I accidentally
+  alighted upon a people&#39;s calendar, published at Brixen for the
+  current year, protruding its somewhat greasy pages from behind a
+  churn; and after turning over long black-and red-lettered lists of
+  fasts and feasts, came upon some pertinent advice to the Tyrolese
+  farmers by Adolph Trientl, concerning <i>Milzbrand</i>. He described
+  it as a dreadful pestilence, the scourge of many a mountain-pasture.
+  Hundreds of cattle, he tells them, are sacrificed to it yearly. Even
+  the deer and lesser game die from the contagion, as well as human
+  beings; death in the latter case being occasioned either by eating
+  the meat of diseased animals or by having cuts or wounds which have
+  come in contact with the victims. Even the bite of a fly which has
+  fed on the contaminated meat will propagate the malady. Hides or
+  reins made of the skins are known years after to reproduce Milzbrand.
+  Where the body of an affected animal has been buried the ground
+  becomes contagious for a long run of years, the cattle pasturing
+  there being attacked. The only remedy consists in burning the
+  contaminated body, and then keeping the live-stock from the place
+  where the victim fell. When Milzbrand appears the farmer feels he has
+  no option between sacrificing his cattle and abandoning for a season
+  his rich pastures. And yet a little attention might soon cause a
+  remedy, the evil often arising from the water of a particular pool or
+  brook, which if carefully guarded against makes the rest of the Alp
+  perfectly secure.</p>
+
+  <p>When I ventured to quote from the calendar to Moidel, suggesting
+  that at Jagdhaus it might certainly be the water, she remained
+  impervious to any new views on the subject. &quot;There was
+  Milzbrand, and that might arise from the water, for all she knew, but
+  at Jagdhaus it was a rod of God, which only prayer averted.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Adolf Trientl appears to be a Tyrolese priest, who travels
+  annually through his native land watching closely the agriculture and
+  domestic economy, and trying, countenanced by government, to help his
+  country people to an easier working life, healthier houses and more
+  profitable land. To the credit of the clergy of Brixen, his practical
+  often pithy remarks are published in their church calendar. He and
+  his colleagues must, however, use almost supernatural patience and
+  energy before they can move a Tyroler one jot from the beaten path
+  which his ancestors have taken for a thousand years before him. The
+  people are perfectly content, it is pleaded, with the existing state
+  of things: why should they change their sowing or ploughing any more
+  than the sun his course or the mountains their position? Changes,
+  like bad weather, breed discontent.</p>
+
+  <p>We had brought no books with us for our five days at the Olm, and
+  in the pauses of our out-door enjoyment the calendar, greasy rather
+  from contact with butter and milk than with fingers, afforded
+  amusing, profitable reading: a lecture may often be pleasant to hear
+  when not addressed to one&#39;s self.</p>
+
+  <p>Moidel, Jakob and Franz, though they had looked with blind eyes on
+  the print, did not turn deaf ears when we spoke; only we had to
+  manage that all we said and thought did not come as a quoted
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 159]</span> sermon, but as suggestions and
+  inquiries from us, who did not know half as much about a dairy and
+  farm-life as they did. First of all, we tried to make them believe
+  that the staff of life need not of necessity be rye bread of so hard
+  and flinty a nature as to require in every house a square wooden
+  board and iron chopper to cut it.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said Moidel, &quot;it is very hard for old
+  people, who must needs sop it, but while one&#39;s teeth are good the
+  crunching is a pleasure. And then it must needs be dry, because the
+  oven can only be heated once in three months. I wish it could come
+  round oftener, for there is no going to bed on baking nights, with
+  some three hundred loaves to pop into the oven.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;How could the poor bake often,&quot; suggested Jakob,
+  &quot;when there is only one oven amongst them in the
+  village?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why,&quot; said we, looking very learned, &quot;you have a
+  common schoolmaster, and a common swineherd, and a common goose-boy:
+  why not have a common baker, who knew how to make good, light dough,
+  and could bake a good batch of bread for each family
+  weekly?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>To Franz, eating good bread only a few days old appeared woeful
+  extravagance. &quot;Bread,&quot; he said, &quot;should be like rocks
+  to last, not like snow to melt away. The rye meal would fly before
+  the wind at that rate, and where would the poor man then
+  be?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Butter and cheese-making, however, involved hours of deep
+  discussion. You would indeed have thought that man merely came into
+  the world to make butter and cheese. Personal experience after two
+  summers in the Tyrol had made us reflect very much upon the butter
+  and cheese question. Whether regarded as a luxury or a necessity, the
+  Swiss Gruy�re and Emmenthal cheese and the fresh dainty pats of
+  butter made the contrast striking in the Tyrol. The milk and cream
+  were rich and delicious, but became simply loathsome when transformed
+  into butter or cheese. We wondered how and why it was that we could
+  never obtain perfectly palatable butter, until we discovered the
+  universal <span class="pagenum">[pg 160]</span> practice of churning
+  it, without salt, into huge oblong balls, large as the nave of a
+  wheel, which naturally soon turn rancid. It does not on this account
+  lose its value to the natives, who use very little butter, melting it
+  down into a clarified dripping called Schmalz for their endless
+  fryings and frizzlings. This badly made butter is, however, often
+  adorned with the emblems of the Passion, such as the cross, ladder,
+  crown of thorns and nails. It was so at the Hofbauer&#39;s Olm. It is
+  considered to enhance the value of the butter <i>Kugel</i> or ball,
+  especially when given to the priest in payment for masses said for
+  dead relations. The Ursuline Sisters were paid for Moidel&#39;s
+  education in butter.</p>
+
+  <p>And the native cheese!&#8212;meagre cheese, as it is justly
+  called&#8212;a poor, insipid, not overclean curd cheese. The curds
+  are often merely squeezed in a cloth, then turned out and placed upon
+  an upper shelf to dry, where they look like the back portions of
+  gigantic skulls until damp and mould somewhat destroy the
+  resemblance. The kind called fat cheese is not much better. It is,
+  however, made with greater care, and dried in bands of pine bark in
+  the Alpine kitchen. This distasteful butter and cheese, the sole
+  result of gallons of rich milk and cream and many a long summer week
+  upon the lofty Alp, becomes still more distasteful when the milk and
+  cream are kept in the one hot, over-crowded sleeping-room, or in a
+  dairy where the goatherd sleeps amongst the milk-dishes. The mountain
+  dwellings are dark and badly constructed, and if furnished with a
+  proper dairy, the prejudiced housewife often refuses to use it,
+  believing that cream will not set unless the milk is warm; thus, much
+  becomes sour, and is either thrown away or turned into a still more
+  inferior cheese. Or she purposely lets the cream become rancid before
+  she churns, that the children may not take too great a fancy to the
+  Schmalz, and thus it may last longer!</p>
+
+  <p>We had tasted already too much of this milky tree of knowledge not
+  to learn with pleasure from the Brixen calendar that in different
+  parts of the Tyrol co-operative <i>sennereien</i> had been started
+  with the greatest success. A manager was employed in each who
+  understood perfectly the Swiss mode of cheese-making and the best
+  manner of churning. Thus, the most excellent produce was gained from
+  the same, or rather from a smaller, quantity of milk, when the
+  reckless waste was deducted. Each shareholder had the right of
+  skimming the milk from his own cows, taking what he required for his
+  personal use, or he might send his entire share of butter, cheese,
+  whey and goats&#39; milk with the common stock to market, where such
+  co-operative wares already brought the highest price. Thus, the
+  farmer gained both ways, not only receiving more money, but saving in
+  dairy utensils, house room and fuel, and his wife in labor.</p>
+
+  <p>Great was our glee over these enlightened and successful efforts;
+  but a friendly dispute immediately arose when one amongst us
+  expressed a surprise that the half dozen bauers who shared the Olm in
+  common did not manage matters on this improved principle. They would
+  find themselves richer, more care-free men. Moidel declared her
+  inability to form an opinion. Old Franz, however, had much to say. He
+  thought it would be foolish. Why need the Hofbauer mix himself up
+  with others, when he only wanted to make meagre cheese for family
+  use, while if there were any over it always brought its worth in
+  kreuzers at the market? And then the pounds and pounds of butter were
+  all wanted for Schmalz. It might be sweeter, it is true, if they
+  could melt it down at the hut, but then there was the fear of setting
+  the place on fire, and the home-melted Schmalz went fast enough, as
+  Moidel knew. And as for the artificial Schmalz which was being sold
+  in the towns now, it was made of palm-oil, fresh suet and butter, and
+  colored with the yellow dye called Orleans; and people praised this
+  machine-made Schmalz and talked of progress! But he hoped, so long as
+  he handled a frying-pan, to stick to good old Schmalz and good old
+  ways.</p>
+
+  <p class="author">MARGARET HOWITT.</p>
+
+  <p class="center">[TO BE CONTINUED.]</p><a name="churchsteps" id=
+  "churchsteps"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>ON THE CHURCH STEPS.</h2><a name="churchstepschi" id=
+  "churchstepschi"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  161]</span>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER I.</h3>
+
+  <p>What a picture she was as she sat there, my own Bessie! and what a
+  strange place it was to rest on, those church steps! Behind us lay
+  the Woolsey woods, with their wooing fragrance of pine and soft
+  rushes of scented air; and the lakes were in the distance, lying very
+  calm in the cloud-shadows and seeming to wait for us to come. But
+  to-day Bessie would nothing of lakes or ledges: she would sit on the
+  church steps.</p>
+
+  <p>In front of us, straight to the gate, ran a stiff little walk of
+  white pebbles, hard and harsh as some bygone creed.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Think of little bare feet coming up here, Bessie!&quot; I
+  said with a shiver. &quot;It is too hard. And every carriage that
+  comes up the hill sees us.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And why shouldn&#39;t they see us?&quot; said my lady,
+  turning full upon me. &quot;I am not ashamed to be here.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Churches should always have soft walks of turf; and
+  lovers,&quot; I would fain have added, &quot;should have naught but
+  whispering leaves about them.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>But Bessie cut me short in her imperious way: &quot;But we are not
+  lovers this morning: at least,&quot; with a half-relenting look at my
+  rueful face, &quot;we are very good friends, and I choose to sit here
+  to show people that we are.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What do you care for <i>people</i>&#8212;the Bartons or the
+  Meyricks?&quot; as I noticed a familiar family carriage toiling up
+  the hill, followed by a lighter phaeton. I recognized already in the
+  latter vehicle the crimson feather of Fanny Meyrick, and &quot;the
+  whip that was a parasol.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Shall I step out into the road this minute, and stop those
+  ladies like a peaceable highwayman, and tell them you have promised
+  to marry me, and that their anxiety as to our intimacy may be at
+  rest? Give me but leave and I will do it. It will make Mrs. Barton
+  comfortable. Then you and I can walk away into those beckoning woods,
+  and I can have you all to myself.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Indeed she was worth having. With the witchery that some girls
+  know, she had made a very picture of herself that morning, as I have
+  said. Some soft blue muslin stuff was caught up around her in airy
+  draperies&#8212;nothing stiff or frilled about her: all was soft and
+  flowing, from the falling sleeve that showed the fair curve of her
+  arm to the fold of her dress, the ruffle under which her little foot
+  was tapping, impatiently now. A little white hat with a curling blue
+  feather shaded her face&#8212;a face I won&#39;t trust myself to
+  describe, save by saying that it was the brightest and truest, as I
+  then thought, in all the world.</p>
+
+  <p>She said something rapidly in Italian&#8212;she is always
+  artificial when she uses a foreign tongue&#8212;and this I caught but
+  imperfectly, but it had a proverbial air about it of the error of too
+  hasty assumptions.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, now I&#39;ll tell you something,&quot; she said as the
+  carriages disappeared over the top of the hill. &quot;Fanny Meyrick
+  is going abroad in October, and we shall not see her for ever so
+  long.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Going abroad? Good gracious! That was the very thing I had to tell
+  her that morning&#8212;that I too was ordered abroad. An estate to be
+  settled&#8212;some bothering old claim that had been handed down from
+  generation to generation, and now springing into life again by the
+  lapsing of two lives on the other side. But how to tell her as she
+  looked up into my face with the half-pleading, half-imperious smile
+  that I knew so well? How to tell her <i>now</i>?</p>
+
+  <p>So I said nothing, but foolishly pushed the little pebbles aside
+  with my stick, fatuously waiting for the subject to pass. Of course
+  my silence brought an instant criticism: &quot;Why, Charlie, what
+  ails you?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Nothing. And really, Bessie, what <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  162]</span> is it to us whether Fanny Meyrick go or stay?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I shouldn&#39;t have thought it <i>was</i> anything. But
+  your silence, your confusion&#8212;Charlie, you do care a little for
+  her, after all.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Two years ago, before Bessie and I had ever met, I had fluttered
+  around Fanny Meyrick for a season, attracted by her bright brown eyes
+  and the gypsy flush on her cheek. But there were other moths
+  fluttering around that adamantine candle too; and I was not long in
+  discovering that the brown eyes were bright for each and all, and
+  that the gypsy flush was never stirred by feeling or by thought. It
+  was merely a fixed ensign of health and good spirits. Consequently
+  the charm had waned, for me at least; and in my confessions to Bessie
+  since our near intimacy it was she, not I, who had magnified it into
+  the shadow even of a serious thought.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Care for her? Nonsense, Bessie! Do you want me to call her a
+  mere doll, a hard, waxen&#8212;no, for wax will melt&#8212;a Parian
+  creature, such as you may see by the dozens in Schwartz&#39;s window
+  any day? It doesn&#39;t gratify you, surely, to hear me say that of
+  any woman.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>And then&#8212;what possessed me?&#8212;I was so angry at myself
+  that I took a mental <i>r�sum�</i> of all the good that could be said
+  of Fanny Meyrick&#8212;her generosity, her constant cheerfulness; and
+  in somewhat headlong fashion I expressed myself: &quot;I won&#39;t
+  call her a dolt and an idiot, even to please you. I have seen her do
+  generous things, and she is never out of temper.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Thanks!&quot; said Bessie, nodding her head till the blue
+  feather trembled. &quot;It is as well, as Aunt Sloman says, to keep
+  my shortcomings before you.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;When did Aunt Sloman say that?&quot; I interrupted, hoping
+  for a diversion of the subject.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;This morning only. I was late at breakfast. You know,
+  Charlie, I was <i>so</i> tired with that long horseback ride, and of
+  course everything waited. Dear aunty never <i>will</i> begin until I
+  come down, but sits beside the urn like the forlornest of martyrs,
+  and reads last night&#39;s papers over and over again.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well? And was she sorry that she had not invited me to wait
+  with her?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said Bessie. &quot;She said all sorts of things,
+  and,&quot; flushing slightly, &quot;that it was a pity you
+  shouldn&#39;t know beforehand what you were to expect.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I wish devoutly that I had been there,&quot; seizing the
+  little hand that was mournfully tapping the weatherbeaten stone, and
+  forcing the downcast eyes to look at me. &quot;I think, both
+  together, we could have pacified Aunt Sloman.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>It <i>was</i> a diversion, and after a little while Bessie
+  professed she had had enough of the church steps.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;How those people do stare! Is it the W&#8212;&#8212;s, do
+  you think, Charlie? I heard yesterday they were coming.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>From our lofty position on the hillside we commanded the road
+  leading out of the village&#8212;the road that was all alive with
+  carriages on this beautiful September morning. The W&#8212;&#8212;
+  carriage had half halted to reconnoitre, and had only not hailed us
+  because we had sedulously looked another way.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Let&#39;s get away,&quot; I said, &quot;for the next carnage
+  will not only stop, but come over;&quot; and Bessie suffered herself
+  to be led through the little tangle of brier and fern, past the gray
+  old gravestones with &quot;Miss Faith&quot; and &quot;Miss
+  Mehitable&quot; carved upon them, and into the leafy shadow of the
+  waiting woods.</p>
+
+  <p>Other lovers have been there before us, but the trees whisper no
+  secrets save their own. The subject of our previous discussion was
+  not resumed, nor was Fanny Meyrick mentioned, until on our homeward
+  road we paused a moment on the hilltop, as we always did.</p>
+
+  <p>It is indeed a hill of vision, that church hill at Lenox.
+  Sparkling far to the south, the blue Dome lay, softened and shining
+  in the September sun. There was ineffable peace in the faint blue
+  sky, and, stealing up from the valley, a shimmering haze that seemed
+  to veil the bustling village and soften all the rural sounds.</p>
+
+  <p>Bessie drew nearer to me, shading her eyes as she looked down into
+  the valley: &quot;Charlie dear, let us stay here always. We shall be
+  happier, better here than to go back to New York.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And the law-business?&quot; I asked like a brutal bear,
+  bringing the realities of life into my darling&#39;s girlish
+  dream.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Can&#39;t you practice law in Foxcroft, and drive over there
+  every morning? People do.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And because they do, and there are enough of them, I must
+  plod along in the ways that are made for me already. We can make
+  pilgrimages here, you know.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I suppose so,&quot; said Bessie with a sigh.</p>
+
+  <p>Just then Fanny Kemble&#39;s clock in the tower above us struck
+  the hour&#8212;one, two, three.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Bless me! so late? And there&#39;s that phaeton coming back
+  over the hill again. Hurry, Charlie! don&#39;t let them see us.
+  They&#39;ll think that we&#39;ve been here all the time.&quot; And
+  Bessie plunged madly down the hill, and struck off into the side-path
+  that leads into the Lebanon road. The last vibrations of the bell
+  were still trembling on the air as I caught up with her again.</p>
+
+  <p>But again the teasing mood of the morning had come over her. Quite
+  out of breath with the run, as we sat down to rest on the little
+  porch of Mrs. Sloman&#39;s cottage she said, very earnestly,
+  &quot;But you haven&#39;t once said it.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Said what, my darling?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;That you are glad that Fanny is going abroad.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Nonsense! Why should I be glad?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Are you sorry, then?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>If I had but followed my impulse then, and said frankly that I
+  was, and why I was! But Mrs. Sloman was coming through the little
+  hall: I heard her step. Small time for explanation, no time for
+  reproaches. And I could not leave Bessie, on that morning of all
+  others, hurt or angry, or only half convinced.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, I am not sorry,&quot; I said, pulling down a branch of
+  honeysuckle, and making a loop of it to draw around her neck.
+  &quot;It is nothing, either way.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Then say after me if it is nothing&#8212;feel as I feel for
+  one minute, won&#39;t you?&quot;</p><span class="pagenum">[pg
+  163]</span>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes, indeed.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Say, after me, then, word for word, &#39;I am glad,
+  <i>very</i> glad, that Fanny Meyrick is to sail in October. I would
+  not have her stay on this side for <i>worlds</i>!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>And like a fool, a baby, I said it, word for word, from those
+  sweet smiling lips: &quot;I am glad, <i>very</i> glad, that Fanny
+  Meyrick is to sail in October. I would not have her stay on this side
+  for <i>worlds</i>!&quot;</p><a name="churchstepschii" id=
+  "churchstepschii"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER II.</h3>
+
+  <p>The next day was Sunday, and I was on duty at an early hour,
+  prepared to walk with Bessie to church. My darling was peculiar among
+  women in this: her church-going dress was sober-suited; like a little
+  gray nun, almost, she came down to me that morning. Her dress, of
+  some soft gray stuff, fell around her in the simplest folds, a knot
+  of brown ribbon at her throat, and in her hat a gray gull&#39;s
+  wing.</p>
+
+  <p>I had praised the Italian women for the simplicity of their
+  church-attire: their black dresses and lace veils make a picturesque
+  contrast with the gorgeous ceremonials of the high altar. But there
+  was something in this quiet toilet, so fresh and simple and
+  girl-like, that struck me as the one touch of grace that the American
+  woman can give to the best even of foreign taste. Not the dramatic
+  abnegation indicated by the black dress, but the quiet harmony of a
+  life atune.</p>
+
+  <p>Mrs. Sloman was ready even before Bessie came down. She was a
+  great invalid, although her prim and rigid countenance forbore any
+  expression save of severity. She had no pathos about her, not a
+  touch. Whatever her bodily sufferings may have been&#8212;and Bessie
+  dimly hinted that they were severe to agony at times&#8212;they were
+  resolutely shut within her chamber door; and when she came out in the
+  early morning, her cold brown hair drawn smoothly over those
+  impassive cheeks, she looked like a lady abbess&#8212;as cold, as
+  unyielding and as hard.</p>
+
+  <p>There was small sympathy between the aunt and niece, but a great
+  deal of <span class="pagenum">[pg 164]</span> painstaking duty on the
+  one side, and on the other the habit of affection which young girls
+  have for the faces they have always known.</p>
+
+  <p>Mrs. Sloman had been at pains to tell me, when my frequent visits
+  to her cottage made it necessary that I should in some fashion
+  explain to her as to what I wanted there, that her niece, Bessie
+  Stewart, was in nowise dependent on her, not even for a home.
+  &quot;This cottage we rent in common. It was her father&#39;s desire
+  that her property should not accumulate, and that she should have
+  nothing at my hands but companionship, and&quot;&#8212;with a set and
+  sickly smile&#8212;&quot;advice when it was called for. We are
+  partners in our expenses, and the arrangement can be broken up at any
+  moment.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Was this all? No word of love or praise for the fair young thing
+  that had brightened all her household in these two years that Bessie
+  had been fatherless?</p>
+
+  <p>I believe there was love and appreciation, but it was not Mrs.
+  Sloman&#39;s method to be demonstrative or expansive. She approved of
+  the engagement, and in her grim way had opened an immediate battery
+  of household ledgers and ways and means. Some idea, too, of making me
+  feel easy about taking Bessie away from her, I think, inclined her to
+  this business-like manner. I tried to show her, by my own manner,
+  that I understood her without words, and I think she was very
+  grateful to be spared the expression of feeling. Poor soul!
+  repression had become such a necessity to her!</p>
+
+  <p>So we talked on gravely of the weather, and of the celebrated
+  Doctor McQ&#8212;&#8212;, who was expected to give us an
+  argumentative sermon that morning, until <i>my</i> argument came
+  floating in at the door like a calm little bit of thistledown, to
+  which our previous conversation had been as the thistle&#39;s
+  self.</p>
+
+  <p>The plain little church was gay that morning. Carriage after
+  carriage drove up with much prancing and champing, and group after
+  group of city folk came rustling along the aisles. It was a bit of
+  Fifth Avenue let into Lenox calm. The World and the Flesh were there,
+  at least.</p>
+
+  <p>In the hush of expectancy that preceded the minister&#39;s arrival
+  there was much waving of scented fans, while the well-bred city
+  glances took in everything without seeming to see. I felt that Bessie
+  and I were being mentally discussed and ticketed. And as it was our
+  first appearance at church since&#8212;well,
+  <i>since</i>&#8212;perhaps there was just a little consciousness of
+  our relations that made Bessie seem to retire absolutely within
+  herself, and be no more a part of the silken crowd than was the
+  grave, plain man who rose up in the pulpit.</p>
+
+  <p>I hope the sermon was satisfactory. I am sure it was convincing to
+  a brown-handed farmer who sat beside us, and who could with
+  difficulty restrain his applauding comment. But I was lost in a dream
+  of a near heaven, and could not follow the spoken word. It was just a
+  quiet little opportunity to contemplate my darling, to tell over her
+  sweetness and her charm, and to say over and again, like a blundering
+  school-boy, &quot;It&#39;s all mine! mine!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The congregation might have been dismissed for aught I knew, and
+  left me sitting there with her beside me. But I was startled into the
+  proprieties as we stood up to sing the concluding hymn. I was
+  standing stock-still beside her, not listening to the words at all,
+  but with a pleasant sense of everything being very comfortable, and
+  an old-fashioned swell of harmony on the air, when suddenly the book
+  dropped from Bessie&#39;s hand and fell heavily to the floor. I
+  should have said she flung it down had it been on any other occasion,
+  so rapid and vehement was the action.</p>
+
+  <p>I stooped to pick it up, when with a decided gesture she stopped
+  me. I looked at her surprised. Her face was flushed, indignant, I
+  thought, and instantly my conscience was on the rack. What had I
+  done, for my lady was evidently angry?</p>
+
+  <p>Glancing down once more toward the book, I saw that she had set
+  her foot upon it, and indeed her whole attitude was one of
+  excitement, defiance. Why did she look so hot and scornful? I was
+  disturbed and anxious: what was there in the book or in me to anger
+  her?</p>
+
+  <p>As quickly as possible I drew her away from the bustling crowd
+  when the service was concluded. Fortunately, there was a side-door
+  through which we could pass out into the quiet churchyard, and we
+  vanished through it, leaving Mrs. Sloman far behind. Over into the
+  Lebanon road was but a step, and the little porch was waiting with
+  its cool honeysuckle shade. But Bessie did not stop at the gate: she
+  was in no mood for home. And yet she would not answer my outpouring
+  questions as to whether she was ill, or what <i>was</i> the
+  matter.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I&#39;ll tell you in a minute. Come, hurry!&quot; she said,
+  hastening along up the hill through all the dust and heat.</p>
+
+  <p>At last we reached that rustic bit of ruin known popularly as the
+  &quot;Shed.&quot; It was a hard bit of climbing, but I rejoiced that
+  Bessie, so flushed and excited at the start, grew calmer as we went;
+  and when, the summit reached, she sat down to rest on a broken board,
+  her color was natural and she seemed to breathe freely again.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Are they all hypocrites, do you think, Charlie?&quot; she
+  said suddenly, looking up into my face.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;They? who? Bessie, what have I done to make you
+  angry?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You? Nothing, dear goose! I am angry at myself and at
+  everybody else. Did it flash upon you, Charlie, what we were
+  singing?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Then she quoted the lines, which I will not repeat here, but they
+  expressed, as the sole aspiration of the singer, a desire to pass
+  eternity in singing hymns of joy and praise&#8212;an impatience for
+  the time to come, a disregard of earth, a turning away from temporal
+  things, and again the desire for an eternity of sacred song.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Suppose I confess to you,&quot; said I, astonished at her
+  earnestness, &quot;that I did not at all know what I was
+  singing?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;That&#39;s just it! just what makes it so dreadful!
+  <i>Nobody</i> was thinking about it&#8212;nobody! Nobody there wanted
+  to give up earth and go straight to heaven <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  165]</span> and sing. I looked round at all the people, with their
+  new bonnets, and the diamonds, and the footmen in the pews up stairs,
+  and I thought, What lies they are all saying! Nobody wants to go to
+  heaven at all until they are a hundred years old, and too deaf and
+  blind and tired out to do anything on earth. My heaven is here and
+  now in my own happiness, and so is yours, Charlie; and I felt so
+  convicted of being a story-teller that I couldn&#39;t hold the book
+  in my hand.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, then,&quot; said I, &quot;shall we have one set of
+  hymns for happy people, and another for poor, tired-out folks like
+  that little dressmaker that leaned against the wall?&quot; For Bessie
+  herself had called my attention to the pale little body who had come
+  to the church door at the same moment with us.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, not two sets. Do you suppose that she, either, wants to
+  <i>sing</i> on for ever? And all those girls! Sorry enough they would
+  be to have to die, and leave their dancing and flirtations and the
+  establishments they hope to have! It wouldn&#39;t be much comfort to
+  them to promise them they should <i>sing</i>. Charlie, I want a hymn
+  that shall give thanks that I am alive, that I have
+  <i>you</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Could the dressmaker sing that?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No;&quot; and Bessie&#39;s eyes sought the shining blue sky
+  with a wistful, beseeching tenderness. &quot;Oh, it&#39;s all wrong,
+  Charlie dear. She ought to tell us in a chant how tired and hopeless
+  she is for this world; and we ought to sing to her something that
+  would cheer her, help her, even in this world. Why must she wait for
+  all her brightness till she dies? So perfectly heartless to stand up
+  along side of her and sing <i>that</i>!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well,&quot; I said, &quot;you needn&#39;t wait till next
+  Sunday to bring her your words of cheer.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>In a minute my darling was crying on my shoulder. I could
+  understand the outburst, and was glad of it.</p>
+
+  <p>All athrill with new emotions, new purposes, an eternity of love,
+  she had come to church to be reminded that earth was naught, that the
+  trials and tempests here would come to an end some day, and after, to
+  the patiently victorious, <span class="pagenum">[pg 166]</span> would
+  come the hymns of praise. <i>Earth</i> was very full that morning to
+  her and me; <i>earth</i> was a place for worshipful harmonies; and
+  yet the strong contrast with the poor patient sufferer who had passed
+  into church with us was too much for Bessie: she craved an expression
+  that should comprehend alike her sorrow and our abundant joy.</p>
+
+  <p>The tempest of tears passed by, and we had bright skies again.
+  Poor Mrs. Sloman&#39;s dinner waited long that day; and it was with a
+  guilty sense that she was waiting too that we went down the hill at a
+  quickened pace when the church clock, sounding up the hillside, came
+  like a chiding voice.</p>
+
+  <p>And a double sense of guiltiness was creeping over me. I must
+  return to New York to-morrow, and I had not told Bessie yet of the
+  longer journey I must make so soon. I put it by again and again in
+  the short flying hours of that afternoon; and it was not until dusk
+  had fallen in the little porch, as we sat there after tea, and I had
+  watched the light from Mrs. Sloman&#39;s chamber shine down upon the
+  honeysuckles and then go out, that I took my resolution.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Bessie,&quot; I said, leaning over her and taking her face
+  in both my hands, &quot;I have something to tell
+  you.&quot;</p><a name="churchstepschiii" id="churchstepschiii">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER III.</h3>
+
+  <p>&quot;I have something to tell you;&quot; and without an
+  instant&#39;s pause I went on: &quot;Mr. D&#8212;&#8212; has business
+  in England which cannot be attended to by letter. One of us must go,
+  and they send me. I must sail in two weeks.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>It was a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, and Bessie gave a little
+  gasp of surprise: &quot;So soon! Oh, Charlie, take me with you!&quot;
+  Realizing in the next instant the purport of the suggestion, she
+  flung away from my hands and rushed into the parlor, where a dim,
+  soft lamp was burning on the table. She sat down on a low chair
+  beside it and hid her face on the table in her hands.</p>
+
+  <p>Like a flash of lightning all the possibilities of our marriage
+  before many days&#8212;arranging it with Mrs. Sloman, and satisfying
+  my partners, who would expect me to travel fast and work hard in the
+  short time they had allotted for the journey,&#8212;all came surging
+  and throbbing through my brain, while my first answer was not given
+  in words.</p>
+
+  <p>When I had persuaded Bessie to look at me and to answer me in
+  turn, I hoped we should be able to talk about it with the calm
+  judgment it needed.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;To leave my wife&#8212;my wife!&quot;&#8212;how I lingered
+  on the word!&#8212;&quot;in some poky lodgings in London, while I am
+  spending my day among dusty boxes and files of deeds in a dark old
+  office, isn&#39;t just my ideal of our wedding-journey; but, Bessie,
+  if <i>you</i> wish it so&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>What was there in my tone that jarred her? I had meant to be
+  magnanimous, to think of her comfort alone, of the hurry and business
+  of such a journey&#8212;tried to shut myself out and think only of
+  her in the picture. But I failed, of course, and went on stupidly,
+  answering the quick look of question in her eyes: &quot;If you prefer
+  it&#8212;that is, you know, I must think of you and not of
+  myself.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Still the keen questioning glance. What new look was this in her
+  eyes, what dawning thought?</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No,&quot; she answered after a pause, slowly withdrawing her
+  hand from mine, &quot;think of yourself.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>I had expected that she would overwhelm me in her girlish way with
+  saucy protestations that she would be happy even in the dull London
+  lodgings, and that she would defy the law-files to keep me long from
+  her. This sudden change of manner chilled me with a nameless
+  fear.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;If <i>I</i> prefer it! If <i>I</i> wish it! I see that I
+  should be quite in your way, an encumbrance. Don&#39;t talk about it
+  any more.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She was very near crying, and I wish to heaven she had cried. But
+  she conquered herself resolutely, and held herself cold and musing
+  before me. I might take her hand, might kiss her unresisting cheek,
+  but she seemed frozen into sudden thoughtfulness that it was
+  impossible to meet or to dispel.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Bessie, you know you are a little goose! What could I wish
+  for in life but to carry you off this minute to New York? Come, get
+  your hat and let&#39;s walk over to the parsonage now. We&#39;ll get
+  Doctor Wilder to marry us, and astonish your aunt in the
+  morning.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Nonsense!&quot; said Bessie with a slight quiver of her
+  pretty, pouting mouth. &quot;Do be rational, Charlie!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>I believe I was rational in my own fashion for a little while, but
+  when I ventured to say in a very unnecessary whisper, &quot;Then you
+  will go abroad with me?&quot; Bessie flushed to her temples and rose
+  from the sofa. She had a way, when she was very much in earnest, or
+  very much stirred with some passionate thought, of pacing the parlor
+  with her hands clasped tightly before her, and her arms tense and
+  straining at the clasping hands. With her head bent slightly forward,
+  and her brown hair hanging in one long tress over her shoulder, she
+  went swiftly up and down, while I lay back on the sofa and watched
+  her. She would speak it out presently, the thought that was hurting
+  her. So I felt secure and waited, following every movement with a
+  lover&#39;s eye. But I ought not to have waited. I should have drawn
+  her to me and shared that rapid, nervous walk&#8212;should have
+  compelled her with sweet force to render an account of that emotion.
+  But I was so secure, so entirely one with her in thought, that I
+  could conceive of nothing but a passing tempest at my blundering,
+  stupid thoughtfulness for her.</p>
+
+  <p>Suddenly at the door she stopped, and with her hand upon it said,
+  &quot;Good-night, Charlie;&quot; and was out of the room in a
+  twinkling.</p>
+
+  <p>I sprang from the sofa and to the foot of the stairs, but I saw
+  only a glimpse of her vanishing dress; and though I called after her
+  in low, beseeching tones, &quot;Bessie! Bessie!&quot; a door shut in
+  the distant corridor for only answer.</p>
+
+  <p>What to do? In that decorous mansion I could not follow her; and
+  my impulse to dash after her and knock at her door till she answered
+  me, I was forced to put aside after a moment&#39;s
+  consideration.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 167]</span>
+
+  <p>I stood there in the quiet hall, the old clock ticking away a
+  solemn &quot;I-told-you-so!&quot; in the corner. I made one step
+  toward the kitchen to send a message by one of the maids, but
+  recoiled at the suggestion that this would publish a lovers&#39;
+  quarrel. So I retreated along the hall, my footsteps making no noise
+  on the India matting, and entered the parlor again like a thief. I
+  sat down by the table: &quot;Bessie will certainly come back: she
+  will get over her little petulance, and know I am here
+  waiting.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>All about the parlor were the traces of my darling. A soft little
+  coil of rose-colored Berlin wool, with its ivory needle sheathed
+  among the stitches, lay in a tiny basket. I lifted it up: the basket
+  was made of scented grass, and there was a delicious sweet and pure
+  fragrance about the knitting-work. I took possession of it and thrust
+  it into my breast-pocket. A magazine she had been reading, with the
+  palest slip of a paper-knife&#8212;a bit of delicate Swiss
+  wood&#8212;in it, next came in my way. I tried to settle down and
+  read where she had left off, but the words danced before my eyes, and
+  a strange tune was repeating in my ears, &quot;Good-night,
+  Charlie&#8212;good-night and good-bye!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>One mad impulse seized me to go out under her window and call to
+  her, asking her to come down. But Lenox nights were very still, and
+  the near neighbors on either side doubtless wide awake to all that
+  was going on around the Sloman cottage.</p>
+
+  <p>So I sat still like an idiot, and counted the clock-strokes, and
+  nervously calculated the possibility of her reappearance, until I
+  heard, at last, footsteps coming along the hall in rapid tread. I
+  darted up: &quot;Oh, Bessie, I knew you would come back!&quot; as
+  through the open door walked in&#8212;Mary, Mrs. Sloman&#39;s
+  maid!</p>
+
+  <p>She started at seeing me: &quot;Excuse me, sir. The parlor was
+  so&#8212;I thought there was no one here.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What is it, Mary?&quot; I asked with assumed indifference.
+  &quot;Do you want Miss Bessie? She went up stairs a few moments
+  ago.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, sir. I thought&#8212;that is&#8212;&quot; glancing
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 168]</span> down in awkward confusion at
+  the key she held in her hand. She was retiring again softly when I
+  saw in the key the reason of her discomposure.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Did you come in to lock up, Mary?&quot; I asked with a
+  laugh.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes, sir. But it is of no consequence. I thought you had
+  gone, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Time I was, I suppose. Well, Mary, you shall lock me out,
+  and then carry this note to Miss Bessie. It is so late that I will
+  not wait for her. Perhaps she is busy with Mrs. Sloman.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Something in Mary&#39;s face made me suspect that she knew Mrs.
+  Sloman to be sound asleep at this moment; but she said nothing, and
+  waited respectfully until I had scribbled a hasty note, rifling
+  Bessie&#39;s writing-desk for the envelope in which to put my card.
+  Dear child! there lay my photograph, the first thing I saw as I
+  raised the dainty lid.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Bessie,&quot; I wrote, &quot;I have waited until Mary has
+  come in with her keys, and I suppose I must go. My train starts at
+  nine to-morrow morning, but you will be ready&#8212;will you
+  not?&#8212;at six to take a morning walk with me. I will be here at
+  that hour. You don&#39;t know how disturbed and anxious I shall be
+  till then.&quot;</p><a name="churchstepschiv" id="churchstepschiv">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER IV.</h3>
+
+  <p>Morning came&#8212;or rather the long night came to an end at
+  last&#8212;and at twenty minutes before six I opened the gate at the
+  Sloman cottage. It was so late in September that the morning was a
+  little hazy and uncertain. And yet the air was warm and soft&#8212;a
+  perfect reflex, I thought, of Bessie last night&#8212;an electric
+  softness under a brooding cloud.</p>
+
+  <p>The little house lay wrapped in slumber. I hesitated to pull the
+  bell: no, it would startle Mrs. Sloman. Bessie was coming: she would
+  surely not make me wait. Was not that her muslin curtain stirring? I
+  would wait in the porch&#8212;she would certainly come down soon.</p>
+
+  <p>So I waited, whistling softly to myself as I pushed the withered
+  leaves about with my stick and drew strange patterns among them. Half
+  an hour passed.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I will give her a gentle reminder;&quot; so I gathered a
+  spray from the honeysuckle, a late bloom among the fast-falling
+  leaves, and aimed it right at the muslin curtain. The folds parted
+  and it fell into the room, but instead of the answering face that I
+  looked to see, all was still again.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It&#39;s very strange,&quot; thought I. &quot;Bessie&#39;s
+  pique is not apt to last so long. She must indeed be angry.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>And I went over each detail of our last night&#39;s talk, from her
+  first burst of &quot;Take me with you!&quot; to my boggling answers,
+  my fears, so stupidly expressed, that it would be anything but a
+  picturesque bridal-trip, and the necessity that there was for rapid
+  traveling and much musty, old research.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What a fool I was not to take her then and there! She
+  <i>is</i> myself: why shouldn&#39;t I, then, be selfish? When I do
+  what of all things I want to, why can&#39;t I take it for granted
+  that she will be happy too?&quot; And a hot flush of shame went over
+  me to think that I had been about to propose to her, to my own
+  darling girl, that we should be married as soon as possible
+  <i>after</i> I returned from Europe.</p>
+
+  <p>Her love, clearer-sighted, had striven to forestall our
+  separation: why should we be parted all those weary weeks? why put
+  the sea between us?</p>
+
+  <p>I had accepted all these obstacles as a dreary necessity, never
+  thinking for the moment that conventional objections might be
+  overcome, aunts and guardians talked over, and the whole matter
+  arranged by two people determined on their own sweet will.</p>
+
+  <p>What a lumbering, masculine plan was mine! <i>After I returned
+  from Europe!</i> I grew red and bit my lips with vexation. And now my
+  dear girl was shy and hurt. How should I win back again that sweet
+  impulse of confidence?</p>
+
+  <p>Presently the household began to stir. I heard unbarring and
+  unbolting, and craftily retreated to the gate, that I might seem to
+  be just coming in, to the servant who should open the door.</p>
+
+  <p>It was opened by a housemaid&#8212;not the Mary of the night
+  before&#8212;who stared a moment at seeing me, but on my asking if
+  Miss Bessie was ready yet to walk, promised smilingly to go and see.
+  She returned in a moment, saying that Miss Bessie begged that I would
+  wait: she was hurrying to come down.</p>
+
+  <p>The child! She has slept too soundly. I shall tell her how
+  insensate she must have been, how serenely unconscious when the
+  flower came in at the window.</p>
+
+  <p>The clock on the mantel struck seven and the half hour before
+  Bessie appeared. She was very pale, and her eyes looked away at my
+  greeting. Passively she suffered herself to be placed in a chair, and
+  then, with something of her own manner, she said hurriedly,
+  &quot;Don&#39;t think I got your note, Charlie, last night, or I
+  wouldn&#39;t, indeed I wouldn&#39;t, have kept you waiting so long
+  this morning.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Didn&#39;t Mary bring it to you?&quot; I asked,
+  surprised.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes: that is, she brought it up to my room, but, Charlie
+  dear, I wasn&#39;t there: I wasn&#39;t there all night. I did shut my
+  door, though I heard you calling, and after a little while I crept
+  out into the entry and looked over the stairs, hoping you were there
+  still, and that I could come back to you. But you were not there, and
+  everything was so still that I was sure you had gone&#8212;gone
+  without a word. I listened and listened, but I was too proud to go
+  down into the parlor and see. And yet I could not go back to my room,
+  next Aunt Sloman&#39;s. I went right up stairs to the blue room, and
+  stayed there. Mary must have put your note on my table when she came
+  up stairs. I found it there this morning when I went down.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Poor darling! And what did you do all night in the blue
+  room? I am afraid,&quot; looking at her downcast eyes, &quot;that you
+  did not sleep&#8212;that you were angry at me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;At you? No, at myself,&quot; she said very low.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Bessie, you know that my first and only thought was of the
+  hurry and worry this journey would cost you. You know <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 169]</span> that to have you with me was something that
+  I had scarce dared to dream.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And therefore,&quot; with a flash of blue eyes, &quot;for me
+  to dare to dream it was&#8212;&quot; and again she hid her face.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But, my precious, don&#39;t you know that it was for
+  <i>you</i> to suggest what I wanted all the time, but thought it
+  would be too much to ask?&quot; For I had discovered, of course, in
+  my morning&#39;s work among the dead leaves on the porch, that I had
+  desired it from the moment I had known of my journey&#8212;desired it
+  without acknowledging it to myself or presuming to plan upon it.</p>
+
+  <p>At this juncture breakfast was announced, and the folding doors
+  thrown open that led into the breakfast-parlor, disclosing Mrs.
+  Sloman seated by the silver urn, and a neat little table spread for
+  three, so quick had been the housemaid&#39;s intuitions.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Good-morning, Charles: come get some breakfast. You will
+  hardly be in time for your train,&quot; suggested Aunt Sloman in a
+  voice that had in it all the gloom of the morning. Indeed, the clouds
+  had gathered heavily during the parlor scene, and some large drops
+  were rattling against the window.</p>
+
+  <p>I looked at my watch. After eight! Pshaw! I will let this train
+  go, and will telegraph to the office. I can take the night train, and
+  thus lose only a few hours. So I stayed.</p>
+
+  <p>What rare power had Bessie in the very depths of her trouble, and
+  with her face pale and eyes so heavy with her last night&#39;s
+  vigil&#8212;what gift that helped her to be gay? Apparently not with
+  an effort, not forced, she was as joyous and frank as her sunniest
+  self. No exaggeration of laughter or fun, but the brightness of her
+  every-day manner, teasing and sparkling round Aunt Sloman, coquetting
+  very naturally with me. It was a swift change from the gloomy
+  atmosphere we had left behind in the parlor, and I basked in it
+  delighted, and feeling, poor fool! that the storm was cleared away,
+  and that the time for the singing of birds was come.</p>
+
+  <p>I was the more deceived. I did not know all of Bessie yet. Her
+  horror of a <span class="pagenum">[pg 170]</span> scene, of any
+  suspicion that there was discord between us, and her rare
+  self-control, that for the moment put aside all trouble, folded it
+  out of sight and took up the serene old life again for a little
+  space.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Aunt Maria,&quot; said Bessie, pushing aside her chair,
+  &quot;won&#39;t you take care of Mr. Munro for a little while? I have
+  a letter to write that I want him to take to New York.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Aunt Maria would be happy to entertain me, or rather to have me
+  entertain her. If I would read to her, now, would I be so kind, while
+  she washed up her breakfast cups?</p>
+
+  <p>How people can do two things at once I am sure I cannot
+  understand; and while the maid brought in the large wooden bowl, the
+  steam of whose household incense rose high in the air, I watched
+  impatient for the signal to begin. When the tea-cups were all
+  collected, and Aunt Sloman held one by the handle daintily over the
+  &quot;boiling flood,&quot; &quot;Now,&quot; she said with a serene
+  inclination of her head, &quot;if you please.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>And off I started at a foot-pace through the magazine that had
+  been put into my hands. Whether it was anything about the
+  &quot;Skelligs,&quot; or &quot;Miss Sedgwick&#39;s Letters,&quot; or
+  &quot;Stanley-Livingstone,&quot; I have not the remotest idea. I was
+  fascinated by the gentle dip of each tea-cup, and watched from the
+  corner of my eye the process of polishing each glittering spoon on a
+  comfortable crash towel.</p>
+
+  <p>Then my thoughts darted off to Bessie. Was she indeed writing to
+  her old trustee? Judge Hubbard was a friend of my father&#39;s, and
+  would approve of me, I thought, if he did not agree at once to the
+  hurried marriage and ocean journey.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What an unconscionable time it takes her! Don&#39;t you
+  think so, Mrs. Sloman?&quot; I said at last, after I had gone through
+  three several papers on subjects unknown.</p>
+
+  <p>I suppose it was scarcely a courteous speech. But Mrs. Sloman
+  smiled a white-lipped smile of sympathy, and said, &quot;Yes; I will
+  go and send her to you.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, don&#39;t hurry her,&quot; I said falsely, hoping,
+  however, that she would.</p>
+
+  <p>Did I say before that Bessie was tall? Though so slight that you
+  always wanted to speak of her with some endearing diminutive, she
+  looked taller than ever that morning; and as she stood before me,
+  coming up to the fireplace where I was standing, her eyes looked
+  nearly level into mine. I did not understand their veiled expression,
+  and before I had time to study it she dropped them and said hastily,
+  &quot;Young man, I am pining for a walk.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;In the rain?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Pshaw! This is nothing, after all, but a Scotch mist. See, I
+  am dressed for it;&quot; and she threw a tartan cloak over her
+  shoulder&#8212;a blue-and-green tartan that I had never seen
+  before.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;The very thing for shipboard,&quot; I whispered as I looked
+  at her admiringly.</p>
+
+  <p>Her face was flushed enough now, but she made no answer save to
+  stoop down and pat the silly little terrier that had come trotting
+  into the room with her.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Fidget shall go&#8212;yes, he shall go walking;&quot; and
+  Fidget made a gray ball of himself in his joy at the permission.</p>
+
+  <p>Up the hill again we walked, with the little Skye terrier
+  cantering in advance or madly chasing the chickens across the
+  road.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Did you finish your letter satisfactorily?&quot; I asked,
+  for I was fretting with impatience to know its contents.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes. I will give it to you when you leave
+  to-night.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Shall we say next Saturday, Bessie?&quot; said I, resolving
+  to plunge at once into the sea of our late argument.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;For what? For you to come again? Don&#39;t you always come
+  on Saturday?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes, but this time I mean to carry you away.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>A dead pause, which I improved by drawing her hand under my arm
+  and imprisoning her little gray glove with my other hand. As she did
+  not speak, I went on fatuously: &quot;You don&#39;t need any
+  preparation of gowns and shawls; you can buy your <i>trousseau</i> in
+  London, if need be; and we&#39;ll settle on the ship, coming over,
+  how and where we are to live in New York.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You think, then, that I am all ready to be
+  married?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I think that my darling is superior to the nonsense of other
+  girls&#8212;that she will be herself always, and doesn&#39;t need any
+  masquerade of wedding finery.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You think, then,&quot; coldly and drawing her hand away,
+  &quot;that I am different from other girls?&quot; and the scarlet
+  deepened on her cheek. &quot;You think I say and do things other
+  girls would not?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;My darling, what nonsense! You say and do things that other
+  girls <i>cannot</i>, nor could if they tried a thousand
+  years.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Thanks for the compliment! It has at least the merit of
+  dubiousness. Now, Charlie, if you mention Europe once in this walk I
+  shall be seriously offended. Do let us have a little peace and a
+  quiet talk.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why, what on earth can we talk about until this is settled?
+  I can&#39;t go back to New York, and engage our passage, and go to
+  see Judge Hubbard&#8212;I suppose you were writing to him this
+  morning?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She did not answer, but seemed bent on making the dainty print of
+  her foot in the moist earth of the road, taking each step carefully,
+  as though it were the one important and engrossing thing in life.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;&#8212;Unless,&quot; I went on, &quot;you tell me you will
+  be ready to go back with me this day week. You see, Bessie dear, I
+  <i>must</i> sail on the fixed day. And if we talk it over now and
+  settle it all, it will save no end of writing to and fro.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Good-morning!&quot; said a gay voice behind us&#8212;Fanny
+  Meyrick&#39;s voice. She was just coming out of one of the small
+  houses on the roadside. &quot;Don&#39;t you want some company?
+  I&#39;ve been to call on my washerwoman, and I&#39;m so glad I&#39;ve
+  met you. Such an English morning! Shall I walk with
+  you?&quot;</p><a name="churchstepschv" id="churchstepschv">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER V</h3>
+
+  <p>If I could have changed places with Fidget, I could scarce have
+  expressed <span class="pagenum">[pg 171]</span> my disapproval of the
+  new-comer more vehemently than he. Miss Meyrick seemed quite annoyed
+  at the little dog&#39;s uncalled-for snapping and barking, and shook
+  her umbrella at him in vain. I was obliged to take him in hand myself
+  at last, and to stand in the road and order him to &quot;Go
+  home!&quot; while the two young ladies walked on, apparently the best
+  of friends.</p>
+
+  <p>When I rejoined them Fanny Meyrick was talking fast and
+  unconnectedly, as was her habit: &quot;Yes, lodgings in
+  London&#8212;the dearest old house in Clarges street. Such a butler!
+  He looks like a member of Parliament. We stayed there once before for
+  three days. I am just going to settle into an English girl. Had
+  enough of the Continent. Never do see England now-a-days, nobody. All
+  rush off. So papa is going to have a comfortable time. Embassy? Oh, I
+  know the general well.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>I looked beseechingly at Bessie. Why wouldn&#39;t she say that we
+  too would be there in London lodgings? Perhaps, then, Fanny Meyrick
+  might take the hint and leave us soon.</p>
+
+  <p>But Bessie gave no sign, and I relapsed into a somewhat impatient
+  <i>r�sum�</i> of my own affairs. Yes: married quietly on Saturday;
+  leave here on Monday morning train; take, yes, Wednesday&#39;s
+  steamer. I could arrange it with my law-partners to be absent a
+  little longer perhaps, that there might be some little rest and
+  romance about the wedding-journey.</p>
+
+  <p>Two or three times in the course of that morning&#8212;for she
+  stayed with us all the morning&#8212;Fanny Meyrick rallied me on my
+  preoccupation and silence: &quot;He didn&#39;t use to be so, Bessie,
+  years ago, I assure you. It&#39;s very disagreeable, sir&#8212;not an
+  improvement by any means.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Then&#8212;I think without any malice prepense, simply the
+  unreasoning rattle of a belle of two seasons&#8212;she plunged into a
+  description of a certain f�te at Blankkill on the Hudson, the
+  occasion of our first acquaintance: &quot;He was so young, Bessie,
+  you can&#39;t imagine, and blushed so beautifully that all the girls
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 172]</span> were jealous as could be. We
+  were very good friends&#8212;weren&#39;t we?&#8212;all that
+  summer?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And are still, I hope,&quot; said I with my most sweeping
+  bow. &quot;What have I done to forfeit Miss Meyrick&#39;s
+  esteem?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Nothing, except that you used to find your way oftener to
+  Meyrick Place than you do now. Well, I won&#39;t scold you for that:
+  I shall make up for that on the other side.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>What did she mean? She had no other meaning than that she would
+  have such compensation in English society that her American admirers
+  would not be missed. She did not know of my going abroad.</p>
+
+  <p>But Bessie darted a quick glance from her to me, and back again to
+  her, as though some dawning suspicion had come to her. &quot;I
+  hope,&quot; she said quietly, &quot;that you may have a pleasant
+  winter. It will be delightful, won&#39;t it, Charlie?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, very!&quot; I answered, but half noting the
+  under-meaning of her words, my mind running on deck state-rooms and
+  the like.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Charlie,&quot; said Miss Meyrick suddenly, &quot;do you
+  remember what happened two years ago to-day?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, I think not.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Taking out a little book bound in Russia leather and tipped with
+  gold, she handed it to Bessie, who ran her eye down the page: it was
+  open at September 28th.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Read it,&quot; said Fanny, settling herself composedly in
+  her shawl, and leaning back against a tree with half-shut eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;&#39;<i>September 28th</i>&#39;&quot; Bessie read, in clear
+  tones which had a strange constraint in them, &quot;&#39;Charlie
+  Munro saved my life. I shall love him for ever and ever. We were out
+  in a boat, we two, on the Hudson&#8212;moonlight&#8212;I was rowing.
+  Dropt my oar into the water. Leaned out after it and upset the boat.
+  Charlie caught me and swam with me to shore.&#39;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>A dead silence as Bessie closed the book and held it in her
+  hand.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh,&quot; said I lightly, &quot;that isn&#39;t worth
+  chronicling&#8212;that! It was no question of saving lives. The New
+  York boat was coming up, if I remember.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes, it was in trying to steer away from it that I dropped
+  my oar.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;So you see it would have picked us up, any how. There was
+  nothing but the ducking to remember.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Such a figure, Bessie! Imagine us running along the road to
+  the gate! I could scarcely move for my dripping skirts; and we
+  frightened papa so when we stepped up on the piazza out of the
+  moonlight!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>To stop this torrent of reminiscences, which, though of nothings,
+  I could see was bringing the red spot to Bessie&#39;s cheek, I put
+  out my hand for the book: &quot;Let me write something down
+  to-day;&quot; and I hastily scribbled: &quot;<i>September</i> 28.
+  Charles Munro and Bessie Stewart, to sail for Europe in ten days, ask
+  of their friend Fanny Meyrick her warm congratulations.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Will that do?&quot; I whispered as I handed the book to
+  Bessie.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Not at all,&quot; said Bessie scornfully and coldly, tearing
+  out the leaf as she spoke and crumpling it in her
+  hand.&#8212;&quot;Sorry to spoil your book, Fanny dear, but the
+  sentiment would have spoiled it more. Let us go home.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>As we passed the hotel on that dreary walk home, Fanny would have
+  left us, but Bessie clung to her and whispered something in a
+  pleading voice, begging her, evidently, to come home with us.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;If Mr. Munro will take word to papa,&quot; she said,
+  indicating that worthy, who sat on the upper piazza smoking his
+  pipe.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;We will walk on,&quot; said Bessie coldly. &quot;Come, Fanny
+  dear.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Strange, thought I as I turned on my heel, this sudden fond
+  intimacy! Bessie is angry. Why did I never tell her of the ducking?
+  And yet when I remembered how Fanny had clung to me, how after we had
+  reached the shore I had been forced to remind her that it was no time
+  for sentimental gratitude when we both were shivering, I could see
+  why I had refrained from mentioning it to Bessie until our closer
+  confidences would allow of it.</p>
+
+  <p>No man, unless he be a downright coxcomb, will ever admit to one
+  woman that another woman has loved him. To his wife&#8212;perhaps.
+  But how much Fanny Meyrick cared for me I had never sought to know.
+  After the dismal ending of that moonlight boat-row&#8212;I had been
+  already disenchanted for some time before&#8212;I had scarce called
+  at Meyrick Place more than civility required. The young lady was so
+  inclined to exaggerate the circumstance, to hail me as her deliverer,
+  that I felt like the hero of a melodrama whenever we met. And after I
+  had met Bessie there were pleasanter things to think about&#8212;much
+  pleasanter.</p>
+
+  <p>How exasperating girls can be when they try! I had had my
+  <i>cong�</i> for the walk home, I knew, and I was vexed enough to
+  accept it and stay at the hotel to dinner.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I will not be played upon in this way. Bessie knows that I
+  stayed over the morning train just to be with her, and piled up for
+  to-morrow no end of work, as well as sarcastic remarks from D. &amp;
+  Co. If she chooses to show off her affection for Fanny Meyrick in
+  these few hours that we have together&#8212;Fanny Meyrick whom she
+  <i>hated</i> yesterday&#8212;she may enjoy her friendship undisturbed
+  by me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>So I loitered with my cigar after dinner, and took a nap on the
+  sofa in my room. I was piqued, and did not care to conceal it. As the
+  clock struck five I bethought me it was time to betake me to the
+  Sloman cottage. A sound of wheels and a carriage turning brought me
+  to the window. The two young ladies were driving off in Fanny
+  Meyrick&#39;s phaeton, having evidently come to the hotel and waited
+  while it was being made ready.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Pique for pique! Serves me right, I suppose.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Evening found me at the Sloman cottage, waiting with Mrs. Sloman
+  by the <span class="pagenum">[pg 173]</span> tea-table. Why do I
+  always remember her, sitting monumental by the silver urn?</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;The girls are very late to-night.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes.&quot; I was beginning to be uneasy. It was nearing
+  train-time again.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Such lovely moonlight, I suppose, has tempted them, or they
+  may be staying at Foxcroft to tea.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Indeed? I looked at my watch: I had ten minutes.</p>
+
+  <p>A sound of wheels: the phaeton drove up.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, Charlie,&quot; said Bessie as she sprang out, &quot;you
+  bad boy! you&#39;ll miss your train again. Fanny here will drive you
+  to the hotel. Jump in, quick!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>And as the moonlight shone full on her face I looked inquiringly
+  into her eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;The letter,&quot; I said, &quot;for Judge Hubbard?&quot;
+  hoping that she would go to the house for it, and then I could follow
+  her for a word.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh! I had almost forgotten. Here it is;&quot; and she drew
+  it from her pocket and held it out to me in her gloved hand. I
+  pressed the hand to my lips, riding-glove and all, and sprang in
+  beside Fanny, who was with some difficulty making her horse stand
+  still.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Good-bye!&quot; from the little figure at the gate.
+  &quot;Don&#39;t forget, Fanny, to-morrow at ten;&quot; and we were
+  off.</p>
+
+  <p>By the wretched kerosene lamp of the car, going down, I read my
+  letter, for it was for me: &quot;I will not go to Europe, and I
+  forbid you to mention it again. I shall never, never forget that
+  <i>I</i> proposed it, and that you&#8212;<i>accepted</i> it. Come up
+  to Lenox once more before you go.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>This was written in ink, and was sealed. It was the morning&#39;s
+  note. But across the envelope these words were written in pencil:
+  &quot;Go to Europe with Fanny Meyrick, and come up to Lenox, both of
+  you, when you return.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p class="author">SARAH C. HALLOWELL.</p>
+
+  <p class="center">[TO BE CONTINUED.]</p><a name="insidejapan" id=
+  "insidejapan"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>INSIDE JAPAN.</h2><span class="pagenum">[pg 174]</span>
+
+  <p>A double pleasure rewards the pioneer who is the first to
+  penetrate into the midst of a new people. Besides the rare
+  exhilaration felt in treading soil virgin to alien feet, it acts like
+  mental oxygen to look upon and breathe in a unique civilization like
+  that of Japan. To feel that for ages millions of one&#39;s own race
+  have lived and loved, enjoyed and suffered and died, living the
+  fullness of life, yet without the religion, laws, customs, food,
+  dress and culture which seem to us to be the vitals of our social
+  existence, is like walking through a living Pompeii.</p>
+
+  <p>I confess to a chronic desire to explore the Island Empire in
+  which I dwell. Having already, in the central provinces of Japan,
+  trodden many a path never before touched by foreign foot, I yearned
+  to explore the twin provinces of Kadzusa and Awa, which form the
+  peninsula lying between the Gulf of Yeddo and the Pacific Ocean. A
+  timely holiday and a passport from the Japanese foreign office
+  enabled me to start toward the end of March, the time when all Japan
+  is glorious with blossoming plum trees, and the camellia trees in
+  forests of bloom are marshaled by thousands on the
+  mountain-slopes.</p>
+
+  <p>I was glad to get away from Yeddo: I had a fit of
+  anti-Caucasianism, and wished to dwell a while amidst things purely
+  Japanese. There were too many foreigners in Yeddo. In that city of
+  only eight hundred thousand Japanese there are now full two hundred
+  foreigners of all nationalities; and of these, fifty or more are
+  Americans. It was too much like home and too little like Japan.
+  Should I go to Yokohama, the case was worse. Nearly twelve hundred of
+  the sons of Japheth dwelt there, and to reach that upstart European
+  city one must travel on a railway and see telegraph-poles all along
+  the line. What <i>was</i> the use of living in Japan? Every young
+  Japanese, too, in the capital is brainful of
+  &quot;civilization,&quot; &quot;progress,&quot; &quot;reform,&quot;
+  etc. I half suspect a few cracks in the craniums belonging to some of
+  the youths who wish to introduce law, religion, steam, language,
+  frock-coats and tight boots by edict and ordinance. There was too
+  much civilization. I yearned for something more primitive, something
+  more purely Japanese; and tramping into the country I should find it.
+  I should eat Japanese food&#8212;profanely dubbed
+  &quot;chow-chow;&quot; sleep in Japanese beds&#8212;on the floor;
+  talk Japanese&#8212;as musical as Italian; and live so much like an
+  old-time native that I should feel as one born on the soil. By that
+  time, returning to Yeddo as a Japanese of the period, I should of
+  course burn to adopt railways, telegraphs and balloons, codify the
+  laws, improve upon United States postage, coinage and dress-coats,
+  and finish off by annexing the English language after I had cut out
+  all irregularities and made all the crooked spelling straight.</p>
+
+  <p>So, resolving to be a heathen for a week at least, I left Yeddo
+  one afternoon, though it took several hours to do so: the big city is
+  one of distances more magnificent than those of Washington. I started
+  in a <i>jin-riki-sha</i>, which baby-carriage on adult wheels has
+  already been described, so as to be tolerably familiar to all
+  American readers. The &quot;team&quot; of this &quot;man-power
+  carriage&quot; consists of two men, pulling tandem&#8212;one in the
+  shafts, the other running ahead with a rope over his shoulder, and,
+  until the recent passage of a law commanding decency, attired only in
+  his cuticle and a loin-cloth two inches wide. You take three coolies
+  when you wish to be stylish, while four are not an unknown sensation
+  in Yeddo. With these and fresh relays you can travel sixty, or even
+  eighty, miles a day; and I have known one man to run thirty miles on
+  the stretch.</p>
+
+  <p>Of all the modes of traveling in Japan, the jin-riki-sha is the
+  most pleasant. The <i>kago</i> is excruciating. It is a flat basket,
+  swung on a pole and carried on the shoulders of two men. If your neck
+  does not break, your feet go hopelessly to sleep. Headaches seem to
+  lodge somewhere in the bamboos, to afflict every victim entrapped in
+  it. To ride in a kago is as pleasant as riding in a washtub or a
+  coffin slung on a pole. In some mountain-passes stout native porters
+  carry you pickapack. Crossing the shallow rivers, you may sit upon a
+  platform borne on men&#39;s shoulders as they wade. Saddle-horses are
+  not to be publicly hired, but pack-horses are pleasant means of
+  locomotion. These animals and their leaders deserve a whole chapter
+  of description for themselves. Fancy a brass-bound peaked pack-saddle
+  rising a foot above the animal&#39;s back, with a crupper-strap
+  slanting down to clasp the tail. The oft-bandied slur, that in Japan
+  everything goes by contraries, has a varnish of truth on it when we
+  notice that the most gorgeous piece of Japanese saddlery is the
+  crupper, which, even on a pack-horse, is painted crimson and gilded
+  gloriously. The man who leads the horse is an animal that by long
+  contact and companionship with the quadruped has grown to resemble
+  him in disposition and ejaculation: at least, the equine and the
+  human seem to harmonize well together. This man is called in Japanese
+  &quot;horse side.&quot; He is dressed in straw sandals and the
+  universally worn <i>kimono</i>, or blue cotton wrapper-like dress,
+  which is totally unfitted for work of any kind, and which makes the
+  slovens of Japan&#8212;a rather numerous class&#8212;always look as
+  if they had just got out of bed. At his waist is the usual girdle,
+  from which hangs the inevitable bamboo-and-brass pipe, the bowl of
+  which holds but a pellet of the mild fine-cut tobacco of the country.
+  The pipe-case is connected with a tobacco-pouch, in which are also
+  flint, steel and tinder. All these are suspended by a cord, fastened
+  to a wooden or ivory button, which is tucked up through the belt. On
+  his head, covering his shaven mid-scalp and right-angled top-knot,
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 175]</span> is a blue cotton rag&#8212;not
+  handkerchief, since such an article in Japan is always made of paper.
+  This head-gear is usually fastened over the head by twisting the ends
+  under the nose. With a rope six feet long he leads his horse, which
+  trusts so implicitly to its master&#39;s guidance that we suspect the
+  prevalence of blindness among the Japanese pack-horses arises from
+  sheer lack of the exercise of their eyesight. These unkempt brutes
+  are strangers to curry-combs and brushes, though a semi-monthly
+  scrubbing in hot water keeps them tolerably clean. Their shoes are a
+  curiosity: the hoofs are not shod with iron, but with straw sandals,
+  tied on thrice or oftener daily. Grass is scarce in Japan, and oats
+  are unknown. The nags live on beans, barley, and the stalks, leaves
+  and tops of succulent plants, with only an occasional wisp of hay or
+  grass.</p>
+
+  <p>In certain districts horses of one or the other sex, as the law
+  determines, are kept exclusively. Horses of the gentler sex in Japan
+  are usually led by women. During part of my journey to the place
+  which I am about to describe the leader of the mare I bestrode was a
+  maiden of some forty summers&#8212;a neat, spare, vinegar-faced
+  sylph, who had evidently long since left the matrimonial market, and
+  had devoted herself to making one horse happy for the rest of her
+  pilgrimage. That she was neither wife nor widow I discovered, not by
+  asking questions, but by the manner in which her hair was dressed.
+  Japanese virgins and wives have each distinct coiffures, by which,
+  apart from the shaven eyebrows and the teeth dyed black of the
+  married women, the <i>musume</i> or young maiden may be known. The
+  widow who has resolved never to marry again (always too old or ugly)
+  is distinguished by her smooth skull, every hair of which is shaved
+  off. A lady of rank may also be known by her coiffure; and many other
+  distinctions are thus noted.</p>
+
+  <p>I waited three-quarters of an hour for my horse and its leader to
+  appear at the post-relay at which I sat down, and was stared at
+  during that time by about three hundred pairs of eyes. The
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 176]</span> populace of each village turned
+  out <i>en masse</i> to see the foreigner, and they diligently
+  improved their time in examining him from crown to boot-sole. Like
+  everything else in the rural districts of Japan, my guide was not in
+  a hurry, and could not understand why a foreigner should be. But
+  finally arriving, she bowed very low and invited me to climb up on
+  the saddle, and off we started for a mountain ride of eight
+  miles.</p>
+
+  <p>A Japanese pack-horse, at his best, seems always swaying between
+  two opinions: his affection for the bestower of his beans and that
+  for the repose of the stable mutually attract him. On this occasion
+  the little woman gently led the horse over the rough places and down
+  the steep paths with the ejaculation, <i>Mite yo! Mite yo!</i> but
+  when the beast stopped too long to meditate or to chew the bit, as if
+  vainly trying to pick its teeth, a lively jerk of the rope and a
+  &quot;You old beast! come on,&quot; started the animal on its
+  travels. Finally, when the creature stopped to deliberate upon the
+  propriety of going forward at all, the vials of the wrath of the
+  Japanese spinster exploded, and I was tempted to believe her
+  affections had been blighted. But when we met any of her friends on
+  the road, or passed the wayside shops or farm-houses, the scolder of
+  horses was the lady who wished all <i>Ohaio</i>
+  (&quot;Good-morning&quot;), or remarked that the weather was very
+  fine; and when joked for carrying a foreigner, replied, &quot;Yes, it
+  is the first time I have had the honor.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>I need not trouble the reader with many details of geography. My
+  trip lasted eight days, during which I passed over two hundred miles,
+  two-thirds of the way on foot. I made the entire circuit of the lower
+  half of the peninsula, but shall dwell only on my visit to Kanozan
+  (Deer Mountain), famous for its lovely scenery, temple and Booddhist
+  monastery. From the top of the mountain there are visible innumerable
+  valleys, nearly the whole of the Gulf of Yeddo, and the white-throned
+  Foosiyama, called the highest mountain in Japan and the most
+  beautiful in the world. We spent the night previous in Kisaradzu, the
+  capital of the now united provinces, and a neat little city, just
+  beginning to introduce foreign civilization. Its streets were lighted
+  with Yankee lamps and Pennsylvania petroleum. Postal boxes after the
+  Yankee custom were erected and in use. Gingham umbrellas were
+  replacing those made of oiled paper. Barbers&#39; poles, painted
+  white with the spiral red band, were set up, and within the shops
+  Young Japan had his queue cut off and his hair dressed in foreign
+  style. Ignorant of the significance of the symbolic relic of the old
+  days, when the barber was doctor and dentist also, and made his pole
+  represent a bandage wound around a broken limb, the Japanese barber
+  has, in many cases, added a green or blue band. Not being an adept in
+  the use of that refractory language which Young Japan would so like
+  to flatten out and plane down for vernacular use, the Japanese barber
+  is not always happy in executing the English legend for his
+  sign-board. The following are specimens:</p>
+
+  <p class="center">&quot;A HAIR-DRESSING SALOON FOR<br />
+  JAPANES AND FOREIGNER.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p class="center">&quot;SHOP OF HAIR.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p class="center">&quot;HAIRS CUT IN THE ENGLISH<br />
+  AND FRENCH FASHION.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Passing out of Kisaradzu, and winding up to Kanozan over the
+  narrow bridle-path, we pass the usual terraced rice-fields watered by
+  descending rivulets, and the usual thatched and mud-walled cottages,
+  which characterize every landscape in Japan, besides long rows of
+  tall <i>tsubaki</i> (camellia) trees, forty feet high and laden with
+  their crimson and white splendors. Along the road are the little
+  wayside shrines and sacred portals of red wood which tell where the
+  worshipers of the Shintoo faith adore their gods and offer their
+  prayers without image, idol or picture. The far more numerous images
+  and shrines of Booddha the sage, Amida the queen of heaven, and
+  hundred-armed Kuannon, tell of the popular faith of the masses of
+  Japan in the gentle doctrines of the Indian sage. The student of
+  comparative religions is interested in noticing how a code of morals
+  founded upon atheistic humanitarianism, in its origin utterly
+  destitute of theology, has developed into a colossal system of
+  demonology, dogmatics, eschatology, myths and legends, with a
+  pantheon more populous than that of old Rome. Many of the images by
+  the wayside are headless, cloven by frost, overturned by earthquakes,
+  and so pitted by time as to resemble petrified smallpox patients
+  rather than divinities. Nature neither respects dogma nor worships
+  the gods made by men, and the moss and the lichens have muffled up
+  the idols and eaten the substance of the sacred stone. Here Booddha
+  wears a robe of choicest green, and there the little saxafrage waves
+  its white blossoms from the shoulder of Amida, rending asunder her
+  stone body. Even the little stone columns which contain a guiding
+  hand pointing out the road to Kanozan are dedicated to Great Shaka
+  (Booddha). Passing one of the larger temples, we meet a company of
+  pilgrims. Actual sight and reasoning from experience in other lands
+  agree in telling me that they are women, and most of them old women.
+  They return my salute, politely striving to conceal their wonder at
+  the first <i>to-jin</i> they have ever looked upon.</p>
+
+  <p>I would wager that these people, like most of the rustics in
+  Japan, have always believed the foreigners from Europe and America to
+  be certainly ruffians, and most probably beasts. Many of them,
+  without having heard; of Darwin or Monboddo, believe all the
+  &quot;hairy foreigners&quot; to be descendants of dogs. Their first
+  meeting with a foreigner sweeps away the cobwebs of prejudice, and
+  they are ashamed of their former ignorance. In extorting from
+  Japanese friends their first ideas about foreigners, I have been
+  forcibly reminded of some popular ideas concerning the people of
+  China and Japan which are still entertained at home, especially by
+  the queens of the kitchen and the lords of the hod.</p>
+
+  <p>After the fashion in Japan, I inquire of the pilgrims whence they
+  came and whither they are going. Leaning upon their staves and
+  unslinging their huge <span class="pagenum">[pg 177]</span> round,
+  conical hats, they give me to know that they have come on foot from
+  Muja, nearly one hundred and fifty miles distant, and that they will
+  finish their pilgrimage at Kominato&#8212;where the great founder of
+  the Nichiren sect (one of the last developments of Booddhism in
+  Japan) was born&#8212;twenty-seven miles beyond the point at which we
+  met. I inform them that I have come over seven thousand miles, and
+  will also visit Nichiren&#39;s birthplace. &quot;<i>Sayo de
+  gozarimos! Naru hodo?</i>&quot; (&quot;Indeed, is it
+  possible?&quot;)</p>
+
+  <p>I have reached their hearts through the gates of surprise. A
+  foreigner visiting Nichiren&#39;s birthplace! And coming seven
+  thousand miles too! The old ladies become loquacious. They pour out
+  their questions by dozens. Do you have Booddhist temples in America?
+  Of course the Nichiren sect flourishes there? When I politely answer
+  No to both questions, a look of disappointed surprise and pity steals
+  over both the ruddy and the wrinkled faces. &quot;Then he is a
+  heathen!&quot; says the expression on their faces. How strange that
+  no Booddhist temples exist in the foreigner&#39;s country! Ah,
+  perhaps, then, the Shintoo religion is the religion of the
+  foreigner&#39;s country? &quot;No? <i>Naru hodo!</i> Then what
+  <i>do</i> you believe in?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>It did not take long to answer that question. There is no country
+  in the world in which Christianity has been more publicly and
+  universally advertised. For three centuries, in every city, village
+  and hamlet and on every highway, the names of Christianity and its
+  Founder have been proclaimed on the edict-boards and in the public
+  law-books of the empire as belonging to a corrupt and hateful
+  doctrine; which should a man believe, he would be punished on earth
+  by fines, imprisonment, perhaps death, and in <i>jigoku</i> (hell) by
+  torments eternal. &quot;Whosoever believeth in Christ shall be
+  damned&#8212;whosoever believeth not shall be saved,&quot; was the
+  formula taught by the priests for centuries. I pointed to the board
+  on which hung the edicts prohibiting Christianity, and told them I
+  believed in that doctrine, and that <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  178]</span> Christ was the One adored and loved by us. A volley of
+  <i>naru hodos</i>, spoken with bated breath, greeted this
+  announcement, and I could only understand the whispered &quot;Why,
+  that is the sect whose followers will go to hell!&quot; The old
+  ladies could not walk fast, and we soon parted, after many a strange
+  question concerning morals, customs and the details of civilization
+  in the land of the foreigner. Be it said, in passing, that the
+  present liberal and enlightened government of Japan, in spite of
+  priestly intolerance and the bigotry of ignorance, resisting even to
+  blood, has decided upon the recission of the slanderous falsehoods
+  against the faith of Christendom; and Japan, though an Asiatic
+  nation, will soon grant toleration to all creeds.</p>
+
+  <p>The path wound up through higher valleys, revealing bolder
+  scenery. Afar off, in the sheen of glorified distance, the water
+  slanted to the sky. The white bosoms of the square-sailed junks
+  heaved with breezy pulses, the mountains were thrones of stainless
+  blue, the floods of sunny splendor and the intense fullness of light,
+  for which the cloudless sky of Japan is remarkable, told the reason
+  for the naming of Niphon, of which &quot;Japan&quot; is but the
+  foreigner&#39;s corruption, &quot;Great Land of the Fountain of
+  Light.&quot; Anon we entered the groves of mountain-pines anchored in
+  the rocks, and with girths upon which succeeding centuries had
+  clasped their zones. They seemed like Nature&#39;s senators in
+  council as they whispered together and murmured in the breeze that
+  reached us laden with music and freighted with resinous aroma.
+  Reaching a hamlet called Mute (&quot;six hands&quot;), I sit outside
+  an inn on one of the benches which are ever ready for the traveler,
+  and shaded overhead by a screen of boughs. A young girl brings me
+  water, the ever-ready cup of tea, and fire for the pipe which I am
+  supposed to smoke. A short rest, another hour&#39;s climb and walk,
+  and we are in the village of Kanozan, which is scarcely more than a
+  street of hotels. Situated on the ridge of the mountain, it rises
+  like an island in a sea of pines.</p>
+
+  <p>In imagining a Japanese hotel, good reader, please dismiss all
+  architectural ideas derived from the Continental or the Fifth Avenue.
+  Our hotels in Japan, outwardly at least, are wooden structures, two
+  stories high, often but one. Their roofs are usually thatched, though
+  the city caravansaries are tiled. They are entirely open on the front
+  <i>ground</i> floor, and about six feet from the sill or threshold
+  rises a platform about a foot and a half high, upon which the
+  proprietor may be seen seated on his heels behind a tiny railing ten
+  inches high, busy with his account-books. If it is winter he is
+  engaged in the absorbing occupation of all Japanese tradesmen at that
+  time of year&#8212;warming his hands over a charcoal fire in a low
+  brazier. The kitchen is usually just next to this front room, often
+  separated from the street only by a latticed partition. In evolving a
+  Japanese kitchen out of his or her imagination, the reader must cast
+  away the rising conception of Bridget&#39;s realm. Blissful, indeed,
+  is the thought as I enter the Japanese hotel that neither the typical
+  servant-girl nor the American hotel-clerk is to be found here. The
+  landlord comes to meet me, and, falling on his hands and knees, bows
+  his head to the floor. One or two of the pretty girls out of the bevy
+  usually seen in Japanese hotels comes to assist me and take my traps.
+  Welcomes, invitations and plenty of fun greet me as I sit down to
+  take off my shoes, as all good Japanese do, and as those filthy
+  foreigners don&#39;t who tramp on the clean mats with muddy boots. I
+  stand up unshod, and am led by the laughing girls along the smooth
+  corridors, across an arched bridge which spans an open space in which
+  is a rookery, garden, and pond stocked with goldfish, turtles and
+  marine plants. The room which my fair guides choose for me is at the
+  rear end of the house, overlooking the grand scenery for which
+  Kanozan is justly famous all over the empire. Ninety-nine valleys are
+  said to be visible from the mountain-top on which the hotel is
+  situated, and I suspect that multiplication by ten would scarcely be
+  an exaggeration. A world of blue water and pines, and the detailed
+  loveliness of the rolling land, form a picture which I lack power to
+  paint with words. The water seemed the type of repose, the earth of
+  motion.</p>
+
+  <p>Enjoying to the full that rapture of first vision which one never
+  feels twice, I turned and entered the room, which made up in neatness
+  what it lacked in luxury. Furniture in a Japanese house there is
+  none. Like all the others, the floor of my room was covered with soft
+  matting two inches thick, made into sections six feet long and three
+  feet wide, and bound with a black border. The dimensions of a room
+  may always be expressed by the number of mats. The inside of the mats
+  is of rice straw, the outside is of the finest and smoothest matting.
+  There are no chairs, stools, sofas or anything to sit down upon,
+  though, having long since forgotten the fact, we find a ready seat on
+  the floor. On one side of the room, occupying one-half of its space,
+  is the <i>tokonoma</i>, a little platform anciently used for the bed,
+  two feet wide and five or six inches high. In one corner is a large
+  vase containing four or five boughs broken from a plum tree crowded
+  with blossoms, and a large bunch of white, crimson and dappled
+  camellias, both single and double. In the centre is the sword-rack,
+  found in every samurai&#39;s house, yet now obsolete, since
+  Japan&#39;s chivalry have laid aside their two swords. On the other
+  half of the room, occupying the same side as the tokonoma, is a
+  series of peculiar shelves like those of an open Japanese cabinet,
+  though larger; and at the top of these is a little closet closed by
+  sliding doors. The other three sides of the room are of sliding
+  partitions six feet high, made of fine white wood, latticed in small
+  squares and covered with paper, through which mellow, softened light
+  fills the room. On the plastered wall above the latticed sliding
+  doors hangs a framed tablet on which are written Chinese characters,
+  which, having the Japanese letters at the side, tell in terse and
+  poetical phrase that &quot;This room is the chamber of peaceful
+  meditation, into which the moonlight streams.&quot; Some of the
+  lattice and other work is <span class="pagenum">[pg 179]</span>
+  handsomely carved and wrought, and a paper screen along the wall
+  which separates this room from the next is covered with verses of
+  Japanese poetry. Were it cold weather, a brazier, with some live
+  coals in it, would be brought for us to toast our hands and feet and
+  to shiver over, as stoves and hard coal are not Japanese
+  institutions. First of all, however, at present, one of the
+  <i>musumes</i> brings me a <i>tobacco-bon</i> or tray, in which is
+  fire to light my pipe, the Japanese scarcely having a conception of a
+  man who does not smoke.</p>
+
+  <p>My description of a Japanese room will answer, in the main, for
+  any in Japan <i>as it was</i>&#8212;from the artisan&#39;s to the
+  emperor&#39;s. Even the palaces of the mikado in Kioto never
+  contained tables, chairs, bedsteads or any such inconvenient and
+  space-robbing thing. The tables upon which they ate, played chess or
+  wrote were six inches or a foot high. A Japanese of the old style
+  thinks the cumbrous furniture in our Western dwellings impertinent
+  and unnecessary. In the eye of aesthetic Japanese a room crowded with
+  luxurious upholstery is a specimen of barbaric pomp, delighting the
+  savage and unrefined eye of the hairy foreigners, but shocking to the
+  purged vision and the refined taste of one born in great Niphon. No
+  such tradesman as an upholsterer or furniture-dealer exists in Japan.
+  The country is a paradise for young betrothed couples who would wed
+  with light purses. One sees love in a cottage on a national scale
+  here. That terrible lion of expense, the furnishing of a house, that
+  stands ever in the way of so many loving pairs desirous of marriage
+  and a home of their own, is a bugbear not known in Japan. A chest of
+  drawers for clothing, a few mats, two or three quilts for a bed on
+  the floor, some simple kitchen utensils, and the house is furnished.
+  Why should we litter these neatly matted rooms, why cover with paint
+  and gilding virgin wood of faultless grain, or mar the sweet
+  simplicity and airy roominess of our (Japanese) chambers by loading
+  them with all kinds of unnecessary luxuries?</p><span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 180]</span>
+
+  <p>These reflections are broken in upon by Miss Cherry-blossom, one
+  of the maids, who glides in, kneels upon the floor, and sets down a
+  tiny round tray with a baby tea-pot and a cup the size of an egg.
+  Pouring out some tea, enough to half fill one of these porcelain
+  thimbles, she sets it in the socket of another yet tinier tray, and
+  bowing her head coquettishly, begs me to drink. Having long since
+  learned to quaff Japan&#39;s fragrant beverage guiltless of milk or
+  sugar, I drain the cup. Miss Cherry-blossom, sitting upright upon her
+  heels, folds her dress neatly under her knees, gives her loose robe a
+  twitch, revealing to advantage her white-powdered neck, the prized
+  point of beauty in a Japanese maiden, and then asks the usual
+  questions as to whence I came, whither I am going, and to what
+  country I belong. These, according to the Japanese code of etiquette,
+  are all polite questions; and in return, violating no dictum which
+  the purists of Kioto or Yeddo have laid down, I inquire her age
+  (&quot;Your honorable years, how many?&quot;). The answer,
+  &quot;<i>Ju-hachi</i>,&quot; makes known that she is eighteen years
+  of age. Chatting further, I learn what things there are to be seen in
+  the neighborhood, whether foreigners have been there before, the
+  distance to the next village, the history of the old temple near by,
+  etc. All this is told with many a laugh and a little
+  pantomime&#8212;she naturally committing the mistake of speaking
+  louder and faster to the foreigner who cannot fully understand her
+  dialect or allusions&#8212;when a new character appears upon the
+  scene.</p>
+
+  <p>A very jolly, matronly-looking woman, evidently the landlady,
+  pulls aside one of the sliding paper doors, and bowing low on her
+  hands and knees, smiles cavernously with her jet-black teeth, which,
+  like all correct and cleanly women in Japan, she dyes on alternate
+  days. She asks concerning dinner, and whether it is the honorable
+  wish of the visitor to eat Japanese food. The answer being
+  affirmative, both matron and maiden disappear to prepare the meal,
+  evidently thinking it a fine joke. No such thing as a common
+  dining-room exists in Japanese hotels. Caste has hitherto been too
+  strictly observed to allow of such an idea. Every guest eats in his
+  own room, sitting on his calves and heels. The preparations are
+  simple, though of course I speak now of every-day life.</p>
+
+  <p>Miss Peach-blossom appears, bearing in her hand a table four
+  inches high, one foot square, and handsomely lacquered red and black.
+  Behind her comes a young girl carrying a rice-box and plate of fish.
+  Most gracefully she sets it down with the apology, &quot;I have kept
+  you long waiting,&quot; and the invitation, &quot;Please take
+  up.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>On the table are four covered bowls, two very small dishes
+  containing pickles and soy, and a little paper bag in which is a pair
+  of chopsticks. The place of each article is foreordained by
+  gastronomic etiquette, and rigidly observed. In the first bowl is
+  soup, in the second a boiled mixture consisting of leeks, mushrooms,
+  lotus-root and a kind of sea-weed. In a third are boiled buckwheat
+  cakes or dumplings, and <i>tofu</i> or bean-curd. In the porcelain
+  cup is rice. In an oblong dish, brought in during the meal, is a
+  broiled fish in soy. Lifting off the covers and adjusting my
+  chopsticks deftly, I begin. The bowl of rice is first attacked, and
+  quickly finished. The attendant damsel proffers her lacquered waiter,
+  and uncovering the steaming tub of rice paddles out another cupful.
+  It is etiquette to dispose of unlimited cups of rice and soup, but a
+  deadly breach of good manners to ask to have the other two bowls
+  replenished. Of course at the hotels whatever the larder affords can
+  be ordered. Boiled eggs, cracked and peeled before you by the
+  tapering fingers of the damsels, are considered choice articles of
+  food. Raw fish, thinly sliced and eaten with radish, sauce, ginger
+  sprouts, etc., is highly enjoyed by the Japanese, who are surprised
+  to find the dish disliked by their foreign guests. A member of one of
+  the embassies sent to Europe confessed that amid the luxuries of
+  continental tables, he longed for the raw fish and grated radish of
+  his native land. Some articles of our own diet, especially cheese and
+  butter, are as heartily detested by the Japanese as their raw fish is
+  by us. The popular idea at home, that the Japanese live chiefly on
+  mice and crawfish, and that the foreigners are in chronic danger of
+  starvation, is matched by that of some Japanese, who, finding that
+  the &quot;hairy foreigners&quot; do not eat the food of human
+  beings&#8212;<i>i.e.</i> Japanese&#8212;wonder what they do eat. A
+  member of the present embassy in Europe, when first leaving his
+  native land, was thus addressed by his anxious mother: &quot;Now,
+  Yazirobe, you are going to those strange countries, where I am afraid
+  you will get very little to eat: do take some rice with you.&quot; I
+  confess that on first landing in Japan I could not relish Japanese
+  diet and cookery. Barring eggs and rice, everything tasted like
+  starch or sawdust. The flavors seemed raw and earthy, or suggested
+  dishcloths not too well scalded. I suspect that a good deal of
+  Philadelphia and Caucasian pride lined the alimentary canal of the
+  writer. Now, after a ten-mile tramp, a Japanese meal tastes very much
+  as it does to one native and to the diet born.</p>
+
+  <p>Besides the young damsel who presides, there is another, less
+  neatly dressed. Her apron is suggestive of the kitchen, and
+  altogether she seems a Cinderella by the fireplace. This damsel is
+  evidently a supe or scullion. She is not so self-possessed as her
+  superior companion, and while observing the foreigner with a mild
+  stare, unskillfully concealing her mirth, she finally explodes when
+  he makes a <i>faux pas</i> with the chopsticks and drops a bit of
+  fish on the clean matting. Thereupon she is dispatched to the kitchen
+  for a floor-cloth, and severely lectured for laughing aloud, and is
+  told to stay among the pots and pans till she learns better
+  manners.</p>
+
+  <p>Dinner over, a siesta on the soft mats is next in order. These
+  mats seem made for sleep and indolence. No booted foot ever defiles
+  them. Every one leaves his clogs on the ground outside, and glides
+  about in his mitten-like socks, which have each a special compartment
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 181]</span> for the great toe. My waiting
+  damsel having gone out, and there being no such things as bells, I do
+  as the natives and clap my hands. A far-off answer of
+  <i>Hei&#8212;i&#8212;i</i> is returned, and soon the shuffling of
+  feet is heard again. The housewife appears with the usual low bow,
+  and, smiling so as to again display what resembles a mouthful of
+  coal, she listens to the request for a pillow. Opening the little
+  closet before spoken of, she produces the desired article. It is not
+  a ticking bag of baked feathers enclosed in a dainty, spotless case
+  of white linen, but a little upright piece of wood, six inches high
+  and long, and one wide, rounded at the bottom like the rockers of a
+  cradle. On the top, lying in a groove, is a tiny rounded bag of
+  calico filled with rice-chaff, about the size of a sausage. The
+  pillow-case is a piece of white paper wrapped around the top, and
+  renewed in good hotels daily for each guest. One can rest about four
+  or six inches of the side of his <i>os occipitis</i> on a Japanese
+  pillow, and if he wishes may rock himself to sleep, though the words
+  suggest more than the facts warrant. By sleeping on civilized
+  feathers one gets out of training, and the Japanese pillows feel very
+  hard and very much in one place. The dreams which one has on these
+  pillows are characteristic. In my first some imps were boring
+  gimlet-holes in the side of my skull, until they had honeycombed it
+  and removed so much brain that I felt too light-headed to preserve my
+  equilibrium. On the present occasion, after falling asleep, I thought
+  that the pillow on which I lay pressed its shape into my head, and
+  the skull, to be repaired, was being trepanned. My head actually
+  tumbling off the pillow was the cause of the fancied operation being
+  suddenly arrested. A short experience in traveling among the Japanese
+  has satisfied me that they are one of the most polite, good-natured
+  and happy nations in the world. By introducing foreign civilization
+  into their beautiful land they may become richer: they need not
+  expect to be happier.</p>
+
+  <p class="author">W.E. GRIFFIS.</p><a name="jason" id="jason">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a> <span class="pagenum">[pg 182]</span>
+
+  <h2>JASON&#39;S QUEST.</h2>
+
+  <h3><a name="jasoni" id="jasoni"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> I.</h3>
+
+  <p>This is a story of love for love, and how it came to naught. In it
+  there shall be no marrying from mercenary motives; the manoeuvering
+  mother-in-law is suppressed; Nature takes her course; and in the
+  climax I strive to prove how sad a thing it is that men are modest
+  and women weak.</p>
+
+  <p>Still, I do not lose faith in humanity, but hope for better things
+  in the broad, bright future. I would respectfully call attention to
+  the moral of this tale, and, as for the heroes and heroines of the
+  hereafter, I cheerfully leave them to regulate their affairs upon a
+  different basis; which basis, I devoutly believe, will be one of the
+  inevitable results of time.</p>
+
+  <p>But, lo! the heroine approaches and the story begins!</p>
+  <hr />
+
+  <p>Life with some of us is but the grouping of a few brilliant or
+  sombre tableaux, which are like the famous lines in an epic that
+  immortalize the whole. Maud&#39;s life was such a one, and her years
+  had been rather unpicturesque until now, when the shadows began to
+  deepen and the lights to grow more intense. In fact, she seemed to be
+  approaching some sort of a climax, and she began to grow nervous
+  about it, being just woman enough to dwell somewhat anxiously upon
+  her anticipated <i>d�but</i>, and to hope for at least a decent
+  appearance in her extremity.</p>
+
+  <p>The good-hearted, commonplace people of a pleasant country down
+  the coast&#8212;which I will call Dreamland for convenience&#39;
+  sake&#8212;thought of Maud only as a gentle and humane little lady,
+  with a comfortable income and a character above reproach. So Maud
+  abode in peace with her maids at the seaside cottage, spending the
+  still hours of Dreamland between her rose-garden on the sunny slope
+  to the southward and the conservatory of lily-like nuns on the hill
+  toward the sea.</p>
+
+  <p>Maud was unhappy in a world which had treated her very kindly
+  indeed, and it was simply because she had a dove&#39;s heart, that
+  was always fluttering in a strange place, and the face of a nun, that
+  was for ever getting looked at by all sorts of people, much as it
+  disliked that kind of treatment from the best of them.</p>
+
+  <p>The only reason why Maud preferred such a dull place as Dreamland
+  to the splendid metropolis up the coast was that she might have a
+  quiet time of it, and not be annoyed by the impudent metropolitans.
+  In fact, she was tired of her lovers&#8212;all save one, a fine young
+  fellow named Jason, but better known in Dreamland as John. I have
+  mentioned, I believe, that Maud was in very good circumstances: I am
+  sorry to add that Jason wasn&#39;t. He was rich only in his untried
+  youth and the promises of a glorious manhood.</p>
+
+  <p>Jason loved Maud, and she knew it as well as she ever knew
+  anything in her life&#8212;she knew it without his having told her.
+  Had she not divined it by the infallible intuition of the heart, she
+  might have lived believing herself unloved, for Jason hadn&#39;t the
+  remotest idea of mentioning the fact. He could barely live
+  comfortably by himself, frugal as he was; and he would not go to her
+  empty-handed, though Heaven knows she had enough for two, and was
+  dying to share it with him. He went his way, and the way was tedious
+  enough in those days. Like a mirage, happiness glimmered before him,
+  but his upright and patient steps brought him no nearer to its
+  alluring vista.</p>
+
+  <p>Youth is impatient and sanguine, and Jason, in his impetuous and
+  hopeful youth, besought the oracle, whose prophetic utterances seemed
+  to imply that his future and his fortune lay in some distant land,
+  and that it would be wise for him to seek it at once. Jason, like his
+  illustrious predecessor, resolved to go over the sea in search of the
+  golden fleece. It was the most adventurous thing he ever did, and
+  Maud thought it a hopeless and a willful act; yet she could do
+  nothing but hold her peace, while her poor heart was as near to
+  breaking as possible&#8212;much nearer to breaking than it is usually
+  safe for a maiden&#39;s heart to be.</p>
+
+  <p>So Jason gathered his mates&#8212;a reckless lot they were,
+  too&#8212;and, having laden his barque and swung into the stream, his
+  men said their final adieux, receiving quantities of pincushions and
+  bookmarks, so indispensable to Argonauts, as testimonials of eternal
+  fidelity from the maids of Dreamland.</p>
+
+  <p>Jason strode to the cottage and kissed the hand of Maud as if it
+  were the hand of a princess; after which, with much embarrassment, he
+  plucked a rose from her garden, while a pang pierced his heart till
+  it ached again, and a thorn probed his finger till a drop of blood
+  fell upon a myrtle leaf; which leaf Maud coveted, and keeps to this
+  day&#8212;hugged to her in her grave-clothes.</p>
+
+  <p>It is of course best that this life should not be perfect, for the
+  life to come might suffer by comparison; yet it is one of the
+  cruelest decrees of Nature&#8212;if Nature has really decreed what
+  seems so wholly against her&#8212;that a woman&#39;s heart must bide
+  its time and be silent in the presence of its natural mate while
+  every attribute of her being implores his recognition; and that the
+  truest men are too honorable or too proud to yield themselves, having
+  no offering but their honest love to lay at the feet of their
+  mistresses. If it were not so, the princess would not have mourned in
+  her garden for her flown mate, and there would have been much
+  happiness on short notice.</p>
+
+  <p>Driven forth by the propitious winds, the barque fled from the
+  shore, while Maud, seated among her roses, with weeping and wringing
+  of hands, poured out upon the winds the burden of her love.</p>
+
+  <p>Why didn&#39;t Jason catch a syllable of that fervent prayer,
+  reef, and come home to her? Then I need not have written this
+  history, and all would have <span class="pagenum">[pg 183]</span>
+  been well in Dreamland. But he didn&#39;t. He heard nothing but the
+  sibilant waters as they rushed under his keel: he thought of nothing
+  but the rose that was withering in the secret locker of his cabin,
+  and of the wound in his heart that was gaping and as fresh as ever.
+  So the night-winds hurried him onward, and the darkness absorbed the
+  outlines of the dear Dreamland coast.</p>
+
+  <p>Maud watched the barque while it lessened and lessened in the
+  distance, and the clouds blew over her, and it grew chilly and damp
+  in the rose-garden&#8212;as chilly and damp as though it were not the
+  abode of a princess who was beloved of the noblest of men. She
+  watched the sail till it faded suddenly beyond the headland, and
+  between it and her loomed the dark towers of the convent. Out on that
+  troubled sea, seeking the golden fleece in some remote kingdom,
+  tossed on the treacherous waves for her sake, in her white and
+  radiant dreams she beheld Jason. Yet ever between him and her, hiding
+  the lessening barque from the slope of the rose-garden, loomed the
+  dark towers of the convent.</p><a name="jasonii" id="jasonii">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>II.</h3>
+
+  <p>Jason and his fellows coursed the seas, scanning with eager eyes
+  the cloudy belt of the horizon, hopefully seeking some signs of the
+  Fortunate Islands, of whose indescribable beauty and untold wealth
+  they had heard many surmises. Day after day they pressed on between
+  the same blank sky and the same blank sea, but there was no token to
+  gladden the eyes of the watchers. Jason grew impatient at last: he
+  had called upon nearly all the saints in the calendar, and was
+  growing to be a very poor sort of a Catholic, inasmuch as he doubted
+  the efficacy of his prayers and the ability of saints to answer them.
+  He didn&#39;t realize that there might be good reasons for their not
+  being answered under the existing circumstances; which is a matter
+  worthy of the consideration of all of us.</p>
+
+  <p>The fact was, the Fortunate Islands were not one-half so wonderful
+  as had been represented; and the saints knew <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 184]</span> it well enough. Had Jason invested there,
+  as he purposed doing at the time of his embarkment, he might have
+  sunk all that he possessed&#8212;which was little enough to float, as
+  one would think&#8212;and then Maud might have tended her rose-garden
+  and carried fruit-offerings to the sweet-faced nuns till she was gray
+  and limping, for all Jason&#39;s fine notions of
+  independence&#8212;namely, a good income from the rise of stocks in
+  the Fortunate Islands, and two souls and two hearts doing the same
+  sort of thing at the same time, with complete and unqualified
+  success, in that sweet rose-garden on the sunny slope to the
+  southward.</p>
+
+  <p>That was the way life went with Captain Jason of the Argonauts,
+  called John, for short, in Dreamland, while the crew growled a good
+  deal at their ill-luck, and began to fear that if things went on in
+  that way much longer they would have more fasts than Fridays in the
+  week. Those were trying times for all of them, and when land was made
+  at last, and it proved to be a temptation and a snare, Jason ordered
+  a special fast and a mass for the salvation of the souls in imminent
+  peril. Out in the world at last, thousands of miles from the
+  unsophisticated people of Dreamland, Jason beheld the dread
+  Symplegades rocking their enormous bulks upon the waves, and liable
+  at any moment to swing together with a terrific and deadly crash.
+  Probably they were whales at play: it may have been two currents of
+  the sea rushing into each other&#39;s arms: at all events, it was
+  something deluding, though temporary, and perhaps the selfsame
+  difficulty experienced by the original J. when he went after the
+  original fleece.</p>
+
+  <p>My hero was young and unschooled in the world&#39;s wickedness,
+  but he knew that where two opposing elements come together with much
+  force, whatever happens to lie between them must suffer. What should
+  be done was a question of no little importance to the Argonauts. Most
+  of them were in favor of running the risk of a collision and letting
+  the vessel drive straight through. Jason thought this a judgment
+  worthy of young men whose lady-loves give expression to their most
+  sacred sentiments by gifts of pincushions and bookmarks. But he had
+  something to consider more than they&#8212;yea, more than any other
+  living man&#8212;in exemplification of the pleasing fallacy that
+  besets all lovers in all ages. Blessed be God that it is so!</p>
+
+  <p>The original Jason in the fable let loose a dove upon the waters,
+  and the dove lost only a tail-feather or two when the clashing
+  islands clashed their worst, and in the moment of the rebound the
+  Argo swept through in safety. The modern J. thought of this in his
+  predicament, and having turned it in his mind, he concluded that
+  whereas the pioneer Argonaut did not meet his princess till after his
+  encounter with the elements, he was not worthy of consideration; for
+  had he known her and loved her as some one knew and loved some one
+  else at that moment, most likely he would not have valued his life so
+  slightly. He clewed up his canvas like a wise mariner, and lay to
+  while the Symplegades butted one another with their foreheads of
+  adamant, and the sea was white with terror all about them. Jason was
+  no coward: he would have braved the passage had he alone been
+  concerned in the result; but for Maud in her rose-garden and for the
+  future, dear to him as his hope of heaven, he paused and
+  trembled.</p>
+
+  <p>It is a pity there should be so little pausing and trembling among
+  the clashing islands when life hangs in the balance and the odds are
+  against it. But there always has been and always will be this little,
+  because we believe that nothing but experience is capable of teaching
+  us, and experience invariably teaches it all wrong end to, so that we
+  begin our lesson with a disaster and conclude it with a slow
+  recovery.</p>
+
+  <p>During Jason&#39;s hour of deliberation his guardian angel, who
+  was the only one having his interests really at heart, and who loved
+  him unselfishly,&#8212;this angel advised him in the similitude of a
+  dream to &quot;luff a little and go round the obstacles.&quot; Jason
+  luffed, and passed on with colors flying; which was doubtless much
+  better than trying to squeeze through the floating islands in the
+  midst of an exceedingly disagreeable sea.</p>
+
+  <p>Then came the land beyond, the long-sought kingdom, full of arts
+  and wiles. Jason was beset with ten thousand temptations, and was
+  more than once upon the point of falling into a snare, when, however,
+  he seemed to behold the apparition of his withered rose, which
+  bloomed and blushed again at such times, and gave out a faint
+  fragrance, so like a breath from that Eden on the sunny slope that he
+  paused and grew strong, and was saved.</p>
+
+  <p>His troubles were not yet over. There was the bargaining for the
+  golden fleece, and the tempting offer of the dragons&#39; teeth which
+  he was to sow. They were the lusts of the body, that, once planted,
+  spring up an armed force of bloody and persistent accusers. But that
+  precious rose! How it blossomed over and over for his especial
+  benefit, a perpetual warning and an unfailing talisman&#8212;a very
+  profitable sort of blossom to wear in one&#39;s button-hole in these
+  times! But such blossoms are scarce indeed.</p>
+
+  <p>In due course of time that potent charm got him the golden fleece
+  in a very natural and business-like way, and, rejoicing in his
+  possessions, Jason returned to his vessel and trimmed his sails for
+  home.</p>
+
+  <p>Merry the hearts that sailed with him, and fresh the winds that
+  wafted them onward, while, as is usual at sea, nothing occurred
+  during the voyage worth mentioning an hour after its occurrence.
+  Jason in his new joy had almost forgotten that withered token. In
+  deep remorse at his thoughtlessness, he sought his treasure, and,
+  horror of horrors! every leaf had fallen from the stem, the blossom
+  was annihilated for ever. He dwelt upon this episode morbidly, as
+  upon a presentiment: he pictured in his mind the hill-slope cottage
+  deserted, the rose-garden wasted and full of tares, and the bleak
+  wind blowing whither it listed through those avenues of beauty, for
+  desolation possessed them all. He groaned in spirit and wrestled with
+  his new and invisible adversary, beseeching the Most Merciful, from
+  the bitterness <span class="pagenum">[pg 185]</span> of his suspense,
+  a speedy deliverance or a happy death.</p><a name="jasoniii" id=
+  "jasoniii"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>III.</h3>
+
+  <p>There were thistles and tares in the unkept rose-garden, and the
+  cottage was abandoned to a sisterhood of doves, who mourned
+  perpetually for their lost princess. The place was desolate, yet
+  there had been no sudden desertion of it. For many months no news had
+  been heard of the Argonauts. They were considerably overdue: the
+  sages of Dreamland shook their grizzly heads. They were just as sage
+  and shaky in those days as in these degenerate times. The maids of
+  the hamlet wept for a season, then turned from sorrowing, dried their
+  tears, took unto themselves new lovers, and the world wagged well in
+  Dreamland.</p>
+
+  <p>But Maud was a truer soul than any amongst them: she prayed hourly
+  for Jason&#39;s prosperity, and was trusting and hopeful until it
+  seemed almost that something had whispered to her the fate of the
+  voyagers. Then she mourned night and day: she went into retirement
+  with the sweet-faced nuns at the headland, whose secluded life had
+  ever been very grateful to her. She gave out of her bounty to all who
+  asked, and rested not then, but sought the sick and the suffering,
+  and they were comforted, and blessed her who had blessed them. They
+  began to think her half an angel in Dreamland, and it seemed as
+  though she were not made for this world at all. The same thing
+  happens now occasionally, and in this way we acknowledge our
+  shortcomings before our fellow-men and women when we find some one
+  considerably above the average who shames us into confessing it. I
+  hope the Recording Angel is within hearing at these precious
+  moments.</p>
+
+  <p>The world certainly possessed no charms for one of Maud&#39;s
+  temperament: it never did possess any for her. She was as out of
+  place in it as a mourning dove in a city mob. Her spirit sought
+  tranquillity, and she found it in the serene and changless convent
+  life. You and I might seek in vain for anything like peace of spirit
+  in such a place: we <span class="pagenum">[pg 186]</span> might find
+  it a stale and profitless imprisonment; and perhaps it speaks badly
+  for both of us that it is so. The violet finds its silent cell in the
+  earth-crevice by the hidden spring a sufficient refuge, and rejoices
+  in it, but the sea-grass that has all its life tossed in the surges
+  would think that a very dull sort of existence. There are human
+  violets in the world, and human sunflowers and poppies, and doves
+  also, and apes and alligators; and some of them come within one of
+  being inhuman; and sometimes that <i>one</i> drops out, and the
+  inhuman swallows up the human.</p>
+
+  <p>Maud was the mourning dove seeking its bower of shade: she used to
+  fancy herself a nun, and followed the prescribed duties of the house
+  as faithfully as Sister Grace herself. She knelt in the little chapel
+  of the convent till her back ached and her knees were lame, but it
+  was a never-failing joy in time of trouble, and her time of tremble
+  had come. Maud said many prayers before an altar of exceeding
+  loveliness, where fresh flowers seemed to breathe forth an unusual
+  fragrance. There was a statue of the Virgin, said to possess some
+  miraculous qualities: tradition whispered that on two or three
+  occasions the expression on the face of the statue had been seen to
+  change visibly. Maud heard of this, and was very eager to witness the
+  miracle, for it was thought to be nothing less than miraculous by the
+  good Sisters. She bowed before the altar for hours, and dreamed of
+  the marble face till she seemed to see its features smiling upon her
+  and its small, slim hand beckoning her back to prayer. She grew
+  nervous and pale and almost ill with watching and waiting, and at
+  last was found prostrate and insensible at the foot of the statue,
+  overcome with excitement and exhaustion. When she grew better she
+  vowed she had seen the head bowing to her, and the hands spread over
+  her in benediction: no one could deny it, for she was alone in the
+  chapel. After that there was a feast of lilies at the convent, and
+  Maud became Sister Somebody or other, and never again set foot beyond
+  the great gates of the convent wall.</p>
+
+  <p>The consecration was doubtless a blessing to her, for she was
+  happy in her new home, and found a sphere of usefulness that employed
+  her hours to the best advantage. Moreover, she grew to be a sensible
+  nun, and ceased to look for supernatural demonstrations in the
+  neighborhood of the chapel. She grew hearty, and was cheerful, and
+  sang at her work, and prayed with more honesty and less sentiment.
+  Her life was as placid as a river whose waters are untroubled by
+  tempestuous winds, and upon her bosom light cares, like passing
+  barges, left but a momentary wake.</p>
+
+  <p>As Maud mused in her cell one day, through the narrow barred
+  window she caught a glimpse of the burnished sea bearing upon its
+  waves a weather-beaten barque inward bound. There was danger that her
+  mind might wander off, piloted by her dreamy and worshipful eyes. She
+  arose, drew across the opening a leathern curtain, and returned with
+  undisturbed complacence to her prayers.</p><a name="jasoniv" id=
+  "jasoniv"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>IV.</h3>
+
+  <p>Jason, having among his freights the veritable golden fleece,
+  still coursed the seas, but beheld with rapture the fair outlines of
+  the Dreamland coast traced in the far blue and mysterious horizon.
+  The wind freshened: hour after hour they were nearing port, and as
+  the whole familiar picture grew more and more distinct, Jason saw the
+  convent towers looming like a great shadow, and afterward the sunny
+  slope whereon the rose-garden grew.</p>
+
+  <p>The manner of his quitting the barque before she was fairly within
+  communication with the shore was hardly worthy of his calling. I
+  forbear to dwell upon this exhibition of human weakness, for almost
+  any one in Jason&#39;s shoes would have been equally regardless of
+  the regulations, and in consequence proportionally unseamanlike.</p>
+
+  <p>With soiled garments and unshorn beard Jason ran to the hill. No
+  one of the idlers in port recognized the returned wanderer, and he
+  assured himself of the fact before venturing upon his visit to the
+  dove-cot where Maud dwelt, for he wished to gaze upon her from afar,
+  and in silence to worship her, unknown and unregarded. When he
+  reached the wicket, breathless with haste and excitement, he at once
+  beheld the ruin of his hopes&#8212;the thistles in the paths, the
+  roses overgrown and choked with weeds, the sad and general decay.
+  Jason smote his breast in a paroxysm of despair, while the doves
+  fluttered out from the porch of the cottage in amazement at the
+  approach of a human foot to their domains.</p>
+
+  <p>What could it mean? he asked himself again and again, while
+  suspicions taunted him almost to madness. Up and down that disordered
+  garden he paced like a ghostly sentinel; the doves fluttered to and
+  fro, and were dismayed; the night-winds came in from the chilly sea,
+  and the dews gathered in his beard. Through the deepening dusk he
+  beheld the lights of the little town below him: across the solemn
+  silence floated the clear notes of the vesper-bell. Jason turned
+  toward the tower on the headland. A single ray of light stealing from
+  one of the high, narrow windows shot through the mist toward heaven.
+  &quot;The ladder of Jacob&#39;s dream,&quot; said Jason: &quot;on it
+  the angels are ascending and descending in their visitations. Oh that
+  I, like Jacob, might receive intelligence from these!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>With the heaviest heart that ever burdened man he returned to the
+  town and entered the open doors of the church, seeking a few moments
+  of repose. An alien in his own land and unwelcomed of any, Jason
+  sought the good priest and learned the fate of Maud. She was dead to
+  the world and to him. It was but the realization of his fears, and he
+  was in some measure prepared for it; yet the best part of the man was
+  killed with the force of that blow. His only hope was gone. He set
+  his house in order, like one about to leave it, never to return: his
+  golden fleece was made over to enrich the convent, and, as the
+  magnanimous offering of a homelesss and nameless voyager, it delights
+  the happy creatures within those walls, and the shrine of the Virgin
+  was made more <span class="pagenum">[pg 187]</span> wonderfully
+  beautiful than it is possible to conceive.</p>
+
+  <p>That night Jason walked in the shadow of the lofty walls and
+  poured out his sorrowful prayers upon the winds that swept about
+  them. Once in his agony he beat at the massive gates, demanding in
+  the name of God and of mercy admittance for a lost soul that had no
+  shelter save under that roof, and no salvation away from it; but his
+  bleeding hands made no impression upon the ponderous doors, and the
+  silent inmates at prayer heard nothing save their own whispers, or
+  dreamed in their cells of heaven and of peace.</p>
+
+  <p>So the cry of that hopeless soul rang up to the stars unanswered,
+  and the night frowned down upon him with impenetrable darkness.</p>
+
+  <p>End of the tragedy of Jason&#39;s Quest, which might easily have
+  been a pleasant comedy if Maud had only spoken her mind in the right
+  place. Will women never learn&#8212;since God has given them the same
+  instincts with man, to love, to trust, to doubt, to hate and to make
+  themselves at times disagreeable, even with a more complete success
+  than men in each of these lines of dramatic business&#8212;that God
+  must have intended also that they should have the equal right to
+  choose the particular object upon which they may exercise those
+  various offices of love, trust, etc., etc.? I shall never cease to
+  wonder why they are persistently and stupidly silent through six
+  thousand years, content to let their hearts wither and die within
+  them, or surrender at last to the wretched apology for a lover who
+  offers himself as a substitute, and is surprised at rinding himself
+  accepted.</p>
+
+  <p>To be sure, it is less dramatic. Jason might have come back and
+  married Maud: there would have been a pretty wedding and some
+  delightful hours before things grew dull and commonplace, as they
+  must have done ultimately. That rose-garden would have come to grief
+  when once the children got to playing in it; Jason, on some tedious
+  afternoon, when overhauling old letters <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  188]</span> and the like, would have thrown out that withered rose
+  (of precious memory), quite forgetful of its significance; Maud would
+  have lost her myrtle leaf in house-cleaning. Yet what were the odds?
+  A withered rose and a myrtle leaf are scarcely worth the keeping.</p>
+
+  <p>You will remember how it turned out in the days of the gods: Jason
+  wearied of Medea and the children; Medea was disgusted with such
+  conduct, and behaved like a savage; there was general unhappiness in
+  the family; and I blush for my sex&#8212;which is
+  Jason&#39;s&#8212;whenever I think of it. Now, if my Jason had
+  married his Maud, it would have scarcely been worth noticing beyond
+  the simple register in the <i>Daily Dreamlander</i>, after having
+  been thrice published from the pulpit between the Gospel and the
+  Creed&#8212;&quot;Jason to Maud.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>As Jason was not heard of after the windy night under the wall of
+  the convent, there were many surmises concerning his disappearance.
+  It was thought that he had again embarked upon some voyage of
+  discovery. I believe he had, and it was a desperate one for him. The
+  other Argonauts married such maids as were left unmarried, and they
+  did well to do so. Some of the old sweethearts regretted their haste,
+  and looked enviously upon the new brides of Dreamland; but most of
+  them were satisfied with their children, and contented with such
+  husbands as Heaven had sent them.</p>
+
+  <p>Life grew slow in the little drowsy seaport; the old tales of the
+  Symplegades were stale and tedious; the Argonauts had become
+  spiritless and corpulent and lazy. One night a great gale swept in
+  from the sea: the earth fairly trembled under the repeated shocks of
+  the breakers. Old people looked troubled and young people looked
+  scared, and on the worst night of all the convent bell was heard to
+  toll, and then everybody feared something dreadful was happening to
+  the nuns, and everybody lay still and hoped it would soon be over.
+  The nuns wondered who rang the bell; and when every one had denied
+  all knowledge of it, it was known that most likely the devil had rung
+  it, for it was a dreadful night, and such a one as he best likes to
+  be out in.</p>
+
+  <p>In the morning, when the wind and the sea had gone down somewhat,
+  the wreckers found a stark corpse among the rocks under the headland,
+  lying with its face to the tower. It was dreadfully mangled: no one
+  could identify it as being any one in particular, and it was
+  impossible to know whether death had occurred by accident or
+  intentionally; so it was shrouded and put away out of Christian
+  burial in the common field of the unfortunate. The nuns sang a
+  <i>requiem</i>, as was their custom, and Maud prayed earnestly for
+  all followers of the sea; and the echo of her <i>miserere</i> is the
+  saddest line in the story of Jason&#39;s Quest.</p>
+
+  <p class="author">CHARLES WARREN STODDARD.</p><a name="forebodings"
+  id="forebodings"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>FOREBODINGS.</h2>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">What weight is this which presses on my soul?</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Powerless to rise, I sink amidst the dust:</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">The days in solemn cycle o&#39;er me roll,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">While, praying, I can only wait and trust.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">&#8212;Trust the dear Hand that all my life has
+      led</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Through pastures green, by waters pure and
+      still:</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">If now He leads me through dark ways and dread,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Shall I dare murmur, whatsoe&#39;er His will?</p>
+    </div>
+  </div><a name="deerparks" id="deerparks"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>DEER-PARKS.</h2><span class="pagenum">[pg 189]</span>
+
+  <p>There is nothing in England at the present day much more
+  distinctly an institution of that country than its deer-parks.
+  Although it seems probable that the Saxons had some sort of enclosed
+  or partially enclosed chases where deer were hunted or taken in the
+  toils, the regular and systematic enclosure of parks would appear to
+  have come in with the Normans. According to the old Norman law, no
+  subject could form a park without a grant from the Crown, or
+  immemorial prescription, which was held presumptive evidence of such
+  a grant.</p>
+
+  <p>On the Continent there would appear to have been much more
+  strictness in this respect than in England. &quot;In April,
+  1656,&quot; says Reresby in his travels, &quot;I returned to Saumur,
+  where I stayed two months: then I went to Thouars in Brittany, where
+  the duke of Tr�mouille hath his best house. Thouars is looked upon as
+  one of the best manors in all France, not so much for profit (a great
+  extent of land there sometimes affording not much rent), but for
+  greatness of tenure; five hundred gentlemen, it is said, holding
+  their lands from it. Going to wait on the duke, I found him very kind
+  when I told him my country, the late earl of Derby having married his
+  sister.<a id="footnotetag1" name="footnotetag1"></a><a href=
+  "#footnote1"><sup>1</sup></a> He commanded me to dine with him, and
+  the next time mounted me upon one of his horses to wait on him
+  a-hunting in his park, which, not being two miles about, I thought of
+  little compass to belong to so great a person, till I found that few
+  are allowed to have any there save the princes of the blood. So true
+  is it that there are more parks in England than in all Europe
+  besides.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>A large park would appear to have been among the many luxuries of
+  the princely Medici, for Reresby says: &quot;Ten miles from Florence
+  the duke hath another country-house, nothing so considerable in
+  itself as in its situation, standing betwixt several hills on one
+  side, covered with vines and olive trees, and a valley divided into
+  many walks by rows of trees leading different ways: one leads to a
+  park where the great duke hath made a paddock course by the direction
+  of Signior Bernard Gascoigne, an Italian, who, having served our late
+  king in his wars, carried the pattern from England. Near to this
+  house, Poggio-Achaiano, is another park, the largest in Italy, or
+  rather chase, said to be thirty miles in compass.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Foremost amongst English parks is Windsor. The immense tracts by
+  which Windsor was formerly surrounded consisted of park and forest.
+  Windsor Forest has gradually diminished in size. In the time of
+  Charles I. it contained twelve parishes, and probably covered not
+  less than 100,000 acres. According to a survey in 1789-92, it
+  amounted to 59,600 acres, of which the enclosed property of the Crown
+  amounted to 5454. Like all the other forests in England, it has been
+  much encroached on, and now consists of only some 1450 acres
+  adjoining Windsor Great Park. The rest of the land formerly composing
+  it has been sold or leased. Enough of the forest remains, in
+  conjunction with the park, to enable the visitor to make many
+  delightful excursions. The most agreeable way of seeing this sylvan
+  country is on horseback. Perhaps nowhere in the world can one get a
+  more delicious canter. By a little management it is easy to take a
+  ride of twenty-five miles without more than a couple of miles off the
+  turf. In 1607 the Great Park was stated at 3650 acres: it consists
+  now of about one thousand acres less.</p>
+
+  <p>The principal royal park in modern days, next to Windsor, is
+  Richmond. <span class="pagenum">[pg 190]</span> This covers more than
+  two thousand acres, and, thanks to the railway, may almost be
+  regarded as a lung of London, being only eight miles distant from the
+  city. Richmond Park is as replete as Windsor with historical
+  association, and came into especial importance in the reign of
+  Charles I. That king, who was excessively addicted to the sports of
+  the field, had a strong desire to make a great park, for red as well
+  as fallow deer, between Richmond and Hampton Court, where he had
+  large wastes of his own, and great parcels of wood, which made it
+  very fit for the use he designed it for; but as some parishes had
+  rights of commonage in the wastes, and many gentlemen and farmers had
+  good houses and farms intermingled with them which they had inherited
+  or held on lease, and as, without including all these, the park would
+  not be large enough for Charles&#39;s satisfaction, the king, who was
+  willing to pay a very high price, expected people to gratify him by
+  parting with their property. Many did so, but&#8212;like the
+  blacksmith of Brighton who utterly refused to be bought out when
+  George IV. was building his hideous pavilion, and the famous miller
+  of Potsdam, that Mordecai at the gate of Sans Souci&#8212;&quot;a
+  gentleman who had the best estate, with a convenient house and
+  gardens, would by no means part with it, and made a great noise as if
+  the king would take away men&#39;s estates at his own pleasure.&quot;
+  The case of this gentleman and his many minor adherents soon caused a
+  regular row. The lord treasurer, Juxon, bishop of London, who
+  accompanied Charles to the scaffold, and other ministers were very
+  averse to the scheme, not only on account of the hostile feeling it
+  had evoked, but because the purchase of the land and making a brick
+  wall of ten miles around it, which was what the king wanted, was a
+  great deal too costly for his depleted exchequer. However, Charles,
+  with his usual fatal obstinacy, would not hear of abandoning the
+  scheme, and told Lord Cottington, who did his utmost to dissuade him
+  from it, &quot;he was resolved to go through with it, and had already
+  caused brick to be burned and much of the wall to be built.&quot;
+  This beginning of the wall before people consented to part with their
+  land or common rights, increased the public feeling on the subject,
+  and, happening at a time when public opinion was growing strongly
+  against arbitrary rule, was no doubt one of the circumstances which
+  contributed to Charles&#39;s fall.</p>
+
+  <p>George II. and Queen Caroline lived much at Richmond, and the
+  interview between Jeanie Deans and Her Majesty took place here.
+  Jeanie, it will be remembered, told her ducal friend that she thought
+  the park would be &quot;a braw place for the cows&quot;&#8212;a
+  sentiment similar to that of Mr. Black&#39;s Highland heroine,
+  Sheila, who pronounced it &quot;a beautiful ground for
+  sheep.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The practice of hunting deer in a park, now quite a thing of the
+  past, appears to have been very prevalent at Richmond during this
+  reign, and apparently was attended with considerable risk. In a
+  chronicle of 1731 we read:</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;<i>August</i> 13, 1731. The royal family hunted a stag in
+  Richmond new park: in the midst of the sport, Sir Robert
+  Walpole&#39;s horse fell with him just before the queen&#39;s chaise,
+  but he was soon remounted, and Her Majesty ordered him to bleed by
+  way of precaution.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;<i>Aug</i>. 28, 1731. The royal family hunted in Richmond
+  Park, when the Lord Delaware&#39;s lady and Lady Harriet
+  d&#39;Auverquerque, daughter to the earl of Grantham, were overturned
+  in a chaise, which went over them, but did no visible hurt. Mr.
+  Shorter, one of the king&#39;s huntsmen, had a fall from his horse,
+  and received a slight contusion in his head.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;<i>Sept</i>. 13, 1731. Some of the royal family and persons
+  of quality hunted a stag in Richmond Park. A stag gored the horse of
+  Coulthorp Clayton, Esq., and threw him. The Lady Susan Hamilton was
+  unhorsed.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;<i>Sept</i>. 14, being Holy Rood Day, the king&#39;s
+  huntsmen hunted their free buck in Richmond new park with
+  bloodhounds, according to custom.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>It will be noted that this sport took place at a season when no
+  hunting is now done in England.</p>
+
+  <p>There are two other small royal parks within a walk of
+  Richmond&#8212;Bushy and Hampton Court. Both contain magnificent
+  trees.</p>
+
+  <p>The New Forest is now the only royal appanage of the kind, and the
+  House of Hanover has never made use of it for hunting purposes,
+  although the Stuart kings were very fond of going there. It was to
+  enjoy this territory that Charles II. commenced the magnificent
+  palace at Winchester, the finished portions of which are now used as
+  barracks. Nell Gwyn&#39;s quarters at the deanery are still shown. Up
+  to 1779 there was a great tract of royal forest-ground near London,
+  on the Essex side, known as Enfield Chase, containing numbers of
+  deer. If we remember rightly, it is alluded to in <i>The Fortunes of
+  Nigel</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>There are many more parks in the south than in the north of
+  England&#8212;a circumstance which is remarkable, having regard to
+  the wilder character of the ground in the former.</p>
+
+  <p>According to a valuable work on parks published a few years ago by
+  Mr. Shirley, a large landed proprietor, there are three hundred and
+  thirty-four parks still stocked with deer in the different counties
+  of England, and red deer are found in about thirty-one. It is
+  supposed that the oldest is that attached to Eridge Castle, near that
+  celebrated and most ancient of English watering-places, Tonbridge
+  Wells, in Sussex. It is very extensive, and there are no less than
+  ninety miles of grass drives cut through the park and woods. Almost
+  the largest park is that attached to the present duke of
+  Marlborough&#39;s famous seat, Blenheim. A large proportion of this
+  magnificent demesne formed part of Woodstock Chase, a favorite
+  hunting-seat of British sovereigns from an early date up to the time
+  of Queen Anne. It was then granted by the Crown to the hero of
+  Blenheim, far more fortunate in respect of the nation&#39;s gift than
+  the hero of Waterloo, whose grant of lands lay in a swamp which it
+  cost him a little fortune to drain. Next to Blenheim, in point of
+  size, stands <span class="pagenum">[pg 191]</span> Tatton in
+  Cheshire, the seat of Lord Egerton. It contains 2500 acres, and the
+  portion appropriated to deer is far larger than at Blenheim. Tatton
+  is from ten to eleven miles around.</p>
+
+  <p>Another extensive park, 1500 acres, is that at Stowe, the duke of
+  Buckingham&#39;s. When in 1848 the family misfortunes reached a
+  climax which necessitated the sale of everything in Stowe House, the
+  deer in the park were sold off. But twenty-five years have rolled by,
+  and restored in a great degree the prosperity of the family. The duke
+  is again living at his splendid ancestral seat, is by degrees
+  restoring to their former home as the opportunity offers many of its
+  scattered treasures, and has restocked the park with deer.</p>
+
+  <p>Two parks pre-eminently famous for the magnificence of their oak
+  timber are Keddleston, Lord Scarsdale&#39;s, in Derbyshire, and
+  Bagot&#39;s Park, Lord Bagot&#39;s, in Staffordshire. The latter,
+  which contains a thousand acres, is a very ancient enclosure. It
+  contains, besides the deer, a herd of wild goats said to have been
+  presented by Richard II. to an ancestor of the present owner.</p>
+
+  <p>Parks vary from a paddock of twenty-one acres to twenty-eight
+  hundred, but the most usual dimensions are from one hundred and fifty
+  to four hundred acres. For a <i>multum in parvo</i> of beautiful park
+  scenery the traveler in search of these charming specimens of the
+  picturesque may be advised to take a tour in Herefordshire and
+  Worcestershire; and if he be a horseman he will do well to ride
+  through the country. &quot;Anyone,&quot; says Mr. Shirley, &quot;who
+  ascends the steep crest of the Malvern Hills in Worcestershire, and
+  looks down from the summit of the ridge on the western side of the
+  hills upon the richly wooded and beautifully undulating country which
+  lies stretched beneath as far as the mountains of South Wales, would
+  at once be struck with the &#39;bosky&#39; nature of the scenery, and
+  its perfect adaptation for the formation of deer-parks and sylvan
+  residences.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Grimsthorpe, Lady Aveland&#39;s (inherited from the dukes of
+  Ancaster, extinct); Thoresby, Earl Manvers&#39;s, formerly the
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 192]</span> duke of Kingston&#39;s, father
+  of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; and Knowsley, Lord Derby&#39;s, are
+  also very large parks.</p>
+
+  <p>A writer on Grimsthorpe in 1774 says: &quot;On a former visit I
+  was told that the park was sixteen miles and three quarters in
+  circumference, and esteemed the largest in England: since then it
+  has, nevertheless, been somewhat enlarged, but different spots in it
+  are cultivated.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>A few parks have been created and others restocked during the
+  present century. In Norfolk, Lord Kimberley, the present secretary of
+  state for the colonies, has restored the deer which were removed
+  during the present century, saying, it is reported, that &quot;a
+  place is not a place without deer&quot;&#8212;a sentiment shared by
+  many of his countrymen regarding an ancient grand-seigneur home. In
+  the same county a new park has been created at Sandringham, the seat
+  of the prince of Wales, the deer having been brought from Windsor.
+  Sandringham Park and Woods were half a century ago a sandy waste, but
+  fell into judicious hands and were admirably planted. The modern
+  history of the place is remarkable. Toward the close of the century
+  it became the property of a French refugee, Mr. Matou. This gentleman
+  having been driven from his native country by the Revolution,
+  conceived somehow the idea of importing from Sicily immense
+  quantities of rabbit skins, which were used for making hats of a
+  cheap kind which passed for beaver. In this way he acquired a large
+  fortune. In England he mixed in the best society, and became very
+  intimate with Earl Cowper, first husband of the well-known Lady
+  Palmerston, and at his death bequeathed Sandringham to the Honorable
+  Spencer Cowper, that nobleman&#39;s younger son, who married Lady
+  Blessington&#39;s stepdaughter, Lady Harriet Gardiner, after her
+  divorce from Count d&#39;Orsay. When the prince of Wales was casting
+  round for a country-seat, Sandringham was selected. Lord Palmerston
+  was then in office, and some ill-natured things were said as to the
+  sale of his stepson&#39;s place having been a much better thing for
+  Mr. Cowper than for the prince of Wales. Vast sums have since been
+  spent here.</p>
+
+  <p>Where a deer-park has long existed on his paternal estate, it goes
+  to an Englishman&#39;s heart to give it up. An incident in point
+  occurred about twenty years ago. In a secluded part of Devonshire,
+  approached by the narrow, high-hedged, tortuous lanes characteristic
+  of that part of the country, stands a magnificent old Tudor mansion
+  known as Great Fulford Hall. Here for upward of six hundred years
+  have been seated the Fulfords, a family of Saxon origin, the rivals
+  of the Tichbornes in antiquity. The mansion of Fulford was garrisoned
+  by Charles I., and taken by a detachment of Cromwell&#39;s army in
+  1645. The marks they left behind them may be seen to this day. The
+  Fulfords have supporters to their arms, a very rare circumstance in
+  the case of commoners. These supporters are two Saracens, and were
+  granted in consideration of services in the Crusades. &quot;Sir
+  Baldwin de Fulford fought a combat with a Saracen, for bulk and
+  bigness an unequal match (as the representation of him cut in the
+  wainscot at Fulford doth plainly shew), whom yet he vanquished, and
+  rescued a lady.&quot; This gentleman&#39;s granddaughter was the
+  mother of Henry VIII.&#39;s favorite, Russell, first earl of Bedford,
+  and the Fulfords are connected with a hundred other ancient and
+  honorable houses. But for a long time the heads of the house have
+  failed &quot;to marry money;&quot; and when this happens for two or
+  three generations in the case of a country gentleman with a large
+  family to portion off, the result must usually be impecuniosity.
+  Thus, when the late Mr. Fulford succeeded to the family property in
+  1847, he found himself the owner of a majestic old dilapidated
+  mansion, surrounded by a deer-park, which had been gradually growing
+  less until the portion of the park devoted to this purpose was little
+  more than a big field.</p>
+
+  <p>Like his ancestor in the time of &quot;the troubles,&quot; Mr.
+  Baldwin Fulford was a Conservative, and had been very useful to his
+  party. It was intended, therefore, to reward his services when the
+  time came by a county office, which would have placed him at ease
+  pecuniarily. When this office fell vacant the Tories were
+  &quot;in,&quot; and all seemed secure for Mr. Fulford&#39;s interest.
+  But there&#39;s many a slip &#39;twixt cup and lip. A gentleman
+  applied to the prime minister for the place for a friend of his,
+  whose services to the party he duly dilated on. &quot;I
+  understood,&quot; said his lordship, &quot;that Mr. Fulford&#39;s
+  claims are considered paramount.&quot; &quot;Mr. Fulford!&quot; was
+  the rejoinder. &quot;I scarcely thought that such a place as this
+  would be an object to Mr. Fulford&#8212;a gentleman of great
+  position, with a deer-park and all that sort of thing.&quot; &quot;A
+  deer-park! You surprise me. I understood that Mr. Fulford&#39;s
+  circumstances were extremely reduced. This alters the matter.&quot;
+  Unfortunately, the, minister committed himself too far to draw back
+  before making inquiries, when he learned that a deer-park having
+  existed at Fulford for some four or five centuries, its owner had
+  kept as a memento of grand old days a little remnant of the herd in a
+  paddock, as before mentioned. He never recovered the blow of this
+  disappointment. The heir to the property is, we believe, a son of the
+  late bishop of Montreal. The family motto is &quot;Bear
+  up&quot;&#8212;one eminently suited to its present condition, and we
+  may hope that it will be followed so successfully that this ancient
+  stock, which has held for so long a high place among the worthies of
+  Devon, may once more win the smiles of Fortune.</p>
+
+  <p>Many of the most picturesque parks are but little known, lying as
+  they do remote from railway stations. Mr. Nesfield, the great
+  landscape-gardener, considers that Longleat, the marquis of
+  Bath&#39;s, near Warminster, has greater natural advantages than any
+  park in England, and that these have been made the most of.</p>
+
+  <p>Lord Stamford&#39;s park of Bradgate, in Leicestershire, is in the
+  highest degree interesting. It is mostly covered with the common fern
+  or brakes, and the projecting bare and abrupt rocks rising here and
+  there, with a few gnarled and shivered oaks in the last stage of
+  decay, <span class="pagenum">[pg 193]</span> present a scene of
+  wildness and desolation in striking contrast to some of the beautiful
+  adjoining valleys and fertile country.</p>
+
+  <p>Another gem of its kind is Ugbrook. This is situated a few miles
+  from the Newton-Abbot station of the South Devon Railway, and lies in
+  a rocky nook on the confines of Dartmoor. Macaulay, whose brother was
+  vicar of the neighboring parish of Bovey-Tracey, knew it well, and
+  tells us in his <i>History</i> that Clifford (a member of the Cabal
+  ministry) retired to the woods of Ugbrook. He was a lucky man to have
+  such paternal acres to retire to, but probably the visitor to-day
+  sees this park in a condition which Charles&#39;s minister would
+  indeed have enjoyed. There is no place in England where a man may
+  feel more grateful to those who have gone before him for their taste
+  and forethought in creating a sylvan paradise. Although not very
+  large, this park contains almost every variety of scenery. There is a
+  grove gloomy from the heavy shadows of the magnificent trees which
+  compose it, glorious avenues of lime and beech, and monarch-like
+  trees, which, standing alone amid an expanse of sward, show to the
+  fullest advantage their superb proportions. Entering the park on one
+  side, the road winds beside a river, to which the bank gently slopes
+  on the one hand, whilst on the other it rises precipitately, clad
+  with the greenest foliage. An especial feature of this place is what
+  is known as &quot;the riding park,&quot; a stretch of smooth turf
+  extending some miles, from which you may get a view over thirty
+  miles, with the rocky heights of Dartmoor Forest, where the autumn
+  manoeuvres take place this year, on the one hand, and the Haldon
+  Hills on the other. This ancient heritage is still the property of
+  the Cliffords, the present peer being eighth baron in direct descent
+  from the lord treasurer. The Cliffords have always remained constant
+  to the Roman Catholic faith, and a Catholic chapel adjoins the
+  mansion.</p>
+
+  <p>A discriminating foreign tourist writes of Lord Hill&#39;s park,
+  Hawkstone, in Shropshire, which, also lying rather off <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 194]</span> the beaten track, is comparatively little
+  known: &quot;I must in some respects give Hawkstone the preference
+  over all I have seen. It is not art nor magnificence nor aristocratic
+  splendor, but Nature alone to which it is indebted for this
+  pre-eminence, and in such a degree that were I gifted with the power
+  of adding to its beauty, I should ask, What can I add? Imagine a spot
+  so commandingly placed that from its highest point you can let your
+  eye wander over fifteen counties. Three sides of this wide panorama
+  rise and fall in constant change of hill and dale like the waves of
+  an agitated sea, and are bounded at the horizon by the strangely
+  formed, jagged outline of the Welsh mountains, which at either end
+  descend to a fertile plain shaded by thousands of lofty trees, and in
+  the obscure distance, where it blends with the sky, is edged with a
+  white misty line&#8212;the Atlantic Ocean.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Moor Park, in Hertfordshire, is remarkable for the following
+  tradition concerning it: In Charles II.&#39;s reign it was bought by
+  the duke of Monmouth, whose widow&#8212;she who</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">In pride of youth, in beauty&#39;s bloom,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Had wept o&#39;er Monmouth&#39;s bloody
+    tomb&#8212;</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>is said to have ordered the heads of the trees in the park to be
+  cut off on being informed of her husband&#39;s execution. This
+  tradition is strengthened by the condition of many of the oaks here,
+  which are decayed from the top. The duchess sold the place in 1720,
+  thirty-five years after the duke&#39;s death. This is the Moor Park
+  of apricot fame, but not the one where Sir William Temple lived when
+  Swift was his secretary.</p>
+
+  <p>Most of the oldest and finest trees in England are naturally to be
+  found in the deer-parks. At Woburn, the duke of Bedford&#39;s, is the
+  largest ash&#8212;ninety feet high and twenty-three feet six inches
+  in circumference at the base. The Abbot&#39;s Oak, on which the last
+  abbot was hung, stands, or lately stood, here. It is remarkable that
+  oaks are more often struck by lightning than any other trees. At
+  Tortworth, Lord Ducie&#39;s, in Gloucestershire, is a chestnut
+  asserted to have been a boundary tree in the time of King John. So
+  late as 1788 it produced great quantities of chestnuts. At five feet
+  from the ground this tree measured fifty feet in circumference.</p>
+
+  <p>The lover of fine trees should wander through the glades of Lord
+  Leigh&#39;s park at Stoneleigh, in Warwickshire, where tall and
+  shapely oaks grow with such symmetry that you do not guess their
+  size, and are surprised to discover on measuring them how great it
+  is.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">Oh, how I love these solitudes</p>
+
+    <p class="i4">And places silent as the night&#8212;</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">There where no thronging multitudes</p>
+
+    <p class="i4">Disturb with noise their sweet delight!</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Oh, how mine eyes are pleased to see</p>
+
+    <p class="i4">Oaks that such spreading branches bear,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Which, from old Time&#39;s nativity,</p>
+
+    <p class="i4">And th&#39; envy of so many years,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Are still green, beautiful and fair</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">As at the world&#39;s first day they were!</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Writing of the confines of the ancient forest of Sherwood, Mr.
+  Howitt says of those sylvan delights: &quot;The great woods have
+  fallen under the axe, and repeated enclosures have reduced the open
+  forests, but at the Clipstone end still remains a remnant of its
+  ancient woodlands, unrifled except of deer&#8212;a specimen of what
+  the whole once was, and a specimen of consummate beauty and interest.
+  The part called Bilhaghe is a forest of oaks, and is clothed with the
+  most impressive aspect of age that can be presented to the eye in
+  these kingdoms. Stonehenge does not give you a feeling of greater
+  eld, because it is not composed of a material so easily acted on by
+  the elements. But the hand of Time has been on these woods, and has
+  stamped them with a most imposing character. The tempests,
+  lightnings, winds and wintry violence of a thousand years have flung
+  their force on these trees, and there they stand, trunk after trunk,
+  scathed, hollow, gray, gnarled, stretching out their bare, sturdy
+  arms, or their mingled foliage and ruin, a life in death. All is gray
+  and old. The ground is gray beneath, the trees are gray with clinging
+  lichens&#8212;the very heather and fern that spring beneath them have
+  a character of the past. If you turn aside and step amongst them,
+  your feet sink in a depth of moss and dry vegetation that is the
+  growth of ages, or rather that ages have not been able to destroy.
+  You stand and look round, and in the height of summer all is silent:
+  it is like the fragment of a world worn out and forsaken. These were
+  the trees under which King John pursued the red deer six hundred
+  years ago, these were the oaks beneath which Robin Hood led up his
+  bold band of outlaws.... Advance up this long avenue, which the noble
+  owner of the forest tract has cut through it, and, looking right and
+  left as you proceed, you will not be able long to refrain from
+  turning into the tempting openings that present themselves. Enter
+  which you please, you cannot be wrong. These winding tracks, just
+  wide enough for a couple of people on horseback or in a pony phaeton,
+  carpeted with a mossy turf which springs under your feet with a
+  delicious elasticity, and closed in with shadowy trunks and flowery
+  thickets&#8212;are they not lovely?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>In the time of Elizabeth the largest park in Warwickshire, and one
+  of the very finest in England, was that which surrounded the castle
+  rendered classic ground by the immortal limning of
+  Scott&#8212;Kenilworth. In a survey taken in the time of James I. it
+  is stated that &quot;the circuit of the castle mannours, parks and
+  chase lying round together contain at least nineteen or twenty miles
+  in a pleasant country, the like both for strength, state and pleasure
+  not being within the realme of England.&quot; Kenilworth came to an
+  end in Cromwell&#39;s time, a period very unfavorable to these sylvan
+  paradises. He had the park cut up and divided amongst various
+  grantees. How much damage was done to the park interest by the civil
+  wars the following extract from the Life of Margaret, duchess of
+  Newcastle, attests: &quot;Of eight parks which my lord had before the
+  wars, there was but one left that was not quite destroyed&#8212;viz.
+  Welbeck Park of about four miles compass; for my lord&#39;s brother,
+  Sir Charles Cavendish, who bought out the life of my lord in that
+  lordship, saved most part of it from being cut down; and in Blore
+  Park there were some few deer left. The rest of the parks were
+  totally defaced <span class="pagenum">[pg 195]</span> and destroyed,
+  both wood, pales and deer; amongst which was also Clipston Park of
+  seven miles compass, wherein my lord had taken much delight formerly,
+  it being rich of wood, and containing the greatest and tallest timber
+  trees of all the woods he shad; insomuch that only the pale-row was
+  valued at two thousand pounds. It was watered by a pleasant river
+  that runs through it, full of fish and otters; was well stocked with
+  deer, full of hares, and had great store of partridges, poots,
+  pheasants, etc., besides all sorts of water-fowl; so that this park
+  afforded all manner of sports, for hunting, hawking, coursing,
+  fishing, etc., for which my lord esteemed it very much. And although
+  his patience and wisdom is such that I never perceived him sad or
+  discontented for his own losses and misfortunes, yet when he beheld
+  the ruins of that park I observed him troubled, though he did little
+  express it, only saying he had been in hopes it would not have been
+  so much defaced as he found it, there being not one timber tree in it
+  left for shelter.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The number of deer-parks in Scotland and Ireland is small. The
+  principal park in the former is that of the duke of Buccleuch at
+  Dalkeith Palace, near Edinburgh. At Hamilton, belonging to the duke
+  of that ilk, are wild cattle similar to those at Chillingham.</p>
+
+  <p>A wonderfully picturesque Irish park is Rockingham, the Hon. L.
+  King Harinan&#39;s, in the county Roscommon. The traveler will
+  observe this beautiful and very extensive demesne as he goes from
+  Boyle to Sligo. It is at the foot of the Curlew Mountains, and
+  contains a magnificent sheet of water surrounding an island on which
+  stands an ancient castle, still inhabitable. At Strokestown, in the
+  same county, is a small park, where Mr. Mahon, its former owner,
+  planted many years ago all sorts of forest trees, to see how far the
+  deer would eat them: the only tree they entirely avoided was the
+  beech.</p>
+
+  <p>There is nothing grander in the three kingdoms than Lord
+  Waterford&#39;s seat, Curraghmore. Taken with the adjoining woods,
+  the demesne contains five <span class="pagenum">[pg 196]</span>
+  thousand acres. The special feature of this superb place is grandeur;
+  &quot;not that arising from the costly and laborious exertions of
+  man, but rather the magnificence of Nature. The beauty of the
+  situation consists in the lofty hills, rich vales and almost
+  impenetrable woods, which deceive the eye and give the idea of
+  boundless forests. The variety of the scenery is calculated to please
+  in the highest degree, and to gratify every taste.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>At Lyme Park, the splendid old seat of the Leghs in Cheshire,
+  &quot;a very remarkable custom,&quot; says Lysons, &quot;of driving
+  the red deer, which has not been practiced in any other park, either
+  in England or abroad, was established about a century ago by an old
+  park-keeper, who occupied that position for seventy years, dying at
+  over one hundred years of age. It was his custom in May and June,
+  when the animals&#39; horns were tender, to go on horseback, with a
+  rod in his hand, round the hills of this extensive park, and, having
+  collected the deer, to drive them before him like a herd of common
+  horned cattle, sometimes even opening a gate for them to pass
+  through. When they came to a place before the hall called the
+  Deer-Clod, they would stand in a collected body as long as the
+  spectators thought fit; the young ones following their dams, and the
+  old stags rising one against another and combating with their fore
+  feet, not daring at this season of the year to make use of their
+  horns. At the command of the keeper they would then move forward to a
+  large piece of water and swim through the whole length of it, after
+  which they were allowed to disperse.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Following the example of the abbots, many of the bishops formerly
+  had deer-parks, and up to 1831 the bishop of Durham, a
+  prince-palatine in his diocese, had a park at his country-seat, still
+  his residence, Bishops-Auckland; but now the only prelate enjoying
+  this distinction is the bishop of Winchester, at Farnham Castle, in
+  Hampshire.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;There are some,&quot; says a writer in an early number of
+  the <i>Westminster Review</i>, &quot;who enclose immense possessions
+  with walls and gates, and employ keepers with guns to guard every
+  avenue to the vast solitudes by which they choose to be surrounded.
+  Let such men pitch their tents in the deserts of Sahara or the wild
+  prairies of America. What business have they here in the midst of a
+  civilized community, linked together by chains of mutual obligation
+  and dependence?&quot; These observations apply to few private parks
+  now-a-days. Permission to drive, ride or walk through them is rarely
+  refused. Almost the only cases where there is much strictness in this
+  respect are those of parks situated near a great watering place, such
+  as Brighton or Tonbridge Wells. Thus, at the former, Lord
+  Chichester&#39;s rule is that all persons on horseback or in
+  carriages may pass through his ground, but foot-passengers are not
+  allowed. The late Lord Abergavenny, a man of very shy and retiring
+  disposition, was the least liberal park-owner in England. The gates
+  of his superb demesne of Eridge very rarely revolved on their hinges;
+  and this was the more remarkable, inasmuch as he did not reside there
+  more than three months in the year. The story was told that at his
+  accession to the property he had been more liberal, but that one day
+  he was seated at luncheon alone when, suddenly looking up, he
+  observed to his horror three proletarians flattening their noses
+  against the window-pane, and gaping with exasperating interest at the
+  august spectacle of a live lord at luncheon. To pull the bell and
+  issue an order for the immediate removal of the intruders was, in the
+  graphic language of the dime novel, the work of a moment; and from
+  that hour the gates of Eridge were so rigorously sealed that it was
+  often a matter of difficulty even for invited guests to obtain
+  admittance.</p>
+
+  <p>It may seem very ill-natured sometimes to refuse admittance on
+  easy terms to such places, and to act apparently in a sort of
+  dog-in-the-manger spirit. But it should be borne in mind that the
+  privilege when accorded has not unfrequently been abused, more
+  especially by the &quot;lower middle class&quot; of the English
+  people, <span class="pagenum">[pg 197]</span> whose manners are often
+  very intrusive. Such persons will approach close to the house, peer
+  into the windows of private apartments, or push in amongst the family
+  and guests while engaged in croquet or other out-door amusements.
+  Another common offence is leaving a disgusting <i>d�bris</i> lying
+  about after a picnic in grounds which it costs the owners thousands
+  of pounds yearly to keep in order. The sentiment from which such
+  places are kept up is not that of vulgar display. They are hallowed
+  by associations which are well depicted by the late Lord Lytton in an
+  eloquent passage in <i>Earnest Maltravers</i>:</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It is a wild and weird scene, one of those noble English
+  parks at midnight, with its rough forest-ground broken into dell and
+  valley, its never-innovated and mossy grass overrun with fern, and
+  its immemorial trees, that have looked upon the birth, and look yet
+  upon the graves, of a hundred generations. Such spots are the last
+  proud and melancholy trace of Norman knighthood and old romance left
+  to the laughing landscapes of cultivated England. They always throw
+  something of shadow and solemn gloom upon minds that feel their
+  associations, like that which belongs to some ancient and holy
+  edifice. They are the cathedral aisles of Nature, with their darkened
+  vistas, and columned trunks, and arches of mighty foliage. But in
+  ordinary times the gloom is pleasing, and more delightful than all
+  the cheerful lawns and sunny slopes of the modern taste.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p class="author">REGINALD WYNFORD.</p>
+
+  <blockquote class="footnote">
+    <a id="footnote1" name="footnote1"></a><b>Footnote 1:</b> <a href=
+    "#footnotetag1">(return)</a> [This was the famous Charlotte de la
+    Tr�mouille, so admirably portrayed by Scott in <i>Peveril of the
+    Peak</i>. Her direct male heirs terminated in her grandson, the
+    tenth earl, and she is now represented in the female line by the
+    duke of Atholl, who through her claims descent from the Greek
+    emperors.]
+  </blockquote><a name="rambles" id="rambles"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>RAMBLES AMONG THE FRUITS AND FLOWERS OF THE TROPICS.</h2>
+
+  <h3><a name="2H_4_0036"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> TWO
+  PAPERS.&#8212;I.</h3>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, Abdallah, what have you in view that can tempt one to
+  a ramble on such a breezeless morning as this?&quot; was my question
+  of the turbaned exquisite who had just presented himself on the
+  balcony where we sat at sunrise inhaling the fragrant breath of a
+  thousand flowers. We were at Singapore, that little ocean gem at the
+  foot of the Malayan peninsula, where, fair as a pearl, she nestles in
+  the crested coronet of the deep blue sea. The whole island is but
+  twenty-seven miles long, with a width varying from three to twelve;
+  but in no other area of such limited dimensions can the tourist find
+  so much of enchanting beauty and picturesqueness, or such a variety
+  of tropical products, as in this &quot;garden of the East.&quot;
+  Without mountains, but with its central peak of Bookit Tim� rising
+  about six hundred feet above the sea, the scenery is diversified with
+  richly-wooded hills, evergreen dales, and luxuriant jungle-growth
+  drooping over and reflecting its graceful fringes in many a little
+  babbling brook. The fruits of the island are varied and luscious, the
+  foliage perennial, and its myriads of flowers so gorgeously tinted,
+  so redolent of balmy odors, that one is fairly bewildered with the
+  superabundance of sweets. Of course we were nothing loath to tarry a
+  few weeks on this fairy isle, and we gladly availed ourselves of the
+  opportunity thus afforded to enrich our herbariums and sketchbooks
+  with new specimens by making occasional excursions to the jungles,
+  and now and then a picnic to some of the thirty smaller islands that
+  surround Singapore. But as the foreign tourist in those enervating
+  tropical regions is not slow to acquire the Oriental love of ease and
+  inveterate aversion to fatigue even in pleasure-seeking, we usually
+  left our Mussulman comprador to seek out <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  198]</span> objects of interest and report to us beforehand, thus
+  saving us from the weariness of many a bootless expedition, and
+  catering to the precise tastes and desires of each of us in the way
+  of adding to our treasures.</p>
+
+  <p>On the morning in question Abdallah had just brought in the
+  invariable morning coffee, served in the purest and tiniest of
+  porcelain cups; and while we listlessly sipped the fragrant Mocha he
+  seemed scanning our faces with more than usual interest, evidently
+  expecting just such a question as I had asked. What a picture he was
+  as he stood there in flowing robes and huge turban, with his jet
+  black moustache and bronze-brown complexion, one small hand placed
+  over the heart in token of his absolute devotion to the foreign
+  sahibs, and his lithe, supple form leaning forward in the most
+  obsequious attitude imaginable! His answer was characteristic:</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, Madam Sahib, I find much beautiful flower, but not all
+  where lady sahib can go, unless she can ride in samp�n. Some roads
+  too small for palanquin, and lady sahib&#39;s satin slipper must not
+  be soiled with dust or mud. But I engage one big samp�n with six men
+  to pull, and, if the foreign sahibs all please, we make one grand
+  picnic to Pulo N�nas (Pineapple Island) and Pulo Panjan. They can
+  ride first to where boat is waiting, visit Pulo N�nas, take breakfast
+  under orange tree, see much fine fruit trees, and then go to Pulo
+  Panjan, where I gave orders for dinner to be served for the
+  sahibs.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But pray tell us who is to serve it,&quot; laughingly
+  responded one of our party. &quot;Are we to have monkeys or wild
+  squirrels for caterers? It must be one or the other, as I am sure I
+  have been informed that neither of those islands are inhabited by
+  human beings.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No man there, true, sahib,&quot; was our Mussulman&#39;s
+  ready rejoinder. &quot;But I send small boat with two men to pull,
+  and two cooks, with rice, fowls, and everything wanted for breakfast
+  and dinner. I believe they already at Pulo N�nas, cooking breakfast;
+  the palanquins are also at the door; and so, if it be the sahibs&#39;
+  pleasure, it is better to start before the sun gets very
+  high.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>All this certainly promised well for us pleasure-seekers, and was
+  no doubt quite as satisfactory an arrangement for our scheming
+  comprador, who always took care to add to every charge a very liberal
+  commission for his own valuable services. We well knew that he was
+  cheating us on a grand scale, but of what avail was such knowledge?
+  We should gain nothing by discharging one who had at least the merit
+  of being good-looking, well-mannered and pleasant-speaking, only to
+  engage another less civil and probably no more honest. And in India
+  all disbursements for personal and household expenses are made
+  through these compradors or stewards&#8212;not of necessity, but
+  because it is the custom of the country, and in the East one never
+  rebels against established usage.</p>
+
+  <p>Our preparations were soon made: sketchbooks, drawing materials
+  and covered baskets for specimens were transferred to the keeping of
+  our faithful Mussulman, and we set out, anticipating a day of rare
+  enjoyment. We were fortunate in securing the company of Mr.
+  M&#8212;&#8212;, the accomplished president of the Anglo-Chinese
+  College, who had spent some thirty years in Singapore, and was well
+  acquainted with its localities and objects of interest. He was like a
+  complete volume with illustrations on everything pertaining to the
+  East, could answer all manner of unheard-of questions about things
+  that everybody else had forgotten, and had always ready an
+  appropriate anecdote or story just to the point. His very dress was
+  characteristic. It consisted of loose trousers of gray linen, and an
+  old-fashioned white hunting-coat with Quaker collar, and huge pockets
+  that would have answered very well for the saddle-bags of an
+  itinerant surgeon. These were designed as receptacles for such stray
+  &quot;specimens&quot; in botany, geology or conchology as he might
+  chance to discover <i>en route</i>; while thrust into a smaller
+  breast-pocket he carried a brace of huntsman&#39;s pistols, with
+  antique powder-horn and shot-pouch slung over the shoulder. His hat
+  was a Panama with low, round crown and a rim nearly as large as an
+  ordinary umbrella. A Chinese youth, an orphan adopted by Mr.
+  M&#8212;&#8212; years before, accompanied his patron in a full suit
+  of yellow nankin made <i>� la Chinoise</i>, with broad-brimmed straw
+  hat, long, braided queue, and the inevitable Chinese fan. The rest of
+  us donned our white linen &quot;fatigue suits,&quot; and leghorn hats
+  of such vast dimensions as bade the wearers have no thought for
+  umbrellas. Thus equipped, we were ready for all sorts of
+  emergencies&#8212;climbing rocks, diving into jungles or wading
+  through muddy creeks.</p>
+
+  <p>The drive was for the most part through spice plantations and
+  groves of orange and palm, and, without delays, would have brought us
+  in an hour&#39;s time to the coast. But we could not consent to press
+  onward to the goal ahead without pausing for at least a glimpse of
+  the many objects of interest on the way. First we strolled over a
+  plantation of black pepper cultivated by Chinamen. The vine is a
+  creeper with a knotty stem that if unpruned will reach the height of
+  near thirty feet, but in order to render the vines more productive
+  they are kept down to about a dozen or fifteen feet, and each is
+  trained over a separate pole or prop. At each joint of the stem the
+  plant puts out its fibrous tendrils, grasping the prop, and so
+  climbing to the top. Whenever a vine happens to trail on the ground
+  these tendrils, like strawberry &quot;runners,&quot; shoot into the
+  earth, but then they bear no fruit. The branches are short, brittle
+  and easily broken, the leaves deep-green, heart-shaped and very
+  abundant, and the blossom a cluster of small white flowers, almost
+  destitute of odor. The fruit hangs in long clusters of some forty or
+  fifty grains each, somewhat after the fashion of the wild grape,
+  though much more diminutive in size. Until after it has reached its
+  full size it is green, when at maturity of a bright red, and black
+  only after it has become thoroughly dry. When the berries begin to
+  redden the bunches are gathered and spread upon mats in the
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 199]</span> sun to dry: then the corns soon
+  wither, turn black and drop from the stems, becoming thus the
+  shriveled black pepper known in commerce. What is known among us as
+  white pepper was formerly supposed to be a different species from the
+  black; but the sole difference is in the curing, that intended for
+  white pepper being placed in baskets under water until sufficiently
+  swollen for the exterior pellicle to rub off by rolling in the hands
+  after being again dried in the sun. The plants are propagated by
+  cuttings, which are generally placed some six feet apart, sometimes
+  being trained over the trunk of an old tree, and at others over a
+  strong stake. The vines commence bearing the third year, and continue
+  to do so for a dozen or more, when they are rooted up, new ones
+  having been previously planted to take their places.</p>
+
+  <p>We next called at two gambier plantations, both owned and
+  conducted by Chinamen who came to the island a few years before as
+  common coolies. The gambier (<i>Funis uncatis</i>) was formerly
+  called terra japonica, from being supposed to be an earth and to come
+  from Japan. It is grown on sandy soil or dry hills, and requires very
+  little labor in cultivation. It is a slender-stemmed, vine-like shrub
+  with oval-shaped leaves and pale purplish flowers in clusters. The
+  seeds germinate in forty days, and the seedlings are transplanted
+  when about nine inches high. When full grown they reach a height of
+  ten feet or more, and after the first year the leaves and branches
+  are regularly gathered and prepared for the market. Men and boys were
+  engaged in plucking the leaves and conveying them, in mat-bags
+  suspended on each end of a bamboo staff, to the boiling-ground. Here
+  they were boiled until the water was evaporated, and the inspissated
+  juice deposited, which we afterward saw drying in little squares. It
+  is a powerful astringent, having one-tenth more tannin than any other
+  substance known. It is used by the natives as a dye, also as a salve
+  for wounds and for chewing with betel-nut and tobacco, besides being
+  largely exported to Europe for tanning <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  200]</span> leather and for dyeing. All through the gambier
+  plantations, and in every department of the labor of preparing it for
+  the boiler, I observed that not a female was to be seen, and on
+  inquiring the reason was gravely told that gambier plants would not
+  flourish if touched by a woman! &quot;Sensitive plants&quot; indeed,
+  so readily to discern the difference between the handling of the two
+  sexes!</p>
+
+  <p>Our next call was at a coffee plantation, where we saw sixty
+  thousand young and healthy coffee trees, and two-thirds of them in a
+  bearing condition, yielding in the aggregate not less than fifty
+  thousand pounds of dry coffee per annum. The trees are beautifully
+  formed, and rise naturally to the height of sixteen feet or more, but
+  when under culture are kept at five or six feet for the convenience
+  of collecting the ripe fruit. They are planted in rows, the leaves
+  grow opposite each other, and many sessile flowers are produced at
+  their insertion. The blossoms are pure white, and when the plants are
+  in full bloom nothing can exceed their beauty or fragrance, the
+  branches looking as if frosted with snow, while the air is filled
+  with the delicate perfume. But the scene is brief as enchanting: the
+  flowers fade a few hours after they are full blown, to be succeeded
+  by tiny berries that are at first green, then a yellowish red, and
+  finally ripen into a rich crimson or purple; after which, unless
+  gathered at once, they shrivel and drop from the tree. This is about
+  seven months after the blooms make their appearance. The pulp is torn
+  off and separated from the seeds by means of a machine, and the
+  grains, after being thoroughly washed, are dried in the sun and put
+  up in bags. Chek Kongtwau, the Chinese proprietor of the plantation,
+  not only walked with us over his grounds, and answered all our
+  questions with exemplary patience, but insisted that we should go
+  into the house, be presented to his wife and partake of a lunch. He
+  regaled us with tea and coffee of his own growing and curing,
+  excellent turtle steaks, boiled rice, and curry made of shrimps and
+  cucumbers stewed together. For vegetables there were the Malay lobak,
+  a tender white radish, and the cocoa-nut bud stewed in the milk of
+  the ripe fruit; and as dessert we had placed before us, for the first
+  time, the far-famed durian, so universal a favorite among Orientals
+  as to command a higher price than any other fruit in market, yet so
+  abominably disgusting in smell that the olfactories of few strangers
+  can tolerate its approach. To me the odor seemed precisely that
+  supposed to be produced by the admixture of garlic and assafoetida;
+  and as a plate piled with the rich golden pulp was placed before me
+  by our hostess, I came so near fainting as to be compelled to seek
+  the open air. The old Chinaman followed me, and when he had learned
+  the cause of my indisposition, laughed heartily, saying, &quot;Wait a
+  year or two. You have not been in the country long enough to
+  appreciate this rare luxury. But when you have become initiated into
+  a knowledge of its surpassing excellences, never an orange, pineapple
+  or other fruit will you touch when a durian can be had.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Just as we were re-entering our palanquins, Chek Kongtwau inquired
+  whether we had yet seen the anoo palm or sago tree, of which he said
+  there was but a solitary specimen in the island, most of the sago
+  manufactured at Singapore being brought in its crude state from the
+  swamps of Sumatra. He told us the famous tree was several miles from
+  his house, out of our direct route, but if we had time to visit it he
+  would undertake to guide us safely through the jungle to and from the
+  tree. We found it standing in solitary grandeur in a low swamp, and
+  lifting its long pinnated leaves from the extreme top of a trunk full
+  thirty feet high and twenty-eight inches in diameter. Its general
+  appearance is not unlike the cocoa-nut palm. Our conductor called the
+  sago tree <i>sibla</i>, but the Malays give it the name of
+  <i>rumbiga</i>. They say that each tree, if kept properly pruned
+  down, will produce at least five hundred pounds of pith per annum;
+  but it soon degenerates if suffered to grow to any considerable
+  height. The pith is soaked in large troughs of running water until it
+  dissolves and afterward settles, the sand and heavy dirt sinking
+  beneath it, and the fibres and scum floating on top. After being
+  separated from these impurities the sago is dried, and then
+  granulated by passing it through perforated plates till it becomes
+  smooth and polished like so many pearls, when it is packed in boxes
+  and bags for sale. We did not see the process that day, of course,
+  but afterward at the large factory on the river a few miles above the
+  settlement.</p>
+
+  <p>One more plantation, a grove of the stately areca-nut or betel
+  trees, we determined to visit before taking the boat. The smooth road
+  was bordered everywhere with the beautiful melastoma or Singapore
+  rose, of perennial foliage and always in bloom, underneath acacias
+  and palms; and the very earth was carpeted with beauty and fragrance
+  enough to have formed the bridal-couch of a fairy queen. Over such a
+  highway three miles were quickly made, and we alighted at the
+  entrance of a narrow lane that led to the abode of Cassim Mootoo, the
+  Malay owner and cultivator of the betel-nut plantation. At the outer
+  door a stone monster of huge proportions and uncouth features kept
+  guard against the uncanny spirits that are supposed to frequent
+  out-of-the-way lanes and dreary passages. The planter received us
+  pleasantly, accepted our apologies for troubling him, and offered to
+  show us over the grounds. He was far less courtly in manners than the
+  Chinese coffee-cultivator, to whom we should scarcely have ventured
+  to offer a fee, while out of the Malay&#39;s cunning eyes there
+  gleamed the evident expectation of a snug bonus of silver rupees,
+  which he received as a matter of course when we bade him adieu, and
+  having counted them over and jingled them for a moment in his
+  fingers, he thrust them into his pouch as he re-entered the
+  house.</p>
+
+  <p>We found the areca trees planted in rows, and growing to the
+  height of some forty feet, with straight, branchless trunks,
+  terminated at the top with ten or twelve pinnated leaves, each of
+  which is full five feet long. The fruit grows in clusters immediately
+  below the tuft of leaves. The outer shell is of a bright <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 201]</span> golden hue, that gradually deepens to
+  crimson as the fruit matures, and when opened shows a brown,
+  astringent nut about the size of a nutmeg. This is the portion chewed
+  with chun�m and tobacco all over the East; and its use is so
+  universal that one seldom meets a man, woman or child of any Oriental
+  nation whose mouth is not filled, always and everywhere, with the
+  execrable mixture. Pepper leaves are sprinkled with chun�m (lime) and
+  rolled up: a slice of betel-nut with a quid of tobacco is placed in
+  the mouth first, and then the rolled-up leaf is bitten off, and all
+  masticated together. When a visitor calls the betel-box is
+  immediately passed to him; and as in regard to the eating of salt in
+  Western Asia, so, in the eastern and southern portions, those who
+  have once partaken of betel-nut together are ever after sworn to
+  faithful and undying friendship. The use of the areca-nut preserves
+  the teeth from decay, but keeps them stained of a disgusting
+  brick-red color.</p>
+
+  <p>On the outer edge of Cassim&#39;s plantation, where the soil was
+  damp, we noticed several long rows of the nepah palm, generally known
+  as attap, and extensively used for thatching houses in the East. It
+  has the same huge pinnated leaves as most of the other palms, but is
+  destitute of the long straight trunk, the leaves commencing from near
+  the root, and the entire height being seldom more than twelve or
+  fourteen feet. We saw also a few specimens of the hutan, a
+  strange-looking palmate shrub with leaves fifteen feet long, which
+  are generally used by the Malays for sails, in lieu of canvas, for
+  their piratical proas. But the strangest of all the palms we saw was
+  the talip�t, so called from the Bali word <i>talipoin</i>, a priest;
+  and the name was originally derived from the fact that the sacred
+  fans used by Booddhist priests in their religious ceremonies are
+  formed of its leaves. This fan is a prescribed item of clerical
+  costume, and no conscientious Booddhist priest ever appears without
+  this long-handled fan held directly in front of his face, to prevent
+  the sacred countenance from coming <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  202]</span> in contact with anything unclean. The sacred books of the
+  Booddhists and Brahmins are also written on the talip�t palm leaves,
+  as are many of their historical records and scientific works. This
+  mammoth tree sometimes reaches the height of nearly two hundred feet,
+  and its trunk the circumference of twelve feet. It lives to the age
+  of nearly a century, but blossoms only a single time; during the
+  whole period of its existence. The flower, some thirty feet in
+  length, bursts with a loud explosion at maturity, and in dying
+  scatters the seeds that are to produce the next generation of trees.
+  A single leaf will sometimes measure forty feet in circumference; and
+  it is no unusual sight on the Malabar coast, where storms are so
+  fierce and sudden, to see ten or fifteen men finding shelter in a
+  boat over which is spread a single; palm leaf, which effectually
+  shields all from both wind and rain. When the storm has subsided the
+  huge leaf may be folded up like a lady&#39;s fan, and is so light as
+  to be readily carried by a man under one arm. The talip�t never grows
+  wild, it is said, as do most of the other palms; and it reaches its
+  greatest perfection in the island of Ceylon. All that I ever met with
+  were under cultivation, being tended and nursed with the utmost care.
+  Indeed, half a dozen talip�t palm trees are a fortune in themselves,
+  the leaves being very profitable as merchandise, while a crop may be
+  gathered every year during a long life, and then the tree be of
+  sufficient value to be bequeathed to the heirs of the owner.</p>
+
+  <p>Bidding adieu to our Malayan host, we once more entered the
+  palanquins, and in a little while were set down on the coast, where
+  lay our samp�n with flag hoisted and pennons gayly flaunting in the
+  breeze. First we passed Battu Bliah, &quot;the sailing
+  rock&quot;&#8212;so called from its fancied resemblance to a ship
+  under widespread canvas; then around an abrupt projection of
+  Erskine&#39;s Hill, in a narrow passage between Singapore and Baltan
+  M�teo, we came in full view of the promontory upon the highest point
+  of which is built the palace-bungalow of the old sultan-rajah who
+  held sway over the island previous to its purchase by Sir Stamford
+  Raffles for the British government, in 1819. The old rajah has passed
+  away, but the bungalow is still occupied by his son, a pensioner on
+  the English Crown, and one of the most daring pirates in all that
+  region&#8212;successful enough to have achieved a fame for prowess,
+  but too crafty ever to be caught.</p>
+
+  <p>At Pulo N�nas, where we were to lunch, we found the cloth was
+  already laid on the green grass under the protecting shadow of a huge
+  orange tree, whose ripe golden fruit offered a dainty dessert. We
+  took our seats with the &quot;professor&quot; at the head, and were
+  soon discussing the merits of boiled chicken, fried fish, omelette,
+  oysters, turtle eggs and sundry fruits and confections with the zest
+  created by seven hours of active exercise in the open air. Then came
+  the reaction, inclining every one more to repose than research, and
+  the hours would probably have been dreamed away barren of adventures,
+  had it not been for our indomitable professor. We had missed him but
+  a moment, when suddenly he reappeared, holding at arm&#39;s length
+  what seemed in the distance about a dozen brown, scaly snakes a yard
+  long, all strung together. Simultaneously the entire company sprang
+  to their feet and started for a race as this regiment of frightful
+  reptiles was thrust into their midst by the radiant
+  &quot;dominie,&quot; whose face was fairly aglow with mischief.
+  &quot;Where did they come from? What are you going to do with
+  them?&quot; exclaimed everybody at once, turning to look at the
+  monsters as they lay passive and motionless where the professor had
+  thrown them. &quot;Give them to Saint Patrick, to keep company with
+  those he drove out of the Emerald Isle; or we&#39;ll have them for
+  dinner if you prefer,&quot; was the laughing response. Reassured by
+  the non-combatant air of the dreaded reptiles, we ventured a nearer
+  approach, and our astonishment may readily be imagined when we found
+  not snakes, but simply a cluster of the pendent blossoms of the
+  rattan tree (<i>Arundo bambos</i>), one of the strangest of all the
+  floral products of the tropics. They hang from the tree in clusters
+  usually of ten or twelve, each a yard or more in length, looking like
+  a soldier&#39;s aigrettes suspended among the green leaves, or
+  perhaps still more like a string of chestnut-colored scales threaded
+  through the centre. Waving to and fro in the summer breeze, as I
+  afterward saw them, intertwined with the graceful tendrils of the
+  beautiful passion-flower with its rare feathery chalice of purple and
+  gold, and flanked on every side by ferns of exquisite symmetry,
+  reflecting their dainty fringes in the clear waters, the <i>tout
+  ensemble</i> is one of radiant loveliness, seemingly too fair to be
+  hidden away among lonely jungles.</p>
+
+  <p>Consigning our newly acquired treasure to the keeping of the
+  comprador, we sauntered forth in search of other discoveries, and
+  were richly rewarded by finding several perfect specimens of the
+  monkey-cup or pitcher-plant (<i>Nepenthes distillatoria</i>). This
+  plant is found in moist places, such as are suited to the growth of
+  ferns, mangroves and palmate shrubs. It has pendent from each leaf a
+  natural pitcher or elongated cup, growing perfectly upright and
+  capable of holding a pint or more of liquid. It is provided also with
+  a natural cover, which when closed prevents the ingress of leaves or
+  rubbish falling from other trees. The most curious circumstance
+  connected with this strange plant is, that it is nearly always found
+  full of pure, sparkling water, and that the lid closes of itself as
+  soon as the receptacle is full, and opens whenever it is empty. The
+  water is thus protected from dust, and kept always fit for the use of
+  thirsty travelers, as well as of the immense troops of monkeys that
+  inhabit tropical jungles. When the dainty cup has been drained of its
+  refreshing contents, this wonderful little plant again throws wide
+  the portals of its exhausted receptacle for the free entrance of rain
+  or dew. Another plant, one we had often heard of, and sought for
+  without success, the so-called oyster tree, was found, and proved to
+  be nothing very wonderful after all. It is simply <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 203]</span> an ordinary oyster or other shell-fish,
+  that, tired of lying in the mud, concludes by way of variety to try
+  swinging in the air for a while, and so fastens itself to the long,
+  pendent branches of the mangroves that grow luxuriantly on the shores
+  of most tropical islands.</p>
+
+  <p>There seeming to be no more objects of interest to detain us at
+  Pulo N�nas, and our chuliahs having already gone on to prepare dinner
+  at Pulo Panjan, we rallied our forces and followed suit. It was
+  already four o&#39;clock, and so near the equinoctial line, where
+  there is no twilight, it is dark soon after six; but then Pulo Panjan
+  was on our route homeward, and we should have time at least to dine
+  and gather some of the beautiful flowers for which the island is
+  famous, as well as to taste the white pineapple, a rare and exquisite
+  variety that grows here in great abundance. Both rind and pulp are of
+  a pale straw-color; hence the name, to distinguish this species from
+  the ordinary golden-colored fruit, which is far inferior to the
+  white. Those we obtained were magnificent specimens&#8212;large and
+  juicy, with a flavor to tempt the appetite of the veriest epicure.
+  Abdallah peeled them in such a way as to remove the bur entire, and
+  brought them to our grassy &quot;board&quot; on pure white porcelain
+  plates garnished with wreaths of fragrant flowers. Never were the
+  gods feasted on nectar and ambrosia more divinely luscious than the
+  white pines and golden mangoes, the rich juicy grapes and sparkling
+  sherbet, with which we were regaled on that bright summer eve at the
+  base of the old flagstaff towering above our heads.</p>
+
+  <p>We had not much time for roaming, but gathered whole handfuls of
+  the lotus or water-lily, with its pale-blue, golden or rose-tinted
+  blooms gleaming up from the sparkling waters like the fabled charms
+  of mermaid or sea-nymph. There are many varieties of this exquisite
+  flower&#8212;blue, pink, carnation, bright yellow, royal purple
+  fringed with gold, and, more beautiful than all, pure, virgin white,
+  with the faintest possible rose tinge in the centre of each section
+  of the corolla, <span class="pagenum">[pg 204]</span> a just
+  perceptible blush, as of its own conscious loveliness. This last
+  variety is the royal flower of Siam: it is borne before the king at
+  weddings, funerals and all state festivals, and the royal
+  reception-rooms are always beautifully decorated with the young buds
+  arranged in costly vases of exquisite workmanship. The costly silk
+  and lace canopies over the cradles of the infants of the king&#39;s
+  family are also made in the form of a lotus reversed; and it is said
+  that in cases of fever or eruptive diseases the leaves of the fresh
+  lotus are spread over the royal couches, as being not only sanitary,
+  but more agreeable to the invalid than the ordinary linen or silk
+  bedding. Guided by the rare rich perfume of its waxen buds, we found
+  a choice specimen of the bride-like moon-creeper, and bore if off,
+  vine, blooms and all, to a place among the floral adornments of our
+  own home.</p>
+
+  <p>We reached home at eight o&#39;clock, after a cruise, by sea and
+  by land, of thirteen hours; but the day had been so replete with
+  enjoyment that we scarcely felt conscious of fatigue, and were off
+  again the next morning, soon after sun-rise, for a ride to Bookit
+  Tim� (&quot;hill of tin&quot;), the central and loftiest peak of
+  Singapore Island. It is nine miles from the city, with a smooth road
+  to the very summit, so that we might go either in pony palanquins or
+  on horseback. We chose the latter, as affording us better opportunity
+  for observation and the collection of &quot;specimens,&quot; and, as
+  we could readily gain the mountain-top in season for a nine
+  o&#39;clock breakfast, the heat would not be oppressive. Abdallah
+  despatched the chuliahs, each with a stout load of provisions,
+  table-ware and cooking-utensils, at dawn, and when we arrived our
+  <i>d�jeuner</i> was ready to be served. The viands were tempting and
+  the cookery faultless, but we could scarce do justice to either, so
+  eager were we to begin our explorations on the summit and sides of
+  this beautiful hill, or rather hills, for there are twin peaks
+  closely connected, and each presenting an enchanting view of verdant
+  fields and fertile valleys, of the neighboring city, the wide expanse
+  of blue waters beyond, and the shipping in the harbor. Having
+  satisfied ourselves with gazing at the distant prospect, we began to
+  descend in search of adventures, sending our ponies ahead to await us
+  at the base of the mountain, where we were to dine. Onward we
+  strolled, gradually descending, every step marked by
+  novelties&#8212;flowers, grasses, weeds and shrubs vieing with each
+  other in varied and glad-some beauty. At length we sat down to rest
+  beneath a huge bombax or cotton tree (<i>Bombax ceiba</i>), its
+  widespread branches and thick foliage shielding us effectually from
+  the noonday sun, a fragrant blossom falling occasionally into our
+  laps or pelting us over head and shoulders, while with every passing
+  zephyr the fleecy down from the ripe bolls floated hither and
+  thither, looking for all the world like a snow-storm, except that the
+  sun was shining luminously in the clear heavens. This tree must have
+  been sixty feet in height, a grand, noble type of a green old age
+  after scores of years well and usefully spent, still vigorous and
+  productive. We met specimens afterward even taller and larger than
+  this, and they are said sometimes to reach the height of a hundred
+  feet. The timber is light and porous, and is in great demand for
+  boats. Lower down, the various palms, especially the cocoa-nut and
+  cabbage, were all about us. The former is found in nearly every
+  tropical clime, and is of all trees the one most indispensable to the
+  East Indian, furnishing him with meat, drink, medicine, clothing,
+  lodging and fuel. The ripe kernel of the nut, besides being eaten,
+  has expressed from it an excellent oil, that feeds all the lamps in
+  an Oriental house, supplies the table with a most palatable
+  substitute for butter, and the belle with a choice article of
+  perfumery; the green nut affords a delicious beverage to the thirsty
+  traveler; the fibrous covering of the nut is readily converted into
+  strong and durable cordage, and the polished shells into
+  drinking-cups, ladles and spoons; the leaves are frequently used for
+  thatch, the wood for lathing and musical instruments, and the sap for
+  toddy, an intoxicating drink very common in the East. The tree is
+  graceful and pretty, with a tuft of large pinnated leaves at the top,
+  and nestled cosily in their midst are the clusters of fruit. It grows
+  to the height of forty or fifty feet, is long-lived, and bears fruit
+  nearly the whole year round. The cabbage palm is much less common in
+  a wild state, and few planters will take the trouble to cultivate it,
+  since a whole tree must be destroyed to obtain a single dish. The
+  edible part consists of snow-white flakes found just inside the bark
+  near the top of the tree. When stewed in the expressed juice of the
+  cocoa-nut it constitutes one of the most luscious dishes I have ever
+  eaten. The tree is tall and large, and the pinnated leaves very
+  long.</p>
+
+  <p>In the moist portions of the jungle toward the foot of the hill
+  were whole groves of the fragrant pandanus, ferns of infinite
+  variety, and a species of wild mignonette with a perfume like that of
+  commingled strawberries and lemon. Now and then we paused beneath the
+  thick green foliage of the <i>Magnolia grandiflora</i>, as it towered
+  in stately grandeur above its sister flowers, acknowledged queen of
+  the parterre, and dispensing with genuine Oriental profusion its rare
+  and delicious perfume. A step farther and our gaze was riveted by the
+  modest purity of the spotless japonica, the fragrant tuberose and
+  Cape jessamine, the graceful passion-flower, with its royal beauty
+  and storied reminiscences, the peerless dauk-m�l�, fragrant and fair,
+  the <i>Kalla Indica</i>, with its five long petals of heavenly blue,
+  the gold-plant of the Chinese, and crimson boon-gah-riah of the
+  Malays, the last two consecrated symbols in the religious rites of
+  those nations. What a medley of sweets, flaunting their gay colors in
+  the bright tropical sunshine! Then the innumerable company of
+  roses&#8212;tea, moss, perpetual, cluster, climbing, variegated, and
+  a score of others&#8212;how fair, fresh and fragrant they are,
+  peerless, queen-like still, even amid such a gorgeous <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 205]</span> array of ripe floral charms! These, and a
+  thousand others for which we have no names in our language, are
+  scattered profusely over those sunny lands of dreamy beauty, vieing
+  with each other in rare, rich perfume, exquisite grace of form and
+  matchless blending of their warm, ripe colors.</p>
+
+  <p>The next day we dined at Dr. Almeida&#39;s, and in his magnificent
+  garden found several choice specimens of both the <i>Victoria
+  regia</i> and the <i>Rafflesia Arnoldi</i>, the two largest flowers
+  in the world, each bloom measuring two feet in diameter. But the
+  rarest of all the doctor&#39;s treasures was the night-blooming
+  cereus. There were six blooms in full maturity&#8212;four on one
+  stalk and two on another&#8212;creamy, waxen flowers of exquisite
+  form, the leaves of the corolla of a pale golden hue and the petals
+  intensely white. The calyx rises from a long, hollow footstalk, which
+  is formed of rough plates overlapping each other like tiles on a
+  roof. From the centre of this footstalk rises a bundle of filaments
+  that encircle the style, stamens springing also from the insertion of
+  the leaves of the corolla, lining it with delicate beauty and waving
+  their slender forms with exquisite grace. But the real charm of the
+  cereus is its wondrous perfume, exhaled just at night-fall, and
+  readily discernible over the circuit of a mile. The peculiar odor
+  cannot be understood by mere description, but partakes largely of
+  that of sweet lilies, violets, the tuberose and vanilla. After the
+  bud appears the growth is very rapid, often two or three inches a
+  day&#8212;that is, in the height of the stalk, the flower expanding
+  proportionately. When fully grown it begins to unfold its charms as
+  the twilight deepens into night, and reaches perfect maturity about
+  an hour before midnight: at three o&#39;clock its glory is already
+  beginning to wane, though scarcely perceptibly; but at dawn it is
+  fading rapidly, and by sun-rise only a wilted, worthless wreck
+  remains, good for nothing but to be &quot;cast out and trodden under
+  foot of men.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p class="author">FANNIE R. FEUDGE.</p><a name="thule" id="thule">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a> <span class="pagenum">[pg 206]</span>
+
+  <h2>A PRINCESS OF THULE.</h2>
+
+  <h3>BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF &quot;THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A
+  PHAETON.&quot;</h3><a name="thulechxii" id="thulechxii">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER XII.</h3>
+
+  <h3>TRANSFORMATION.</h3>
+
+  <p>Had Sheila, then, Lavender could not help asking himself, a bad
+  temper, or any other qualities or characteristics which were apparent
+  to other people, but not to him? Was it possible that, after all,
+  Ingram was right, and that he had yet to learn the nature of the girl
+  he had married? It would be unfair to say that he suspected something
+  wrong about his wife&#8212;that he fancied she had managed to conceal
+  something&#8212;merely because Mrs. Lavender had said that Sheila had
+  a bad temper; but here was another person who maintained that when
+  the days of his romance were over he would see the girl in another
+  light.</p>
+
+  <p>Nay, as he continued to ask himself, had not the change already
+  begun? He grew less and less accustomed to see in Sheila a beautiful
+  wild sea-bird that had fluttered down for a time into a strange home
+  in the South. He had not quite forgotten or abandoned those
+  imaginative scenes in which the wonderful sea-princess was to enter
+  crowded drawing-rooms and have all the world standing back to regard
+  her and admire her and sing her praises. But now he was not so sure
+  that that would be the result of Sheila&#39;s entrance into society.
+  As the date of a certain dinner-party drew near he began to wish she
+  was more like the women he knew. He did not object to her strange
+  sweet ways of speech, nor to her odd likes and dislikes, nor even to
+  an unhesitating frankness that nearly approached rudeness sometimes
+  in its scorn of all compromise with the truth; but how would others
+  regard these things? He did not wish to gain the reputation of having
+  married an oddity.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Sheila,&quot; he said on the morning of the day on which
+  they were going to this dinner-party, &quot;you should not say
+  <i>like-a-ness</i>. There are only two syllables in <i>likeness</i>.
+  It really does sound absurd to hear you say
+  <i>like-a-ness</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She looked up to him with a quick trouble in her eyes. When had he
+  spoken to her so petulantly before? And then she cast down her eyes
+  again, and said submissively, &quot;I will try not to speak like
+  that. When you go out I take a book and read aloud, and try to speak
+  like you; but I cannot learn all at once.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;<i>I</i> don&#39;t mind,&quot; he said. &quot;But you know
+  other people must think it so odd. I wonder why you should always say
+  <i>gyarden</i> for <i>garden</i> now, when it is just as easy to say
+  <i>garden</i>?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Once upon a time he had said there was no English like the English
+  spoken in Lewis, and had singled out this very word as typical of one
+  peculiarity in the pronunciation. But she did not remind him of that.
+  She only said in the same simple fashion, &quot;If you will tell me
+  my faults I will try to correct them.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She turned away from him to get an envelope for a letter she had
+  been writing to her father. He fancied something was wrong, and
+  perhaps some touch of compunction smote him, for he went after her
+  and took her hand, and said, &quot;Look here, Sheila. When I point
+  out any trifles like that, you must not call them faults, and fancy I
+  have any serious complaint to make. It is for your own good that you
+  should meet the people who will be your friends on equal terms, and
+  give them as little as possible to talk about.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I should not mind their talking about me,&quot; said Sheila
+  with her eyes still cast down, &quot;but it is your wife they must
+  not talk about; and if you will tell me anything I do wrong I will
+  correct it.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, you must not think it is anything so serious as that.
+  You will soon pick up from the ladies you will meet some notion of
+  how you differ from them; and if you should startle or puzzle them a
+  little at first by talking about the chances of the fishing or the
+  catching of wild-duck, or the way to reclaim bogland, you will soon
+  get over all that.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Sheila said nothing, but she made a mental memorandum of three
+  things she was not to speak about. She did not know why these
+  subjects should be forbidden, but she was in a strange land and going
+  to see strange people, whose habits were different from hers.
+  Moreover, when her husband had gone she reflected that these people,
+  having no fishing and no peat-mosses and no wild-duck, could not
+  possibly be interested in such affairs; and thus she fancied she
+  perceived the reason why she should avoid all mention of those
+  things.</p>
+
+  <p>When in the evening Sheila came down dressed and ready to go out,
+  Lavender had to admit to himself that he had married an exceedingly
+  beautiful girl, and that there was no country gawkiness about her
+  manner, and no placid insipidity about her proud and handsome face.
+  For one brief moment he triumphed in his heart, and had some wild
+  glimpse of his old project of startling his small world with this
+  vision from the northern seas. But when he got into the hired
+  brougham, and thought of the people he was about to meet, and of the
+  manner in which they would carry away such and such impressions of
+  the girl, he lost faith in that admiration. He would much rather have
+  had Sheila unnoticeable and unnoticed&#8212;one who would quietly
+  take her place at the dinner-table, and attract no more special
+  attention than the flowers, for example, which every one would glance
+  at with some satisfaction, and then forget in the interest of talking
+  and dining. He was quite conscious of his own weakness in thus
+  fearing social criticism. He knew that Ingram would have taken Sheila
+  anywhere in her blue serge dress, and been quite content and
+  oblivious of observation. But then Ingram was independent of those
+  social circles in which a married man must move, and in which his
+  position is often defined for him by the disposition and manners of
+  his wife. Ingram did not know how women talked. <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 207]</span> It was for Sheila&#39;s own sake, he
+  persuaded himself, that he was anxious about the impression she
+  should make, and that he had drilled her in all that she should do
+  and say.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Above all things,&quot; he said, &quot;mind you take no
+  notice of me. Another man will take you in to dinner, of course, and
+  I shall take in somebody else, and we shall not be near each other.
+  But it&#39;s after dinner, I mean: when the men go into the
+  drawing-room don&#39;t you come and speak to me or take any notice of
+  me whatever.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Mayn&#39;t I look at you, Frank?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;If you do you&#39;ll have half a dozen people all watching
+  you, saying to themselves or to each other, &#39;Poor thing! she
+  hasn&#39;t got over her infatuation yet. Isn&#39;t it pretty to see
+  how naturally her eyes turn toward him?&#39;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But I shouldn&#39;t mind them saying that,&quot; said Sheila
+  with a smile.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, you mustn&#39;t be pitied in that fashion. Let them keep
+  their compassion to themselves.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Do you know, dear,&quot; said Sheila very quietly,
+  &quot;that I think you exaggerate the interest people will take in
+  me? I don&#39;t think I can be of such importance to them. I
+  don&#39;t think they will be watching me as you fancy.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, you don&#39;t know,&quot; he said. &quot;I know they
+  fancy I have done something romantic, heroic and all that kind of
+  thing, and they are curious to see you.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;They cannot hurt me by looking at me,&quot; said Sheila
+  simply. &quot;And they will soon find out how little there is to
+  discover.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The house being in Holland Park they had not far to go; and just
+  as they were driving up to the door a young man, slight, sandy-haired
+  and stooping, got out of a hansom and crossed the pavement.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;By Jove!&quot; said Lavender, &quot;there is Redburn, I did
+  not know he knew Mrs. Lorraine and her mother. That is Lord Arthur
+  Redburn, Sheila: mind, if you should talk to him, not to call him
+  &#39;my lord.&#39;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Sheila laughed and said, &quot;How am I to remember all these
+  things?&quot;</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 208]</span>
+
+  <p>They got into the house, and by and by Lavender found himself,
+  with Sheila on his arm, entering a drawing-room to present her to
+  certain of his friends. It was a large room, with a great deal of
+  gilding and color about it, and with a conservatory at the farther
+  end; but the blaze of light had not so bewildering an effect on
+  Sheila&#39;s eyes as the appearance of two ladies to whom she was now
+  introduced. She had heard much about them. She was curious to see
+  them. Many a time had she thought over the strange story Lavender had
+  told her of the woman who heard that her husband was dying in a
+  hospital during the war, and started off, herself and her daughter,
+  to find him out; how there was in the same hospital another dying man
+  whom they had known some years before, and who had gone away because
+  the girl would not listen to him; how this man, being very near to
+  death, begged that the girl would do him the last favor he would ask
+  of her, of wearing his name and inheriting his property; and how,
+  some few hours after the strange and sad ceremony had been performed,
+  he breathed his last, happy in holding her hand. The father died next
+  day, and the two widows were thrown upon the world, almost without
+  friends, but not without means. This man Lorraine had been possessed
+  of considerable wealth, and the girl who had suddenly become mistress
+  of it found herself able to employ all possible means in assuaging
+  her mother&#39;s grief. They began to travel. The two women went from
+  capital to capital, until at last they came to London; and here,
+  having gathered around them a considerable number of friends, they
+  proposed to take up their residence permanently. Lavender had often
+  talked to Sheila about Mrs. Lorraine&#8212;about her shrewdness, her
+  sharp sayings, and the odd contrast between this clever, keen, frank
+  woman of the world and the woman one would have expected to be the
+  heroine of a pathetic tale.</p>
+
+  <p>But were there two Mrs. Lorraines? That had been Sheila&#39;s
+  first question to herself when, after having been introduced to one
+  lady under that name, she suddenly saw before her another, who was
+  introduced to her as Mrs. Kavanagh. The mother and daughter were
+  singularly alike. They had the same slight and graceful figure, which
+  made them appear taller than they really were, the same pale, fine
+  and rather handsome features, the same large, clear gray eyes, and
+  apparently the same abundant mass of soft fair hair, heavily plaited
+  in the latest fashion. They were both dressed entirely in black,
+  except that the daughter had a band of blue round her slender waist.
+  It was soon apparent, too, that the manner of the two women was
+  singularly different; Mrs. Kavanagh bearing herself with a certain
+  sad reserve that almost approached melancholy at times, while her
+  daughter, with more life and spirit in her face, passed rapidly
+  through all sorts of varying moods, until one could scarcely tell
+  whether the affectation lay in a certain cynical audacity in her
+  speech, or whether it lay in her assumption of a certain coyness and
+  archness, or whether there was any affectation at all in the matter.
+  However that might be, there could be no doubt about the sincerity of
+  those gray eyes of hers. There was something almost cruelly frank in
+  the clear look of them; and when her face was not lit up by some
+  passing smile the pale and fine features seemed to borrow something
+  of severity from her unflinching, calm and dispassionate habit of
+  regarding those around her.</p>
+
+  <p>Sheila was prepared to like Mrs. Lorraine from the first moment
+  she had caught sight of her. The honesty of the gray eyes attracted
+  her. And, indeed, the young widow seemed very much interested in the
+  young wife, and, so far as she could in that awkward period just
+  before dinner, strove to make friends with her. Sheila was introduced
+  to a number of people, but none of them pleased her so well as Mrs.
+  Lorraine. Then dinner was announced, and Sheila found that she was
+  being escorted across the passage to the room on the other side by
+  the young man whom she had seen get out of the hansom.</p>
+
+  <p>This Lord Arthur Redburn was the younger son of a great Tory duke;
+  he represented in the House a small country borough which his father
+  practically owned; he had a fair amount of ability, an uncommonly
+  high opinion of himself, and a certain affectation of being bored by
+  the frivolous ways and talk of ordinary society. He gave himself
+  credit for being the clever member of the family; and if there was
+  any cleverness going, he had it; but there were some who said that
+  his reputation in the House and elsewhere as a good speaker was
+  mainly based on the fact that he had an abundant assurance and was
+  not easily put out. Unfortunately, the public could come to no
+  decision on the point, for the reporters were not kind to Lord
+  Arthur, and the substance of his speeches was as unknown to the world
+  as his manner of delivering them.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, Mrs. Lorraine had intended to tell this young man something
+  about the girl whom he was to take in to dinner, but she herself had
+  been so occupied with Sheila that the opportunity escaped her. Lord
+  Arthur accordingly knew only that he was beside a very pretty woman,
+  who was a Mrs. Somebody&#8212;the exact name he had not
+  caught&#8212;and that the few words she had spoken were pronounced in
+  a curious way. Probably, he thought, she was from Dublin.</p>
+
+  <p>He also arrived at the conclusion that she was too pretty to know
+  anything about the Deceased Wife&#39;s Sister bill, in which he was,
+  for family reasons, deeply interested, and considered it more likely
+  that she would prefer to talk about theatres and such things.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Were you at Covent Garden last night?&quot; he said.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No,&quot; answered Sheila. &quot;But I was there two days
+  ago, and it is very pretty to see the flowers and the fruit; and then
+  they smell so sweetly as you walk through.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh yes, it is delightful,&quot; said Lord Arthur. &quot;But
+  I was speaking of the theatre.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Is there a theatre in there?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He stared at her, and inwardly hoped she was not
+  mad.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 209]</span>
+
+  <p>&quot;Not in among the shops, no. But don&#39;t you know Covent
+  Garden Theatre?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I have never been in any theatre, not yet,&quot; said
+  Sheila.</p>
+
+  <p>And then it began to dawn upon him that he must be talking to
+  Frank Lavender&#39;s wife. Was there not some rumor about the girl
+  having come from a remote part of the Highlands? He determined on a
+  bold stroke: &quot;You have not been long enough in London to see the
+  theatres, I suppose.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>And then Sheila, taking it for granted that he knew her husband
+  very well, and that he was quite familiar with all the circumstances
+  of the case, began to chat to him freely enough. He found that this
+  Highland girl of whom he had heard vaguely was not at all shy. He
+  began to feel interested. By and by he actually made efforts to
+  assist her frankness by becoming equally frank, and by telling her
+  all he knew of the things with which they were mutually acquainted.
+  Of course by this time they had got up into the Highlands. The young
+  man had himself been in the Highlands&#8212;frequently, indeed. He
+  had never crossed to Lewis, but he had seen the island from the
+  Sutherlandshire coast. There were very many deer in Sutherlandshire,
+  were there not? Yes, he had been out a great many times, and had had
+  his share of adventures. Had he not gone out before daylight, and
+  waited on the top of a hill, hidden by some rocks, to watch the mists
+  clear along the hillsides and in the valley below? Did not he tremble
+  when he fired his first shot, and had not something passed before his
+  eyes so that he could not see for a moment whether the stag had
+  fallen or was away like lightning down the bed of the stream? Somehow
+  or other, Lord Arthur found himself relating all his experiences, as
+  if he were a novice begging for the good opinion of a master. She
+  knew all about it, obviously, and he would tell her his small
+  adventures if only that she might laugh at him. But Sheila did not
+  laugh. She was greatly delighted to have this talk about the hills
+  and the deer and the wet mornings. She forgot all about the dinner
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 210]</span> before her. The servants
+  whipped off successive plates without her seeing anything of them:
+  they received random answers about wine, so that she had three full
+  glasses standing by her untouched. She was no more in Holland Park at
+  that moment than were the wild animals of which she spoke so proudly
+  and lovingly. If the great and frail masses of flowers on the table
+  brought her any perfume at all, it was a scent of peat-smoke. Lord
+  Arthur thought that his companion was a little too frank and
+  confiding, or rather that she would have been had she been talking to
+  any one but himself. He rather liked it. He was pleased to have
+  established friendly relations with a pretty woman in so short a
+  space; but ought not her husband to give her a hint about not
+  admitting all and sundry to the enjoyment of these favors? Perhaps,
+  too, Lord Arthur felt bound to admit to himself there were some men
+  who more than others inspired confidence in women. He laid no claims
+  to being a fascinating person, but he had had his share of success,
+  and considered that Sheila showed discrimination as well as
+  good-nature in talking so to him. There was, after all, no necessity
+  for her husband to warn her. She would know how to guard against
+  admitting all men to a like intimacy. In the mean time he was very
+  well pleased to be sitting beside this pretty and agreeable
+  companion, who had an abundant fund of good spirits, and who showed
+  no sort of conscious embarrassment in thanking you with a bright look
+  of her eyes or by a smile when you told her something that pleased or
+  amused her.</p>
+
+  <p>But these flattering little speculations were doomed to receive a
+  sudden check. The juvenile M.P. began to remark that a shade
+  occasionally crossed the face of his fair companion, and that she
+  sometimes looked a little anxiously across the table, where Mr.
+  Lavender and Mrs. Lorraine were seated, half hidden from view by a
+  heap of silver and flowers in the middle of the board. But though
+  they could not easily be seen, except at such moments as they turned
+  to address some neighbor, they could be distinctly enough heard when
+  there was any lull in the general conversation. And what Sheila heard
+  did not please her. She began to like that fair, clear-eyed young
+  woman less. Perhaps her husband meant nothing by the fashion in which
+  he talked of marriage and the condition of a married man, but she
+  would rather have not heard him talk so. Moreover, she was aware that
+  in the gentlest possible fashion Mrs. Lorraine was making fun of her
+  companion, and exposing him to small and graceful shafts of ridicule;
+  while he seemed, on the whole, to enjoy these attacks.</p>
+
+  <p>The ingenuous self-love of Lord Arthur Redburn, M.P., was severely
+  wounded by the notion that, after all, he had been made a
+  cat&#39;s-paw of by a jealous wife. He had been flattered by this
+  girl&#39;s exceeding friendliness; he had given her credit for a
+  genuine impulsiveness which seemed to him as pleasing as it was
+  uncommon; and he had, with the moderation expected of a man in
+  politics who hoped some day to assist in the government of the nation
+  by accepting a junior lordship, admired her. But was it all pretence?
+  Was she paying court to him merely to annoy her husband? Had her
+  enthusiasm about the shooting of red-deer been prompted by a wish to
+  attract a certain pair of eyes at the other side of the table? Lord
+  Arthur began to sneer at himself for having been duped. He ought to
+  have known. Women were as much women in a Hebridean island as in
+  Bayswater. He began to treat Sheila with a little more coolness,
+  while she became more and more preoccupied with the couple across the
+  table, and sometimes was innocently rude in answering his questions
+  somewhat at random.</p>
+
+  <p>When the ladies were going into the drawing-room, Mrs. Lorraine
+  put her hand within Sheila&#39;s arm and led her to the entrance to
+  the conservatory. &quot;I hope we shall be friends,&quot; she
+  said.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I hope so,&quot; said Sheila, not very warmly.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Until you get better acquainted with your husband&#39;s
+  friends you will feel rather lonely at being left as at present, I
+  suppose.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;A little,&quot; said Sheila.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It is a silly thing altogether. If men smoked after dinner I
+  could understand it. But they merely sit, looking at wine they
+  don&#39;t drink, talking a few common-places and yawning.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why do they do it, then?&quot; said Sheila.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;They don&#39;t do it everywhere. But here we keep to the
+  manners and customs of the ancients.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What do you know about the manners of the ancients?&quot;
+  said Mrs. Kavanagh, tapping her daughter&#39;s shoulder; as she
+  passed with a sheet of music.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I have studied them frequently, mamma,&quot; said the
+  daughter with composure, &quot;&#8212;in the monkey-house at the
+  Zoological Gardens.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The mamma smiled, and passed on to place the music on the piano.
+  Sheila did not understand what her companion had said; and indeed
+  Mrs. Lorraine immediately turned, with the same calm, fine face and
+  careless eyes, to ask Sheila whether she would not, by and by, sing
+  one of those northern songs of which Mr. Lavender had told her.</p>
+
+  <p>A tall girl, with her back hair tied in a knot and her costume
+  copied from a well-known pre-Raphaelite drawing, sat down to the
+  piano and sang a mystic song of the present day, in which the moon,
+  the stars and other natural objects behaved strangely, and were
+  somehow mixed up with the appeal of a maiden who demanded that her
+  dead lover should be reclaimed from the sea.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Do you ever go down to your husband&#39;s studio?&quot; said
+  Mrs. Lorraine.</p>
+
+  <p>Sheila glanced toward the lady at the piano.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, you may talk,&quot; said Mrs. Lorraine, with the least
+  expression of contempt in the gray eyes. &quot;She is singing to
+  gratify herself, not us.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes, I sometimes go down,&quot; said Sheila in as low a
+  voice as she could manage without falling into a whisper, &quot;and
+  it is such a dismal place. It is very hard on him to have to work in
+  a big bare room like that, with the windows <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  211]</span> half blinded. But sometimes I think Frank would rather
+  have me out of the way.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And what would he do if both of us were to pay him a
+  visit?&quot; said Mrs. Lorraine. &quot;I should so like to see the
+  studio! Won&#39;t you call for me some day and take me with
+  you?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Take her with her, indeed! Sheila began to wonder that she did not
+  propose to go alone. Fortunately, there was no need to answer the
+  question, for at this moment the song came to an end, and there was a
+  general movement and murmur of gratitude.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Thank you,&quot; said Mrs. Lorraine to the lady who had
+  sung, and who was now returning to the photographs she had
+  left&#8212;&quot;thank you very much. I knew some one would instantly
+  ask you to sing that song: it is the most charming of all your songs,
+  I think, and how well it suits your voice, too!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Then she turned to Sheila again: &quot;How did you like Lord
+  Arthur Redburn?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I think he is a very good young man.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Young men are never good, but they may be very
+  amiable,&quot; said Mrs. Lorraine, not perceiving that Sheila had
+  blundered on a wrong adjective, and that she had really meant that
+  she thought him honest and pleasant.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You did not speak at all, I think, to your neighbor on the
+  right: that was wise of you. He is a most insufferable person, but
+  mamma bears with him for the sake of his daughter, who sang just now.
+  He is too rich. And he smiles blandly, and takes a sort of
+  after-dinner view of things, as if he coincided with the arrangements
+  of Providence. Don&#39;t you take coffee? Tea, then. I have met your
+  aunt&#8212;I mean, Mr. Lavender&#39;s aunt: such a dear old lady she
+  is!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I don&#39;t like her,&quot; said Sheila.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, don&#39;t you, really?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Not at present, but I shall try to like her.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well,&quot; said Mrs. Lorraine calmly, &quot;you know she
+  has her peculiarities. I wish she wouldn&#39;t talk so much about
+  Marcus Antoninus and doses of medicine. <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  212]</span> I fancy I smell calomel when she comes near. I suppose if
+  she were in a pantomime, they&#39;d dress her up as a phial, tie a
+  string round her neck and label her &#39;POISON.&#39; Dear me, how
+  languid one gets in this climate! Let us sit down. I wish I was as
+  strong as mamma.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>They sat down together, and Mrs. Lorraine evidently expected to be
+  petted and made much of by her new companion. She gave herself pretty
+  little airs and graces, and said no more cutting things about
+  anybody. And Sheila somehow found herself being drawn to the girl, so
+  that she could scarcely help taking her hand, and saying how sorry
+  she was to see her so pale and fine and delicate. The hand, too, was
+  so small that the tiny white fingers seemed scarcely bigger than the
+  claws of a bird. Was not that slender waist, to which some little
+  attention was called by a belt of bold blue, just a little too
+  slender for health, although the bust and shoulders were exquisitely
+  and finely proportioned?</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;We were at the Academy all the morning, and mamma is not a
+  bit tired. Why has not Mr. Lavender anything in the Academy? Oh, I
+  forgot&quot; she added, with a smile. &quot;Of course, he has been
+  very much engaged. But now I suppose he will settle down to
+  work.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Sheila wished that this fragile-looking girl would not so
+  continually refer to her husband; but how was any one to find fault
+  with her when she put a little air of plaintiveness into the
+  ordinarily cold gray eyes, and looked at her small hand as much as to
+  say, &quot;The fingers there are very small, and even whiter than the
+  glove that covers them. They are the fingers of a child, who ought to
+  be petted.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Then the men came in from the dining-room. Lavender looked round
+  to see where Sheila was&#8212;perhaps with a trifle of disappointment
+  that she was not the most prominent figure there. Had he expected to
+  find all the women surrounding her and admiring her, and all the men
+  going up to pay court to her? Sheila was seated near a small table,
+  and Mrs. Lorraine was showing her something. She was just like
+  anybody else. If she was a wonderful sea-princess who had come into a
+  new world, no one seemed to observe her. The only thing that
+  distinguished her from the women around her was her freshness of
+  color and the unusual combination of black eyelashes and dark blue
+  eyes. Lavender had arranged that Sheila&#39;s first appearance in
+  public should be at a very quiet little dinner-party, but even here
+  she failed to create any profound impression. She was, as he had to
+  confess to himself again, just like anybody else.</p>
+
+  <p>He went over to where Mrs. Lorraine was, and sat down beside her.
+  Sheila, remembering his injunctions, felt bound to leave him there;
+  and as she rose to speak to Mrs. Kavanagh, who was standing by, that
+  lady came and begged her to sing a Highland song. By this time
+  Lavender had succeeded in interesting his companion about something
+  or other, and neither of them noticed that Sheila had gone to the
+  piano, attended by the young politician who had taken her in to
+  dinner. Nor did they interrupt their talk merely because some one
+  played a few bars of prelude. But what was this that suddenly
+  startled Lavender to the heart, causing him to look up with surprise?
+  He had not heard the air since he was in Borva, and when Sheila
+  sang</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">Hark, hark! the horn</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">On mountain-breezes borne!</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Awake, it is morn,</p>
+
+    <p class="i6">Awake, Monaltrie!&#8212;</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>all sorts of reminiscences came rushing in upon him. How often had
+  he heard that wild story of Monaltrie&#39;s flight sung out in the
+  small chamber over the sea, with a sound of the waves outside and a
+  scent of sea-weed coming in at the door and the windows! It was from
+  the shores of Borva that young Monaltrie must have fled. It must have
+  been in Borva that his sweetheart sat in her bower and sang, the
+  burden of all her singing being &quot;Return, Monaltrie!&quot; And
+  then, as Sheila sang now, making the monotonous and plaintive air
+  wild and strange&#8212;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">What cries of wild despair</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Awake the sultry air?</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Frenzied with anxious care,</p>
+
+    <p class="i6">She seeks Monaltrie&#8212;</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>he heard no more of the song. He was thinking of bygone days in
+  Borva, and of old Mackenzie living in his lonely house there. When
+  Sheila had finished singing he looked at her, and it seemed to him
+  that she was still that wonderful princess whom he had wooed on the
+  shores of the Atlantic. And if those people did not see her as he saw
+  her, ought he to be disappointed because of their blindness?</p>
+
+  <p>But if they saw nothing mystic or wonderful about Sheila, they at
+  all events were considerably surprised by the strange sort of music
+  she sang. It was not of a sort commonly heard in a London
+  drawing-room. The pathos of its minor chords, its abrupt intervals,
+  startling and wild in their effect, and the slowly subsiding wail in
+  which it closed, did not much resemble the ordinary drawing-room
+  &quot;piece.&quot; Here, at least, Sheila had produced an impression;
+  and presently there was a heap of people round the piano, expressing
+  their admiration, asking questions and begging her to continue. But
+  she rose. She would rather not sing just then. Whereupon Lavender
+  came out to her and said, &quot;Sheila, won&#39;t you sing that wild
+  one about the farewell&#8212;that has the sound of the pipes in it,
+  you know?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh yes,&quot; she said directly.</p>
+
+  <p>Lavender went back to his companion.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;She is very obedient to you,&quot; said Mrs. Lorraine with a
+  smile.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes, at present,&quot; he said; and he thought meanly of
+  himself for saying it the moment the words were uttered.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">Oh, soft be thy slumbers, by Tigh-na-linne&#39;s
+    waters;</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Thy late-wake was sung by Macdiarmid&#39;s fair
+    daughters;</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">But far in Lochaber the true heart was weeping</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Whose hopes are entombed in the grave where
+    thou&#39;rt sleeping.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>So Sheila sang; and it seemed to the people that this ballad was
+  even more strange than its predecessor. When the song was over,
+  Sheila seemed rather anxious to get out of the crowd, and indeed
+  walked away into the conservatory to have a look at the
+  flowers.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 213]</span>
+
+  <p>Yes, Lavender had to confess to himself, Sheila was just like
+  anybody else in this drawing-room. His sea-princess had produced no
+  startling impression. He forgot that he had just been teaching her
+  the necessity of observing the ways and customs of the people around
+  her, so that she might avoid singularity.</p>
+
+  <p>On one point, at least, she was resolved she would attend to his
+  counsels: she would not make him ridiculous by any show of affection
+  before the eyes of strangers. She did not go near him the whole
+  evening. She remained for the most part in that half conservatory,
+  half ante-room at the end of the drawing-room; and when any one
+  talked to her she answered, and when she was left alone she turned to
+  the flowers. All this time, however, she could observe that Lavender
+  and Mrs. Lorraine were very much engrossed in their conversation;
+  that she seemed very much amused, and he at times a trifle
+  embarrassed; and that both of them had apparently forgotten her
+  existence. Mrs. Kavanagh was continually coming to Sheila and trying
+  to coax her back into the larger room, but in vain. She would rather
+  not sing any more that night. She liked to look at flowers. She was
+  not tired at all, and she had already seen those wonderful
+  photographs about which everybody was talking.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, Sheila, how did you enjoy yourself?&quot; said her
+  husband as they were driving home.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I wish Mr. Ingram had been there,&quot; said Sheila.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Ingram! He would not have stopped in the place five minutes,
+  unless he could play the part of Diogenes and say rude things to
+  everybody all round. Were you at all dull?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;A little.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Didn&#39;t somebody look after you?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh yes, many persons were very kind.
+  But&#8212;but&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Nobody seemed to be better off than myself. They all seemed
+  to be wanting something to do; and I am sure they were all very glad
+  to come away.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, no, no, Sheila. That is only <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  214]</span> your fancy. You were not much interested, that is
+  evident; but you will get on better when you know more of the people.
+  You were a stranger&#8212;that is what disappointed you&#8212;but you
+  will not always be a stranger.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Sheila did not answer. Perhaps she contemplated with no great hope
+  or longing the possibility of her coming to like such a method of
+  getting through an evening. At all events, she looked forward with no
+  great pleasure to the chance of her having to become friends with
+  Mrs. Lorraine. All the way home Sheila was examining her own heart to
+  try to discover why such bitter feelings should be there. Surely that
+  girl was honest: there was honesty in her eyes. She had been most
+  kind to Sheila herself. And was there not at times, when she
+  abandoned the ways and speech of a woman of the world, a singular coy
+  fascination about her, that any man might be excused for yielding to,
+  even as any woman might yield to it? Sheila fought with herself, and
+  resolved that she would cast forth from her heart those harsh fancies
+  and indignant feelings that seemed to have established themselves
+  there. She would <i>not</i> hate Mrs. Lorraine.</p>
+
+  <p>As for Lavender, what was he thinking of, now that he and his
+  young wife were driving home from their first experiment in society?
+  He had to confess to a certain sense of failure. His dreams had not
+  been realized. Every one who had spoken to him had conveyed to him,
+  as freely as good manners would admit, their congratulations and
+  their praises of his wife. But the impressive scenes he had been
+  forecasting were out of the question. There was a little curiosity
+  about her on the part of those who knew her story, and that was all.
+  Sheila bore herself very well. She made no blunders. She had a good
+  presence, she sang well, and every one could see that she was
+  handsome, gentle and honest. Surely, he argued with himself, that
+  ought to content the most exacting. But, in spite of all argument, he
+  was not content. He did not regret that he had sacrificed his liberty
+  in a freak of romance; he did not even regard the fact of a man in
+  his position having dared to marry a penniless girl as anything very
+  meritorious or heroic; but he had hoped that the dramatic
+  circumstances of the case would be duly recognized by his friends,
+  and that Sheila would be an object of interest and wonder and talk in
+  a whole series of social circles. But the result of his adventure was
+  different. There was only one married man the more in London, and
+  London was not disposed to pay any particular heed to that
+  circumstance.</p><a name="thulechxiii" id="thulechxiii">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER XIII.</h3>
+
+  <h3>BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON.</h3>
+
+  <p>If Frank Lavender had been told that his love for his wife was in
+  danger of waning, he would have laughed the suggestion to scorn. He
+  was as fond of her and as proud of her as ever. Who knew as well as
+  himself the tenderness of her heart, the delicate sensitiveness of
+  her conscience, the generosity of self-sacrifice she was always ready
+  to bestow? and was he likely to become blind, so that he should fail
+  to see how fair and frank and handsome she was? He had been
+  disappointed, it is true, in his fancies about the impression she
+  would produce on his friends; but what a trifle was that! The folly
+  of those fancies was his own. For the rest, he was glad that Sheila
+  was not so different from the other women whom he knew. He hit upon
+  the profound reflection, as he sat alone in his studio, that a
+  man&#39;s wife, like his costume, should not be so remarkable as to
+  attract attention. The perfection of dress was that you should be
+  unconscious of its presence: might that not be so with marriage?
+  After all, it was better that he had not bound himself to lug about a
+  lion whenever he visited people&#39;s houses.</p>
+
+  <p>Still, there was something. He found himself a good deal alone.
+  Sheila did not seem to care much for going into society; and although
+  he did not much like the notion of going by himself, nevertheless one
+  had certain duties toward one&#39;s friends to perform. She did not
+  even care to go down to the Park of a forenoon. She always professed
+  her readiness to go, but he fancied it was a trifle tiresome for her;
+  and so, when there was nothing particular going on in the studio, he
+  would walk down through Kensington Gardens himself, and have a chat
+  with some friends, followed generally by luncheon with this or the
+  other party of them. Sheila had been taught that she ought not to
+  come so frequently to that studio. Bras would not lie quiet.
+  Moreover, if dealers or other strangers should come in, would they
+  not take her for a model? So Sheila stayed at home; and Mr. Lavender,
+  after having dressed with care in the morning&#8212;with very
+  singular care, indeed, considering that he was going to his
+  work&#8212;used to go down to his studio to smoke a cigarette. The
+  chances were that he was not in a humor for working. He would sit
+  down in an easy-chair and kick his heels on the floor for a time,
+  watching perhaps the sunlight come in through the upper part of the
+  windows and paint yellow squares on the opposite wall. Then he would
+  go out and lock the door behind him, leaving no message whatever for
+  those crowds of importunate dealers who, as Sheila fancied, were
+  besieging him with offers in one hand and purses of gold in the
+  other.</p>
+
+  <p>One morning, after she had been indoors for two or three days, and
+  had grown hopelessly tired of the monotony of watching that sunlit
+  square, she was filled with an unconquerable longing to go away, for
+  however brief a space, from the sight of houses. The morning was
+  sweet and clear and bright, white clouds were slowly crossing a fair
+  blue sky, and a fresh and cool breeze was blowing in at the open
+  French windows.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Bras,&quot; she said, going down stairs and out into the
+  small garden, &quot;we are going into the country.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The great deer-hound seemed to know, and rose and came to her with
+  great gravity, while she clasped on the leash. He was no frisky
+  animal to show his delight by yelping and gamboling, but he laid his
+  long nose in her hand, and <span class="pagenum">[pg 215]</span>
+  slowly wagged the down-drooping curve of his shaggy tail; and then he
+  placidly walked by her side up into the hall, where he stood awaiting
+  her.</p>
+
+  <p>She would go along and beg of her husband to leave his work for a
+  day and go with her for a walk down to Richmond Park. She had often
+  heard Mr. Ingram speak of walking down, and she remembered that much
+  of the road was pretty. Why should not her husband have one
+  holiday?</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It is such a shame,&quot; she had said to him that morning
+  as he left, &quot;that you will be going into that gloomy place, with
+  its bare walls and chairs, and the windows so that you cannot see out
+  of them!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I must get some work done somehow, Sheila,&quot; he said,
+  although he did not tell her that he had not finished a picture since
+  his marriage.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I wish I could do some of it for you,&quot; she said.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You! All the work you&#39;re good for is catching fish and
+  feeding ducks and planting things in gardens. Why don&#39;t you come
+  down and feed the ducks in the Serpentine?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I should like to do that,&quot; she answered. &quot;I will
+  go any day with you.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well,&quot; he said, &quot;you see, I don&#39;t know until I
+  get along to the studio whether I can get away for the fore-noon; and
+  then if I were to come back here, you would have little or no time to
+  dress. Good-bye, Sheila.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Good-bye,&quot; she had said to him, giving up the
+  Serpentine without much regret.</p>
+
+  <p>But the forenoon had turned out so delightful that she thought she
+  would go along to the studio, and hale him out of that gaunt and
+  dingy apartment. She should take him away from town: therefore she
+  might put on that rough blue dress in which she used to go boating in
+  Loch Roag. She had lately smartened it up a bit with some white
+  braid, and she hoped he would approve.</p>
+
+  <p>Did the big hound know the dress? He rubbed his head against her
+  arm and hand when she came down, and looked up and whined almost
+  inaudibly.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 216]</span>
+
+  <p>&quot;You are going out, Bras, and you must be a good dog and not
+  try to go after the deer. Then I will send a very good story of you
+  to Mairi; and when she comes to London after the harvest is over, she
+  will bring you a present from the Lewis, and you will be very
+  proud.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She went out into the square, and was perhaps a little glad to get
+  away from it, as she was not sure of the blue dress and the small hat
+  with its sea-gull&#39;s feather being precisely the costume she ought
+  to wear. When she got into the Uxbridge road she breathed more
+  freely, and in the lightness of her heart she continued her
+  conversation with Bras, giving that attentive animal a vast amount of
+  information, partly in English, partly in Gaelic, which he answered
+  only by a low whine or a shake of his shaggy head.</p>
+
+  <p>But these confidences were suddenly interrupted. She had got down
+  to Addison Terrace, and was contentedly looking at the trees and
+  chatting to the dog, when by accident her eye happened to light on a
+  brougham that was driving past. In it&#8212;she beheld them both
+  clearly for a brief second&#8212;were her husband and Mrs. Lorraine,
+  so engaged in conversation that neither of them saw her. Sheila stood
+  on the pavement for a couple of minutes absolutely bewildered. All
+  sorts of wild fancies and recollections came crowding in upon
+  her&#8212;reasons why her husband was unwilling that she should visit
+  his studio, why Mrs. Lorraine never called on her, and so forth and
+  so forth. She did not know what to think for a time; but presently
+  all this tumult was stilled, and she had resolved her doubts and made
+  up her mind as to what she should do. She would not suspect her
+  husband&#8212;that was the one sweet security to which she clung. He
+  had made use of no duplicity: if there were duplicity in the case at
+  all, he could not be the author of it. The reasons for his having of
+  late left her so much alone were the true reasons. And if this Mrs.
+  Lorraine should amuse him and interest him, who ought to grudge him
+  this break in the monotony of his work? Sheila knew that she herself
+  disliked going to those fashionable gatherings to which Mrs. Lorraine
+  went, and to which Lavender had been accustomed to go before he was
+  married. How could she expect him to give up all his old habits and
+  pleasures for her sake? She would be more generous. It was her own
+  fault that she was not a better companion for him; and was it for
+  her, then, to think hardly of him because he went to the Park with a
+  friend instead of going alone?</p>
+
+  <p>Yet there was a great bitterness and grief in her heart as she
+  turned and walked on. She spoke no more to the deer-hound by her
+  side. There seemed to be less sunlight in the air, and the people and
+  carriages passing were hardly so busy and cheerful and interesting as
+  they had been. But all the same, she would go to Richmond Park, and
+  by herself; for what was the use in calling in at the studio? and how
+  could she go back home and sit in the house, knowing that her husband
+  was away at some flower-show or morning concert, or some such thing,
+  with that young American lady?</p>
+
+  <p>She knew no other road to Richmond than that by which they had
+  driven shortly after her arrival in London; and so it was that she
+  went down and over Hammersmith Bridge, and round by Mortlake, and so
+  on by East Sheen. The road seemed terribly long. She was an excellent
+  walker, and in ordinary circumstances would have done the distance
+  without fatigue; but when at length she saw the gates of the Park
+  before her, she was at once exceedingly tired and almost faint from
+  hunger. Here was the hotel in which they had dined: should she enter?
+  The place seemed very grand and forbidding: she had scarcely even
+  looked at it as she went up the steps with her husband by her side.
+  However, she would venture, and accordingly she went up and into the
+  vestibule, looking rather timidly about. A young gentleman,
+  apparently not a waiter, approached her and seemed to wait for her to
+  speak. It was a terrible moment. What was she to ask for? and could
+  she ask it of this young man? Fortunately, he spoke first, and asked
+  her if she wished to go into the coffee-room, and if she expected any
+  one.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, I do not expect any one,&quot; she said; and she knew
+  that he would perceive the peculiarity of her accent; &quot;but if
+  you will be kind enough to tell me where I may have a
+  biscuit&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>It occurred to her that to go into the Star and Garter for a
+  biscuit was absurd; and she added wildly, &quot;&#8212;or anything to
+  eat.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The young man obviously regarded her with some surprise; but he
+  was very courteous, and showed her into the coffee-room and called a
+  waiter to her. Moreover, he gave permission for Bras to be admitted
+  into the room, Sheila promising that he would lie under the table and
+  not budge an inch. Then she looked round. There were only three
+  persons in the room&#8212;one, an old lady seated by herself in a far
+  corner, the other two being a couple of young folks too much
+  engrossed with each other to mind any one else. She began to feel
+  more at home. The waiter suggested various things for lunch, and she
+  made her choice of something cold. Then she mustered up courage to
+  ask for a glass of sherry. How she would have enjoyed all this as a
+  story to tell to her husband but for that incident of the morning!
+  She would have gloried in her outward bravery, and made him smile
+  with a description of her inward terror. She would have written about
+  it to the old man in Borva, and bid him consider how she had been
+  transformed, and what strange scenes Bras was now witnessing. But all
+  that was over. She felt as if she could no longer ask her husband to
+  be amused by her childish experiences; and as for writing to her
+  father, she dared not write to him in her present mood. Perhaps some
+  happier time would come. Sheila paid her bill. She had heard her
+  husband and Mr. Ingram talk about tipping waiters, and knew that she
+  ought to give something to the man who had attended on her. But how
+  much? He was a very august-looking person, with formally-cut whiskers
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 217]</span> and a severe expression of
+  face. When he had brought back the change to her she timidly selected
+  a half crown and offered it to him. There was a little glance of
+  surprise: she feared she had not given him enough. Then he said
+  &quot;Thank you!&quot; in a vague and distant fashion, and she knew
+  that she had not given him enough. But it was too late. Bras was
+  summoned from under the table, and again she went out into the fresh
+  air.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, my good dog!&quot; she said to him as they together
+  walked up to the gates and into the Park, &quot;this is a very
+  extravagant country. You have to pay half a crown to a servant for
+  bringing you a piece of cold pie, and then he looks as if he was not
+  paid enough. And Duncan, who will do everything about the house, and
+  will give us all our dinners, it is only a pound a week he will get,
+  and Scarlett has to be kept out of that. And wouldn&#39;t you like to
+  see poor old Scarlett again?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Bras whined as if he understood every word.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I suppose now she is hanging out the washing on the
+  gooseberry bushes, and you know the song she always used to sing
+  then? Don&#39;t you know that Scarlett carried me about long before
+  you were born, for you are a mere infant compared with me? and she
+  used to sing to me&#8212;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">Ged&#39; bheirte mi&#39; bho&#39;n bhas so,</p>
+
+    <p class="i6">Mho Sheila bheag �g!</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And that is what she is singing just now in the garden; and Mairi
+  she is bringing the things out of the washing-house. Papa is over in
+  Stornoway this morning, arranging his accounts with the people there;
+  and perhaps he is down at the quay, looking at the Clansman, and
+  wondering when she is to bring me into the harbor. The castle is all
+  shut up, you know, with cloths over all the wonderful things, and the
+  curtains all down, and most of the shutters shut. Do you think papa
+  has got my letter in his pocket, and does he read it over and over
+  again, as I read all his letters to me over and over again?
+  Ah&#8212;h! You bad dog!&quot;</p><span class="pagenum">[pg
+  218]</span>
+
+  <p>Bras had forgotten to listen to his mistress in the excitement of
+  seeing in the distance a large herd of deer under certain trees. She
+  felt by the leash that he was trembling in every limb with
+  expectation, and straining hard on the collar. Again and again she
+  admonished him in vain, until she had at last to drag him away down
+  the hill, putting a small plantation between him and the herd. Here
+  she found a large, umbrageous chestnut tree, with a wooden seat round
+  its trunk, and so she sat down in the green twilight of the leaves,
+  while Bras came and put his head in her lap. Out beyond the shadow of
+  the tree all the world lay bathed in sunlight, and a great silence
+  brooded over the long undulations of the Park, where not a human
+  being was within sight. How strange it was, she fell to thinking,
+  that within a short distance there were millions of men and women,
+  while here she was absolutely alone! Did they not care, then, for the
+  sunlight and the trees and the sweet air? Were they so wrapped up in
+  those social observances that seemed to her so barren of
+  interest?</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;They have a beautiful country here,&quot; she said, talking
+  in a rambling and wistful way to Bras, and scarcely noticing the
+  eager light in his eyes, as if he were trying to understand.
+  &quot;They have no rain and no fog; almost always blue skies, and the
+  clouds high up and far away. And the beautiful trees they have too!
+  you never saw anything like that in the Lewis, not even at Stornoway.
+  And the people are so rich and beautiful in their dress, and all the
+  day they have only to think how to enjoy themselves and what new
+  amusement is for the morrow. But I think they are tired of having
+  nothing to do; or perhaps, you know, they are tired because they have
+  nothing to fight against&#8212;no hard weather and hunger and
+  poverty. They do not care for each other as they would if they were
+  working on the same farm, and trying to save up for the winter; or if
+  they were going out to the fishing, and very glad to come home again
+  from Caithness to find all the old people very well and the young
+  ones ready for a dance and a dram, and much joy and laughing and
+  telling of stories. It is a very great difference there will be in
+  the people&#8212;very great.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Bras whined: perhaps he understood her better now that she had
+  involuntarily fallen into something of her old accent and habit of
+  speech.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Wouldn&#39;t you like, Bras, to be up in Borva
+  again&#8212;only for this afternoon? All the people would come
+  running out; and it is little Ailasa, she would put her arms round
+  your neck; and old Peter McTavish, he would hear who it was, and come
+  out of his house groping by the wall, and he would say, &#39;Pless
+  me! iss it you, Miss Sheila, indeed and mir-over? It iss a long time
+  since you hef left the Lewis.&#39; Yes, it is a long time&#8212;a
+  long time; and I will be almost forgetting what it is like sometimes
+  when I try to think of it. Here it is always the same&#8212;the same
+  houses, the same soft air, the same still sunlight, the same things
+  to do and places to see&#8212;no storms shaking the windows or ships
+  running into the harbor, and you cannot go down to the shore to see
+  what has happened, or up the hill to look how the sea is raging. But
+  it is one day we will go back to the Lewis&#8212;oh yes, we will go
+  back to the Lewis!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She rose and looked wistfully around her, and then turned with a
+  sigh to make her way to the gates. It was with no especial sort of
+  gladness that she thought of returning home. Here, in the great
+  stillness, she had been able to dream of the far island which she
+  knew, and to fancy herself for a few minutes there: now she was going
+  back to the dreary monotony of her life in that square, and to the
+  doubts and anxieties which had been suggested to her in the morning.
+  The world she was about to enter once more seemed so much less
+  homely, so much less full of interest and purpose, than that other
+  and distant world she had been wistfully regarding for a time. The
+  people around her had neither the joys nor the sorrows with which she
+  had been taught to sympathize. Their cares seemed to her to be
+  exaggerations of trifles&#8212;she could feel no pity for them: their
+  satisfaction was derived from sources unintelligible to her. And the
+  social atmosphere around her seemed still and close and suffocating;
+  so that she was like to cry out at times for one breath of God&#39;s
+  clear wind&#8212;for a shaft of lightning even&#8212;to cut through
+  the sultry and drowsy sameness of her life.</p>
+
+  <p>She had almost forgotten the dog by her side. While sitting under
+  the chestnut she had carelessly and loosely wound the leash round his
+  neck in the semblance of a collar, and when she rose and came away
+  she let the dog walk by her side without undoing the leash and taking
+  proper charge of him. She was thinking of far other things, indeed,
+  when she was startled by some one calling to her, &quot;Look out,
+  miss, or you&#39;ll have your dog shot!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She turned and caught a glimpse of what sent a thrill of terror to
+  her heart. Bras had sneaked off from her side&#8212;had trotted
+  lightly over the breckans, and was now in full chase of a herd of
+  deer which were flying down the slope on the other side of the
+  plantation. He rushed now at one, now at another: the very number of
+  chances presented to him proving the safety of the whole herd. But as
+  Sheila, with a swift flight that would have astonished most town-bred
+  girls, followed the wild chase and came to the crest of the slope,
+  she could see that the hound had at length singled out a particular
+  deer&#8212;a fine buck with handsome horns that was making straight
+  for the foot of the valley. The herd, that had been much scattered,
+  were now drawing together again, though checking nothing of their
+  speed; but this single buck had been driven from his companions, and
+  was doing his utmost to escape from the fangs of the powerful animal
+  behind him.</p>
+
+  <p>What could she do but run wildly and breathlessly on? The dog was
+  now far beyond the reach of her voice. She had no whistle. All sorts
+  of fearful anticipations rushed in on her mind, the most prominent of
+  all being the anger of her father if Bras were shot. How could she go
+  back to Borva with such a tale? <span class="pagenum">[pg 219]</span>
+  and how could she live in London without this companion who had come
+  with her from the far North? Then what terrible things were connected
+  with the killing of deer in a royal park! She remembered vaguely what
+  Mr. Ingram and her husband had been saying; and while these things
+  were crowding in upon her, she felt her strength beginning to fail,
+  while both the dog and the deer had disappeared altogether from
+  sight.</p>
+
+  <p>Strange, too, that in the midst of her fatigue and fright, while
+  she still managed to struggle on with a sharp pain at her heart and a
+  sort of mist before her eyes, she had a vague consciousness that her
+  husband would be deeply vexed, not by the conduct or the fate of
+  Bras, but by her being the heroine of so mad an adventure. She knew
+  that he wished her to be serious and subdued and proper, like the
+  ladies whom she met, while an evil destiny seemed to dog her
+  footsteps and precipitate her into all sorts of erratic mishaps and
+  &quot;scenes.&quot; However, this adventure was likely soon to have
+  an end. She could go no farther. Whatever had become of Bras, it was
+  in vain for her to think of pursuing him. When she at length reached
+  a broad and smooth road leading through the pasture, she could only
+  stand still and press her two hands over her heart, while her head
+  seemed giddy, and she did not see two men who had been standing on
+  the road close by until they came up and addressed her.</p>
+
+  <p>Then she started and looked round, finding before her two men who
+  were apparently laborers of some sort, one of them having a shovel
+  over his shoulder.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Beg your pardon, miss, but wur that your dawg?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes,&quot; she said eagerly. &quot;Could you get him? Did
+  you see him go by? Do you know where he is?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Me and my mate saw him go by, sure enough; but as for
+  getting him&#8212;why the keepers&#39;ll have shot him by this
+  time.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh no!&quot; cried Sheila, almost in tears, &quot;they must
+  not shoot him. It was my fault. I will pay them for all the harm he
+  has done. Can&#39;t you tell me which way he will go
+  past?&quot;</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 220]</span>
+
+  <p>&quot;I don&#39;t think, miss,&quot; said the spokesman quite
+  respectfully, &quot;as you can go much furder. If you would sit down
+  and rest yourself, and keep an eye on this &#39;ere shovel, me and my
+  mate will have a hunt arter the dawg.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Sheila not only accepted the offer gratefully, but promised to
+  give them all the money she had if only they would bring back the dog
+  unharmed. She made this offer in consequence of some talk between her
+  husband and her father which she had overheard. Lavender was speaking
+  of the civility he had frequently experienced at the hands of Scotch
+  shepherds, and of the independence with which they refused to accept
+  any compensation even for services which cost them a good deal of
+  time and trouble. Perhaps it was to please Sheila&#39;s father, but
+  at any rate, the picture the young man drew of the venality and the
+  cupidity of folks in the South was a desperately dark one. Ask the
+  name of a village, have your stick picked up for you from the
+  pavement, get into a cab or get out of it, and directly there was a
+  touch of the cap and an unspoken request for coppers. Then, as the
+  services rendered rose in importance, so did the fees&#8212;to
+  waiters, to coachmen, to game-keepers. These things and many more
+  sank into Sheila&#39;s heart. She heard and believed, and came down
+  to the South with the notion that every man and woman who did you the
+  least service expected to be paid handsomely for it. What, therefore,
+  could she give those two men if they brought back her deer-hound but
+  all the money she had?</p>
+
+  <p>It was a hard thing to wait here in the greatest doubt and
+  uncertainty while the afternoon was visibly waning. She began to grow
+  afraid. Perhaps the men had stolen the dog, and left her with this
+  shovel as a blind. Her husband must have come home, and would be
+  astonished and perplexed by her absence. Surely, he would have the
+  sense to dine by himself, instead of waiting for her; and she
+  reflected with some glimpse of satisfaction that she had left
+  everything connected with dinner properly arranged, so that he should
+  have nothing to grumble at.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Surely,&quot; she said to herself as she sat there, watching
+  the light on the grass and the trees getting more and more
+  yellow&#8212;&quot;surely I am very wicked or very wretched to think
+  of his grumbling in any case. If he grumbles, it is because I will
+  attend too much to the affairs of the house, and not amuse myself
+  enough. He is very good to me, and I have no right to think of his
+  grumbling. And I wish I cared to amuse myself more&#8212;to be more
+  of a companion to him; but it is so difficult among all those
+  people.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The reverie was interrupted by the sound of footsteps on the grass
+  behind, and she turned quickly to find the two men approaching her,
+  one of them leading the captive Bras by the leash. Sheila sprang to
+  her feet with a great gladness. She did not care even to accuse the
+  culprit, whose consciousness of guilt was evident in his look and in
+  the droop of his tail. Bras did not once turn his eyes to his
+  mistress. He hung down his head, while he panted rapidly, and she
+  fancied she saw some smearing of blood on his tongue and on the side
+  of his jaw. Her fears on this head were speedily confirmed.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I think, miss, as you&#39;d better take him out o&#39; the
+  Park as soon as may be, for he&#39;s got a deer killed close by the
+  Robin Hood Gate, in the trees there; and if the keepers happen on it
+  afore you leave the Park, you&#39;ll get into trouble.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, thank you!&quot; said Sheila, retaining her composure
+  bravely, but with a terrible sinking of the heart; &quot;and how can
+  I get to the nearest railway station?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You&#39;re going to London, miss?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, I suppose the nearest is Richmond; but it would be
+  quieter for you&#8212;don&#39;t you see, miss?&#8212;if you was to go
+  along to the Roehampton Gate and go to Barnes.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Will you show me the gate?&quot; said Sheila, choosing the
+  quieter route at once.</p>
+
+  <p>But the men themselves did not at all like the look of
+  accompanying her and this dog through the Park. Had they not already
+  condoned a felony, or done something equally dreadful, in handing to
+  her a dog that had been found keeping watch and ward over a slain
+  buck? They showed her the road to the Roehampton Gate, and then they
+  paused before continuing on their journey.</p>
+
+  <p>The pause meant money. Sheila took out her purse. There were three
+  sovereigns and some silver in it, and the entire sum, in fulfillment
+  of her promise, she held out to him who had so far conducted the
+  negotiations.</p>
+
+  <p>Both men looked frightened. It was quite clear that either good
+  feeling or some indefinite fear of being implicated in the killing of
+  the deer caused them to regard this big bribe as something they could
+  not meddle with; and at length, after a pause of a second or two, the
+  spokesman said with great hesitation, &quot;Well, miss, you&#39;ve
+  kep&#39; your word; but me and my mate&#8212;well, if so be as
+  it&#39;s the same to you&#8212;&#39;d rather have summut to drink
+  your health.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Do you think it is too much?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The man looked at his neighbor, who nodded.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It was only for ketchin&#39; of a dawg, miss, don&#39;t you
+  see?&quot; he remarked slowly, as if to impress upon her that they
+  had had nothing to do with the deer.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Will you take this, then?&quot; and she offered them half a
+  crown each.</p>
+
+  <p>Their faces lightened considerably: they took the money, and with
+  a formal expression of thanks moved off, but not before they had
+  taken a glance round to see that no one had been a witness of this
+  interview.</p>
+
+  <p>And so Sheila had to walk away by herself, knowing that she had
+  been guilty of a dreadful offence, and that at any moment she might
+  be arrested by the officers of the law. What would the old King of
+  Borva say if he saw his only daughter in the hands of two policemen?
+  and would not all Mr. Lavender&#39;s fastidious and talkative and
+  wondering friends pass about the newspaper report of her trial and
+  conviction? A man was approaching her. As he drew near her heart
+  failed her, for might not this <span class="pagenum">[pg 221]</span>
+  be the mysterious George Ranger himself, about whom her husband and
+  Mr. Ingram had been talking? Should she drop on her knees at once and
+  confess her sins, and beg him to let her off? If Duncan were with her
+  or Mairi, or even old Scarlett Macdonald, she would not have cared so
+  much, but it seemed so terrible to meet this man alone.</p>
+
+  <p>However, as he drew near he did not seem a fierce person. He was
+  an old gentleman with voluminous white hair, who was dressed all in
+  black and carried an umbrella on this warm and bright afternoon. He
+  regarded her and the dog in a distant and contemplative fashion, as
+  though he would probably try to remember some time after that he had
+  really seen them; and then he passed on. Sheila began to breathe more
+  freely. Moreover, here was the gate, and once she was in the high
+  road, who could say anything to her? Tired as she was, she still
+  walked rapidly on; and in due time, having had to ask the way once or
+  twice, she found herself at Barnes Station.</p>
+
+  <p>By and by the train came in: Bras was committed to the care of the
+  guard, and she found herself alone in a railway-carriage for the
+  first time in her life. Her husband had told her that whenever she
+  felt uncertain of her where-abouts, if in the country, she was to ask
+  for the nearest station and get a train to London; if in town, she
+  was to get into a cab and give the driver her address. And, indeed,
+  Sheila had been so much agitated and perplexed during this afternoon
+  that she acted in a sort of mechanical fashion, and really escaped
+  the nervousness which otherwise would have attended the novel
+  experience of purchasing a ticket and of arranging about the carriage
+  of a dog in the break-van. Even now, when she found herself traveling
+  alone, and shortly to arrive at a part of London she had never seen,
+  her crowding thoughts and fancies were not about her own situation,
+  but about the reception she should receive from her husband. Would he
+  be vexed with her? Or pity her? Had he called with Mrs. Lorraine to
+  take her somewhere, and found her gone? Had he brought home
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 222]</span> some bachelor friends to
+  dinner, and been chagrined to find her not in the house?</p>
+
+  <p>It was getting dusk when the slow four-wheeler approached
+  Sheila&#39;s home. The hour for dinner had long gone by. Perhaps her
+  husband had gone away somewhere looking for her, and she would find
+  the house empty.</p>
+
+  <p>But Frank Lavender came to meet his wife in the hall, and said,
+  &quot;Where have you been?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She could not tell whether there was anger or kindness in his
+  voice, and she could not well see his face. She took his hand and
+  went into the dining-room, which was also dusk, and standing there
+  told him all her story.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;This is too bad, Sheila!&quot; he said in a tone of deep
+  vexation. &quot;By Jove! I&#39;ll go and thrash that dog within an
+  inch of his life.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No,&quot; she said, drawing herself up; and for one brief
+  second&#8212;could he but have seen her face&#8212;there was a touch
+  of old Mackenzie&#39;s pride and firmness about the ordinarily gentle
+  lips. It was but for a second. She cast down her eyes and said
+  meekly, &quot;I hope you won&#39;t do that, Frank. The dog is not to
+  blame. It was my fault.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, really, Sheila,&quot; he said, &quot;you are very
+  thoughtless. I wish you would take some little trouble to act as
+  other women act, instead of constantly putting yourself and me into
+  the most awkward positions. Suppose I had brought any one home to
+  dinner, now? And what am I to say to Ingram? for of course I went
+  direct to his lodgings when I discovered you were nowhere to be
+  found. I fancied some mad freak had taken you there; and I should not
+  have been surprised. Indeed, I don&#39;t think I should be surprised
+  at anything you do. Do you know who was in the hall when I came in
+  this afternoon?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No,&quot; said Sheila.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why that wretched old hag who keeps the fruit-stall. And it
+  seems you gave her and all her family tea and cake in the kitchen
+  last night.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;She is a poor old woman,&quot; said Sheila humbly.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;A poor old woman!&quot; he said impatiently. &quot;I have no
+  doubt she is a lying old thief, who would take an umbrella or a coat
+  if only she could get the chance. It is really too bad, Sheila, your
+  having all those persons about you, and demeaning yourself by
+  amending on them. What must the servants think of you?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I do not heed what any servants think of me,&quot; she
+  said.</p>
+
+  <p>She was now standing erect, with her face quite calm.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Apparently not,&quot; he said, &quot;or you would not go and
+  make yourself ridiculous before them.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Sheila hesitated for a moment, as if she did not understand; and
+  then she said, as calmly as before, but with a touch of indignation
+  about the proud and beautiful lips, &quot;And if I make myself
+  ridiculous by attending to poor people, it is not my husband who
+  should tell me so.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She turned and walked out, and he was too surprised to follow her.
+  She went up stairs to her own room, locked herself in and threw
+  herself on the bed. And then all the bitterness of her heart rose up
+  as if in a flood&#8212;not against him, but against the country in
+  which he lived, and the society which had contaminated him, and the
+  ways and habits that seemed to create a barrier between herself and
+  him, so that she was a stranger to him, and incapable of becoming
+  anything else. It was a crime that she should interest herself in the
+  unfortunate creatures round about her&#8212;that she should talk to
+  them as if they were human beings like herself, and have a great
+  sympathy with their small hopes and aims; but she would not have been
+  led into such a crime if she had cultivated from her infancy upward a
+  consistent self-indulgence, making herself the centre of a world of
+  mean desires and petty gratifications. And then she thought of the
+  old and beautiful days up in the Lewis, where the young English
+  stranger seemed to approve of her simple ways and her charitable
+  work, and where she was taught to believe that in order to please him
+  she had only to continue to be what she was then. There was no great
+  gulf of time between that period and this; but what had not happened
+  in the interval? She had not changed&#8212;at least she hoped she had
+  not changed. She loved her husband with her whole heart and soul: her
+  devotion was as true and constant as she herself could have wished it
+  to be when she dreamed of the duties of a wife in the days of her
+  maidenhood. But all around her was changed. She had no longer the old
+  freedom&#8212;the old delight in living from day to day&#8212;the
+  active work, and the enjoyment of seeing where she could help and how
+  she could help the people around her. When, as if by the same sort of
+  instinct that makes a wild animal retain in captivity the habits
+  which were necessary to its existence when it lived in freedom, she
+  began to find out the circumstances of such unfortunate people as
+  were in her neighborhood, some little solace was given to her; but
+  these people were not friends to her, as the poor folk of Borvabost
+  had been. She knew, too, that her husband would be displeased if he
+  found her talking with a washerwoman over her family matters, or even
+  advising one of her own servants about the disposal of her wages; so
+  that, while she concealed nothing from him, these things nevertheless
+  had to be done exclusively in his absence. And was she in so doing
+  really making herself ridiculous? Did he consider her ridiculous? Or
+  was it not merely the false and enervating influences of the indolent
+  society in which he lived that had poisoned his mind, and drawn him
+  away from her as though into another world?</p>
+
+  <p>Alas! if he were in this other world, was not she quite alone?
+  What companionship was there possible between her and the people in
+  this new and strange land into which she had ventured? As she lay on
+  the bed, with her head hidden down in the darkness, the pathetic wail
+  of the captive Jews seemed to come and go through the bitterness of
+  her thoughts, like some mournful refrain: &quot;By the rivers of
+  Babylon, there we sat down; yea we wept when we remembered
+  Zion.&quot; She almost heard <span class="pagenum">[pg 223]</span>
+  the words, and the reply that rose up in her heart was a great
+  yearning to go back to her own land, so that her eyes were filled
+  with tears in thinking of it, and she lay and sobbed there in the
+  dusk. Would not the old man living all by himself in that lonely
+  island be glad to see his little girl back again in the old house?
+  And she would sing to him as she used to sing, not as she had been
+  singing to those people whom her husband knew. &quot;For there they
+  that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that
+  wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of
+  Zion.&quot; And she had sung in the strange land, among the strange
+  people, with her heart breaking with thoughts of the sea and the
+  hills and the rude and sweet and simple ways of the old bygone life
+  she had left behind her.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Sheila!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She thought it was her father calling to her, and she rose with a
+  cry of joy. For one wild moment she fancied that outside were all the
+  people she knew&#8212;Duncan and Scarlett and Mairi&#8212;and that
+  she was once more at home, with the sea all around her, and the salt,
+  cold air.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Sheila, I want to speak to you.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>It was her husband. She went to the door, opened it, and stood
+  there penitent and with downcast face.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Come, you must not be silly,&quot; he said with some
+  kindness in his voice. &quot;You have had no dinner. You must be
+  hungry.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I do not care for any: there is no use troubling the
+  servants when I would rather lie down,&quot; she said.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;The servants! You surely don&#39;t take so seriously what I
+  said about them, Sheila? Of course you don&#39;t need to care what
+  the servants think. And in any case they have to bring up dinner for
+  me, so you may as well come and try.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Have you not had dinner?&quot; she said timidly.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Do you think I could sit down and eat with the notion that
+  you might have tumbled into the Thames or been kidnapped, or
+  something?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am very sorry,&quot; she said in a low <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 224]</span> voice, and in the gloom he felt his hand
+  taken and carried to her lips. Then they went down stairs into the
+  dining-room, which was now lit up by a blaze of gas and candles.</p>
+
+  <p>During dinner of course no very confidential talking was possible,
+  and indeed Sheila had plenty to tell of her adventures at Richmond.
+  Lavender was now in a more amiable mood, and was disposed to look on
+  the killing of the roebuck as rather a good joke. He complimented
+  Sheila on her good sense in having gone in at the Star and Garter for
+  lunch; and altogether something like better relations was established
+  between them.</p>
+
+  <p>But when dinner was finally over and the servants dismissed,
+  Lavender placed Sheila&#39;s easy-chair for her as usual, drew his
+  own near hers, and lit a cigarette.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Now, tell me, Sheila,&quot; he said, &quot;were you really
+  vexed with me when you went up stairs and locked yourself in your
+  room? Did you think I meant to displease you or say anything harsh to
+  you?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, not any of those things,&quot; she said calmly: &quot;I
+  wished to be alone&#8212;to think over what had happened. And I was
+  grieved by what you said, for I think you cannot help looking at many
+  things not as I will look at them. That is all. It is my bringing up
+  in the Highlands, perhaps.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Do you know, Sheila, it sometimes occurs to me that you are
+  not quite comfortable here? And I can&#39;t make out what is the
+  matter. I think you have a perverse fancy that you are different from
+  the people you meet, and that you cannot be like them, and all that
+  sort of thing. Now, dear, that is only a fancy. There need be no
+  difference if only you will take a little trouble.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, Frank!&quot; she said, going over and putting her hand
+  on his shoulder, &quot;I cannot take that trouble. I cannot try to be
+  like those people. And I see a great difference in you since you have
+  come back to London, and you are getting to be like them and say the
+  things they say. If I could only see you, my own darling, up in the
+  Lewis again, with rough clothes on and a gun in your hand, I should
+  be happy. You were yourself up there, when you were helping us in the
+  boat, or when you were bringing home the salmon, or when we were all
+  together at night in the little parlor, you know&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;My dear, don&#39;t get so excited. Now sit down, and I will
+  tell you all about it. You seem to have the notion that people lose
+  all their finer sentiments simply because they don&#39;t, in society,
+  burst into raptures over them. You mustn&#39;t imagine all those
+  people are selfish and callous merely because they preserve a decent
+  reticence. To tell you the truth, that constant profession of noble
+  feelings you would like to see would have something of ostentation
+  about it.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Sheila only sighed. &quot;I do not wish them to be altered,&quot;
+  she said by and by, with her eyes grown pensive: &quot;all I know is,
+  that I could not live the same life. And you&#8212;you seemed to be
+  happier up in the Highlands than you have ever been since.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, you see, a man ought to be happy when he is enjoying a
+  holiday in the country along with the girl he is engaged to. But if I
+  had lived all my life killing salmon and shooting wild-duck, I should
+  have grown up an ignorant boor, with no more sense
+  of&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He stopped, for he saw that the girl was thinking of her
+  father.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, look here, Sheila. You see how you are
+  placed&#8212;how we are placed, rather. Wouldn&#39;t it be more
+  sensible to get to understand those people you look askance at, and
+  establish better relations with them, since you have got to live
+  among them? I can&#39;t help thinking you are too much alone, and you
+  can&#39;t expect me to stay in the house always with you. A husband
+  and wife cannot be continually in each other&#39;s company, unless
+  they want to grow heartily tired of each other. Now, if you would
+  only lay aside those suspicions of yours, you would find the people
+  just as honest and generous and friendly as any other sort of people
+  you ever met, although they don&#39;t happen to be fond of expressing
+  their goodness in their talk.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I have tried, dear&#8212;I will try again,&quot; said
+  Sheila.</p>
+
+  <p>She resolved that she would go down and visit Mrs. Lavender next
+  day, and try to be interested in the talk of such people as might be
+  there. She would bring away some story about this or the other
+  fashionable woman or noble lord, just to show her husband that she
+  was doing her best to learn. She would drive patiently round the Park
+  in that close little brougham, and listen attentively to the
+  moralities of Marcus Aurelius. She would make an appointment to go
+  with Mrs. Lavender to a morning concert; and she would endeavor to
+  muster up courage to ask any ladies who might be there to lunch with
+  her on that day, and go afterward to this same entertainment. All
+  these things and many more Sheila silently vowed to herself she would
+  do, while her husband sat and expounded to her his theories of the
+  obligations which society demanded of its members.</p>
+
+  <p>But her plans were suddenly broken asunder.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I met Mrs. Lorraine accidentally to-day,&quot; he said.</p>
+
+  <p>It was his first mention of the young American lady. Sheila sat in
+  mute expectation.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;She always asks very kindly after you.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;She is very kind.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He did not say, however, that Mrs. Lorraine had more than once
+  made distinct propositions, when in his company, that they should
+  call in for Sheila and take her out for a drive or to a flower-show,
+  or some such place, while Lavender had always some excuse ready.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;She is going to Brighton to-morrow, and she was wondering
+  whether you would care to run down for a day or two.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;With her?&quot; said Sheila, recoiling from such a proposal
+  instinctively.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Of course not. I should go. And then at last, you know, you
+  would see the sea, about which you have been dreaming for ever so
+  long.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The sea! There was a magic in the very word that could, almost at
+  any moment, <span class="pagenum">[pg 225]</span> summon tears into
+  her eyes. Of course she accepted right gladly. If her husband&#39;s
+  duties were so pressing that the long-talked-of journey to Lewis and
+  Borva had to be repeatedly and indefinitely postponed, here at least
+  would be a chance of looking again at the sea&#8212;of drinking in
+  the freshness and light and color of it&#8212;of renewing her old and
+  intimate friendship with it that had been broken off for so long by
+  her stay in this city of perpetual houses and still sunshine.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You can tell her you will go when you see her to-night at
+  Lady Mary&#39;s. By the way, isn&#39;t it time for you to begin to
+  dress?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, Lady Mary&#39;s!&quot; repeated Sheila mechanically, who
+  had quite forgotten about her engagement for that evening.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Perhaps you are too tired to go,&quot; said her husband.</p>
+
+  <p>She was a little tired, in truth. But surely, just after her
+  promises, spoken and unspoken, some little effort was demanded of
+  her; so she bravely went to dress, and in about three-quarters of an
+  hour was ready to drive down to Curzon street. Her husband had never
+  seen her look so pleased before in going out to any party. He
+  flattered himself that his lecture had done her good. There was fair
+  common sense in what he had said, and although, doubtless, a
+  girl&#39;s romanticism was a pretty thing, it would have to yield to
+  the actual requirements of society. In time he should educate
+  Sheila.</p>
+
+  <p>But he did not know what brightened the girl&#39;s face all that
+  night, and put a new life into the beautiful eyes, so that even those
+  who knew her best were struck by her singular beauty. It was the sea
+  that was coloring Sheila&#39;s eyes. The people around her, the glare
+  of the candles, the hum of talking, and the motion of certain groups
+  dancing over there in the middle of the throng,&#8212;all were faint
+  and visionary, for she was busily wondering what the sea would be
+  like the next morning, and what strange fancies would strike her when
+  once more she walked on sand and heard the roar of waves. That,
+  indeed, was the sound <span class="pagenum">[pg 226]</span> that was
+  present in her ears while the music played and the people murmured
+  around her. Mrs. Lorraine talked to her, and was surprised and amused
+  to notice the eager fashion in which the girl spoke of their journey
+  of the next day. The gentleman who took her in to supper found
+  himself catechised about Brighton in a manner which afforded him more
+  occupation than enjoyment. And when Sheila drove away from the house
+  at two in the morning she declared to her husband that she had
+  enjoyed herself extremely, and he was glad to hear it; and she was
+  particularly kind to himself in getting him his slippers, and
+  fetching him that final cigarette which he always had on reaching
+  home; and then she went off to bed to dream of ships and flying
+  clouds and cold winds, and a great and beautiful blue plain of
+  waves.</p>
+
+  <p class="center">[TO BE CONTINUED.]</p><a name="gold" id="gold">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>GOLD.</h2>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">A day of bright reflections on the pond,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And wavering shadows over moss and frond:</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">A wayward breeze, the summer&#39;s latest born,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Teased the stiff grain and bent the stately
+      corn,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Or rocked the bird-nests in the prickly thorn.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">Above, the lavish sun filled air with gold;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Again, below, on mimic waves it rolled,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And hid in lily cups. Her netted hair</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Gleamed in the splendor, bright beyond compare,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Forming about her head a nimbus rare.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">The velvet mullen raised its yellow head,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">The buttercups like precious ore were spread:</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Like golden shuttles flung by spirit hands,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Weaving invisible their magic strands,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Darted quick orioles in joyous bands.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">Fond helianthus turned her fervent face,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Meek antirrhinum paled and grew apace;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Late dandelions, robed in cloth of gold,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">With golden-rod, upsprung from out the mould,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And pensive, gold-eyed daisies pranked the
+      wold.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">As snowy, gold-rimmed cloudlets hide the sky,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">So hid her eyelid&#39;s golden fringe her eye:</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">As every growing beauty of the earth</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">But figures forth great Nature&#39;s hidden
+      worth,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">So my love&#39;s charms from her pure heart had
+      birth.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">Pure heart of gold to me that day was given,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And promise true as gold made earth a heaven;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Then far away fled every doubt forlorn;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">We felt for us the Golden Age reborn,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And envied none their gold from labor torn.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <center>
+    ITA ANIOL PROKOP.
+  </center><a name="glimpses" id="glimpses"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 227]</span>
+
+  <h2>GLIMPSES OF GHOST-LAND.</h2>
+
+  <p>It is no longer the fashion to scoff at tales of the supernatural.
+  On the contrary, there is a growing tendency to investigate subjects
+  which were formerly pooh-poohed by most persons claiming to be well
+  informed and capable of reasoning. It is, however, without
+  propounding any theory or advancing any opinion that I record a few
+  instances of apparently supernatural, or at least inexplicable,
+  occurrences. I can vouch for the truth of nearly all the stories I am
+  about to relate, one of them only not being either my personal
+  experience or narrated to me by some one of the actors in the
+  scene.</p>
+
+  <p>My first story shall be one that was told to me by an aged lady
+  who was one of the friends of my youth, and who often mentioned this
+  strange incident of her placid, yet busy life. She was a sensible,
+  practical woman, the last person in the world likely to be led astray
+  by an overheated imagination or deceived by hallucinations. Her early
+  youth had been passed in the country, her father being a wealthy
+  farmer. She had formed a close intimacy with the daughter of a
+  gentleman living at some distance from her father&#39;s farm, and the
+  two were seldom apart. An invitation given to my friend (whom I shall
+  call Mrs. L&#8212;&#8212;) to visit some relatives in a neighboring
+  city caused a brief separation between the two girls, and they parted
+  with many protestations of enduring affection. On the day appointed
+  for Mrs. L&#8212;&#8212;&#39;s return she set out at the prescribed
+  hour. The latter part of her journey was to be performed on
+  horseback. On a bright sunny afternoon in June she found herself,
+  about five o&#39;clock, drawing near her father&#39;s house. Suddenly
+  in the broad road before her she perceived a female form walking
+  rapidly toward her, and, to her delight, recognized her friend
+  coming, as she thought, to meet her.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I will make her go back with me and take tea,&quot; was Mrs.
+  L&#8212;&#8212;&#39;s thought as she whipped up her horse in her
+  haste to greet the dear one, who was all the more beloved on account
+  of their temporary separation. But as she approached the figure, and
+  before she had had time to speak, or indeed to do more than notice
+  that her friend looked very pale and ill, her horse, an unusually
+  quiet, steady animal, seemed struck with sudden terror, reared,
+  shied, and finally plunged into a hollow by the roadside, from which
+  she had some difficulty in extricating him. When she did succeed in
+  bringing him back to the level road she found, to her astonishment,
+  that the young girl had disappeared. Around her lay the open fields,
+  before her and behind her the road&#8212;all in the bright lustre of
+  the summer afternoon&#8212;but no trace of the figure could she see.
+  Completely mystified, she hastened home, there to learn that her
+  friend had died suddenly that very morning.</p>
+
+  <p>The next incident I shall narrate was told me by a German
+  gentleman whose mother was the heroine of the tale. His father had
+  been appointed to some public office in a small German town, and
+  among the emoluments of the place was the privilege of residing in a
+  large, old-fashioned, but very handsome mansion. The husband and wife
+  set off in high spirits to inspect their new abode, to which some
+  portion of their furniture had already been transferred. They went
+  from room to room, inspecting and planning, till they came to an
+  apartment the ceiling of which was elaborately decorated with plaster
+  Cupids, baskets of flowers, etc., modeled in high relief, and with a
+  centre-piece of unusual size and magnificence. A small table, the
+  only article of furniture the room contained, was placed directly
+  under this centre-piece. The young wife, rather weary of her
+  researches, was standing beside this table, and was leaning on it
+  while she went on talking with her husband, <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  228]</span> when suddenly a loud, imploring voice called from down
+  stairs, &quot;Caroline! Caroline! come down to
+  me&#8212;come!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Who can that be?&quot; asked the husband in amazement.
+  &quot;I fastened all the doors and windows before we left the lower
+  rooms.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Again came the loud call, this time with an accent of agonized
+  entreaty: &quot;Caroline! oh, Caroline! come down&#8212;<i>do</i>
+  come!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The young couple hesitated no longer, but hastened down stairs.
+  There was no one there. Doors and windows were securely fastened, and
+  the old house looked as solitary as when they had first entered
+  it.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Very strange!&quot; said the gentleman. &quot;But now that
+  we <i>are</i> down here, Caroline, suppose we take a look at the
+  garden?&quot; So they sallied forth to examine that portion of their
+  new domain, but scarcely had they entered it when they were startled
+  by a loud crash within the house. Looking up, they saw volumes of
+  what appeared to be smoke issuing from the window of the room they
+  had just quitted, and fearing that the room was on fire, they quickly
+  returned to it. There was no fire: what had appeared to be smoke was
+  only a cloud of dust, for the massive and elaborately ornamented
+  ceiling had fallen, and the heavy centre-piece had crushed to
+  fragments the table against which the young wife had so lately been
+  leaning. But for the warning voice her destruction would have been
+  inevitable. My informant went on to state that the pieces of the
+  shattered table were preserved as sacred relics by his parents, and
+  that his mother always declared that she had recognized in the
+  mysterious voice that of a dear relative long before deceased.</p>
+
+  <p>It was once my fortune to pass some weeks in a &quot;haunted
+  house.&quot; I was quite young then, a mere school-girl in fact, and
+  the friend whom I came to visit was also very young; and both of us
+  were too gay and frolicsome to care much for whatever was strange or
+  startling in our surroundings. Not that we ever saw anything&#8212;my
+  friend herself, the daughter of the house, had never done
+  so&#8212;but the sounds we heard were sufficiently odd and
+  inexplicable to fill us with astonishment, if not with terror. Twice
+  during my visit I was roused from a sound slumber by a loud, heavy
+  crash, resembling that which might be caused by the overthrow of a
+  marble-topped washstand or bureau, or some other equally ponderous
+  piece of furniture. The room actually vibrated, and yet a close
+  scrutiny of that and the adjoining apartments failed to reveal any
+  cause for the peculiar noise. It was a sound which could not possibly
+  have been produced by cracking furniture, falling bricks, scampering
+  rats, or any other of the numerous causes of supposed ghostly sounds.
+  The room overhead was used as a linen-room, and was always kept
+  locked; and besides, the noise (which I afterward heard on another
+  occasion in broad daylight, when I was wide awake) was unmistakably
+  <i>in</i> the room where we found ourselves. My friend told me that
+  she had heard it very often&#8212;so often, in fact, that she had got
+  quite used to it, and no longer felt any emotion save that of
+  curiosity.</p>
+
+  <p>There was another room in which (also in broad daylight) I heard a
+  strange crackling sound like the rustling of a large sheet of stiff
+  paper or parchment turned slowly in the reader&#39;s hands. This
+  noise also was one of frequent occurrence. Among the things seen by
+  other members of the family was a light that glided over walls and
+  ceiling in points inaccessible to outside light or reflection. Then
+  there was a lady in black silk who had more than once been seen
+  gliding about the house, but who always disappeared when accosted or
+  followed. Three slow, solemn raps sometimes sounded at dead of night
+  at the door of one member of the family, a skeptical and irascible
+  old gentleman.</p>
+
+  <p>But, strange to say, all these uncanny sights and sounds portended
+  nothing, and seemed to be utterly without a purpose or a cause. The
+  house was a cheerful modern one, and the father of my friend was its
+  first occupant; so there was nothing in the past to which these
+  unearthly occurrences could refer. Nor were they warnings of coming
+  misfortune. Neither death nor disaster ever followed in their train,
+  and in due course of time the family ceased to trouble their heads
+  about them&#8212;were not at all frightened, and scarcely even
+  annoyed. There were other sounds which I did not myself hear, but of
+  which I was told&#8212;stealthy footsteps that paced a certain
+  corridor at dead of night; a sharp, rattling noise like hail dashing
+  against the window-panes, and one or two other trifling yet equally
+  unaccountable occurrences. Once, too, a young lady visiting the house
+  heard in the next room to that in which she was loud and lamentable
+  sounds, as of a woman weeping bitterly and in sore distress. She
+  listened in considerable perplexity for some time, fearing to intrude
+  on the sorrows of some member of the family; but at last she resolved
+  to go and proffer aid, if not consolation. As he approached the door
+  between the two rooms the sound suddenly ceased, and, to her
+  amazement, she found the adjoining apartment not only empty, but with
+  the door locked and bolted on the inside.</p>
+
+  <p>I once knew a young lady who, on going to pay a visit to a friend
+  who had recently moved into a new house, was asked to walk up stairs,
+  and on complying saw an old woman preceding her up the staircase.
+  Supposing her to be one of the servants, she took but little notice
+  of her, though struck by the peculiarity of her gait, a sort of jerky
+  limp, as though one leg was shorter than the other. In the course of
+  conversation with her friend she mentioned the old woman, and asked
+  if she was the housekeeper. &quot;Housekeeper? no,&quot; said the
+  lady: &quot;we have no such person about our house. You must have
+  been mistaken.&quot; The visitor then described the person she had
+  seen, and when she mentioned the peculiar limp her hostess seemed
+  startled. After a pause she said: &quot;No such person lives here
+  <i>now</i>, but the woman who took care of this house before we
+  rented it was exactly such a person as you describe, and was lame in
+  just such a manner. But she died here <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  229]</span> about six weeks ago&#8212;I think in this very
+  room&#8212;so your eyes must certainly have deceived you.&quot; The
+  lady still persisted that she had seen the old woman; so the servants
+  were called and the house thoroughly searched, but no intruder was
+  discovered.</p>
+
+  <p>I have known several instances of persons who have seen the
+  &quot;fetch&quot; or apparition of a living person, called in Germany
+  the &quot;Doppelg�nger;&quot; yet, though such appearances are
+  usually supposed to portend the death or illness of the person thus
+  strangely &quot;doubled,&quot; I have never yet heard of a case where
+  any unpleasant consequences followed. For instance, an old friend of
+  mine, a gentleman of undoubted veracity, once told me that on one
+  occasion he entered his house about five o&#39;clock in the
+  afternoon, and ran up stairs to his mother&#39;s bed-chamber, where
+  he saw her standing near the centre of the room, clad in a loose
+  white gown and engaged in combing out her long black hair. He
+  remained looking at her for some moments, expecting that she would
+  speak to him, but she did not take notice in any way of his presence,
+  and neither spoke nor looked at him. He then addressed her, but,
+  receiving no reply, became indignant and went down stairs, where, to
+  his amazement, he found his mother seated by the parlor window,
+  dressed and <i>coiff�e</i> as usual. It was some years before he
+  would trust himself to tell her of what he had seen, fearing that she
+  might consider it an omen of approaching death, and indeed, though
+  not a superstitious man, he was inclined so to view it himself; but
+  his mother lived for many years after the appearance of her wraith. I
+  also knew a young gentleman to whom the unpleasant experience of
+  beholding his own double was once vouchsafed. He had been spending a
+  quiet evening with some young ladies, and returned home about eleven
+  o&#39;clock, let himself into the house with his latch-key and
+  proceeded to his own room, where he found the gas already lighted,
+  though turned down to a mere blue spark. He turned it up, and the
+  full light of the jet shone on his <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  230]</span> bed, which stood just beside the burner, and there,
+  extended at full length, lay&#8212;himself. His first idea was of a
+  burglar or some such intruder. But his second glance dispelled that
+  impression. He stood for some moments gazing at the prostrate figure
+  with feelings which must have been anything but agreeable: he noticed
+  little peculiarities of his own dress and features, and marked the
+  closed eyelids and easy respiration of slumber. At length, plucking
+  up courage, he attempted to pass his hand under the pillow to draw
+  out a small revolver which he usually kept there, and as he did so he
+  felt the pressure of the pillow as though weighed down by a reclining
+  head. This completely unnerved him. He went out of the room, locking
+  the door on the outside, and spent the remainder of the night on a
+  sofa in the parlor. He did not re-enter his chamber till broad
+  daylight, when, to his delight, he found that his ghostly visitor had
+  vanished.</p>
+
+  <p>The next story on my list was narrated to me by one of the most
+  sensible and intelligent women I ever met&#8212;a lady of great
+  strength of character, joined to a fine and highly cultivated mind.
+  During her childhood my friend (whom I shall call Mrs.
+  X&#8212;&#8212;) dwelt with her parents in a large, roomy house in
+  the vicinity of one of our inland cities. The house was a double one,
+  a solid, substantial structure built of stone, and had been purchased
+  by her father a short time before the occurrences which I am about to
+  relate. A wide lawn at the back of the mansion sloped down to the
+  bank of a small stream, along the verge of which, without intervening
+  bank or path, ran the terminating wall of the grounds. The stables
+  were also situated at the foot of this lawn, and the back windows of
+  these stables looked out on the water. Mrs. X&#8212;&#8212; had
+  several brothers and sisters, all of whom, as well as herself, were
+  still children at the period of which she spoke.</p>
+
+  <p>One summer evening her parents accepted an invitation to take tea
+  with a friend, and went out, leaving the children at play in the
+  library, a room which opened on the main hall on the ground floor.
+  The front door was open, and as it grew dark a large hanging lamp
+  which fully illuminated the hall was lighted, so that every part of
+  it, as well as the staircase, was fully illuminated. Late in the
+  evening the children were disturbed at their play in the library by
+  the sound of heavy footsteps ascending the outer steps and then
+  pacing along the hall. Imagining that it was their parents who had
+  returned earlier than they expected, they rushed to the door to greet
+  them, but to their astonishment they could see no one, though the
+  heavy steps were still heard traversing the hall, ascending the
+  staircase, and finally resounding on the floor of a room overhead.
+  The children summoned the servants, who merely laughed at their
+  story, till one of the maids, who had been busy up stairs, came down
+  and said that her master and mistress must surely have returned, as
+  she had heard them walking along the entry and afterward entering one
+  of the rooms. Upon this, one of the men-servants went up stairs and
+  made a careful search, but without rinding any one. In the midst of
+  the excitement the lady and gentleman of the house returned home, and
+  upon hearing the story the gentleman himself instituted a second and
+  more vigorous search, which, like the first, was wholly without
+  result.</p>
+
+  <p>Some time after this the children were playing under their
+  nurse&#39;s care on the lawn at the back of the house one gray,
+  dismal afternoon in the early autumn. The attention of the whole
+  party was suddenly attracted by the figure of a man passing slowly
+  outside of the stone wall that stretched along the foot of the lawn,
+  and finally disappearing behind the stable. As he did so a tremendous
+  uproar arose among the horses in the stable, and on examination one
+  of them, a remarkably fine and docile animal, whose stall happened to
+  be next the window that opened on the water, was found to be in a
+  perfect ecstasy of terror, plunging, rearing and struggling to get
+  loose in a manner that rendered the task of releasing and removing
+  him anything but an easy or even a safe one. After the horse was got
+  out of the stable and led away, the question arose, What had
+  frightened him? Could the man they had seen passing behind the stable
+  have done anything to terrify him? Then, for the first time, it
+  dawned on the minds of the whole party that no human being could have
+  walked where they had seen the passing figure, as the wall rose
+  straight from the verge of the water, and there was no pathway
+  between the wall and the stream, which in that spot was deep, though
+  not very wide. Strange to say, the horse could never be induced to
+  re-enter that stable, but always manifested signs of wild alarm and
+  excitement when brought even to the door, though in all other
+  respects he was perfectly gentle and tractable.</p>
+
+  <p>Owing to the size of the family, one of the large garret-rooms had
+  been fitted up as a bed-room for one of the younger boys, who
+  preferred having a chamber of his own to sharing the apartment of one
+  of his brothers. He had not occupied it long before he began to
+  complain of frightful dreams, and more than once he came trembling
+  down stairs and took refuge in his mother&#39;s room, terrified by
+  something horrible&#8212;<i>what</i>, he could not define, but
+  something that came into his room at night and roused him from his
+  slumbers. Thinking that the child was merely nervous and excitable,
+  she changed the arrangements, put him to sleep in the bed-room of one
+  of his brothers, and gave up the apartment in the garret to one of
+  the servants. But in a very short time the complaints were renewed:
+  the girl could not sleep on account of that vague, strange horror,
+  which often drove her shrieking and half awakened from her bed. So
+  the lady had the room dismantled, and used it as a lumber-room, and
+  during the remaining years of her occupancy of the house was troubled
+  no more.</p>
+
+  <p>As time passed on, the increasing exigencies of his growing family
+  induced Mrs. X&#8212;&#8212;&#39;s father to purchase a house in
+  town, and he accordingly rented his country-mansion to a childless
+  pair, a clergyman and his wife. The new residents <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 231]</span> had not been long installed when a series
+  of ghostly disturbances began in real earnest. I believe that nothing
+  more was ever <i>seen</i>, but the kitchen at night, when all the
+  family had retired, would at times become the seat of an appalling
+  uproar of inarticulate voices and clashing dishes and dragging
+  furniture. If any one was bold enough to venture down stairs, the
+  noise would suddenly cease, and the kitchen itself never showed any
+  trace of these unearthly revels, every plate, dish, cup and chair
+  remaining in its accustomed place. Then, too, the footsteps of the
+  invisible intruder were heard again, and often while the minister was
+  writing in his study the steps would be heard coming through the door
+  and across the room, and the unseen visitor would seat himself in the
+  chair that usually stood opposite to that of the clergyman at the
+  writing-table, when a sound as of the pages of a large book with
+  stiff paper leaves being slowly turned would usually ensue. The
+  minister often addressed his invisible companion, but never received
+  any reply to his questions or his appeals.</p>
+
+  <p>On hearing these strange stories, Mrs. X&#8212;&#8212;&#39;s
+  father determined upon trying to trace out the history of the house
+  before it came into his possession. He learned that it had originally
+  been occupied by the person who built it, a man of low origin, who,
+  being looked upon as a pillar of the Church by the congregation to
+  which he belonged, had been entrusted with the task of collecting
+  certain sums due to it&#8212;whether actual income or subscriptions I
+  do not now recollect. At all events, he never paid over the money,
+  but launched out into sundry extravagances rather unusual for a man
+  in his station of life, amongst which was the erection of this large
+  and handsome house. But from the time the house was finished a blight
+  seemed to fall upon his life. He gave up all his religious and
+  regular habits, frequented evil company, took to drinking, and
+  finally, in a fit of delirium tremens, hanged himself in the very
+  garret room of which I have before spoken. <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  232]</span> The scenes at his funeral were said to baffle
+  description. The corpse was laid out in the kitchen, and thither all
+  his late boon-companions repaired and turned the sad ceremonial into
+  a hideous orgy. Among other horrible deeds, they took the corpse from
+  the coffin, propped it up in a chair and poured whisky down its
+  throat.</p>
+
+  <p>The incidents which I have related happened when Mrs.
+  X&#8212;&#8212; was a child, and she is now in the prime of
+  womanhood. When she finished her story I recollected that scarce a
+  year ago I had read in a Philadelphia paper an extract from one of
+  the journals of the town near which this house stood, giving an
+  account of an investigation which was then taking place of the cause
+  of sundry strange disturbances occurring in this very house. The
+  extract closed with the history of its builder and first occupant,
+  tallying exactly with what she related to me, though with fewer
+  details. So, after all these years, the perturbed spirit still
+  refuses to rest.</p>
+
+  <p>The narrative with which I shall conclude this chapter of ghostly
+  experiences is one for the truth of which I am not prepared to vouch,
+  as I was neither an actor in its scenes nor was it related to me by
+  one who was. Yet were the incidents of any other than a supernatural
+  nature I should consider the authority from which I learned them as
+  unquestionable.</p>
+
+  <p>A few years ago a lady in quest of summer lodgings for herself,
+  her sister and her children (her husband being absent) was offered a
+  large, old-fashioned house in the vicinity of one of our seashore
+  resorts on highly advantageous terms. Having inspected the house and
+  found it, though old, in good repair, she engaged it joyfully, and a
+  few weeks after the date of her first negotiations she was settled
+  there with her family. For some time nothing occurred to mar the
+  peace of the household. The children enjoyed the fresh sea-breezes,
+  their pleasant sports on the beach and the large airy rooms, while
+  the ladies sewed and read and looked after household matters and took
+  long walks after the fashion of most people during the summer season
+  by the seaside. One night, when the mother was about to retire to
+  rest, one of her younger children, a bright little boy, called to her
+  from his sleeping-room. Fearing that he was ill, she hastened to
+  him.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Mamma,&quot; he said very earnestly, &quot;I wish you would
+  tell that strange woman to keep out of my room.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What woman, dear?&quot; asked his mother, convinced that he
+  had been dreaming.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I don&#39;t know her name, and I can&#39;t see her face
+  because she wears a big sun-bonnet, but she comes and stands at the
+  foot of my bed, and she frightens me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, never mind, dear. Go to sleep, and if ever she
+  troubles you again, come into my room and sleep with me,&quot;
+  answered the mother, still thinking that the child had been wakened
+  by an uneasy dream. The little fellow, thus soothed and consoled,
+  soon fell asleep, and slept soundly till morning. But a few nights
+  afterward the child came running into his mother&#39;s room at dead
+  of night, panting and terrified, and exclaiming, &quot;Mamma! mamma!
+  she has come again!&quot; His mother took him into her arms, and soon
+  caressed away his fears, but thinking that the child&#39;s uneasiness
+  was caused by his sleeping alone, she had his bed moved into her own
+  chamber, and fitted up the vacant apartment as a guest-chamber. Soon
+  after this the servants began to complain of strange sights and
+  sounds for which they could not account, and one burning July day the
+  sister, who was seated by the parlor window, happened to say,
+  &quot;Oh, I am so warm!&quot; when a voice, seemingly from the
+  cellar, made answer, &quot;And <i>I</i> am so cold!&quot; Struck with
+  amazement, she called, but no one replied, and subsequent
+  investigation proved that there was no one in the cellar at that
+  moment, nor could there have been, as its only door was always kept
+  locked.</p>
+
+  <p>I cannot now recall the details of various strange occurrences
+  which afterward took place, but will pass on to the final one, which
+  may be considered as the d�no�ment of the whole story. The lady of
+  the house, a strong-minded, practical woman, had always sternly
+  rejected the theory that the odd incidents that annoyed her had any
+  supernatural origin; so, disregarding them wholly, she sent an
+  invitation to an old friend of hers, a clergyman, to pay her a visit
+  of some weeks&#39; duration. Her invitation was accepted, and in due
+  time her guest arrived and was put in possession of the spare
+  bed-room. Night coming on, the whole household retired to rest. Early
+  in the morning the active hostess rose to see that all was in order
+  for the further entertainment of her guest, when, on going into the
+  parlor to unfasten the shutters, what was her amazement to find him
+  there extended on the sofa, and looking very ill, as though he had
+  passed a wretched night! In answer to her anxious questioning he
+  stated that on retiring to rest he had fallen into a profound
+  slumber, from which he suddenly woke, and saw a woman wearing a large
+  sun-bonnet, which completely concealed her face, standing beside his
+  bed, the moonlight which shone into the room rendering every detail
+  of her figure distinctly visible. Supposing that she was one of the
+  servants who had come to his room to see that he was perfectly
+  comfortable and wanted nothing, he spoke to her. What she replied, or
+  how he first became convinced that the Thing before him was no form
+  of flesh and blood, I cannot now remember; but I recollect two
+  particulars of the interview: one was, that she told him to look for
+  her in the cellar; the other, that he asked her why she wore a
+  sun-bonnet, and she answered, &quot;Because the lime has spoilt my
+  face.&quot; At this his failing senses forsook him, and when
+  consciousness returned his ghostly visitor had disappeared.</p>
+
+  <p>His hostess heard him in silence. As soon as breakfast was over
+  she requested him to accompany her to the cellar. Careful examination
+  soon revealed a spot where some of the stones with which it was paved
+  had been removed and afterward replaced. Assistants with proper tools
+  were procured, the stones <span class="pagenum">[pg 233]</span> were
+  lifted, and after a few minutes of vigorous digging a mass of lime
+  was disclosed, in which was found imbedded a quantity of calcined
+  fragments of bone, which medical authority afterward pronounced to be
+  portions of a human skeleton. These poor remains were carefully
+  removed, placed in a box and interred in a neighboring cemetery, and
+  the &quot;woman in a sun-bonnet&quot; was seen no more.</p>
+
+  <p>Subsequent investigation into the history of the old house
+  revealed the following facts. It had originally been occupied by a
+  retired sea-captain and his only son, the latter a wild, reckless
+  youth of evil character and confirmed bad habits. A young girl went
+  to live there as a servant, and for some months seemed well contented
+  with her place, but afterward she became gloomy and unhappy, and was
+  frequently seen in tears by the neighbors. At last she disappeared,
+  and it was given out by her employers that she had gone to visit some
+  friends at a distance, but she did not return, and suspicion was
+  already directed toward the old man and his son, when one morning the
+  house was found to be shut up, its inhabitants having found it
+  expedient to remove as silently and secretly as possible. The girl
+  was never heard of afterward. The discovery of the bones led to the
+  supposition that the younger man had seduced her, had afterward
+  murdered her to conceal his original crime, and that he had then
+  buried the body in the cellar, taking the precaution to cover it with
+  quicklime.</p>
+
+  <p>As I said at the beginning of this article, I neither wish to
+  propound any theories nor to deduce any conclusions from the
+  relations I have given. I can only reiterate my statement that they
+  came to me from sources the reliability of which I cannot question. I
+  have carefully excluded everything relating to the supernatural which
+  I ever heard from the lips of ignorant and superstitious persons, and
+  have only recorded such incidents as bore an added weight of evidence
+  in the shape of the sense, intelligence and unquestionable veracity
+  of their relators.</p>
+
+  <p class="author">LUCY H. HOOPER.</p><a name="afternoon" id=
+  "afternoon"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  234]</span>
+
+  <h2>AFTERNOON.</h2>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i6">Small, shapeless drifts of cloud</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Sail slowly northward in the soft-hued sky,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">With blue half-tints and rolling summits
+      bright,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">By the late sun caressed; slight hazes shroud</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">All things afar; shineth each leaf anigh</p>
+
+      <p class="i6">With its own warmth and light.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i6">O&#39;erblown by Southland airs,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">The summer landscape basks in utter peace:</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">In lazy streams the lazy clouds are seen;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Low hills, broad meadows, and large, clear-cut
+      squares</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Of ripening corn-fields, rippled by the breeze,</p>
+
+      <p class="i6">With shifting shade and sheen.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i6">Hark! and you may not hear</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">A sound less soothing than the rustle cool</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Of swaying leaves, the steady wiry drone</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Of unseen crickets, sudden chirpings clear</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Of happy birds, the tinkle of the pool,</p>
+
+      <p class="i6">Chafed by a single stone.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i6">What vague, delicious dreams,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Born of this golden hour of afternoon,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">And air balm-freighted, fill the soul with
+      bliss,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Transpierced like yonder clouds with lustrous
+      gleams,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Fantastic, brief as they, and, like them, spun</p>
+
+      <p class="i6">Of gilded nothingness!</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i6">All things are well with her.</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">&#39;Tis good to be alive, to see the light</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">That plays upon the grass, to feel (and sigh</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">With perfect pleasure) the mild breezes stir</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Among the garden roses, red and white,</p>
+
+      <p class="i6">With whiffs of fragrancy.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i6">There is no troublous thought,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">No painful memory, no grave regret,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">To mar the sweet suggestions of the hour:</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">The soul, at peace, reflects the peace without,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Forgetting grief as sunset skies forget</p>
+
+      <p class="i6">The morning&#39;s transient shower.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <center>
+    EMMA LAZARUS.
+  </center><a name="gossip" id="gossip"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 235]</span>
+
+  <h2>OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.</h2>
+
+  <h3><a name="washington" id="washington"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+  WASHINGTON&#39;S BIRTHPLACE IN 1873.</h3>
+
+  <p>Was George Washington born in Great Britain or America? Absurd as
+  this question must sound to an American, it has been gravely
+  discussed within the last few months by a writer in the London
+  <i>Notes and Queries</i>, who has the effrontery to say that
+  Washington&#39;s own brief assertion in a letter to the effect that
+  he was born in Virginia cannot be conclusive. &quot;No man&#39;s
+  unsupported testimony,&quot; he adds, &quot;as to the place of his
+  birth would be taken in evidence in a court of justice, for his
+  knowledge of the event must necessarily be from hearsay or from
+  records.&quot; This is silly enough. I did not see the whole article,
+  or learn by what arguments the writer endeavored to substantiate his
+  doubts, if he really had any, as to the true birthplace of the
+  <i>Pater Patriae</i>, but, feeling some interest in the matter, I cut
+  out the slip containing the quotation just given, and enclosed it in
+  a letter to a prominent gentleman living in Westmoreland not far from
+  Wakefield, the estate on which the birthplace&#8212;or rather the
+  site of it&#8212;is situated, with a request that he would reply to
+  it. He did so promptly and almost indignantly.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am amazed,&quot; says he, &quot;at the contents of the
+  printed slip you send me. That any man of ordinary intelligence,
+  living within the bounds of civilization, could be ignorant of or
+  doubt the fact that General Washington was born in America, I did not
+  for a moment suppose.&quot; He goes on to say that if
+  Washington&#39;s biography, written by so many competent hands, and
+  founded upon sources the most authentic, and particularly the Lives
+  of Marshall, Sparks and Irving, were not sufficient to convince
+  incredulity itself, he is at a loss to know what would. Certainly, he
+  would not attempt the task himself. In addition to the well-known
+  biographies, traditions and memoranda attest the fact beyond the
+  possibility of enlightened doubt. Other credible and corroborative
+  records are not wanting. &quot;Had the question,&quot; he concludes,
+  &quot;been asked of Dr. Livingstone by some savage in the depths of
+  the African jungles, it would not have been surprising; but to come
+  from a writer in <i>London</i>, it is inexpressibly marvelous, and
+  looks like a relapse into barbarism.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Among the memoranda alluded to is a fac-simile of the entry of the
+  birth of Washington in the Bible of his mother, which is given in
+  Howe&#39;s <i>Historical Collections of Virginia</i>, as follows:</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;<i>George Washington son to Augustine and Mary his Wife was
+  Born 11&#39;th Day of February</i> 173-1/2 <i>about</i> 10 <i>in the
+  Morning and was Baptized the</i> 3&#39;th (sic) <i>of April following
+  M&#39;r Beverley Whiting and Cap&#39;n Christopher Brooks godfathers
+  and M&#39;rs Mildred Gregory God-mother.&quot;</i></p>
+
+  <p>There are no marks of punctuation, and Howe states that the
+  original entry is supposed to have been made by Washington&#39;s
+  mother. If so, the handwriting, not very unlike Washington&#39;s own,
+  is unusually masculine, compact, even and clear for a woman&#39;s.
+  Howe&#39;s book was published in 1836. At that time the old family
+  Bible, a much dilapidated quarto with the title-page missing, and
+  covered with the striped Virginia cloth so common in old days, was in
+  the possession of George W. Bassett, Esq., of Farmington, Hanover
+  county, who married a grand-niece of Washington. At that time, too,
+  the birthplace, which had been destroyed previous to the Revolution,
+  was much more plainly marked than it is now. From its associations,
+  and from its natural beauties as well, the place was doubly
+  interesting. Standing half a mile from the junction of Pope&#39;s
+  Creek with the Potomac River, it commanded a view of the Maryland
+  shore and of the course of the Potomac for many miles. The house was
+  a low-pitched, <span class="pagenum">[pg 236]</span> single-storied
+  frame dwelling, with four rooms on the first floor, and a huge
+  chimney at each end on the outside&#8212;the style of the better
+  class of houses of those days. A stone, placed there to mark its site
+  by G.W.P. Custis, bore the simple inscription:</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;HERE, ON THE 11TH OF FEBRUARY (O.S.), 1732, GEORGE
+  WASHINGTON WAS BORN.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Such was its appearance in 1834 or &#39;35, when Howe visited it.
+  Its present condition may be gathered from what the writer of the
+  letter in response to the London querist has to say about the site
+  itself, that being all that is left of a place so memorable and so
+  deserving of perpetuation:</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I have had no opportunity to obtain the sketch I promised
+  you. Indeed, there is virtually no material to make a sketch of. The
+  birthplace is now simply an old field lying waste, with indistinct
+  vestiges of a human habitation. An old chimney stands which belonged
+  to an outhouse (kitchen or laundry), some remains of a cellar, and
+  the foundations of a house in which tradition states Washington was
+  born. There was a stone slab, with a simple inscription, placed on
+  the spot some sixty years ago by G. W: P. Custis, to denote the
+  place, but it was long ago removed from its original position,
+  mutilated and broken, so that only a fragment remains.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>That a place of such interest&#8212;one might call it
+  sacred&#8212;should be left to decay and obliteration is no new thing
+  in Virginia. Enemies might well declare that neglect of her mighty
+  dead is characteristic of the old commonwealth. The truth is, she has
+  a great many dead to care for, and of late years all her time has
+  been absorbed in the care of her living. But something has been done,
+  or attempted to be done, to rescue Washington&#39;s birthplace from
+  oblivion. As far back as 1858 an act was passed by the General
+  Assembly of Virginia, accepting from Lewis Washington a grant of the
+  &quot;site of the birthplace of George Washington, and the home and
+  graves of his progenitors in America,&quot; and appropriating five
+  thousand dollars &quot;to enclose the same in an iron fence,&quot;
+  etc. Hon. Henry A. Wise, governor of Virginia at the time this act
+  was passed, entered with zeal and alacrity upon the work, the
+  execution of which was entrusted to him by the Legislature&#8212;went
+  in person to Westmoreland, examined carefully the sites, negotiated
+  with the owner of the adjacent farm for right of way, adopted a plan
+  for the enclosures and tablets, and began a correspondence with
+  mechanics and artisans at the North with a view to the speedy
+  completion of the work, and&#8212;just then his term expired, the war
+  soon followed, and the matter was of course dropped.</p>
+
+  <p>The money appropriated, together with the accrued interest, is now
+  in the treasury of Virginia, and although Governor Walker in his late
+  message did not bring the subject to the attention of the
+  Legislature, the long-delayed work will be consummated sooner or
+  later, and &quot;a neat iron fence&quot; with a few plain slabs will
+  be erected on the hallowed spot. But it strikes the present writer
+  that five thousand dollars, or even ten thousand dollars, form rather
+  a small sum for such an object, and that &quot;a neat iron
+  fence&quot; is not exactly the thing that the place and its memories
+  demand. But not a dollar more may be expected of Virginia at this
+  time. She owes too much, and has too little. If one of the many
+  Northern gentlemen who are lavishing their hundreds of thousands on
+  colleges and other charities would come to Westmoreland and put
+  something a little better than a &quot;neat iron fence&quot; around
+  the birthplace of Washington, he would do a noble deed for himself
+  and for both sections of his lately estranged country.</p>
+
+  <p class="author">R.B.E.</p><a name="vicissitudes" id="vicissitudes">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>VICISSITUDES IN HIGH LIFE.</h3>
+
+  <p>The London papers lately recorded the death of a lady who was the
+  representative and last descendant, save one sister, of a house
+  famous in English history. This was Lady Langdale, widow of
+  Bickersteth, first and last Lord Langdale, and sister of Harley, last
+  earl of Oxford. Lady Langdale had but one child, who married Count
+  Teleki, a Hungarian nobleman, and pre-deceased her mother, dying
+  childless. Lord Langdale was the son of Mr. Bickersteth, surgeon, of
+  Kirby-Lonsdale, Westmoreland. He was brought up to his father&#39;s
+  vocation, and traveled, as physician, with the earl of Oxford.</p>
+
+  <p>Impressed, no doubt, with Mr. Bickersteth&#39;s extraordinary
+  abilities, Lord Oxford advised him to go to college and read for the
+  law, which offered greater prizes than the medical profession.
+  Accordingly, he entered at Cambridge, and in 1808 graduated as senior
+  wrangler. Twenty-seven years later, in 1835, he married the daughter
+  and heiress of his friend and patron, and the year following was
+  created a peer.</p>
+
+  <p>His brother Edward was the celebrated evangelical leader in the
+  Church of England. Bred to the law, he abandoned that profession for
+  holy orders. Their nephew, son of their brother John, is the present
+  bishop of Ripon.</p>
+
+  <p>The Harleys have been seated for six or seven centuries in
+  Herefordshire, at Brampton-Bryan and Egwood, properties which in part
+  remained in Lady Langdale&#39;s possession. By marriage! with the
+  heiress of the Vaughans in the fifteenth century, they became
+  possessed of Wigmore Castle, the ancient heritage of the extinct
+  earls of Mortimer, and great estates which added to their
+  consequence.</p>
+
+  <p>When Charles II. made a batch of peers on his restoration, the
+  Harley of that day displayed a rare modesty. The king offered him a
+  viscounty, but he declined the honor, &quot;lest his zeal and
+  services for the restoration of the ancient government should be
+  reproached as proceeding from ambition, and not conscience;&quot; and
+  so scrupulous was he that his being made a knight of the Bath even
+  was done without his knowledge, he being then at Dunkirk, and Charles
+  inserting with his own hand his name in the list. But his son was
+  destined for a higher dignity, for he it was who became in the tenth
+  year of the reign of Charles II.&#39;s niece, Queen Anne, earl of
+  Oxford and Mortimer, being the famous Harley of that reign, linked in
+  our memories <span class="pagenum">[pg 237]</span> with St. John Lord
+  Bolingbroke, the Mashams, Marlboroughs, Swift, Addison, Pope, and the
+  host of brilliant men which makes the reign of one of the feeblest
+  women who ever sat on a throne a period of almost pre-eminent
+  interest in English annals to men of cultivated mind subject to the
+  influence of association. By Elizabeth Foley, daughter of the first
+  Lord Foley, of Witley Court (sold, about thirty-five years ago, with
+  the bulk of the Foley estates, for �990,000 to Lord Dudley, who
+  married Lady Mordaunt&#39;s sister), the famous lord treasurer,
+  Oxford, had one son, the second earl. He was the friend of Swift, to
+  whom the dean addressed so many letters. A man of literary tastes, he
+  spent a portion of his immense fortune in forming the finest library
+  of the period, and it is to him the student is indebted for the
+  magnificent collection known as the &quot;Harleian,&quot; which
+  subsequently became, by purchase, the property of the nation, and is
+  deposited in the British Museum. He married the greatest heiress of
+  the day, Lady Henrietta Cavendish-Holies, only daughter and heir of
+  the duke of Newcastle (of the Holies creation&#8212;the present duke,
+  a Pelham-Clinton, derives from a different descent). He left but one
+  daughter. She married the second duke of Portland, grandson of Dutch
+  William&#39;s pet page Bentinck, whom he imported into England, and
+  loaded with honors and emolument until even the House of Commons of
+  <i>that</i> day cried out loudly, &quot;Enough! stop!&quot; Through
+  this lady the Bentincks got Welbeck, the duke of Portland&#39;s chief
+  seat to-day.</p>
+
+  <p>Meanwhile, the Oxford honors and patrimonial estates in
+  Herefordshire passed to the second earl&#39;s first cousin, and so
+  on, in regular succession, until the earldom became extinct by the
+  death of Lady Langdale&#39;s brother a few years ago. One of Lady
+  Langdale&#39;s sisters married a General Bacon. At the time of the
+  marriage he was but a poor captain, and his wealth did not much
+  increase, whilst his family did, and his wife, the once beautiful
+  Lady Charlotte, Byron&#39;s &quot;Ianthe&quot;&#8212;to whom he
+  addressed <span class="pagenum">[pg 238]</span> the famous lines
+  which form the prelude of <i>Childe Harold</i>, beginning,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+  <p>Not in those climes where I have late been straying&#8212;</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>had to see her daughter a governess in the family of a Cornishman,
+  once a common miner! One of her daughters is now married to the son
+  of Lord Mount Edgecumbe&#39;s agent. It seems that the sisters could
+  not forgive the mesalliance, as they deemed it, for Lady
+  Langdale&#39;s will shows no bequest to the Bacons.</p>
+
+  <p>Lady Langdale had another sister, who married a son of Doctor
+  Vernon-Harcourt, long archbishop of York, grandfather of
+  &quot;Historicus,&quot; the well-known political letter-writer of the
+  London <i>Times</i>. This lady died about the same time as Lady
+  Langdale. One sister only, the wife of a foreign nobleman, survives.
+  She is the last of the Harleys of the great minister&#39;s
+  line.</p><a name="madeira" id="madeira"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>A GLASS OF OLD MADEIRA.</h3>
+
+  <p>We had met in Europe some dozen years ago&#8212;I from
+  Massachusetts, he from Carolina. We both looked grave for an instant
+  as a friend presented us to each other, naming our respective
+  residences, and then both laughed cheerily, and were good friends
+  ever after. We enjoyed <i>Tartuffe</i> and the <i>Mariage de
+  Figaro</i> in company with each other at the Theatre Francois, heard
+  Mario, Grisi, Gratiano and Borghi Mamo in Verdi&#39;s
+  <i>Trovatore</i> at the Op�ra Italien, danced with <i>les filles de
+  l&#39;Op�ra</i> at Cellarius&#39;s saloons, and had many a midnight
+  carouse afterward at the Maison Dor�. Nor had our time always been
+  unprofitably spent. Toward Easter we journeyed together to Rome, and
+  stood side by side before the masterpieces of Raphael and Domenichino
+  in the Vatican, strolled by moonlight amid the ruins of the Coliseum,
+  and drank out of the same cup from the Fountain of Trevi; often
+  visited Crawford&#39;s studio, where then stood the famous group
+  which now adorns the frieze of the Capitol at Washington, and by
+  actual observation agreed in thinking his Indian not unworthy of
+  comparison with the famous statue of the Dying Gladiator. We stood
+  together on the Tarpeian Rock, and, looking down upon the mutilated
+  Column of Trajan and all the ruins of ancient Rome, read out of the
+  same copy of Horace the famous ode beginning, &quot;Exegi monumentum
+  aere perennius.&quot; We were both passionately fond of sculpture and
+  of painting, and often sat for hours before the glorious Descent from
+  the Cross of Daniel da Volterra in the Chiesa della Trinit� dei
+  Monti, the principal figure in which is said to have been sketched by
+  Michael Angelo, and which, although less widely known, appeared to
+  our minds equal in execution and superior in grandeur to any other
+  painting in the world.</p>
+
+  <p>After our return to this country I happened to go South one
+  winter, and spent a month with my friend on his plantation in the low
+  country of Carolina. It seemed to be our fate to meet amid the ruins
+  of the past. But the war had not then occurred, and we had many a
+  hunt together, in which, after a glorious burst of the hounds through
+  the open savannas, I brought down more than one noble buck. On other
+  days we would drive with the ladies along the broad beach upon which
+  stood the summer residences of the neighboring planters. And
+  sometimes we would stroll lazily about the lanes of his estate,
+  basking in the mellow sunshine in the midst of February, and chatting
+  of Capri and Sorrento in a climate equal to that of Italy.</p>
+
+  <p>And we met again the other day in the streets of a Northern city.
+  He looked older certainly, and very careworn, but his eye was as
+  bright as ever and his voice as cheery.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Come and dine with me,&quot; he said after we had given each
+  other a hurried account of our present abodes and occupations.
+  &quot;You will find me in rather modest and decidedly airy lodgings,
+  and I cannot offer you either wild-ducks or venison. A rasher of
+  bacon and a glass of madeira as we chat over old times: what say you
+  to the bill-of fare? You remember the old French adage, &#39;Quand on
+  n&#39;a pas ce que l&#39;on aime, faut bien aimer ce que l&#39;on
+  a.&#39;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;A quelle heure, mon ami?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Four o&#39;clock.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>And at five that afternoon we were seated together, the remnants
+  of our frugal repast removed, and on the scrupulously polished old
+  mahogany table which separated us stood a cut-glass decanter of old
+  Carolina madeira, the bouquet of which filled the room with its
+  fragrance.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Fill your glass, Harry: &#39;tis not the fragrance of the
+  wine, but the sentiment connected with it, which prevents me from
+  offering you a pipe. The odor of the best Virginia would seem to me a
+  desecration. There are only a dozen bottles left in that cupboard. I
+  never uncork one except for a near friend. &#39;Tis out of fashion
+  now: hock and champagne have taken its place; but, do you know, I
+  like it the better on that account. It reminds me of the past, and,
+  though still a young man, it is one of my greatest pleasures to dwell
+  on the picture which a glass of it never fails to recall to my
+  imagination. You remember Woodlawn? For five-and-twenty years, during
+  the whole of a long minority and subsequent travels abroad, those old
+  bottles stood wreathed with cobwebs in the garret of the old mansion.
+  You drank one with me in 1859. The rest were buried at the
+  commencement of the war, and this is one of the few which survived
+  it. There are not many of your compatriots to whom I would tell the
+  story of its preservation, for it illustrates a feature of feudal
+  attachment which they persistently refuse to believe possible.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You remember the stately old negro who occupied the
+  porter&#39;s lodge at Woodlawn, and who told you with such pride that
+  he and his ancestors had always occupied a favored post near the
+  great house? You remember, too, his grand air, fashioned after the
+  gentlemen of the olden time, the contemporaries of Washington,
+  Rutledge and Pinckney? And in what awe and reverence his
+  fellow-servants stood of him! Well, when the war fairly began, and
+  all hope of amicable adjustment was exhausted, I did what every true
+  man on either side was bound to do&#8212;raised a company for the
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 239]</span> service, removed my family to
+  an up-country farm, and left Old John in charge of my residence and
+  interests in the low country. The Federal gunboats soon appeared upon
+  the coast, entered the bay and ran up the rivers. Many of the younger
+  people went off with them, but during the long and dreary four years
+  which ensued Old John remained staunch at his post, cultivating the
+  land as best he might, and sending constantly supplies of money and
+  provisions to his mistress. At last the whole thing broke down: Lee
+  surrendered, Johnston surrendered. Troops as well as gunboats swarmed
+  in all directions. Not only regular soldiers, but raw negro levies,
+  occupied the towns and were posted through the country. Stories were
+  circulated that I was killed, that I was captured; and the latter
+  statement was true. There were rumors that the land was to be divided
+  among the negroes, and one dark night in the early summer of 1865
+  some drunken sailors, escaped from the gunboats lying in the bay,
+  raised a mob of negroes from the various plantations and gutted
+  nearly every house in the parish. Among others they came to mine
+  eager for wine, and John was pointed out by some of the neighboring
+  negroes as knowing where it was concealed. The sailors threatened his
+  life: he refused to tell. They held a pistol to his head, but the old
+  man remained staunch in his refusal. Provoked by his fidelity, at
+  length they brutally beat him with the butts of their pistols until
+  his gray hairs were dabbled in gore, and went off to other plunder,
+  telling their followers to take what they wanted from my residence.
+  But, bruised, bleeding and crippled though he was, Old John still
+  defended his master&#39;s property, and sitting on the front steps of
+  the house kept the whole crowd at bay by the firmness and dignity of
+  his attitude. I heard of the affair first from a white man who lived
+  in the neighborhood, and it was not until I asked him about it that
+  he told me himself. The next day he gave to my own people the
+  furniture remaining in the house to keep until I came back, but
+  positively refused to <span class="pagenum">[pg 240]</span> allow
+  them to take of the crops that had been gathered any more than was
+  required for their subsistence, and this he regularly shared out to
+  them at stated intervals. And when, after a long imprisonment and
+  much enfeebled myself, I landed one evening at the wharf which leads
+  up to the house, the first figure which met my sight was the old man
+  faithfully guarding the barns. His eyesight was too dim for him to
+  see me, but as soon as he heard my voice he seized my hand with
+  passionate fervor, pressing it repeatedly to his lips and bedewing it
+  with tears. Can you wonder if he has shared my fortunes ever since?
+  But not at Woodlawn. The negroes generally were wild with the notion
+  of freedom, and utterly ignorant of the practical meaning of the
+  term. To me they were always civil and affectionate, but I preferred
+  that some other than myself should teach them its rugged lesson, and
+  immediately leased the place for a term of years to one better fitted
+  than I to derive profit from it under the new system. The gentlemen
+  and the negroes are the two classes upon whom the first results of
+  the fearful revolution in society caused by the war fell with
+  heaviest weight. Both were totally unprepared for it, and both have
+  so far suffered cruelly. A year ago Old John died, faithful and cared
+  for to the last. A few months ago the lease I had executed expired,
+  and I visited the estate again. All the glamour of the past had
+  disappeared. The home of my fathers knew me no more, and I have sold
+  it. Cuffee, whom you remember as my body-servant, who followed me
+  through the war, and bore me on his back from the battlefield upon
+  which I was severely wounded, and who would have come with me here
+  had circumstances permitted of my retaining his
+  services,&#8212;Cuffee has taken to politics, and now represents the
+  county in the Legislature of the State; and the last figure that I
+  remember seeing as I left the place was that of old Sary, the sick
+  nurse, her long black hair streaming in the wind (you remember she
+  was an Indian half-breed), her feet bare, her petticoat ragged and
+  limp, standing in the lane which leads from the house&#8212;her arms
+  akimbo, a sort of miniature Meg Merrilies&#8212;screaming out to me,
+  &#39;You left you own plantashun.&#39; Yes, I have left my own
+  plantation, and am grubbing out a modest and sometimes a rather
+  precarious existence elsewhere. But for all that, it is more
+  wholesome than mouldering among the ruins of a past that can never
+  return. The fight has been fairly fought, and New England has won the
+  day. Germany is up, France is down; Italy united, the pope existing
+  on sufferance in the palace where erstwhile emperors did him homage.
+  I don&#39;t quarrel with Fortune. Nay, in many things I dare say the
+  world has benefited by the change. And so, when I take my children
+  sometimes to look at Crawford&#39;s famous group, I even enjoy the
+  spirit of pride with which they look upon the figure of America, and
+  the zest with which they enjoy the vigorous onslaught of the pioneer
+  on the forest tree; but my own eyes seek the Indian chieftain
+  reclining in mute despair on the right of the group, and I have a
+  strange sympathy with the fortune which his very attitude so forcibly
+  indicates. Our battle of Dorking has been fought, and, whatever may
+  be the fate of the next generation, all that is left to me of home or
+  of country are the golden drops which sparkle in this tiny
+  glass.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p class="author">RAMBLER.</p><a name="matinee" id="matinee">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>AT A MATIN�E: A MONOLOGUE.</h3>
+
+  <p>Oh Dear! I meant to be very early, people do look so cross when
+  you squeeze by them. I don&#39;t think it is exactly proper, either,
+  when they are men. Here is my seat, No. 10: that girl has piled all
+  her waterproofs on it. Why don&#39;t she take them away quicker? and
+  I wish she wouldn&#39;t grope about my feet for her overshoes.</p>
+
+  <p>I never sat right next to the orchestra before. What a convenient
+  railing to hang my umbrella on! Provoking it should rain so to-day.
+  There now! my waterproof is all disposed of, and I know my dress is
+  all right, so I shall enjoy myself.</p>
+
+  <p>What a ridiculous girl beside me! <i>Such</i> a bunch of curls!
+  The two young men on the other side look like gentlemen: the one this
+  way especially nice&#8212;lovely eyes and moustache. I&#39;ll look
+  round the house as far as I can without moving. Can&#39;t see much,
+  though, for I&#39;m so near the front. Why on earth didn&#39;t
+  brother Bob put me where I could see the people?</p>
+
+  <p>Why, there&#39;s Lucy Morris! I can&#39;t bear that girl: her hair
+  is almost the color of mine. A vacant seat beside her, too; so she
+  came with some one. Wonder who it is? I hope she won&#39;t see
+  me.</p>
+
+  <p>Oh, how funny! The musicians come up out of a hole just like the
+  tame rats at the Museum, nasty things!&#8212;the rats, I mean. The
+  man right in front of me has a trombone. I know what it is, because
+  the name is written on his music. I&#39;m so glad, for I never knew
+  exactly what a trombone was until now. And what a funny instrument!
+  He doesn&#39;t blow at all for ever so long, and then suddenly comes
+  in with two or three toots.</p>
+
+  <p>But, good gracious! there&#39;s Dick Livingstone! I saw him come
+  in at that door. I&#39;m so glad I came! He asked me night before
+  last at Mrs. Harris&#39;s if I was coming to the matin�e, and of
+  course I said &quot;Yes,&quot; though I didn&#39;t have the slightest
+  idea of doing so until he spoke. But what&#8212;! He has taken the
+  seat by that Lucy Morris, and has given her a programme. I hate that
+  girl!</p>
+
+  <p>There goes the curtain. What a stupid play! Why did I come? The
+  damp will ruin my dress. Oh, that horrid girl! Well, of all the
+  ridiculous acting I ever saw, this is the worst! I should think they
+  would be ashamed to put such people on the stage. He is opening her
+  fan. A fan to-day! absurd! I <i>won&#39;t</i> look again. How that
+  man rants! I&#39;m sure I don&#39;t know why I came: I might have
+  known how poor it would be. Even <i>I</i> can see that Leicester and
+  Mortimer have dresses at least a hundred years apart. I wonder if
+  their legs are stuffed? Oh dear! that&#39;s hardly proper. What Dick
+  can see to admire in that <span class="pagenum">[pg 241]</span> girl
+  is beyond my comprehension. Such airs and graces!&#8212;all put on;
+  and how she makes eyes at him! I can feel it behind my back.</p>
+
+  <p>How absurdly Queen Elizabeth is dressed! and what a fright she is!
+  And I wore my new hat, too: he said he liked blue so much. I could
+  just cry, I am so provoked. It&#39;s all her fault, I know. Oh! the
+  play! Yes, Dudley is making love. Ridiculous! There, the
+  curtain&#39;s down at last, and&#8212;what&#8212;! Dick is getting
+  up: he looks as if he were saying good-bye. There&#39;s Lucy&#39;s
+  uncle: he sits down beside her&#8212;he must have brought her. Oh,
+  what a relief! After all, it was very natural for Dick to take the
+  vacant seat, he is so thoughtful always. Lucy can talk pretty well
+  sometimes, too. If she only had some idea of dress! There! I&#39;m
+  sure Dick saw me, but of course I shall take no notice.</p>
+
+  <p>Upon my word, the young man next me is admiring the girl&#39;s
+  hair on the other side of me. It&#39;s hideous&#8212;red as a carrot,
+  and stuck on at that. Thank Goodness! my hair hasn&#39;t a tinge of
+  red in it&#8212;pure <i>blonde cendr�</i>&#8212;but I have to pay
+  awfully to match it. Wish I could tell that young fellow her hair is
+  all stuck on. Hark! the nice one says,</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why, it is all her own&#8212;I see it growing&quot;
+  &quot;S-s-s-h!&quot; says the other: &quot;she&#39;ll hear you.&quot;
+  &quot;Loveliest hair I ever saw,&quot; continues No. 1: &quot;pure
+  gold, not a tinge of red&#8212;&quot; It&#39;s <i>my</i> hair they
+  are discussing. What a nice fellow he is! I&#39;ll just turn a little
+  away, so he can study that curl which really does grow out of my
+  head. It is worth all the trouble it gives me, for it makes the
+  others seem so natural. I declare, he is looking right at me: suppose
+  he should speak? I should <i>die</i>! Nonsense! he is bowing to a
+  lady in the dress-circle. I know he&#39;d like to do something for
+  me. Brother Bob says girls can&#39;t be too careful. I might drop
+  something. Not my handkerchief&#8212;that <i>would</i> be
+  improper&#8212;but my opera-glass case: nothing could be said against
+  that. Oh my! I haven&#39;t used my glasses yet, I&#39;m so near the
+  stage. I&#39;ll look round the house; so here goes. &quot;Thank you,
+  sir,&quot; <span class="pagenum">[pg 242]</span> with my sweetest
+  smile and such a nice flutter. I saw him nudge his friend.</p>
+
+  <p>There goes the curtain again. Mary queen of Scots: I thought she
+  was prettier. Oh, the act is really over; I actually forgot
+  everything but the stage. My eyes are all wet. But it won&#39;t do to
+  cry: they would be red. I don&#39;t quite like some of the words they
+  use, though&#8212;they make one feel queer. Now, why couldn&#39;t
+  they say &quot;illegitimate child&quot;? It means just the same;
+  besides, it&#39;s longer.</p>
+
+  <p>I wonder how Dick Livingstone liked it? <i>Mr</i>. Livingstone, I
+  should say. Brother Bob doesn&#39;t think it nice for girls to speak
+  of young men by their first names. But then brothers are so
+  particular about their own sisters, though, Goodness knows, they
+  flirt enough with other people&#39;s. Bob and Kate Harris, for
+  example, and yet he preaches at <i>me</i>!</p>
+
+  <p>Oh, the young men are going out. They push by as well as they can,
+  but still they crowd unpleasantly. I am sure I&#39;ve seen that nice
+  one somewhere. They are going to stay away, too, I think, for they
+  have taken their over-coats. If only Dick&#8212;Mr. Livingstone, I
+  mean&#8212;</p>
+
+  <p>Oh, there&#39;s the curtain again. It&#39;s really quite
+  interesting. I was mistaken about the actors: they do very well
+  indeed. Queen Elizabeth is excellent, and so are they all. It shows
+  how careful one ought to be not to judge too hastily. That&#39;s what
+  mother always says. I won&#39;t do so again.</p>
+
+  <p>Well, that play is over&#8212;now for the comedy. Some one says it
+  is still raining. I hate a waterproof, my figure looks so well in
+  this suit. I might carry my cloak over my arm, but then I&#39;m
+  afraid the rain will ruin my dress. I <i>must</i> wear the waterproof
+  and be a dowdy. I don&#39;t believe, after all, that it would hurt
+  the underskirt, and then, with the umbrella up, I should have to take
+  his arm. I shouldn&#39;t like to get this dress spoiled, either. I
+  know mother wouldn&#39;t give me another. Brother Bob says men
+  don&#39;t care so much about women&#39;s dress: they like to see a
+  sensible girl. I don&#39;t believe that; besides, I have thick boots,
+  and I&#39;m sure that&#39;s sensible. I don&#39;t care: I won&#39;t
+  wear the waterproof unless it is a perfect deluge. My goodness! I
+  don&#39;t see Dick anywhere! Suppose, after all, he didn&#39;t come
+  to meet me? and I gave him that flower at Mrs. Leslie&#39;s, too! I
+  wish the thing was over.</p>
+
+  <p>But oh, what a pretty dress! and how sweet she is! I had no idea
+  she could be so cunning, after being such a tragedy queen. The man on
+  the stage actually kissed her. Bob says they don&#39;t really kiss,
+  though.</p>
+
+  <p>I&#39;m sorry it&#39;s over. Oh dear! I don&#39;t like being alone
+  in such a crowd. Brother Bob wouldn&#39;t have let me come, I know,
+  only he thought I should meet the Davidsons. No matter: I&#39;ll
+  never tell him. I do believe Dick hasn&#39;t stayed, after all.
+  I&#39;ll just put on my waterproof and thick veil, and go home and
+  have a good cry.</p>
+
+  <p>Oh, Mr. Livingstone, how you startled me! I had no idea you were
+  here. Yes, I am by myself: certainly you may escort me home. Take a
+  walk in this pouring rain? Why, it&#39;s all sunshine!</p>
+
+  <p class="author">C.A.D.</p><a name="notes" id="notes">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>NOTES.</h2>
+
+  <p>Wellnigh half a century has elapsed since the discovery of the
+  beautiful Venus of Milo (the exact year was 1825), and yet now, for
+  the first time, the endless discussions regarding two doubtful and
+  interesting points in its history have been set at rest. These two
+  points are&#8212;first, the original pose of the statue; and,
+  secondly, the reason of its being armless. After so many years of
+  dispute over these questions, it occurred at length to M. Jules Ferry
+  to do what of course ought to have been done long ago&#8212;namely,
+  go to the very spot whence the statue was exhumed, and there talk
+  with all the surviving witnesses of the exhumation. M. Ferry not long
+  since put his idea into execution, went to Milo, took into
+  consultation with him M. Brest, son of the consul who procured the
+  statue for France, and found and cross-questioned two Greeks who were
+  present at the unearthing of the statue. M. Ferry has collected the
+  details of his labors in an elaborate communication to the Acad�mie
+  des Beaux Arts, but a brief indication of the results obtained may be
+  made as follows:</p>
+
+  <p>First, then, the Venus was found in 1825 at the foot of a little
+  hill, where it had been covered up by successive crumblings of the
+  earth above. The proprietor of the ground, wishing to clear a little
+  more of the soil for his planting, chanced to strike the statue with
+  his shovel. &quot;It was on its base, erect,&quot; said the two Greek
+  peasants to the French minister. &quot;With one hand she held
+  together her draperies, and in the other an apple&quot;&#8212;the
+  same, doubtless, that Paris had just given her. Such, very briefly,
+  is the clear, short, definite, decisive story which puts an end to
+  ten thousand disquisitions and hypotheses about the pose. The
+  evidence thus given is that of people who actually saw what they
+  describe. But, secondly, what of those &quot;long-lost arms&quot;?
+  and how came they to be lost? The body of the Venus was formed of two
+  blocks, and the arms were afterward fastened upon the trunk. When
+  discovered, it was intact. M. Brest, the French consul, instantly
+  bought the Venus for five hundred dollars, while the Turkish
+  government on its part hurried off a small vessel to bring it away,
+  offering the owner of the farm fivefold the French price, or
+  something like two thousand five hundred dollars. A French
+  <i>aviso</i>, sent by M. de Rivi�re, the ambassador at
+  Constantinople, arrived on the scene at the very moment when the
+  Turks had got possession of the statue, and were embarking it on
+  their vessel. A dispute arose at once, and in the material as well as
+  legal confusion the arms of the Venus, which had been detached for
+  safer transportation, were missed. The people of the neighborhood got
+  up a story that the arms were carried off by the Turkish vessel out
+  of chagrin and spite, but this seems to be mere surmise where all
+  else is clear.</p>
+  <hr />
+
+  <p>The story of Demosthenes and the pebbles is familiar. Less
+  familiar, we <span class="pagenum">[pg 243]</span> venture to say, is
+  the theory that declamation is sometimes the cause of stammering; or,
+  rather, that stuttering impels a man to talkativeness, and the
+  yielding to this tendency fixes the habit of stammering and makes it
+  worse. Hence it might plausibly be argued that it is the rostrum, or
+  the very emotion of speaking in public, which makes some orators
+  become stammerers. At all events, in Paris an institution has been
+  founded expressly to remedy stuttering; and M. Chervin, its director,
+  not long ago presented before a meeting of the learned societies at
+  the Sorbonne some interesting statistics on his specialty. These
+  statistics seem to show that stuttering is in direct proportion with
+  the habit of speaking, and that the more one speaks the more one
+  stutters. This is certainly an unexpected result of the restoration
+  of freedom of speech in France. M. Chervin mentions a village of
+  eighteen hundred souls where everybody, without exception, undeniably
+  stutters. What strange dialogues, says Jules Claretie (who cites
+  these points in <i>l&#39;Ind�pendance Belge</i>), must take place
+  there! A very curious fact is, that stammering is less frequent in
+  the north of France than in the south. In the north-east it is least
+  known, and most in the south-east. For example, all things being
+  equal, for six stammerers in Paris there would be twenty-five in
+  Lyons and seventy in Marseilles. The admitted garrulity or fluency of
+  southern speaking is often the cause or the preface to stammering.
+  Thus, comically concludes M. Claretie, oratorical habits threaten to
+  make stammering become the order of the day, and for one Vergniaud
+  there will be ten stutterers, and ten more stutterers for one General
+  Foy. Nevertheless, in earlier days, Camille Desmoulins stammered, and
+  yet spoke but little at the Convention. It does not appear that
+  Charles Lamb was a garrulous person, and in the familiar experience
+  of daily life we rarely find stutterers to be rapid talkers. Still,
+  this latter fact really helps M. Chervin&#39;s theory, since we may
+  conclude it is precisely because stammerers find that a very rapid
+  utterance <span class="pagenum">[pg 244]</span> increases their
+  defect that they force themselves to speak deliberately, and also not
+  to tire the vocal muscles. Hence, apart from the jesting inference
+  which M. Claretie, in French journalist&#39;s fashion, is bent son
+  twisting out of the scientific statistics, there would appear to be a
+  mutual influence, perfectly comprehensible, of rapidity in utterance
+  and a tendency to stammering. We could not safely go on to generalize
+  that only voluble people become stutterers, or that all stutterers
+  are unusually garrulous and unusually eager in enunciation; but we
+  may conclude that if they are thus careless and rattling in delivery,
+  their peculiarity will be likely to grow more marked, and that
+  accordingly a natural tendency to the same defect is developed by the
+  same habits or necessities of much and rapid talking.</p>
+  <hr />
+
+  <p>Two illustrations of nineteenth-century precocity, rather superior
+  to the generality of anecdotes regarding the wisdom of the rising
+  generation, we find in recent French papers. One of them is
+  originated by the <i>Moulin-�-Parole</i>. Madame de B. was visiting,
+  with her baby, her friend Madame X. After chattering three-quarters
+  of an hour, without giving anybody else a chance to put in a word,
+  Madame X. pauses, when Baby immediately takes up the burden of
+  conversation. Madame X., getting tired at last, says, &quot;Why do
+  you talk so much, mignonne? It isn&#39;t nice for a little girl like
+  you to do so.&quot; &quot;Oh,&quot; replies Baby very graciously,
+  &quot;it is only so that mamma may rest!&quot; A little lad furnishes
+  the other instance of the premature sagacity of modern childhood. A
+  famous merchant has four children, three daughters and a boy named
+  Arthur. Two of the former die successively of consumption, and at the
+  funeral of the second a friend of the family comes to offer his
+  compliments of condolence, and, patting little Arthur&#39;s head,
+  tells the poor lad the house must seem lonely to him now.
+  &quot;Yes,&quot; briskly replies Arthur, whom his father has brought
+  up to accurate ideas, &quot;here we children are reduced <i>fifty per
+  cent</i>.&quot; Worthy to take charge of these children would have
+  been the prudent bonne of whom <i>Charivari</i> speaks. The morning
+  after engaging herself to Madame R. she hastened to that lady with
+  her finger wrapped in a handkerchief, and in an agitated voice asked
+  if the <i>converts</i> were real silver. &quot;Why so,
+  Nannette?&quot; &quot;Because, I just pricked my finger with a fork,
+  and I know that if it is plated copper I ought to take the precaution
+  of having the place bled.&quot; &quot;Don&#39;t be alarmed,&quot;
+  replies the lady, smiling despite herself at the young girl&#39;s
+  innocence, &quot;my plate is all solid.&quot; &quot;Ah,&quot; says
+  the bonne with a sigh of relief, &quot;I am so glad!&quot; The day
+  after, the simple young lady disappeared with all the silver. It is
+  not every bonne that would take such precautions.</p>
+  <hr />
+
+  <p>Paris has always been famous among modern cities for its genius
+  and industry in adding variety to its cuisine, either by the
+  audacious invention of new dishes or the felicitous combination of
+  old ones&#8212;either by discovering new sources of food or new
+  methods of preparing it. It was a curious incident in the late
+  history of the city that what had been a fashionable whim became a
+  hard necessity&#8212;that after Saint-Hilaire and the hippophagists
+  had struggled to introduce horseflesh as regular provender, the siege
+  of Paris made horseflesh a prized rarity. But the zest resulting from
+  the enforced diet of dogs, cats, rats and monkeys in bombardment days
+  appears to have been so great that we now hear of an enterprise
+  worthy to have a Brillat-Savarin to celebrate it&#8212;namely, the
+  formation of a society under the presidency of the naturalist
+  Lespars, designed to bring into vogue as eatable a great class of
+  living creatures whose presence now inspires ordinary persons only
+  with disgust. A naturalist who devotes himself to eating such
+  creatures with a motive so philanthropic deserves our praise, though
+  we may not be able to personally imitate his heroic example. Among
+  the choice dishes mentioned by one paper as selected to figure at the
+  first public banquet of M. Lespars are a plate of white worms, a
+  bushel of grasshoppers, <span class="pagenum">[pg 245]</span> and a
+  broil of magpies seasoned with the slugs that infest certain green
+  berries. One regards this announcement with more or less incredulity;
+  but little doubt seems to hang over the assertion that the dormouse
+  has just been introduced into the list of French game-dishes. The
+  puzzle for the cooks seems to be with regard to the proper sauce for
+  the new delicacy; but this matter does not trouble the little
+  chimney-sweeps, who find the animal so long associated in poetry and
+  in fact chiefly with their own humble career, now rising to the
+  dignity of game, and commanding a price for the table. Piedmont has
+  thus far furnished the larger part of the displays of
+  <i>marmottes</i> in Paris stalls. The chief trouble in making rats,
+  magpies and other delicacies of that sort really popular amongst the
+  poorer classes is that the latter do not possess adroit cooks to
+  disguise the original flavor under aromatic adjuncts, nor yet the
+  money to buy the necessary spices and side-dishes, nor the high grade
+  of champagne wines with which the wealthy and noble patrons of
+  &quot;food reform&quot; commonly wash down unpalatable
+  viands.</p><a name="literature" id="literature">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>LITERATURE OF THE DAY.</h2>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    Rousseau. By John Morley. 2 vols. London: Chapman &amp; Hall.
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>It was in the natural course of things that modern criticism, ever
+  aiming at a wider comprehension, a keener analysis, a greater
+  independence of judgment and expression, should test itself anew on a
+  subject affording so full a scope and so sure a touchstone as the
+  life and writings of Rousseau. The character of Rousseau, with its
+  strange blending of delicate beauty and repulsive infirmity, requires
+  to be handled with the firm but tender and sympathetic touch which
+  the nurse or the physician lays upon a child afflicted with sores.
+  His career, with its alternations of obscurity and conspicuousness,
+  of tumult and torpidity, of wretchedness and rapture, must be
+  followed with an eye keen to detect the springs and alive to the
+  subtle play of circumstance and impulse. His influence, if not more
+  profound, more varied, extensive and direct than that of any thinker
+  and writer since Luther, is to be traced in the whole history of his
+  own and of later times, under manifold aspects and amid momentous
+  changes of spirit and of form. In the case of most men who have
+  helped to mould the ideas and direct the tendencies of an age, it
+  would be difficult to determine what each has contributed to the
+  general result, or to say with certainty that the work performed by
+  one would not, if he had been wanting, have been equally accomplished
+  by others. On the other hand, there are a few
+  master-spirits&#8212;men not of an age but for all time&#8212;whose
+  power has been so deeply infused, so generally and silently absorbed,
+  that it would be vain to inquire how it has operated in detail. We
+  cannot indicate the course or fix the limits of its action: we
+  perceive only that without it our intellectual life must have been
+  dormant or extinct. Rousseau belongs to neither of these classes. His
+  power was not general but specific, not creative but stimulative, not
+  a source of perennial light but the torch of a conflagration; yet it
+  was original and independent, it did not co-operate but clashed with
+  that of his contemporaries, and while it acted upon minds far higher
+  and broader than his own, it received no aid except from disciples
+  and imitators. Of the French Revolution we may say with precision and
+  confidence that it owed primarily its peculiar character&#8212;its
+  austere ideals and wild distortions, its illimitable aspirations and
+  chaotic endeavors&#8212;to the extent to which the nation had become
+  imbued with his spirit and theories. In regard to literature, it is
+  not sufficient to point to a long list of celebrated writers, from
+  Chateaubriand and De Sta�l to Lamartine and George Sand, whose works
+  have reflected the characteristic <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  246]</span> hues of his sentiment and style; or to adduce particular
+  instances of his influence upon writers of higher and more contrasted
+  genius, such as Goethe and Byron, Schiller and Richter: what is to be
+  noted, as underlying all such examples and illustrations, is the fact
+  that a literature distinguished from that which had immediately
+  preceded it by earnestness, simplicity and depth, by spontaneous and
+  vivid conceptions and freedom from conventional restraints, had its
+  beginning with him, appealing to emotions and ideas which he was the
+  first to call into renewed and general activity. In education, in
+  art, in modifications of religious opinion and of social life, the
+  same force, if less measurable and distinct, is everywhere apparent
+  either as an active participant or a strong original impulse.</p>
+
+  <p>It need hardly be said that, as productions of genius, the
+  writings of Rousseau cannot hold any rank proportionate to the effect
+  which they thus produced. They are not among the treasures that
+  constitute our intellectual capital, the possessions which we could
+  not lose without becoming bankrupt. They are rather among the
+  instruments which, having served their purpose, may be laid aside,
+  however interesting as mementoes or admirable as curiosities. Their
+  highest qualities&#8212;their fervor, simplicity and grace&#8212;do
+  not of themselves disclose the secret of their power. From the point
+  of view of mere literary criticism we are apt to be more observant of
+  their defects than their beauties. By the side of earlier and later
+  models they are seen to be deficient in the very
+  qualities&#8212;force of passion and depth of thought&#8212;by which
+  they startled or enthralled contemporary readers.</p>
+
+  <p>If we turn to the man himself, we might imagine at the first
+  glance that none could have been less fitted for the position of a
+  leader of thought, a founder of systems and schools, the apostle of a
+  new era. The career for which Nature seemed to have destined him, and
+  which, in truth, he may almost be said to have followed, was that of
+  a vagabond, or at the best a recluse. Of all the advantages we desire
+  and anxiously seek for our children, Rousseau enjoyed none. Poverty,
+  degradation and neglect weighed upon him from his birth. The evil in
+  him was unchecked, the good unfostered, by any training hand. The
+  opportunity and the faculty of acquiring any substantial nutriment
+  from books seemed alike denied him. His intercourse with mankind
+  through all his earlier and the greater part of his later life was
+  confined to the ignorant, and with these alone was he ever able to
+  hold any harmonious relations or any grateful interchange of
+  sentiment. Physically, mentally and morally diseased, weak yet stern,
+  sensitive but unpliant, equally devoid of courage and of tact, he
+  could not come in contact with the world without suffering a shock
+  and swift recoil that drove him back to the refuge of
+  solitude&#8212;to the mute companionship of external Nature or the
+  brooding contemplation of himself. Even the ideals which, despite his
+  practical aberrations from them, he yet intensely worshiped, had, in
+  his conception of them, little connection with the activities of
+  life: truth, simplicity, order, purity and peace were ideas that
+  occupied his soul only to fill it with a horror of reality, with
+  yearnings for an idyllic repose, with dreams of a state which he
+  persuaded himself had been the original condition of the race, in
+  which virtue and right must prevail through the mere absence of
+  occasion for wrong or temptation to evil.</p>
+
+  <p>Yet it is not in some radiance breaking through this cloudy
+  environment, it is not in this or that faculty overcoming all
+  obstacles, it is in the entirety of his nature as originally formed,
+  and as moulded or marred by circumstance and fate, that we shall find
+  the secret of that spell which he exercised over men of all classes
+  and characters. The culture which might have sweetened and perhaps
+  ennobled his life would have unfitted him for his mission. It would
+  have brought him more or less into harmony with his age; and it was
+  by his utter and vehement opposition to its habits and opinions that
+  he turned the stream into a different channel. Not only his finer
+  intuitions and purer tastes, but his unsatisfied desires, his errors,
+  his remorse, urged him to make war upon it, as the step-mother that
+  had sought to enervate or brutalize his mind while defrauding him of
+  his inheritance. He held up the image of its corruption, shallowness
+  and false refinement, and that of a life of simple manners and
+  unperverted instincts. That he depicted this as the real life of a
+  primitive epoch only gave greater pungency to the contrast. The
+  eighteenth century, aroused to the consciousness of its own
+  degeneracy, its false and artificial existence, readily accepted an
+  idealized Geneva, an idealized Sparta, as the type of a primitive
+  community, the model on which society was to be refashioned. What the
+  &quot;pure word of God&quot; had been to the Reformers, that
+  &quot;Nature&quot; became to the revolutionists in all departments of
+  thought and action, in poetry and music as in philosophy and
+  politics&#8212;a shibboleth to rally and unite all the elements of
+  discontent and aspirations for change, a universal test by which to
+  try all doctrines and systems. In either case, as was soon
+  discovered, the test would itself admit of diverse interpretations;
+  but in the mean while the solvent had taken effect, the authority of
+  custom and tradition had been overthrown, old organizations had
+  crumbled into dust.</p>
+
+  <p>That the agitation thus evoked should have produced many
+  grotesque, many frightful results, cannot seem strange. Long before
+  the lower strata had been reached the surface was in a state of
+  ebullition. Polite society was delightfully thrilled with a feeling
+  of its own depravity, and found in the novel sensation the zest that
+  had been wanting to its jaded powers of enjoyment. Nor was it
+  awakened from its illusions by the first eruption from below. In a
+  transport of delirium it threw away, as if they had been idle gems,
+  of use only when cast into the public treasury, the privileges and
+  prerogatives that had formed the basis of the monarchy. Thenceforth
+  the only effort was to secure a <i>tabula rasa</i> on which to rear
+  that new and perfect state of which the model was at hand, if only
+  the proper materials could be found and the foundations be laid. Of
+  the men who acquired a temporary mastery, three only, by the massive
+  force of practical genius, were able to free themselves from the
+  fascination of the common ideal. But Mirabeau and Danton were
+  overborne by the full tide, and Napoleon, when he arrested it in its
+  languor, turned it into depths from which it emerged the other day to
+  sweep away his column in the Place Vend�me.</p>
+
+  <p>In thus glancing at the vast proportions of the subject, we have
+  wandered far from the range of Mr. Morley&#39;s work, which has a
+  special purpose with well-defined limits. It is not a complete
+  biography of Rousseau, much less a history of his times. It gives no
+  full or vivid portraiture of character, no adequate narrative of
+  events, no summary even of results. It is an analytical study, an
+  examination of the life and works of <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  247]</span> Rousseau with a view to determine their precise nature
+  and quality, rather than their relative value or bearings. Within
+  these limits it exhibits ample knowledge and skill, combined with a
+  searching but tolerant judgment. Without labored discussion or
+  passionate apology, it clears away entangling prejudices and current
+  misconceptions, to assume a position from which undistorted views may
+  be obtained. At times, indeed, Mr. Morley carries his impartiality to
+  the verge of indifference. His certificate of Grimm&#39;s
+  &quot;integrity&quot; rests on very slender grounds, and the Memoirs
+  of Madame d&#39;�pinay are subjected to no such scrutiny as the
+  circumstances of their composition and preservation call for, before
+  their statements can be accepted as authority. But whatever minor
+  defects may be found in the book, the general spirit and execution
+  are admirable. It is full of interest and suggestiveness both for
+  readers to whom the subject may not be unfamiliar, and for those who
+  may hitherto have neglected to explore it. Above all, it is valuable
+  as marking the line to which English criticism has advanced, its
+  capacity for treating complicated and delicate questions with
+  clearness, frankness and entire fairness.</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    Pascarel: Only a Story. By &quot;Ouida,&quot; author of
+    &quot;Tricotrin,&quot; &quot;Folle-Farine,&quot; &quot;Under Two
+    Flags,&quot; etc. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott &amp; Co.
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>The genius of &quot;Ouida&quot; is <i>sui generis</i>, and must in
+  part create the standards by which it is to be judged. Her works are
+  so different from the common type of modern novels that they demand
+  to be looked at from a different point of view. The present standard
+  of excellence in prose fiction seems to be the conformity of
+  character and incident to what is actually seen in life. It is a good
+  test for all mere stories, but is manifestly <i>not</i> the test by
+  which to gauge the recent works of &quot;Ouida.&quot; She does not
+  aim at this pre-Raphaelite delineation of men and things as they are.
+  Her characters are idealizations: her later books are prose-poems,
+  not only in the affluence and rhythm of their style, but in the
+  allegoric form and purpose which, pervade them. This characteristic
+  is plain enough in <i>Tricotrin</i> and <i>Folle-Farine</i>, but
+  finds its most marked expression in <i>Pascarel</i>. &quot;Only an
+  Allegory&quot; would be a more expressive sub-title for the book than
+  &quot;Only a Story,&quot; <span class="pagenum">[pg 248]</span> for
+  the story is the mere thread which sustains and binds together a
+  series of parables and crystallized truths. Most of these, indeed,
+  she has embodied in former works, but nowhere as in <i>Pascarel</i>
+  is the author&#39;s design to teach them made so manifest.</p>
+
+  <p>The book is almost wholly free from that extravagance of
+  expression and recklessness of all established codes of taste which
+  have diverted attention from her purpose, and led to a false estimate
+  of the character and tendency of her writings. It has none of the
+  hindrances, for instance, which prevent many from seeing the
+  magnificence of the conception in <i>Folle-Farine</i>. Its object is
+  to enforce the lesson that the only true greatness is that which
+  loses sight of self&#8212;that Love, and Love alone, is, both in its
+  insight and its purpose, divine. &quot;Love sees as God sees, and
+  with infinite wisdom has infinite pardon.&quot; &quot;Laughter and
+  love are all that are really worth having in the world,&quot; but to
+  gain them &quot;one must seek them first for others, with a wish pure
+  from the greed of self.&quot; &quot;The world owes nothing to so
+  personal a passion as ambition.&quot; &quot;The first fruits of a
+  man&#39;s genius are always pure of greed.&quot; What makes a great
+  artist is the &quot;vital, absolute absorption of personality in his
+  love of art.&quot; The experience of the donzella (which constitutes
+  what there is of the story), a nobler, and, we think, a <i>truer</i>,
+  type of womanhood than Viva, yet with a like over-estimate of the
+  advantages of wealth and position, brings her to the conviction that
+  Pascarel is right. These truths, however, find their most effective
+  illustration in the wealth of Italian tradition and history with
+  which the pages abound. &quot;Here is the secret of Florence, sublime
+  aspiration&#8212;the aspiration which gave her citizens force to live
+  in poverty and clothe themselves in simplicity, so as to give up
+  their millions of florins to bequeath miracles in stone and metal and
+  color to the future.&quot; &quot;In her throes of agony she kept
+  always within her that love of the ideal, impersonal, consecrate,
+  void of greed, which is the purification of the individual life and
+  the regeneration of the body politic.&quot; &quot;Her great men drew
+  their inspiration from the very air they breathed, and the men who
+  knew they were not great had the patience and unselfishness to do
+  their minor work for her zealously and perfectly.&quot; The workmen
+  who chiseled the stones and the boys who ground the colors &quot;did
+  their part mightily and with reverence.&quot; The unrivaled works of
+  art which are the true greatness of Italy owe their existence to the
+  self-forgetfulness of their makers. So the love of Italy is in its
+  essence a love for that which is best and noblest in human
+  nature&#8212;&quot;the consecration of self to an object higher than
+  self.&quot; This love, however, to be true, must be more than
+  perception or sentiment&#8212;it must bear fruit in <i>likeness</i>
+  to that which it admires. &quot;Each gift which men receive imposes a
+  corresponding duty.&quot; &quot;We are Italians,&quot; says Pascarel
+  after recounting the glories of Italian achievement: &quot;great as
+  the heritage is, so great the duty likewise.&quot; As a
+  companion-book of Italian travel, <i>Pascarel</i> has a special
+  value, suffused as it is throughout with the blended charm of
+  picturesque beauty and magical associations that belongs to the
+  country and the people.</p>
+  <hr />
+
+  <h3><a name="books" id="books"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> <i>Books
+  Received</i>.</h3>
+
+  <p>The Great Events of History, from the Creation of Man till the
+  Present Time. By William Francis Collier, LL.D., Trinity College,
+  Dublin. Edited by an experienced American Teacher, New York: J.W.
+  Schermerhorn &amp; Co.</p>
+
+  <p>Words and their Uses, Past and Present: A Study of the English
+  Language. By Richard Grant White. New edition, revised and corrected.
+  New York: Sheldon &amp; Co.</p>
+
+  <p>Manual of Land Surveying, with Tables. By David Murray, A.M.,
+  Ph.D., Professor of Mathematics in Rutgers College. New York: J.W.
+  Schermerhorn &amp; Co.</p>
+
+  <p>The Greatest Plague of Life; or, The Adventures of a Lady in
+  Search of a Good Servant. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson &amp;
+  Brothers.</p>
+
+  <p>Snatches of Song. By Jeanie Morison (Mrs. Campbell of Ballochyle).
+  London: Longmans, Green &amp; Co.</p>
+
+  <p>The Life and Times of Philip Schuyler. By Benson J. Lossing, LL.D.
+  New York: Sheldon &amp; Co.</p>
+
+  <p>Lewis Arundel: A Novel. By Frank E. Smedley. Philadelphia: T.B.
+  Peterson &amp; Brothers.</p>
+
+  <p>Our Forest Home. By the author of &quot;Robert Joy&#39;s
+  Victory.&quot; Illustrated. Boston: Henry Hoyt.</p>
+
+  <p>Philip Earnscliffe: A Novel. By Mrs. Annie Edwards. New York:
+  Sheldon &amp; Co.</p>
+
+  <p>Heart&#39;s Delight. By Mrs. Caroline E.K. Davis. Illustrated.
+  Boston: Henry Hoyt. Henry Hoyt.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular
+Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873., by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE ***
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+</pre>
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,8402 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature
+and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873., by Various
+
+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: Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873.
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: October 22, 2004 [EBook #13828]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Patricia Bennett and the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE
+
+OF
+
+_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE_.
+
+Vol XII, No. 29.
+
+AUGUST, 1873.
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS
+  THE NEW HYPERION [Illustrated] By EDWARD STRAHAN.
+    II.--The Two Chickens.
+  OUR HOME IN THE TYROL [Illustrated] By MARGARET HOWITT.
+    CHAPTER VII.
+    CHAPTER VIII.
+  ON THE CHURCH STEPS By SARAH C. HALLOWELL.
+    CHAPTER I.
+    CHAPTER II.
+    CHAPTER III.
+    CHAPTER IV.
+    CHAPTER V.
+  INSIDE JAPAN By W.E. GRIFFIS.
+  JASON'S QUEST By CHARLES WARREN STODDARD.
+    I.
+    II.
+    III.
+    IV.
+  FOREBODINGS.
+  DEER-PARKS By REGINALD WYNFORD.
+  RAMBLES AMONG THE FRUITS AND FLOWERS OF THE TROPICS By FANNIE R. FEUDGE.
+  TWO PAPERS.--I.
+  A PRINCESS OF THULE By WILLIAM BLACK.
+    CHAPTER XII.--Transformation.
+    CHAPTER XIII.--By The Waters Of Babylon.
+  GOLD By ITA ANIOL PROKOP.
+  GLIMPSES OF GHOST-LAND By LUCY H. HOOPER.
+  AFTERNOON</a> By EMMA LAZARUS.
+  OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
+    Washington's Birthplace In 1873 By R.B.E.
+    Vicissitudes In High Life.
+    A Glass Of Old Madeira.
+    At A Matinee: A Monologue. By C.A.D.
+  NOTES.
+  LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
+    Books Received.
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+  THE FLOWERS OF WAR.
+  THE INVADERS OF ROMIAINVILLE.
+  STORY OF AN OLD MAN AND AN ELDER.
+  MERCHANDISE IN THE TEMPLE.
+  FATHER JOLIET.
+  THE TWO CHICKENS.
+  LOVE LEFT ALONE.
+  "FOND OF CHICKEN."
+  THE WIFE.
+  THE LONE CRUSADE.
+  TENDER CHARITY.
+  NECESSITY KNOWING LAW.
+  THE FERRY.
+  JOVE'S THUNDER.
+  SCHOOL.
+  ON WITH THE DANCE!
+  ENDYMION.
+  HOW THE MODERN DOG TREATS LAZARUS.
+  THE LAUGHING LACKEY.
+  THE PRESENT.
+  THE CONVALESCENT.
+  THE DIVIDED BURDEN.
+  SHARE MY CUP.
+  BREAKING STONES.
+  SICKNESS AND COURTSHIP.
+  THE WAGON.
+  DINNER-TIME!
+  FIDELITY.
+  A LITTLE VISITOR.
+  FRANCINE.
+  "DON'T WRING MY HEART!"
+  VIEW OF TAUFERS VALLEY.
+  SCHLOSS TAUFERS.
+  HAPPY SOULS IN PARADISE.
+  CROSSING THE TORRENT.
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW HYPERION.
+
+FROM PARIS TO MARLY BY WAY OF THE RHINE.
+
+II.--THE TWO CHICKENS.
+
+
+[Illustration: THE FLOWERS OF WAR.]
+
+"Thou art no less a man because thou wearest no hauberk nor mail sark,
+and goest not on horseback after foolish adventures."
+
+So I said, reassuring myself, thirty years ago, when, as Paul Flemming
+the Blond, I was meditating the courageous change of cutting off my
+soap-locks, burning my edition of Bulwer and giving my satin stocks to
+my shoemaker: I mean, when I was growing up--or, in the more beauteous
+language of that day, when Flemming was passing into the age of
+bronze, and the flowers of Paradise were turning to a sword in his
+hands.
+
+Well, I say it again, and I say it with boldness, you can wear a tin
+botany-box as bravely as a hauberk, and foolish adventures can be
+pursued equally well on foot.
+
+Stout, grizzled and short winded, I am just as nimble as ever in the
+pretty exercise of running down an illusion. Yet I must confess, as I
+passed the abattoirs of La Villette, whence blue-smocked butcher-boys
+were hauling loads of dirty sheepskins, I could not but compare myself
+to the honest man mentioned in one of Sardou's comedies: "The good
+soul escaped out of a novel of Paul de Kock's, lost in the throng
+on the Boulevard Malesherbes, and asking the way to the woods of
+Romainville."
+
+[Illustration: THE INVADERS OF ROMIAINVILLE.]
+
+Romainville! And hereabouts its tufts of chestnuts should be, or were
+wont to be of old. I am in the grimy quarter of Belleville. Scene of
+factories, of steam-works and tall bleak mansions as it is to-day,
+Belleville was once a jolly country village, separated on its hilltop
+from Paris, which basked at its feet like a city millionaire sprawling
+before the check apron and leather shoes of a rustic beauty. Inhabited
+by its little circle of a few thousand souls, it looked around itself
+on its eminence, seeing the vast diorama of the city on one side,
+and on the other the Pres-Saint-Gervais, and the woods of Romainville
+waving off to the horizon their diminishing crests of green. A jolly
+old tavern, the Ile d'Amour, hung out its colored lamps among the
+trees, and the orchestra sounded, and the feet of gay young lovers,
+who now are skeletons, beat the floor. The street was a bower of
+lilacs, and opposite the Ile d'Amour was the village church.
+
+Then the workmen of the Paris suburbs were invaders: they besieged the
+village on Sundays in daring swarms, to be beaten back successfully by
+the duties of every successive Monday. Now they are fixed there. They
+are the colorless inhabitants of these many-storied houses. The town's
+long holiday is over. Where the odorous avenues of lilacs stretched
+along, affording bouquets for maman and the children and toothpicks
+for ferocious young warriors from the garrisons, are odious lengths
+of wall. Everything is changed, and from the gardens the grisettes of
+Alfred de Musset are with sighing sent. Their haunts are laboratories
+now, and the Ile d'Amour is a mayor's office.
+
+I, to whom the beer-scandals of the Rhine and the students' holidays
+of the Seine were among the Childe-Harold enormities of a not
+over-sinful youth, was sadly disappointed. Thinking of the groves of
+an Eden, I ran against the furnaces of a Pandemonium. For a stroll
+back toward my adolescence, Belleville was a bad beginning. I
+determined to console myself with the green meadows of Saint-Gervais
+and the pretty woods of Romainville. Attaining the latter was half
+an hour's affair among long walls and melancholy houses: at
+Saint-Gervais, a double file of walls and houses--at Romainville,
+houses and walls again. In the latter, where formerly there were
+scarcely three watches distributed amongst the whole village, I was
+incensed to find the shop of a clockmaker: it was somewhat consoling,
+though, to find it a clockmaker's of the most pronounced suburban
+kind, with pairs of wooden shoes amongst the guard-chains in the
+window, and pots of golden mustard ranged alternately with the
+antiquated silver turnips.
+
+Before the church I found yet standing a knotty little elder tree, a
+bewitched-looking vegetable. A beadle in a blouse, engaged in washing
+one of the large altar-candles with soap and water at the public pump,
+gave me the following history of the elder tree. I am passionately
+fond of legends, and this is one quite hot and fresh, only a hundred
+years old. Hear the tale of the elder of Romainville.
+
+The excellent cure of Romainville in the last century was a man of
+such a charitable nature that his all was in the hands of the
+poor. The grocer of the village, a potentate of terrific powers and
+inexorable temper, finally refused to trust him with the supply of
+oil necessary for the lamp in the sanctuary. Soon the sacred flame
+sputtered, palpitated, flapped miserably over the crusted wick: the
+cure, responsible before Heaven for the life of his lamp, tottered
+away from the altar with groans of anguish. Arrived in the garden, he
+threw himself on his knees, crying _Mea culpa_, and beating his bosom.
+The garden contained only medicinal plants, shaded by a linden and an
+elder: completely desperate, the unhappy priest fixed his moist eyes
+on the latter, when lo! the bark opened, the trunk parted, and a jet
+of clear aromatic liquid spouted forth, quite different from any sap
+yielded by elder before. It was oil. A miracle!
+
+The report spread. The grocer came and humbly visited the priest in
+his garden, his haughty hat, crammed with bills enough to have spread
+agony through all the cottages of Romainville, humbly carried between
+his legs. He came proposing a little speculation. In exchange for a
+single spigot to be inserted in the tree, and the hydraulic rights
+going with the same, he offered all the bounties dearest to the
+priestly heart--unlimited milk and honey, livers of fat geese and pies
+lined with rabbit. The priest, though hungry--hungry with the demoniac
+hunger of a fat and paunchy man--turned his back on the tempter.
+
+[Illustration: STORY OF AN OLD MAN AND AN ELDER.]
+
+One day a salad, the abstemious relish yielded by his garden herbs,
+was set on the table by Jeanneton. At the first mouthful the good cure
+made a terrible face--the salad tasted of lamp-oil. The unhappy girl
+had filled a cruet with the sacred fluid. From that day the bark
+closed and the flow ceased.
+
+There is one of the best oil-stories you ever heard, and one of the
+most recent of attested miracles. For my part, I am half sorry it is
+so well attested, and that I have the authority of that beadle in the
+blouse, who took my little two-franc piece with an expression of much
+intelligence. I love the Legend.
+
+[Illustration: MERCHANDISE IN THE TEMPLE.]
+
+The environs of Paris are but chary of Legend. I treasure this
+specimen, then, as if it had been a rare flower for my botany-box.
+
+But the botany-box indeed, how heavy it was growing! The umbrella, how
+awkward! The sun, how vigorous and ardent! Who ever supposed it could
+become so hot by half-past eight in the morning?
+
+[Illustration: FATHER JOLIET.]
+
+Certainly the ruthless box, which seemed to have taken root on my
+back, was heavier than it used to be. Had its rotundity developed,
+like its master's? I stopped and gathered a flower, meaning to analyze
+it at my next resting-place. I opened my box: then indeed I perceived
+the secret of its weightiness. It revealed three small rolls of
+oatmeal toasted, a little roast chicken, a bit of ham, some mustard
+in a cleaned-out inkstand! This now was the treachery of Josephine.
+Josephine, who never had the least sympathy for my botanical
+researches, and who had small comprehension of the nobler hungers and
+thirsts of the scientific soul, had taken it on her to convert my box
+into a portable meat-safe!
+
+Bless the old meddler, how I thanked her for her treason! The aspect
+of the chicken, in its blistered and varnished brown skin, reminded
+me that I was clamorously hungry. Shade of Apicius! is it lawful for
+civilized mortals to be so hungry as I was at eight or nine in the
+morning?
+
+At last I saw the end of that dusty, featureless street which
+stretches from the barrier to the extremity of Romainville. I saw
+spreading before me a broad plain, a kind of desert, where, by
+carefully keeping my eyes straight ahead, I could avoid the sight of
+all houses, walls, human constructions whatever.
+
+My favorite traveler, the celebrated Le Vaillant, to whom I am
+indebted for so many facts and data toward my great theory of
+Comparative Geography, says that in first reaching the solitudes of
+Caffraria he felt himself elated with an unknown joy. No traced road
+was before him to dictate his pathway--no city shaded him with its
+towers: his fortune depended on his own unaided instincts.
+
+I felt the same delight, the same liberty. Something like the heavy
+strap of a slave seemed to break behind me as I found myself quite
+clear of the metropolis. Mad schemes of unanticipated journeys danced
+through my head; I might amble on to Villemonble, Montfermeil, Raincy,
+or even to the Forest of Bondy, so dear to the experimental botanist.
+Had I not two days before me ere my compact with Hohenfels at Marly?
+And in two days you can go from Paris to Florence. Meantime, from the
+effects of famine, my ribs were sinking down upon the pelvic basin of
+my frame.
+
+The walk, the open air, the sight of the fowl, whose beak now burned
+into my bosom's core, had sharpened my appetite beyond bearing. Yet
+how could I eat without some drop of cider or soft white wine to
+drink? Besides, slave of convention that I have grown, I no longer
+understand the business of eating without its concomitants--a shelter
+and something to sit on.
+
+The plain became wearisome. There are two things the American-born,
+however long a resident abroad, never forgives the lack of in
+Europe. The first I miss when I am in Paris: it is the perpetual
+street-mending of an American town. Here the boulevards, smeared with
+asphaltum or bedded with crunched macadam, attain smoothness without
+life: you travel on scum. But in the dear old American streets the
+epidermis is vital: what strength and mutual reliance in the cobbles
+as they stand together in serried ranks, like so many eye-teeth! How
+they are perpetually sinking into prodigious ruts, along which the
+ponderous drays are forced to dance on one wheel in a paroxysm
+of agony and critical equipoise! But the perpetual state of
+street-mending, that is the crowning interest. What would I not
+sometimes give to exchange the Swiss sweeping-girls, plying their long
+brooms desolately in the mud, for the paviors' hammers of America,
+which play upon the pebbles like a carillon of muffled bells? As
+for the other lack, it is the want of wooden bridges. Far away in my
+native meadows gleams the silver Charles: the tramp of horses' hoofs
+comes to my ear from the timbers of the bridge. _Here_, with a pelt
+and a scramble your bridge is crossed: nothing addresses the heart
+from its stony causeway. But the low, arched tubes of wood that span
+the streams of my native land are so many bass-viols, sending out
+mellow thunders with every passing wagon to blend with the rustling
+stream and the sighing woods. Shall I never hear them again?
+
+A reminiscence more than ten years old came to give precision to my
+ramblings in the past. Beyond the rustic pathway I was now following I
+could perceive the hills of Trou-Vassou. Hereabouts, if memory served
+me, I might find a welcome, almost a home, and the clasp of cordial if
+humble hands. Here I might find folks who would laugh when I arrived,
+and would be glad to share their luncheon with me But--ten years gone
+by!
+
+[Illustration: THE TWO CHICKENS.]
+
+This computation chilled my hopes. What family remains ten years in a
+spot--above all, a spot on that fluctuating periphery of Paris, where
+the mighty capital, year after year, bursts belt after belt? Where
+might they have gone? Francine!--Francine must be twenty-two. Married,
+of course. Her husband, no doubt, has dragged her off to some
+other department. Her parents have followed. March, volunteer, and
+disentangle yourself from these profitless speculations!
+
+Ten minutes farther on, in the shade of the fort at Noisy-le-Sec,
+I saw a red gable and the sign of a tavern. As a tourist I have a
+passion for a cabaret: in practice, I find Vefours to unite perhaps a
+greater number of advantages.
+
+[Illustration: LOVE LEFT ALONE.]
+
+Some soldiers of the Fortieth were drinking and laughing in a corner.
+I took a table not far off, and drew my cold victuals out of my box of
+japanned tin, which they doubtless took for a new form of canteen. The
+red-fisted garcon, without waiting for orders, set up before me, like
+ten-pins, a castor in wood with two enormous bottles, and a litre of
+that rinsing of the vats which, under the name "wine of the country,"
+is so distressingly similar in every neighborhood. Resigned to
+anything, I was about drawing out my slice of ham, the chicken seeming
+to me just there somewhat too proud a bird and out of harmony with the
+local color, when my glance met two gray eyes regarding my own in the
+highest state of expansion. The lashes, the brows, the hair and the
+necklace of short beard were all very thick and quite gray. The face
+they garnished was that of the tavern-keeper.
+
+[Illustration: "FOND OF CHICKEN."]
+
+"Why, it is you, after all, Father Joliet!" I said, after a rapid
+inspection of his figure.
+
+[Illustration: THE WIFE.]
+
+"Ah, it is Monsieur Flemming, the Americain-flamand!" cried the host,
+striking one hand into the other at the imminent risk of breaking his
+pipe. In a trice he trundled off my bottle of rinsings, and replaced
+it by one of claret with an orange seal, set another glass, and posted
+himself in front of me.
+
+I asked the waiter for two plates, and with a slight blush evoked the
+chicken from my box. The soldiers of the Fortieth opened a battery of
+staring and hungry eyes.
+
+"And how came you here?" asked I of Joliet.
+
+"It is I who am at the head of the hotel," he replied, proudly
+pointing out the dimensions of the place by spreading his hands.
+"My old establishment has sunk into the fosses of the fort: it was a
+transaction between the government and myself."
+
+"And was the transaction a good one for you?"
+
+"Not so bad, not so bad," said he, winking his honest gray eyes with
+a world of simple cunning. "It cannot be so very bad, since I owe
+nothing on the hotel, and the cellar is full, and I am selling
+wholesale and retail."
+
+The vanity which a minute since had expanded his hands now got into
+his legs, and set them upright under his body. He stood upon them,
+his eyes proudly lowered upon the seal of the claret. A pang of envy
+actually crossed my mind. I, simple _rentier_, with my two little
+establishments pressing more closely upon my resources with every
+year's increase of house-rates, how could I look at this glorious
+small freeholder without comparisons?
+
+"So, then, Father Joliet," said I, "you are rich?"
+
+"At least I depend no longer on my horse, and that thanks to you and
+the government."
+
+"To me! What do you mean?"
+
+"Why, have you forgotten the two chickens?"
+
+[Illustration: THE LONE CRUSADE.]
+
+At the allusion to the chickens we caught each other's eye, and
+laughed like a pair of augurs. But the mysterious fowls shall be
+explained to the reader.
+
+[Illustration: TENDER CHARITY.]
+
+[Illustration: NECESSITY KNOWING LAW.]
+
+I need not explain that I have cast my lot with the Colonial Americans
+of Paris, and taken their color. It is a sweet and luxurious mode of
+life. The cooks send round our dinners quite hot, or we have faultless
+servants, recommended from one colonist to another: these capital
+creatures sometimes become so thoroughly translated into American
+that I have known them shift around from flat to flat in colonized
+households of the second and third stories without ever touching
+French soil for the best part of a lifetime. At our receptions,
+dancing-teas and so on we pass our time in not giving offence.
+Federals and Confederates, rich cotton-spinners from Rhode Island and
+farmers from thousand-acre granges in the West, are obliged to mingle
+and please each other. Naturally, we can have no more political
+opinions than a looking-glass. We entertain just such views as
+_Galignani_ gives us every morning, harmonized with paste from a dozen
+newspapers. Our grand national effort, I may say, the common
+principle that binds us together as a Colony, is to forget that we
+are Americans. We accordingly give our whole intellects to the task of
+appearing like Europeans: our women succeed in this particularly well.
+Miss Yuba Sequoia Smith, whose father made a fortune in water-rights,
+is now afraid to walk a single block without the attendance of a
+chambermaid in a white cap, though she came up from California quite
+alone by the old Panama route. Everybody agrees that our ladies dress
+well. Shall I soon forget how proud Mrs. Aquila Jones was when
+a gentleman of the emperor's body-guard took her for Marguerite
+Bellanger in the Bois? Our men, not having the culture of costume to
+attend to, are perhaps a little in want of a stand-point. Still,
+we can play billiards in the Grand Hotel and buy fans at the
+Palais Royal. We go out to Saint-Cloud on horseback, we meet at the
+minister's; and I contend that there was something conciliatory and
+national in a Southern colonel offering to take Bigelow to see
+Menken at the Gaite, or when I saw some West Pointers and a nephew of
+Beauregard's lighting the pipe of peace at a handsome tobacconist's
+in the Rue Saint-Honore. The consciousness that we have no longer a
+nationality, and that nobody respects us, adds a singular calm, an
+elevation, to our views. Composed as our cherished little society is
+of crumbs from every table under heaven, we have succeeded in forming
+a way of life where the crusty fortitude and integrity of patriotism
+is unnecessary. Our circle is like the green palace of the magpies in
+Musset's _Merle Blanc_, and like them we live "de plaisir, d'honneur,
+de bavardage, de gloire et de chiffons."
+
+[Illustration: THE FERRY.]
+
+[Illustration: JOVE'S THUNDER.]
+
+I confess that there was a period, between the fresh alacrity of a
+stranger's reception in the Colony and the settled habits I have
+now fallen into, when I was rather uneasy. A society of migrators, a
+system woven upon shooting particles, like a rainbow on the rain,
+was odd. Residents of some permanency, like myself, were constantly
+forming eternal friendships with people who wrote to them in a month
+or two from Egypt. In this way a quantity of my friendships were
+miserably lacerated, until I learned by practice just how much
+friendship to give. At this period I was much occupied with vain
+conciliations, concessions and the reconciling of inconsistencies. A
+brave American from the South, an ardent disciple of Calhoun, was a
+powerful advocate of State Rights, and advocated them so well that
+I was almost convinced; when it appeared one day that the right of
+States to individual action was to cease in cases where a living
+chattel was to escape from the South to the North.
+
+[Illustration: SCHOOL.]
+
+In this case the State, in violation of its own
+laws unrecognizant of that kind of ownership, was to account for the
+property and give it back, in obedience to general Congressional order
+and to the most advanced principles of Centralization. Before I
+had digested this pill another was administered to me in that
+small English section of our circle which gave us much pride and an
+occasional son-in-law. This was by no less a person than my dear old
+friend Berkley, now grown a ruddy sexagenarian, but still given to
+eating breakfast in his bath-tub. The wealthy Englishman, who had
+got rich by exporting china ware, was sound on the subject of free
+commerce between nations. That any industry, no matter how young might
+be the nation practicing it, or how peculiar the difficulties of its
+prosecution, should ever be the subject of home protection, he stamped
+as a fallacy too absurd to be argued. The journals venturing such
+an opinion were childish drivelers, putting forth views long since
+exploded before the whole world. He was still loud in this opinion
+when his little book of epigrams, _The Raven of Zurich and Other
+Rhymes_, came out, and being bright and saucy was reprinted in
+America. The knowledge that he could not tax on a foreign soil his own
+ideas, the plastic pottery of his brain, was quite too much for
+his mental balance, and he took to inveighing against free trade
+in literary manufactures without the slightest perception of
+inconsistency, and with all the warmth, if not the eloquence, of Mr.
+Dickens on the same theme. The gradual accumulation of subjects like
+these--subjects _taboo_ in gentle society--soon made it apparent that
+in a Colony of such diverse colors, where every man had a sore spot
+or a grievance, and even the Cinderellas had corns in their little
+slippers, harmony could only be obtained by keeping to general
+considerations of honor, nobility, glory, and the politics of
+Beloochistan; on which points we all could agree, and where Mr.
+Berkley's witty eloquence was a wonder.
+
+[Illustration: ON WITH THE DANCE!]
+
+It is to my uneasy period, when I was sick with private griefs and
+giddy with striving to reconcile incompatibilities, that the episode
+of the Chickens belongs. I was looking dissatisfied out of one of
+my windows. Hohenfels, disappointed of a promenade by an afternoon
+shower, was looking dissatisfied out of the other. Two or three
+people, waiting for four o'clock lunch, were lounging about. I had
+just remarked, I believe, that I was a melancholy man, for ever
+drinking "the sweet wormwood of my sorrows." A dark phantom, like that
+of Adamastor, stood up between me and the stars.
+
+"Nonsense, you ingrate!" responded the baron from his niche, "you are
+only too happy. You are now in the precise position to define my
+old conception of the Lucky Dog. The Lucky Dog, you know, in my
+vocabulary, is he who, free from all domestic cares, saunters up and
+down his room in gown and slippers, drums on the window of a rainy
+afternoon, and, as he stirs his evening fire, snaps his fingers at the
+world, saying, 'I have no wife nor children, good or bad, to provide
+for.'"
+
+[Illustration: ENDYMION.]
+
+I replied that I did not willingly give way to grief, but that the
+main-spring of my life was broken.
+
+"Did you ever try," spoke up a buxom lady from a sofa--it was the
+Frau Kranich, widow of the Frankfort banker, the same who used to give
+balls while her husband was drugged to sleep with opium, and now for
+a long time in Paris for some interminable settlement with Nathan
+Rothschild--"Did you ever try the tonic of a good action? _I_ never
+did, but they actually say it rejuvenates one considerably."
+
+I avowed that I had more faith in the study of Geography.
+Nevertheless, to oblige her, I would follow any suggestion.
+
+[Illustration: HOW THE MODERN DOG TREATS LAZARUS.]
+
+"Benefit the next person who applies to you."
+
+"Madame, I will obey."
+
+At this moment a wagon of singular appearance drew up before my
+windows. I knew it well enough: it was the vehicle of a handy,
+convenient man who came along every other morning to pick up odd jobs
+from me and my neighbors. He could tinker, carpenter, mend harness:
+his wife, seated in the wagon by his side, was good at a button, or
+could descend and help Josephine with her ironing. A visit at this
+hour, however, was unprecedented.
+
+As Charles was beginning a conversation under the hood of the wagon, I
+opened the window. "Come into the room," I said.
+
+Hohenfels maliciously opened his. "Come in," he added "Monsieur
+Flemming is especially anxious to do you a benefit."
+
+The man, uncovering, was now standing in the little garden before
+the house--a man with a face at once intelligent and candid, which is
+unfortunately rare among the poor rascals of his grade. Although still
+young, he was growing gray: his blouse, patched and re-sewed at all
+the seams, was clean and whole. Poverty had tested him, but had as yet
+picked no flaws in him. By this time my windows were alive with faces.
+
+The man, humble but not awkward, made two or three respectful bows.
+"Monsieur," he said to me, "I hope you are fond of chickens. I am
+desirous to sell you a fine pair."
+
+[Illustration: THE LAUGHING LACKEY.]
+
+Chickens for me! and what was it supposed I should do with them?
+At this point the voice of the Frau Kranich was heard, clear and
+malicious: "It is a bargain: bring them in."
+
+At the same time the canvas cover of the wagon puffed outward, giving
+issue to a heavy sigh.
+
+The man went to a sort of great cage in lattice-work occupying the
+back of the vehicle. Then he backed his wagon up to the sidewalk, and
+we saw, sitting on the cage and framed by the oval of the wagon-cover,
+a young woman of excellent features, but sadly pale. She now held the
+two chickens in her lap, caressing them, laying their heads against
+her cheek, and enwreathing them in the folds of her great shawl. I
+could only close the bargain with the utmost speed, to be safe from
+ridicule.
+
+"Your price?" I asked.
+
+"Fix it yourself, sir," said the man, determined to confuse me. "You
+are doubtless thoroughly acquainted with poultry."
+
+"The nankeen--colored one," spoke up again the bell-like and
+inexorable voice from the other window, "is a yellow Crevecoeur,
+very well formed and lively-looking: the slate-colored one is a
+Cochin-China, with only a few of the white feathers lacking from
+the head. They are chef-d'oeuvres, and are worth fully forty francs
+apiece."
+
+"Only look, sir, at their claws and bills, see their tongues, and
+observe under their wings: they are young, wholesome and of fine
+strain--"
+
+He was running on when I stopped him: "Here are a hundred francs for
+you, brave man."
+
+The patchwork blouse cut a caper, a look of lively joy shot from
+the man's eyes, where a tear was gathering, and the wagon, from its
+bursting cover, gave utterance to a sob.
+
+"Why sell them," I asked, touched in spite of myself, "if you are so
+attached to them? Is the money indispensable to you? I might possibly
+make an advance."
+
+"Ah, you are a real Christian--you are now," said the honest Joliet,
+polishing his eyeball with his coat-cuff. "The good woman holds by
+them, it is true. Holy Virgin! it's she that has raised them, and I
+may say brooded over them in the coop. The eggs were for our salad
+when we had nothing better than nettles and sorrel. But, day in and
+night in, we have no other lodging than our wagon, and the wife is
+promising to give me a dolly; and if we don't take out the cage, where
+will the cradle go, sir?"
+
+[Illustration: THE PRESENT.]
+
+The calculation appeared reasonable. I received the birds, and they
+were the heroes, in their boudoir under the piano, of that night's
+conversazione.
+
+[Illustration: THE CONVALESCENT.]
+
+[Illustration: THE DIVIDED BURDEN.]
+
+How hard it is for a life cast upon the crowded shores of the Old
+World to regain the place once lost is shown by the history of my
+honest friend Joliet. Born in 1812, of an excellent family living
+twenty miles from Versailles, the little fellow lost his mother before
+he could talk to her. When he was ten years old, his father, who had
+failed after some land speculations, and had turned all he had into
+money, tossed him up to the lintel of the doorway, kissed him, put a
+twenty-franc gold-piece into his little pocket, and went away to
+seek his fortune in Louisiana: the son never heard of him more. The
+lady-president of a charitable society, Mademoiselle Marx, took pity
+on the abandoned child: she fed him on bones and occasionally beat
+him. She was an ingenious and inventive creature, and made her own
+cat-o'-nine-tails: an inventor is for ever demonstrating the merits
+of his implement. Soon, discovering that he was thankless and
+unteachable, she made him enter, as youngest clerk, the law-office
+of her admirer and attorney, Constabule. This gentleman, not finding
+enough engrossing work to keep the lad out of mischief, allowed him to
+sweep his rooms and blacken his boots. Little Joliet, after giving a
+volatile air to a great many of his employer's briefs by making paper
+chickens of them, showed his imperfect sense of the favors done him
+by absconding. In fact, proud and independent, he was brooding over
+boyish schemes of an honorable living and a hasty fortune. He soon
+found that every profession required an apprenticeship, and that an
+apprenticeship could only be bought for money. He was obliged, then,
+to seek his grand fortune through somewhat obscure avenues. If I
+were to follow my poor Joliet through all his transmigrations and
+metempsychoses, as I have learned them by his hints, allusions and
+confessions, I should show him by turns working a rope ferry, where
+the stupid and indolent cattle, whose business it is to draw men, were
+drawn by him; then letter-carrier; supernumerary and call-boy in a
+village theatre; road-mender on a vicinal route; then a beadle,
+a bell-ringer, and a sub-teacher in an infant school, where he
+distributed his own ignorance impartially amongst his little patrons
+at the end of a stick; after this, big drum in the New Year's
+festivals, and ready at a moment's opportunity to throw down the
+drumstick and plunge among the dancers, for Joliet was a well-hinged
+lad, and the blood of nineteen years was tingling in his heels. After
+fluttering thus from branch to branch, like the poor birdling that
+cannot take its flight, discouraged by his wretched attempts at life,
+he plunged straight before him, hoping for nothing but a turn of luck,
+driving over the roads and fields, lending a hand to the farmers,
+sleeping in stables and garrets, or oftener in the open air;
+sometimes charitably sheltered in a kind man's barn, and perhaps--oh
+bliss!--honestly employed with him for a week or two; at others rudely
+repulsed as a good-for-nothing and vagabond. Vagabond! That truly was
+his profession now. He forgot the charms of a fixed abode. He came
+to like his gypsy freedom, the open air and complete independence. He
+laughed at his misery, provided it shifted its place occasionally.
+
+[Illustration: SHARE MY CUP.]
+
+[Illustration: BREAKING STONES.]
+
+One day, when Hazard, his ungenerous guardian, seemed to have
+quite forgotten him, he walked--on an empty stomach, as the doctors
+say--past the lofty walls of a chateau. A card was placed at the gate
+calling for additional hands at a job of digging. Each workman, it
+was promised, had a right to a plate of soup before beginning. This
+article tempted him. At the gate a lackey, laughing in his face,
+told him the notice had been posted there six months: workmen were no
+longer wanted. "Wait, though," said the servant, and in another minute
+gave the applicant a horse!--a real, live horse in blood and bones,
+but in bones especially. "There," said the domestic, "set a beggar
+on horseback and see him ride to the devil!" And, laughing with that
+unalloyed enjoyment which one's own wit alone produces, he retired
+behind his wicket.
+
+[Illustration: SICKNESS AND COURTSHIP.]
+
+The horse thus vicariously fulfilling the functions of a plate of soup
+was a wretched glandered beast--not old, but shunned on account of the
+contagious nature of his disease. Having received the order to take
+him to be killed at the abattoir, monsieur the valet, having better
+things to do, gave the commission to Joliet, with all its perquisites.
+
+Joliet did not kill the steed: he cured it. He tended it, he drenched
+it, he saved it. By what remedy? I cannot tell. I have never been a
+farrier, though Joliet himself made me perforce a poulterer. Many a
+bit of knowledge is picked up by those who travel the great roads. The
+sharp Bohemian, by playing at all trades, brushing against gentry of
+all sorts and scouring all neighborhoods, becomes at length a living
+cyclopaedia.
+
+[Illustration: THE WAGON.]
+
+Joliet, like Democritus and Plato, saw everything with his own eyes,
+learned everything at first hand. He was a keen observer, and in our
+interviews subsequent to the affair of the chickens I was more than
+once surprised by the extent of his information and the subtlety of
+his insight. His wits were tacked on to a number of remote supports.
+In our day, when each science has become so complicated, so obese,
+that a man's lifetime may be spent in exercising round one of them,
+there are hardly any generalizers or observers fit to estimate their
+relativity, except among the two classes called by the world idlers
+and ignorants--the poets and the Bohemians.
+
+Joliet, now having joined the ranks of the cavalry, found his account
+in his new dignity. He became an orderly, a messenger. He carried
+parcels, he transported straw and hay. If the burden was too heavy for
+the poor convalescent, the man took his own portion with a good grace,
+and the two mutually aided each other on the errand. Thanks to his
+horse, the void left by his failure to learn a trade was filled up by
+a daily and regular task: what was better, an affection had crept into
+his heart. He loved his charge, and his charge loved him.
+
+This great hotel, the world, seemed to be promising entertainment then
+for both man and beast, when an epoch of disaster came along--a season
+of cholera. In the villages where Joliet's business lay the doors just
+beginning to be hospitable were promptly shut against him. Where the
+good townsmen had recognized Assistance in his person, they now saw
+Contagion.
+
+[Illustration: DINNER-TIME!]
+
+If he had been a single man, he could have lain back and waited for
+better times. But he now had two mouths to feed. He kissed his horse
+and took a resolution.
+
+He had never been a mendicant. "Beggars don't go as hungry as I have
+gone," said he. "But what will you have? Nobility obliges. My father
+was a gentleman. I have broken stones, but never the _devoirs_ of my
+order."
+
+He left the groups of villages among which his new industry had lain.
+The cholera was behind him: trouble, beggary perhaps, was before him.
+As night was coming on, Joliet, listlessly leading his horse, which he
+was too considerate to ride, saw upon the road a woman whom he took
+in the obscurity for a farmer's wife of the better class or a decent
+villager. For an introduction the opportunity was favorable enough.
+On her side, the _quasi_ farmer's wife, seeing in the dusk an honest
+fellow dragging a horse, took him for a "gentleman's gentleman" at
+the least, and the two accosted each other with that easy facility of
+which the French people have the secret. Each presented the other with
+a hand and a frank smile.
+
+[Illustration: FIDELITY.]
+
+Joliet, whom I have erred perhaps in comparing to Democritus, was
+nevertheless a laugher and a philosopher. But his grand ha-ha! usually
+infectious, was not shared on this occasion. The wanderer could not
+show much merriment. A sewing-woman with a capacity for embroidery,
+her needle had given her support, but now a sudden warning of
+paralysis, and symptoms of cholera added to that, had driven her
+almost to despair. She was without home, friend or profession.
+
+[Illustration: A LITTLE VISITOR.]
+
+Joliet set her incontinently on horseback, and walked by her side to
+a good village cure's two miles off--the same who had assisted him to
+his first communion, and for whom he subsequently became a beadle. The
+kind priest opened his arms to the man, his heart to the woman, his
+stable to the horse. For his second patient my Bohemian set in motion
+all his stock of curative ideas. In a month she was well, and the cure
+no longer had three pensioners, for of two of them he made one.
+
+Two poverties added may make a competence. Monsieur and Madame Joliet
+were good and willing. The man began to wear a strange not
+unbecoming air of solidity and good morals. The girls now saluted him
+respectfully when he passed through a village.
+
+One thing, however, in the midst of his proud honeymoon perplexed him
+much. Hardly married, and over head and ears in love, he knew not how
+to invite his bride to some wretched garret, himself deserting her to
+resume his former life in the open air. To give up the latter seemed
+like losing existence itself.
+
+One morning, as he asked himself the difficult question, a pair of
+old wheels at the door of a cartwright seemed of their own accord
+to resolve his perplexity. He bought them, the payment to be made in
+labor: for a week he blew the wheelwright's bellows. The wheels were
+his own: to make a wagon was now the affair of a few old boards and a
+gypsy's inventiveness.
+
+Thus was conceived that famous establishment where, for several years,
+lived the independent monarch and his spouse, rolling over the roads,
+circulating through the whole belt of villages around Paris, and
+carrying in their ambulant home, like the Cossacks, their utensils,
+their bed, their oven, their all.
+
+From town to town they carried packages, boxes and articles of barter.
+At dinner-time the van was rolled under a tree. The lady of the house
+kindled a fire in the portable stove behind a hedge or in a ditch. The
+hen-coop was opened, and the sage seraglio with their sultan prudently
+pecked about for food. At the first appeal they re-entered their cage.
+
+[Illustration: FRANCINE.]
+
+At the same appeal came flying up the dog of the establishment, a most
+piteous-looking griffin, disheveled, moulted, staring out of one eye,
+lame and wild. For devotion and good sense his match could be found
+nowhere. Like his horse, his wife, his house and the pins in his
+sleeve, Joliet had picked the collie up on the road.
+
+The arrival of a tiny visitor to the Bohemian's address made a
+change necessary. Little Francine's dowry was provided by my humorous
+acquisition of the yellow and slate-colored chickens.
+
+With his savings and my banknote Joliet determined to have a fixed
+residence. He succeeded of course. The walls, the windows, the doors,
+everything but the garden-patch, he picked up along the roads.
+
+[Illustration: "DON'T WRING MY HEART!"]
+
+Buried in eglantine and honeysuckle, soon no one would suspect the
+home-made character of Joliet's chateau. It became the centre of my
+botanizing excursions. Francine grew into a fair, slim girl, like the
+sweetest and most innocent of Gavarni's sketches, and sold flowers to
+the passers-by.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such were the souvenirs I had of this brave tavern-keeper in his old
+capacity of roadster and tramp. Now, after an hiatus of years, I
+found him before me in a different character at the beginning of my
+roundabout trips to Marly.
+
+But what had become of my favorite little rose-merchant?
+
+"Francine?" asked Joliet briskly, as if he was wondering whom I could
+mean by such a name. "You mean my wife? Poor thing! She is dead."
+
+"I am speaking of your daughter, Father Joliet."
+
+"Oh, my daughter, my girl Francine? She went to live with her
+godmother. It was ten years ago."
+
+"And you have not seen her since?"
+
+"Yes--yes--two years back. She has gone again."
+
+"To her godmother?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why so?"
+
+"Her godmother would not receive her. Don't wring my heart so, sir!"
+
+EDWARD STRAHAN.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+OUR HOME IN THE TYROL.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF TAUFERS VALLEY.]
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+We left the Hof one August Friday--we were not superstitious--a goodly
+company, sufficient to freight the rumbling old stage-wagon which
+jolted daily between Bruneck and Taufers, a distance of nine miles. At
+this village the sedater portion of the party were to settle down with
+books, pencils and drawing-paper until the Alpine visit should have
+been paid.
+
+The valley of Taufers, running northward with a grand vista to the
+north-west of the vast Zillerthal snow-fields, suggests at a distance
+the idea of a stern, joyless district. When in the broader Pusterthal
+the sunshine floods upland plain and slope, this important but narrow
+tributary valley lies steeped in its gloomy shade, the dark sides of
+the Sambock frowning grimly on the opposite shadowy Tesselberg. Great,
+therefore, was the surprise of some of the party to find, as we drove
+along, instead of melancholy solitude, prosperous villages basking in
+sunshine, whilst little children skipped merrily, and men and women
+worked amongst the golden stooks as if enjoying the labor of their
+hands. Yes, strange to say, effulgent sunshine everywhere on acre
+and meadow, and slanting down upon a wayside cottage garden, where
+a freshly-painted Christ lay drying between tall sunflowers. This
+cottage seemed the only shadow in this unexpectedly bright picture,
+for, occupied by a religious image-maker, crucifixes and wooden saints
+peeped wholesale out of the windows. Is it a want of sensibility in
+these poor Tyrolese peasants which causes them to cling tenaciously to
+such frightful material forms of religion, making them give prominence
+to every conceivable sign of sacred sorrow and suffering? But the
+jolting stage-wagon allowed us no time to analyze this painful,
+ever-recurring feature of the Tyrol. When we next looked up we
+saw above us, on a wooded crag, a square gray tower, which, once a
+stronghold, appears, as if exhausted with old age, to be tottering
+into the midst of lesser ruins.
+
+It was Neuhaus, once a fortress of the rigid old barons of Tuvers.
+Hugo, the sixth lord, died there in 1309, and in the chapel, which
+still stands, mass is said at stated periods for the salvation of his
+soul and the souls of his relations. The whole place would undoubtedly
+have been given over to the owls and the bats had not two adjacent
+springs--one of iron, the other of chalk and alum--been considered, a
+quarter of a century since, either as preventives or as cures for
+the cholera, then raging. A chalet was therefore planted on the rocks
+between the chapel and the castle, and a bath-house opened, which
+would probably be still much frequented on account of the beauty of
+the situation were the bath-owner only a little more attentive to the
+comfort of his humble guests.
+
+The valley, apparently so gloomy, proved not only cheerful, but full
+of romance and old-world memories. Other castles there were,
+perched gracefully on their crags; and thus, much sooner than we
+had anticipated, we found ourselves stopping at the Post in Taufers.
+Rather Sand in Taufers, the single appellation being used chiefly for
+the parent church, which, with a mortuary chapel and a house for
+the "young and sick," stands apart. Sand and Moritz, two prosperous
+villages, cluster with this group of buildings at the head of the
+valley, gathering like fiefs at the foot of the fine old castle, still
+one of the grandest feudal remains in ruin-bestrewn Tyrol. A third
+village, Mueklen, though quite distinct, lies sufficiently near to
+deserve being included in the circle.
+
+The Post, in prospect of the increase of custom occasioned by the
+Pusterthal railway, had enlarged its borders during the past winter.
+Nor had it been deceived in the speculation, for, although only one
+up-and-down train in the day crawls along the valley, the news of the
+comfortable inn in the midst of beautiful scenery had already brought
+custom enough. Thus all our powers of persuasion were lost upon
+the handsome sister of the young wirth, a noted beauty of the
+neighborhood. "Their house was full already. Nine guests, who had
+never sent word beforehand, were quite out of the question, but the
+Herrschaft could be accommodated at the Elephant opposite, which was
+related to the Post."
+
+So, crossing over to the Elephant, the house being entirely empty,
+we found space and cleanliness, and might have found perfect comfort
+withal, had not the landlord and landlady proved in a perpetual state
+of somnolency, their few waking intervals being barely sufficient
+for the supply of the simplest wants. In spite of these and
+other unsatisfactory auspices, such as the tea being served in a
+soup-tureen, the stayers voted to remain at the Elephant in our
+absence, making up for all inward deficiencies by outdoor enjoyment.
+
+A country clown with an honest face, Ignaz by name, agreed for a
+trifle to carry our bundles and ample provision of food to the Olm. He
+made a serious matter of it, however, when he pertinaciously insisted
+on four in the morning being the hour for starting. The dispute
+finally ended by the agreement to allow Ignaz to carry our belongings
+at the hour he chose, seeing that all the village was ready to take an
+affidavit as to his honesty, and we being allowed the same freedom of
+choice for ourselves. All having thus been comfortably arranged, we
+sallied forth for an evening stroll.
+
+A turn in the quiet village street soon revealed the great massive
+castle on its plateau of rock--shattered towers, broken battlements,
+oriel and bay windows jutting out here and there, its bulwarks running
+down the precipice, but not, as formerly, shutting in the narrow gorge
+leading into the Ahrnthal, a busy, populous valley, closed in its turn
+by the snow-clad bulk of the Tauern, down which, on the farther side,
+the noted Kriml waterfall plunges. Remembering, from a visit paid to
+the castle in the former year, that an easy winding road, shaded
+by trees and commanding splendid mountain-views, led through the
+fortifications by the back of the castle to the great gateway, we
+chose it in preference to the steep, perpendicular path, which, always
+taken by the natives, led equally to the drawbridge and main entrance.
+To our extreme regret, however, we soon found our course impeded by
+the huge trunks of mighty pine trees lying in a perfect pell-mell
+above and on both sides of us. A glance up the hillside showed scores
+more of these slain giants. To proceed was almost hopeless, and
+we were forced to rest upon some timber and mark our future course
+between piles oozing with turpentine.
+
+Whilst we were engaged in our calculations, an old crone, who had
+been groping about in the crevices for chips and sticks, stopped, and
+seeing us thus penned in by tree boles, eyed us with a compassionate
+look. "Ja, ja!" said she, "with fallen trees all jumbled together it
+is hard for the Herrschaft to move on; but it's harder for us poor
+folks, who have seen the trees growing here ever since we were born,
+to hear day and night the axe going hack, hack, and the trees come
+thudding down. Sixteen strong Welschers from a distance do the work:
+they knew well enough a Taufern would have looked long at the sixers
+(ten-kreuzer pieces) before he would have shorn the mighty forests.
+Look you!" and she pointed to the sky. "As far as you can see they are
+felling."
+
+We looked, and sure enough the vast woods that clothed the lofty
+mountainsides were being ruthlessly cleared away. We suggested that a
+protest should be made.
+
+"Oh, na, na! The woods are none of ours. The graf de Ferraris too has
+sold the estate to a gesellschaft from Vienna. They care nothing for
+the castle, but are hungry for timber. The count lives a long way
+off, and does not feel it, but it must eat the heart of his aged
+lady mother to the fibres--she lives in the village--to know that
+foreigners are sweeping down masses of trees by wholesale--trees that
+have always kept the poor man's noodles boiling. And where are the
+planks to come from for our houses, our barns, our stables? And how
+can the cattle be kept from straying without fences of wood? Then,
+too, avalanches of snow and of stones will fall, and maybe overwhelm
+the village. Thanks to the Mother of God! they will drop on my grave,
+but, Lord Jesus, the children and the children's children!"
+
+Having given us these sad scraps of information, and heaving a
+big sigh, the poor old soul lifted up her bundle of chips and went
+fumbling forward over her stumbling-blocks.
+
+Sad and true was the picture which she had drawn. Nor does it,
+alas! belong exclusively to Taufers, but to the whole Tyrol. In many
+instances the people are themselves eager for this reckless clearing.
+They hope thereby to secure more pasturage, the feeding and rearing
+of cattle being the great idea of wealth to the Tyroler. So they make
+ready money of their timber, which now in the form of masts floats on
+the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal. The Venetians, requiring timber,
+have turned the once beautiful, richly-wooded Dalmatia into a dreary,
+barren land. In the Tyrol it is not generally foreigners, but the
+natives, who unhesitatingly sweep away woods, which, causing grass and
+plants to grow, have enabled human habitations to be erected on spots
+that would otherwise be but dreary wildernesses, the battle-fields of
+chilling winds and scorching sunshine. The precious timber, which like
+refuse they cart into the clumsy yawning craters called stoves, or
+else sell out of the country for economy so called, might not only
+supply the land for centuries with a proper amount of fuel, either as
+wood or charcoal, but bring prosperity to many a sequestered village
+if turned into tools and kitchen utensils, whilst still leaving
+thousands of trees for export. "The supply has never failed yet," say
+the Tyrolese: "why should we replant forests to have to cut them down
+again, when the ground, too, is good for grass or corn?" So the axe
+lies ruthlessly at the root of every tree, for a heavy reckoning
+hereafter to the Tyroler.
+
+With a weighing and balancing over every step which we took worthy
+of a diplomatist, we finally stood upon the drawbridge of the castle.
+Here the savage customs of the rude days in which it was built
+immediately impress the beholder. Traces remain of the ponderous iron
+portcullis, heavy wooden bars, arrow-holes, and slits in the masonry
+for the pouring of boiling water or oil upon adverse knight or lordly
+freebooter. A steep path leads through two great entrance-gates into
+the large inner court, which is erected upon the virgin rock. A roof
+of old wooden shingles shelters the well, and ancient rotting timber
+mingles everywhere with the impervious stone in the massive buildings
+of the castle, conveying a sense of weakness and decay in the midst of
+the strongest durability.
+
+Not only was the old castle dismantled, but apparently entirely
+abandoned this summer evening. We were preparing to return without
+seeing the interior when a little maiden arrived from the village, who
+with flushed face and timid mien drew the castle key from under a
+big stone, stood on tiptoe and turned the heavy lock, and the door
+creaking on its hinges we were left to wander at our will through
+old wainscoted rooms in the dreamy twilight. No spirit of modern
+restoration had ever reached them: they were allowed to remain just
+as inconvenient, but also just as quaint, as on the day of their
+erection. There were gloomy recesses enough, but there were likewise
+graceful carvings, mottoes, rare tracery and wood-work; while, strange
+to say, in several chambers grotesque wooden birds were suspended from
+the ceiling like malformed ducks, conveying at first no idea of the
+Holy Dove which the old lords had desired to symbolize, yet probably
+in those unquiet days their best conception of this emblem of peace.
+
+The barons not only fought, squabbled and feasted, but prayed too
+in their fashion; so we came upon the chapel, disfigured by barbaric
+effigies, tawdry ornamentation and flimsy modern artificial flowers.
+It is still used for the weekly mass which, as at Neuhaus, is read
+here for the peace of the turbulent lords of Tuvers. Still, within
+the memory of man a hermit occupied some narrow chambers adjoining the
+chapel. He had retired amongst these ruins of transitory greatness to
+warn his fellow-creatures against carnal passions, prayed for the dead
+and shrived the living. The old anchorite has passed, we hope, into
+heavenly repose, but cinders, which may almost be called holy ashes,
+still lie scattered on his deserted little hearth.
+
+The banqueting-hall, a fine though low room, supported on solid
+rounded arches, contains innumerable flour-and corn-bins, which,
+though dating from the Middle Ages, are still in perfect condition.
+Here knight and baron caroused, here mummers have played and bears
+have danced, whilst sword and spur clanked upon the rude stone floor.
+In the ladies' bower above many a minne-singer has struck his lyre.
+Nay, Oswald von Wolkenstein, a prince amongst troubadours, wearing
+his golden chain and brilliant orders, has brought tears from many a
+gentle eye as he sang to his harp his pathetic elegies, the cruelty of
+Sabina his lady, and his adventures in England, Spain and Persia.
+He was a noble, courtly knight, conversing in French, Moorish,
+Catalonian, Castilian, German, Latin, Wendisch, Lombardic and Russian;
+and his bones lie in the great cloister of Neustift, not half a day's
+journey from Taufers.
+
+How often, too, has the shrill sound of the bugle called to feats
+of arms in the court, to hawking and hunting in valley and
+mountain-forest! How many a crusader against Turk, infidel, _Prussian_
+and _Hussite_ has crossed the wooden drawbridge upon his war-horse!
+Yes, and what an excitement in the noble Catholic household when in
+the adjoining Ahrnthal the peasants, becoming enamored of Lutheranism,
+rose in the peasant war of 1525! How darkly, too, must they have
+painted the fanatical bauer Barthlmae Duregger of St. Peter's in the
+Ahrnthal, who, after being taken prisoner, escaped near their
+postern gate to circulate threats of fire and murder throughout the
+neighborhood, vowing to reduce Bruneck to ashes! Reappearing with a
+band of twelve poachers and twenty-six laborers, and accompanied
+by Peter Baszler of Antholz, he robbed and plundered the clergy,
+stripping the worthy priest Andreas Spaat of all his worldly goods,
+so that he died in the utmost poverty. Although much blood was shed
+in their pursuit, this lawless, misguided man and his band were never
+taken. Great as their sin would naturally seem to the noble family at
+the castle, no less lamentable and equally worthy of torture and
+death would the heretics of Bruneck appear. About the same time the
+sacrilegious books, as they were called, of Zwingli and Luther were
+sold there openly, conventicle hymns were sung in the streets, and the
+priest Stephan Gobi preached against the holy doctrine of confession
+and the invocation of saints; whilst the schoolmaster Bartholomew
+Huber, though he could not find time to teach the children the
+catechism, puzzled their innocent minds with Virgil's _Georgics_ and
+Cicero's _Letters_. Toward the end of the sixteenth century the heresy
+was suppressed, when the lords and ladies of Taufers Castle sang no
+doubt a triumphant Te Deum in their chapel. The inmates were not then
+barons of Tuvers proper, for the title having early become extinct
+the castle passed into many noble hands, sometimes reaching those of
+royalty. Such a booty never remained unoccupied, until, coming
+into the possession of Hieronymus, count of Ferraris, in 1685, his
+descendants gradually permitted it to fall into ruin, its evil days
+culminating under the present count, who sold the estate a few years
+since to a speculating company, who merely value it for the timber.
+The rooms which still remain habitable are tenanted by peasants and by
+the sixteen pitiless wood-cutters.
+
+Seven o'clock the next morning found Frau Anna, E----, the two
+Margarets and our good Moidel bound full of life and spirits for the
+Eder Olm. We had soon left the village of Moritz behind us, and were
+climbing a shady wood-path, when we met a peasant-woman with her
+daughter, and she exclaimed, "What! Herrschaft going to Rein! What big
+eyes they will make over the stones!"
+
+Sure enough, very big eyes were made by some of the Herrschaft. After
+ascending to a meadow amphitheatre, then resting in a sunny wood,
+redolent of pine odors, near the foundations of a ruined stronghold,
+the Burgkofel, we came upon a realm of gigantic boulders. Some, in
+the shape of huge granite slabs, formed a rude, continuous broadway;
+others, scarred and furrowed, but softened and beautified by golden
+and silver lichen, torn by storms and snow from the cyclopean
+mountain-walls, were scattered topsy-turvy on either hand; many had
+become lodged in the river, where they carried on a steady defence
+against the tumultuous Giessbach, which, having its rise in mountains
+ten thousand feet high, leapt, foaming milky white, over and between
+them, forming a long series of bold cascades for a distance of half a
+dozen miles. The road continued by the boisterous rapids, hemmed in on
+the other hand by woods and threatening mountain-walls. The thunder of
+the waters prevented continuous conversation: we therefore admired in
+silence the grandeur of the scene and the magnificent glimpses which
+slight curves in the road afforded ever and anon of neighboring
+mountain-peaks and wooded valleys below.
+
+No carriage of any kind can ascend this road. It would be difficult
+indeed for horses; nevertheless, the herds of cattle traverse it
+in the journey to and from the Olm, their hoofs being able to find
+foothold on the rock. Moidel said that the cattle were so delighted
+to go to the Alps for the summer after the winter's confinement in
+the stall that they made the journey with a kind of joyful impatience,
+going on still more eagerly as they approached the end. "Not so,
+however," added Moidel, "with the pigs. I have often sat and cried on
+these rocks at their perverse ways when I have had to bring them up.
+They would only stand still and grunt while I begged and prayed and
+pushed. When they reached the top a new spirit soon seized them: they
+were here, there and everywhere--in a week's time leaping like goats,
+as if they had taken to wine."
+
+We made the climb slowly, and noon was long passed when we reached
+the saw-mills, the first houses in the mountain parish of St. Wolfgang
+or Rein. The busy, purring mills stood on the edge of the Sarine at
+the extremity of a flat mountain-valley intersected by innumerable
+brooks, which, continually overflowing, turn it constantly into a
+lake. The grass had been under water a week previously, but was now
+sufficiently dry for us to sit and rest. Whilst we were so doing,
+Ignaz, our _traeger_, stood before us, his empty basket on his back.
+
+"The barn is swept and garnished in readiness for the Herrschaft, and
+their bundles and parcels are arranged there in beautiful order--many
+bundles, and far heavier than they looked last night." Ignaz, however,
+was of opinion that though the pay was small the gentry meant well
+by him, and therefore he had not scrupled to take the food the worthy
+farmer's wife had offered him, leaving the Christian soul to be repaid
+by the gentlefolks when they came. And, moreover, he had advised the
+landlord at Rein that the gentry were passing through, so that they
+should not fail to find eatables ready, seeing hunger and weariness
+were best consoled by food.
+
+After which communication we regarded Ignaz as much less a clown than
+he looked. Pushing forward, we soon saw the little inn shining forth
+a mile farther up the valley--a small white chalet, with the
+pink-checked feather beds hanging to air in the upper gallery.
+
+Moidel looked grave over the dinner which the interposition of Ignaz
+had prepared for us. "The place is called Rein (clean)," she said,
+"but it is none of the cleanest. A Graf once reached Rein, and he
+thought it so pastoral that he asked at the inn for a drink of new
+milk, but the landlord shook his head and asked for other orders,
+seeing there was none in the house. Then the Graf said he would take
+cream, but the landlord shook his head and asked for other orders.
+Fresh eggs? Yes, the landlord said there were eggs, and begged him to
+step into the zechstube until they were boiled. When they came they
+made the very room smell, and the Graf in disgust ordered wine. This
+was speedily forthcoming, but with so dirty a glass that the Graf,
+making a long face, angrily called for the reckoning and departed."
+
+After Moidel's tale, and certain recollections of our own concerning
+the little hostel last year, we all approached the house with very
+humble expectations. The wirth, already on the lookout, received
+Moidel and two of the party as old friends, and hearing no nay he
+marshaled us up stairs, and flinging open a bed-room door, looked
+proudly triumphant as even Moidel uttered an exclamation of surprise.
+
+Whether constant reminders from his neighbors of the Graf's
+unfortunate visit, or a wave of civilization from the Pusterthal had
+reached this secluded mountain-inn, certain it is that twelve months
+had wrought a marvelous change here. Whilst the rest of the house
+remained rough, dirty and primitive, the landlord had devoted all
+his powers of taste and judgment upon this upper chamber. Leaning
+complacently against the door, he received our congratulations on the
+pretty ceiling and walls of carved deal wainscot, on the grand new
+bed, and the bouquet of fresh Edelweiss in a wash-basin, but showed
+surprise that the fiery tigers and gliding serpents which in a couple
+of gilt frames adorned the walls received no flattering comments from
+our lips. He next displayed a visitors' book, containing already some
+half dozen names, watching closely the astonishment it should produce
+in us as he prepared the table for our meal. But even the study of the
+names had to be interrupted, for he had purchased some steel knives
+and forks, which were, he considered, to bring him great credit and
+reputation; nor could he complete his work without hinting at the
+superiority of his table-cloth and napkins. Fortunately, a call from
+below that the pancakes were ready enabled us to have a little laugh
+to ourselves. Linen being used in all peasant houses, he had discarded
+it as vulgar, wearing himself an unbleached cotton shirt with an
+incipient frill, and supplying his guests with a table-cloth and
+napkins of the same material from an empty wash-basin.
+
+We had already discussed two dishes of hot pancakes--really worthy of
+commendation--enjoyed an hour's rest, taken coffee, and were rising to
+depart, when the landlady appeared with a hop, skip and jump. She was
+a lively, voluble little woman, who, though she had attired herself
+for us in two enormous cloth petticoats, a stuff bodice and yards of
+Bohemian lace in frills and ruffles, by way of displaying the wealth
+of her wardrobe, bobbed and curtseyed as if set on wires. Great was
+the difficulty, between the amusing, friendly wife and the husband
+proud of her and his inn, either to pay our bill or get away. They
+declared there was no hurry about the reckoning, and pressed us still
+to stay. Seeing our resolution, the wirth with a sigh produced a brown
+painted board from under his arm, a piece of chalk from his pocket,
+made the bill, gave us change out of a tea-cup, and amidst reiterated
+invitations to return if not satisfied with the barn, we tore
+ourselves away, their friendly good-byes and good wishes floating
+after us.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+We now left the Reinthal and turned into the side-valley of
+Bachernthal. It was the 17th of August, but the little plots of corn
+still waved long and green, giving a feeling of early summer. We
+were in a perfect paradise of an Alpine valley. Before us the great
+near-lying mountains, the princely Hoch Gall and the Gross Lengstein
+Glacier, shone like molten silver against the intense blue sky, whilst
+the Schnebige Nock rose pure and isolated across the narrow valley,
+suggesting to one of the party the simile of the swan-breasted maiden
+of Northern mythology.
+
+After passing several chalets we came to that of the Eder Olm. It
+belonged to the Hofbauer, and was occupied by his _paechter_ or bailiff
+the year round. Here, too, was the barn which we were to use as
+our night-quarters during our stay. It was a great wooden building,
+divided into three compartments, one being two-thirds filled with hay,
+on which we were intended to sleep. It was true that Josef the paechter
+had succeeded by means of sweeping and a little arrangement in making
+the barn really attractive; but, alas! alas! we had hardly begun
+preparing our beds when the horrible discovery was made that under the
+surface the hay was soaking wet. Josef could hardly be blamed for not
+telling us, as in the Tyrol the people regard lying on wet or dewy
+grass as a natural system of hydropathy.
+
+We had not shawls and cloaks enough to construct beds upon the barn
+floor, and the paechter's house, though substantial, was but a dark
+den, already stuffed full with wife and children. Must we, then,
+really return to the inn at Rein with its ornamental snakes and lions?
+
+It was dusk out of doors, but pitch dark within, save for the dim,
+uncertain light of a horn lantern, and, all regularly worn out with
+our ten miles' climb, we sighed for bed. It was futile, however,
+simply to exchange expressions of dismay; so, groping about, to our
+joy we alighted suddenly upon several bundles of clean, fresh straw
+stowed away in the farthest recess of the opposite division. In a
+trice a dangerous corn-chopping machine had been removed, the straw
+loosened and spread out, and, covered with shawls and water-proof, it
+formed as comfortable a great bed of Ware as ever weary bones could
+desire. Forming a row, the tired wanderers were soon sleeping
+the sleep of five just persons, the sound of several neighboring
+waterfalls soothing rather than disturbing slumber.
+
+In the early morning it was put to the vote and carried that eider
+down and spring mattresses were useless innovations after luxurious
+straw, and that whilst some benighted people might regard us as having
+been in purgatory, we had been in paradise, and hoped to be there
+again within twenty-four hours. And the barn, too! How poor in
+comparison seemed a conventional house on this sweet Sunday morning!
+We had prudently filled all the large apertures in the eaves and
+wooden sides the night before with hay, but there were plenty of
+crevices for the sun to peep in by, whilst with wafts of mountain-air
+it entered freely by the folding barn door as Moidel gently passed in
+and out, on breakfast matters intent. Corn- and grain-bins, sieves,
+flails and ladders pleased us better for the nonce than formal
+furniture, although none the less convenient did we find the great
+square wooden table and the benches which the paechter had thoughtfully
+placed on the threshing-floor which formed the central division.
+
+[Illustration: SCHLOSS TAUFERS.]
+
+On one side of the barn a small room had been boarded off. It
+contained empty milk-pans, ox-bells, old ropes and cords, together
+with two chests and two pairs of men's strong leather boots.
+This, Moidel suggested, should be used as joint store-room and
+dressing-room. Fortunately, however, we had applied it to neither
+requirement, when a singular occurrence took place which might be
+classed as a ghost-story at night or an optical delusion by day. The
+great barn-door quietly opened, Moidel having gone out and shut it,
+and two figures--one in soiled homespun shirt and _loden_ trousers,
+wooden clogs, with a little black leather skull-cap on his head and a
+pipe in his mouth; the other older, in leather breeches, brown knitted
+worsted jacket, and an old black silk handkerchief tied round his
+neck--glided in. We could have sworn that they were Jakob and the old
+senner Franz, but no response came to our exclamation of recognition,
+and in a second they had vanished into the said little room, where all
+remained, however, as silent as before. Two of us now began even to
+doubt, but the other two were positive, that figures had floated
+in. Ten minutes later the mystery was solved by the identical Jakob,
+attended by Franz, reappearing from the chamber, not, however, in
+the hard-working dress in which they had entered, but in full
+Sunday array, the leather boots upon their feet and broad-brimmed,
+flower-bedecked beavers in their hands. Poor Jakob! sore must
+have been his perplexity when, in the hope of slinking into his
+wardrobe-room unobserved, we had come open-eyed upon him in his soiled
+array. At the cost of apparent rudeness, arising chiefly from shyness,
+he had silently disappeared, the old servant following his example.
+Now, however, they could both freely welcome us to the Olm, expressing
+the pleasure it would give them to accompany us to the senner huts on
+their return with Moidel at ten o'clock from church.
+
+This was Jakob's first introduction to Frau Anna and E----. He eyed
+them closely and silently for some minutes; then said, "I like them:
+they look good!" and so they went to mass.
+
+The barn and chalet called Eder formed part of the Hofbauer's lower
+Alp, where a little later in the season the cattle were brought down
+for several weeks of pasturage before they descended to their winter
+home. We were now bound in company with the returning church-goers for
+the group of senner huts belonging to the larger still more elevated
+tract, which the Hofbauer rented in company with five other bauers.
+Leaving the meadows very shortly after quitting our night-quarters,
+where we seemed already in the very bosom of the snow-mountains, we
+began again to ascend through a wood of primeval pines and fir trees,
+long gray moss hanging from their hoary branches like patriarchs'
+beards, whilst round their stems, amidst a chaos of rocks, were spread
+the softest carpets of moss and lichen. In the centre of the wood,
+where an opening covered with the finest turf afforded an agreeable
+resting-place, as usual a cross--that most familiar object in a
+Tyrolese landscape--had been erected. In this instance, more striking
+and melancholy than ever, for this general point of attraction to
+peasants seemed here, in the very heart of the mountains, to be
+forgotten and despised. Small in size, as if wood had been grudged
+in this land of wood, the writing on the cross erased by storms,
+the dissevered arms and limbs were painfully scattered on the sward
+below--type indeed as of a powerless Saviour unable to save or to
+bless. Indeed, so offensive and discordant did this pitiable emblem
+appear, and in such mocking contrast to the sublimity of the scene,
+that we spoke of it to Moidel, as, laden with our eatables, she came
+slowly up behind. "Ah," she replied, "it is not that the cross is
+left unregarded, nor is it age which has thus damaged it, but the wild
+storms and lasting snows. A new cross is often erected, but it has not
+long been exposed before it is again utterly defaced. The herdsmen
+and senners, however, see the meaning under it, and it keeps them
+straight, Fraeulein."
+
+Well-intentioned but slow of apprehension, these poor peasants cling
+to a carved Christ, and feel a horrible alarm, as if you were offering
+them a vacant creed, when you touch upon anything higher. Thus Moidel,
+though very intelligent, looked somewhat grave and quiet until the
+woods opened and she had to point out the senner huts. These were rude
+but very picturesque log cabins, built in a clearing amongst a steep
+chaos of rocks, with the glaciers and the majestic peak of the
+Hoch Gall shining above all. Five were dwelling-houses, the rest
+cattle-sheds and barns: our people's hut was the highest of the group,
+and we had a long climb over the boulders before we reached it.
+
+Seeing us approaching, good old Franz, who had gone forward in
+advance, fastened on his apron and fried marvelous monograms and
+circles of cream batter, of which we, the guests, were soon partaking
+in the best room, otherwise the store-room and dairy. The hut was
+divided into two compartments, both entered by adjoining doors from
+the outside. Seated on milking-stools in somewhat dangerous proximity
+to pans of rich cream, balls of butter and cheeses, the salt and
+meal-bin served as our dining table. In the kitchen, Franz, resting
+from his successful culinary labors, sat with Moidel and Jakob by the
+hearth, where huge blocks of stone kept the fire in compass, the smoke
+curling out of the door, and enjoyed in return some of our ham, wine
+and almond cake.
+
+[Illustration: HAPPY SOULS IN PARADISE.]
+
+The hut was close quarters, even for the two ordinary inmates: there
+were, however, innumerable contrivances for stowing away all kinds of
+useful things, besides notches in the thick wooden partition for hands
+and feet when at night they crept to their burrow of hay under the
+low eaves. Everything with the exception of the old stone floor was
+scrupulously clean: without, the pigs dabbled in the mire between
+the rugged rocks, and nettles grew, but beyond, mountains, woods and
+illimitable space were spread in uninterrupted fullness.
+
+Resting after dinner at a little distance from the huts, we learned
+from Jakob, who was full of excitement on the subject, that shortly
+after we left the inn at Rein the preceding evening a gentleman
+from Bohemia arrived. He immediately communicated to the wirth his
+intention of ascending one of the three great mountains rising from
+the Bachernthal, either the Hoch Gall (11,283 feet high), the Wild
+Gall or the Schnebige Nock, both some thousand feet lower, but perhaps
+even more attractive, as still possessing the charm of untrodden
+summits. The wirth consequently sent for a fine, clever young fellow,
+Johann Ausserkofer, a friend of Jakob's, and whose home we had passed
+on the previous night before reaching the Eder Olm. He had ascended
+the Hoch Gall with two gentlemen in the August of the former year,
+and now recommended an attempt at the still virgin Wild Gall. The
+arrangement being speedily made, for extra help and security Johann
+fetched his younger brother, Josef, as a companion, and the little
+party started by torchlight at two o'clock in the morning.
+
+Jakob now produced a telescope, through which he hoped we might detect
+moving figures amongst the snow of the Wild Gall. In vain we strained
+our eyes through the greasy old telescope, for neither moving figures
+nor stationary black dots were visible. Even Jakob with his eagle
+eye confessed to seeing no trace of man either amongst the irregular
+ash-colored rocks or upon the snowy curves of the Wild Gall, which,
+like a huge white-crested breaker at sea, upheaved itself in the air
+as in the very act of turning. Quite as solitary and untrodden did
+it look as its still more stately sister, the Hoch Gall, a mountain
+deservedly the especial pride of the district, its lofty pinnacle
+piercing the sky, whilst a vast sheet of thick, pure snow hung
+straight and smooth down its concave sides, a huge mountain-buttress
+linking the lower portion of this snow pyramid to the white,
+glittering expanse of the Gross Lengstein Glacier--a buttress of
+many thousand feet, standing prominently forth like an antediluvian
+monster, on whose gigantic pachydermatous flanks the shattered,
+blasted stems of dead uniform fir trees shone out a silvery gray,
+mingling in color with the loose, glittering debris which had slidden
+into the upland valley just below. Two silver threads descending from
+the glaciers of the Hoch Gall wound through these fallen stones into
+the green turf of the Bachernthal, but whether formed of snow or water
+it would have been difficult to decide, had not ever and anon a sound
+as of a distant train been borne upon the breeze, proving them to be
+brooks, which helped to swell the roaring, tumbling Giessbach, whose
+boisterous acquaintance we had already made.
+
+The Hoch Gall, which has been twice ascended, was first attempted in
+1869 by a very adventurous, clever young Alpine climber, Karl Hofmann,
+the only son of a well-known physician of Munich--a youth of whom it
+is said that no study was too difficult, no danger too great, no
+peak too high for him. Innumerable were the mountains which he scaled
+between 1866 and 1870, and of which he wrote excellent, accurate
+descriptions: then laying down his young life--he was but
+twenty-three--on September 2, 1870, in the fierce battle of Sedan, his
+spirit passed away to mightier slopes, to more delectable mountains.
+
+Again, in the August of 1871, after our first visit to the Olm, the
+ascent was repeated by two other members of the Tyrolese Alpine Club,
+Herr Richter and Herr Struedl. They brought with them two experienced
+men--one the chief guide of the Gross Glockner, the other of the
+Venediger Spitze--and, except for Hofmann's written description, had
+to plan and calculate for themselves, there being no local knowledge
+of the mountain attainable, as the two guides who accompanied the
+young explorer were also dead.
+
+Although well provided with their own guides, they thought it right
+to take some active young man of the neighborhood with them, in order
+that he in his turn might help future climbers. At the recommendation
+of the landlord of Rein--who on this important occasion commenced
+his visitors' book--they chose for the purpose Jakob's friend, Johann
+Ausserkofer. They started by torchlight one Monday morning, and after
+a steep climb through a wild mountain-forest on the opposite side of
+the Bachernthal, crossing a vast glacier and the crevasse between the
+Hoch Gall and the Wild Gall, began the real ascent, which proved so
+perpendicular as to be achieved principally with the aid of ropes.
+After a toilsome nine hours and a quarter they had the good fortune to
+reach the summit in safety. The weather was favorable, and the view,
+in Richter's opinion, far surpassed the much-vaunted panorama from the
+Kriml Tauern. A long rest, and raising a cromlech in memory of their
+bold achievement, and then the steep descent over snow and glaciers
+was effected, and St. Wolfgang reached after fourteen hours of toil
+and great danger.
+
+[Illustration: CROSSING THE TORRENT.]
+
+At half-past four, Jakob, having crossed the valley in search of his
+oxen, came upon the Bohemian gentleman--whose name afterward proved to
+be Dr. Hecht--with the two Ausserkofers, and learned their adventures
+in the ascent of the Wild Gall. After clambering over steep, slippery
+glaciers they had begun the climb proper at five o'clock in the
+morning, Dr. Hecht pushing forward in order to be the first human
+being who had ever placed his foot upon the summit of the mountain.
+He had indeed almost reached the highest point when a dark, terrific
+chasm suddenly yawned beneath him, entirely cutting off all farther
+progress. The three explorers, although considerably dejected by
+the disagreeable check and the waste of labor and time which it
+had involved, determining not to be baffled, resolved to make a
+considerable detour. After having, with much trouble, reached a lower
+plateau, they attacked the precipitous, almost invincible mountain
+from another side, the still early hour of the day alone permitting
+the renewal of the attempt. Leaving their telescope and provisions to
+await their return, they boldly scrambled, crept and worked their way
+up the scaly side, and finally reached the summit in safety. The view
+thence they declared to be magnificent. They too raised a cromlech,
+and then a giddy descent followed. However, all three were full of
+spirits when Jakob met them, and the Ausserkofers declared that they
+were ready henceforth to pilot any other tourist to the summit for a
+moderate four or five gulden apiece.
+
+Jakob, as herdsman, had left us at three o'clock to look after the
+cattle, we strolling with him as far as a wild old wood which formed a
+strange contrast to this Sunday afternoon, as lovely an August day as
+ever rejoiced the earth. The near yet unattainable Hoch Gall glittered
+coldly white between the stems and branches of gigantic pines, which,
+scathed and bleached by lightning and storm, rose in the form of
+ruined towers or lay tumbled about in the wildest, dreariest confusion
+amongst the rugged enormous rocks, fit emblems of the forest in
+the Inferno inhabited by the souls of the lost. Nor was this stern,
+forbidding scene enlivened when a melancholy man, carrying the dead
+body of a goat across his shoulders, crossed the torrent on a fallen
+tree and advanced slowly up the craggy path, followed by a little boy
+timidly picking his way behind.
+
+"Ach, Mathies, in God's name, another goat!" said Moidel, lifting
+her eyes from a little book, the life of the odd, humane Joseph II.,
+which, bought for a few kreuzers at a fair, was worth as many guldens
+in the pleasure which it gave her.
+
+The man glanced from under his eyebrows, and answered with a sigh,
+"_Gott hat's so woelln, Diendl_" ("God would have it so, maiden"); and
+then he added in dialect, "It was a beautiful creature. I missed it in
+the reckoning last night. After mass I strode far and wide searching
+it, until an hour since I found the body hanging by a hind hoof from a
+cleft in the Auvogl Nock. See, it has broken its leg in its struggles.
+Ah, poor beast! A solitary, cruel death, _und hast ma g'nomma mei
+Ruah_" ("and it has taken my rest from me").
+
+"Poor Mathies! his half dozen goats are all that he has in the world.
+He rents one of father's huts, but since he has brought them to the
+Olm two or three are already dead." This Moidel explained to us as he
+moved dejectedly forward. "Father, however, told him that our Olm was
+bad for goats. They not only slip from the rocks, but grow thin and
+weakly. Just the reverse of the cattle. Onkel Johann--there is no one
+so deep as he in cattle--says that every blade of grass on our Olm is
+worth half a pint of milk. And it's not the air, nor the water,
+nor the winds that make it wholesome, but some law that he cannot
+understand. Who can? There is Jagdhaus, a wonderfully fertile
+_sennerei_ an hour beyond Rein. It is far finer than our Olm, which
+is so mountainous that timid new-comers amongst the cattle must first
+teach themselves to walk about; but at Jagdhaus, which is as large
+as a village, all the land is smooth, fat pasturage for miles. Yet
+a curse rests on the place for which neither priests nor farmers can
+account. Some seasons, it is true, all goes well, but in others the
+cattle are suddenly bitten, fall dead, and their flesh then turns
+black and rustles like paper. Some say that it is an insect or animal
+that attacks them; others, that it is caused by the grass which they
+eat; and there are again others who are sure that it is a phantom
+which, touching them, blasts them. And there seems reason in the idea,
+because when the priest of Taufers, who has an Olm there, goes and
+says mass and prays for the cattle, or when the _Sterniwitz_ (landlord
+of the Stern), who has acres of pasturage and many heads of cattle at
+Jagdhaus, pays a Capuchin to go thither and pray, the murrain ceases."
+
+In Moidel's tale we had almost forgotten our long walk back to the
+barn and the arrangement for supper previously at the huts. Now, it
+curiously happened that whilst waiting for the tea-pan--rather than
+tea-kettle--to boil, I accidentally alighted upon a people's calendar,
+published at Brixen for the current year, protruding its somewhat
+greasy pages from behind a churn; and after turning over long
+black-and red-lettered lists of fasts and feasts, came upon some
+pertinent advice to the Tyrolese farmers by Adolph Trientl, concerning
+_Milzbrand_. He described it as a dreadful pestilence, the scourge
+of many a mountain-pasture. Hundreds of cattle, he tells them, are
+sacrificed to it yearly. Even the deer and lesser game die from the
+contagion, as well as human beings; death in the latter case being
+occasioned either by eating the meat of diseased animals or by having
+cuts or wounds which have come in contact with the victims. Even the
+bite of a fly which has fed on the contaminated meat will propagate
+the malady. Hides or reins made of the skins are known years after
+to reproduce Milzbrand. Where the body of an affected animal has been
+buried the ground becomes contagious for a long run of years, the
+cattle pasturing there being attacked. The only remedy consists in
+burning the contaminated body, and then keeping the live-stock from
+the place where the victim fell. When Milzbrand appears the farmer
+feels he has no option between sacrificing his cattle and abandoning
+for a season his rich pastures. And yet a little attention might soon
+cause a remedy, the evil often arising from the water of a particular
+pool or brook, which if carefully guarded against makes the rest of
+the Alp perfectly secure.
+
+When I ventured to quote from the calendar to Moidel, suggesting that
+at Jagdhaus it might certainly be the water, she remained impervious
+to any new views on the subject. "There was Milzbrand, and that might
+arise from the water, for all she knew, but at Jagdhaus it was a rod
+of God, which only prayer averted."
+
+Adolf Trientl appears to be a Tyrolese priest, who travels annually
+through his native land watching closely the agriculture and domestic
+economy, and trying, countenanced by government, to help his country
+people to an easier working life, healthier houses and more profitable
+land. To the credit of the clergy of Brixen, his practical often pithy
+remarks are published in their church calendar. He and his colleagues
+must, however, use almost supernatural patience and energy before they
+can move a Tyroler one jot from the beaten path which his ancestors
+have taken for a thousand years before him. The people are perfectly
+content, it is pleaded, with the existing state of things: why should
+they change their sowing or ploughing any more than the sun his course
+or the mountains their position? Changes, like bad weather, breed
+discontent.
+
+We had brought no books with us for our five days at the Olm, and in
+the pauses of our out-door enjoyment the calendar, greasy rather from
+contact with butter and milk than with fingers, afforded amusing,
+profitable reading: a lecture may often be pleasant to hear when not
+addressed to one's self.
+
+Moidel, Jakob and Franz, though they had looked with blind eyes on
+the print, did not turn deaf ears when we spoke; only we had to manage
+that all we said and thought did not come as a quoted sermon, but as
+suggestions and inquiries from us, who did not know half as much about
+a dairy and farm-life as they did. First of all, we tried to make them
+believe that the staff of life need not of necessity be rye bread
+of so hard and flinty a nature as to require in every house a square
+wooden board and iron chopper to cut it.
+
+"Yes," said Moidel, "it is very hard for old people, who must needs
+sop it, but while one's teeth are good the crunching is a pleasure.
+And then it must needs be dry, because the oven can only be heated
+once in three months. I wish it could come round oftener, for there
+is no going to bed on baking nights, with some three hundred loaves to
+pop into the oven."
+
+"How could the poor bake often," suggested Jakob, "when there is only
+one oven amongst them in the village?"
+
+"Why," said we, looking very learned, "you have a common schoolmaster,
+and a common swineherd, and a common goose-boy: why not have a common
+baker, who knew how to make good, light dough, and could bake a good
+batch of bread for each family weekly?"
+
+To Franz, eating good bread only a few days old appeared woeful
+extravagance. "Bread," he said, "should be like rocks to last, not
+like snow to melt away. The rye meal would fly before the wind at that
+rate, and where would the poor man then be?"
+
+Butter and cheese-making, however, involved hours of deep discussion.
+You would indeed have thought that man merely came into the world to
+make butter and cheese. Personal experience after two summers in
+the Tyrol had made us reflect very much upon the butter and cheese
+question. Whether regarded as a luxury or a necessity, the Swiss
+Gruyere and Emmenthal cheese and the fresh dainty pats of butter made
+the contrast striking in the Tyrol. The milk and cream were rich and
+delicious, but became simply loathsome when transformed into butter
+or cheese. We wondered how and why it was that we could never obtain
+perfectly palatable butter, until we discovered the universal practice
+of churning it, without salt, into huge oblong balls, large as the
+nave of a wheel, which naturally soon turn rancid. It does not on this
+account lose its value to the natives, who use very little butter,
+melting it down into a clarified dripping called Schmalz for their
+endless fryings and frizzlings. This badly made butter is, however,
+often adorned with the emblems of the Passion, such as the cross,
+ladder, crown of thorns and nails. It was so at the Hofbauer's Olm.
+It is considered to enhance the value of the butter _Kugel_ or ball,
+especially when given to the priest in payment for masses said for
+dead relations. The Ursuline Sisters were paid for Moidel's education
+in butter.
+
+And the native cheese!--meagre cheese, as it is justly called--a
+poor, insipid, not overclean curd cheese. The curds are often merely
+squeezed in a cloth, then turned out and placed upon an upper shelf to
+dry, where they look like the back portions of gigantic skulls until
+damp and mould somewhat destroy the resemblance. The kind called fat
+cheese is not much better. It is, however, made with greater care, and
+dried in bands of pine bark in the Alpine kitchen. This distasteful
+butter and cheese, the sole result of gallons of rich milk and cream
+and many a long summer week upon the lofty Alp, becomes still
+more distasteful when the milk and cream are kept in the one hot,
+over-crowded sleeping-room, or in a dairy where the goatherd sleeps
+amongst the milk-dishes. The mountain dwellings are dark and badly
+constructed, and if furnished with a proper dairy, the prejudiced
+housewife often refuses to use it, believing that cream will not set
+unless the milk is warm; thus, much becomes sour, and is either thrown
+away or turned into a still more inferior cheese. Or she purposely
+lets the cream become rancid before she churns, that the children
+may not take too great a fancy to the Schmalz, and thus it may last
+longer!
+
+We had tasted already too much of this milky tree of knowledge not to
+learn with pleasure from the Brixen calendar that in different parts
+of the Tyrol co-operative _sennereien_ had been started with the
+greatest success. A manager was employed in each who understood
+perfectly the Swiss mode of cheese-making and the best manner of
+churning. Thus, the most excellent produce was gained from the same,
+or rather from a smaller, quantity of milk, when the reckless waste
+was deducted. Each shareholder had the right of skimming the milk
+from his own cows, taking what he required for his personal use, or
+he might send his entire share of butter, cheese, whey and goats' milk
+with the common stock to market, where such co-operative wares already
+brought the highest price. Thus, the farmer gained both ways, not only
+receiving more money, but saving in dairy utensils, house room and
+fuel, and his wife in labor.
+
+Great was our glee over these enlightened and successful efforts; but
+a friendly dispute immediately arose when one amongst us expressed a
+surprise that the half dozen bauers who shared the Olm in common
+did not manage matters on this improved principle. They would find
+themselves richer, more care-free men. Moidel declared her inability
+to form an opinion. Old Franz, however, had much to say. He thought
+it would be foolish. Why need the Hofbauer mix himself up with others,
+when he only wanted to make meagre cheese for family use, while if
+there were any over it always brought its worth in kreuzers at the
+market? And then the pounds and pounds of butter were all wanted for
+Schmalz. It might be sweeter, it is true, if they could melt it down
+at the hut, but then there was the fear of setting the place on fire,
+and the home-melted Schmalz went fast enough, as Moidel knew. And as
+for the artificial Schmalz which was being sold in the towns now,
+it was made of palm-oil, fresh suet and butter, and colored with
+the yellow dye called Orleans; and people praised this machine-made
+Schmalz and talked of progress! But he hoped, so long as he handled a
+frying-pan, to stick to good old Schmalz and good old ways.
+
+MARGARET HOWITT.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+ON THE CHURCH STEPS.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+What a picture she was as she sat there, my own Bessie! and what a
+strange place it was to rest on, those church steps! Behind us lay the
+Woolsey woods, with their wooing fragrance of pine and soft rushes of
+scented air; and the lakes were in the distance, lying very calm
+in the cloud-shadows and seeming to wait for us to come. But to-day
+Bessie would nothing of lakes or ledges: she would sit on the church
+steps.
+
+In front of us, straight to the gate, ran a stiff little walk of white
+pebbles, hard and harsh as some bygone creed.
+
+"Think of little bare feet coming up here, Bessie!" I said with a
+shiver. "It is too hard. And every carriage that comes up the hill
+sees us."
+
+"And why shouldn't they see us?" said my lady, turning full upon me.
+"I am not ashamed to be here."
+
+"Churches should always have soft walks of turf; and lovers," I would
+fain have added, "should have naught but whispering leaves about
+them."
+
+But Bessie cut me short in her imperious way: "But we are not lovers
+this morning: at least," with a half-relenting look at my rueful face,
+"we are very good friends, and I choose to sit here to show people
+that we are."
+
+"What do you care for _people_--the Bartons or the Meyricks?" as I
+noticed a familiar family carriage toiling up the hill, followed by
+a lighter phaeton. I recognized already in the latter vehicle the
+crimson feather of Fanny Meyrick, and "the whip that was a parasol."
+
+"Shall I step out into the road this minute, and stop those ladies
+like a peaceable highwayman, and tell them you have promised to marry
+me, and that their anxiety as to our intimacy may be at rest? Give me
+but leave and I will do it. It will make Mrs. Barton comfortable. Then
+you and I can walk away into those beckoning woods, and I can have you
+all to myself."
+
+Indeed she was worth having. With the witchery that some girls know,
+she had made a very picture of herself that morning, as I have
+said. Some soft blue muslin stuff was caught up around her in airy
+draperies--nothing stiff or frilled about her: all was soft and
+flowing, from the falling sleeve that showed the fair curve of her arm
+to the fold of her dress, the ruffle under which her little foot
+was tapping, impatiently now. A little white hat with a curling blue
+feather shaded her face--a face I won't trust myself to describe, save
+by saying that it was the brightest and truest, as I then thought, in
+all the world.
+
+She said something rapidly in Italian--she is always artificial when
+she uses a foreign tongue--and this I caught but imperfectly, but it
+had a proverbial air about it of the error of too hasty assumptions.
+
+"Well, now I'll tell you something," she said as the carriages
+disappeared over the top of the hill. "Fanny Meyrick is going abroad
+in October, and we shall not see her for ever so long."
+
+Going abroad? Good gracious! That was the very thing I had to tell
+her that morning--that I too was ordered abroad. An estate to be
+settled--some bothering old claim that had been handed down from
+generation to generation, and now springing into life again by the
+lapsing of two lives on the other side. But how to tell her as she
+looked up into my face with the half-pleading, half-imperious smile
+that I knew so well? How to tell her _now_?
+
+So I said nothing, but foolishly pushed the little pebbles aside with
+my stick, fatuously waiting for the subject to pass. Of course my
+silence brought an instant criticism: "Why, Charlie, what ails you?"
+
+"Nothing. And really, Bessie, what is it to us whether Fanny Meyrick
+go or stay?"
+
+"I shouldn't have thought it _was_ anything. But your silence, your
+confusion--Charlie, you do care a little for her, after all."
+
+Two years ago, before Bessie and I had ever met, I had fluttered
+around Fanny Meyrick for a season, attracted by her bright brown
+eyes and the gypsy flush on her cheek. But there were other moths
+fluttering around that adamantine candle too; and I was not long in
+discovering that the brown eyes were bright for each and all, and that
+the gypsy flush was never stirred by feeling or by thought. It was
+merely a fixed ensign of health and good spirits. Consequently the
+charm had waned, for me at least; and in my confessions to Bessie
+since our near intimacy it was she, not I, who had magnified it into
+the shadow even of a serious thought.
+
+"Care for her? Nonsense, Bessie! Do you want me to call her a mere
+doll, a hard, waxen--no, for wax will melt--a Parian creature, such
+as you may see by the dozens in Schwartz's window any day? It doesn't
+gratify you, surely, to hear me say that of any woman."
+
+And then--what possessed me?--I was so angry at myself that I took
+a mental _resume_ of all the good that could be said of Fanny
+Meyrick--her generosity, her constant cheerfulness; and in somewhat
+headlong fashion I expressed myself: "I won't call her a dolt and an
+idiot, even to please you. I have seen her do generous things, and she
+is never out of temper."
+
+"Thanks!" said Bessie, nodding her head till the blue feather
+trembled. "It is as well, as Aunt Sloman says, to keep my shortcomings
+before you."
+
+"When did Aunt Sloman say that?" I interrupted, hoping for a diversion
+of the subject.
+
+"This morning only. I was late at breakfast. You know, Charlie, I was
+_so_ tired with that long horseback ride, and of course everything
+waited. Dear aunty never _will_ begin until I come down, but sits
+beside the urn like the forlornest of martyrs, and reads last night's
+papers over and over again."
+
+"Well? And was she sorry that she had not invited me to wait with
+her?"
+
+"Yes," said Bessie. "She said all sorts of things, and," flushing
+slightly, "that it was a pity you shouldn't know beforehand what you
+were to expect."
+
+"I wish devoutly that I had been there," seizing the little hand
+that was mournfully tapping the weatherbeaten stone, and forcing the
+downcast eyes to look at me. "I think, both together, we could have
+pacified Aunt Sloman."
+
+It _was_ a diversion, and after a little while Bessie professed she
+had had enough of the church steps.
+
+"How those people do stare! Is it the W----s, do you think, Charlie? I
+heard yesterday they were coming."
+
+From our lofty position on the hillside we commanded the road leading
+out of the village--the road that was all alive with carriages on this
+beautiful September morning. The W---- carriage had half halted to
+reconnoitre, and had only not hailed us because we had sedulously
+looked another way.
+
+"Let's get away," I said, "for the next carnage will not only stop,
+but come over;" and Bessie suffered herself to be led through the
+little tangle of brier and fern, past the gray old gravestones with
+"Miss Faith" and "Miss Mehitable" carved upon them, and into the leafy
+shadow of the waiting woods.
+
+Other lovers have been there before us, but the trees whisper no
+secrets save their own. The subject of our previous discussion was not
+resumed, nor was Fanny Meyrick mentioned, until on our homeward road
+we paused a moment on the hilltop, as we always did.
+
+It is indeed a hill of vision, that church hill at Lenox. Sparkling
+far to the south, the blue Dome lay, softened and shining in the
+September sun. There was ineffable peace in the faint blue sky, and,
+stealing up from the valley, a shimmering haze that seemed to veil the
+bustling village and soften all the rural sounds.
+
+Bessie drew nearer to me, shading her eyes as she looked down into the
+valley: "Charlie dear, let us stay here always. We shall be happier,
+better here than to go back to New York."
+
+"And the law-business?" I asked like a brutal bear, bringing the
+realities of life into my darling's girlish dream.
+
+"Can't you practice law in Foxcroft, and drive over there every
+morning? People do."
+
+"And because they do, and there are enough of them, I must plod along
+in the ways that are made for me already. We can make pilgrimages
+here, you know."
+
+"I suppose so," said Bessie with a sigh.
+
+Just then Fanny Kemble's clock in the tower above us struck the
+hour--one, two, three.
+
+"Bless me! so late? And there's that phaeton coming back over the hill
+again. Hurry, Charlie! don't let them see us. They'll think that we've
+been here all the time." And Bessie plunged madly down the hill, and
+struck off into the side-path that leads into the Lebanon road. The
+last vibrations of the bell were still trembling on the air as I
+caught up with her again.
+
+But again the teasing mood of the morning had come over her. Quite out
+of breath with the run, as we sat down to rest on the little porch of
+Mrs. Sloman's cottage she said, very earnestly, "But you haven't once
+said it."
+
+"Said what, my darling?"
+
+"That you are glad that Fanny is going abroad."
+
+"Nonsense! Why should I be glad?"
+
+"Are you sorry, then?"
+
+If I had but followed my impulse then, and said frankly that I was,
+and why I was! But Mrs. Sloman was coming through the little hall: I
+heard her step. Small time for explanation, no time for reproaches.
+And I could not leave Bessie, on that morning of all others, hurt or
+angry, or only half convinced.
+
+"No, I am not sorry," I said, pulling down a branch of honeysuckle,
+and making a loop of it to draw around her neck. "It is nothing,
+either way."
+
+"Then say after me if it is nothing--feel as I feel for one minute,
+won't you?"
+
+"Yes, indeed."
+
+"Say, after me, then, word for word, 'I am glad, _very_ glad, that
+Fanny Meyrick is to sail in October. I would not have her stay on this
+side for _worlds_!"
+
+And like a fool, a baby, I said it, word for word, from those sweet
+smiling lips: "I am glad, _very_ glad, that Fanny Meyrick is to sail
+in October. I would not have her stay on this side for _worlds_!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+The next day was Sunday, and I was on duty at an early hour, prepared
+to walk with Bessie to church. My darling was peculiar among women in
+this: her church-going dress was sober-suited; like a little gray nun,
+almost, she came down to me that morning. Her dress, of some soft gray
+stuff, fell around her in the simplest folds, a knot of brown ribbon
+at her throat, and in her hat a gray gull's wing.
+
+I had praised the Italian women for the simplicity of their
+church-attire: their black dresses and lace veils make a picturesque
+contrast with the gorgeous ceremonials of the high altar. But there
+was something in this quiet toilet, so fresh and simple and girl-like,
+that struck me as the one touch of grace that the American woman can
+give to the best even of foreign taste. Not the dramatic abnegation
+indicated by the black dress, but the quiet harmony of a life atune.
+
+Mrs. Sloman was ready even before Bessie came down. She was a
+great invalid, although her prim and rigid countenance forbore any
+expression save of severity. She had no pathos about her, not a touch.
+Whatever her bodily sufferings may have been--and Bessie dimly hinted
+that they were severe to agony at times--they were resolutely shut
+within her chamber door; and when she came out in the early morning,
+her cold brown hair drawn smoothly over those impassive cheeks, she
+looked like a lady abbess--as cold, as unyielding and as hard.
+
+There was small sympathy between the aunt and niece, but a great deal
+of painstaking duty on the one side, and on the other the habit of
+affection which young girls have for the faces they have always known.
+
+Mrs. Sloman had been at pains to tell me, when my frequent visits to
+her cottage made it necessary that I should in some fashion explain to
+her as to what I wanted there, that her niece, Bessie Stewart, was in
+nowise dependent on her, not even for a home. "This cottage we rent
+in common. It was her father's desire that her property should
+not accumulate, and that she should have nothing at my hands but
+companionship, and"--with a set and sickly smile--"advice when it was
+called for. We are partners in our expenses, and the arrangement can
+be broken up at any moment."
+
+Was this all? No word of love or praise for the fair young thing that
+had brightened all her household in these two years that Bessie had
+been fatherless?
+
+I believe there was love and appreciation, but it was not Mrs.
+Sloman's method to be demonstrative or expansive. She approved of the
+engagement, and in her grim way had opened an immediate battery of
+household ledgers and ways and means. Some idea, too, of making me
+feel easy about taking Bessie away from her, I think, inclined her to
+this business-like manner. I tried to show her, by my own manner, that
+I understood her without words, and I think she was very grateful to
+be spared the expression of feeling. Poor soul! repression had become
+such a necessity to her!
+
+So we talked on gravely of the weather, and of the celebrated Doctor
+McQ----, who was expected to give us an argumentative sermon that
+morning, until _my_ argument came floating in at the door like a calm
+little bit of thistledown, to which our previous conversation had been
+as the thistle's self.
+
+The plain little church was gay that morning. Carriage after carriage
+drove up with much prancing and champing, and group after group of
+city folk came rustling along the aisles. It was a bit of Fifth Avenue
+let into Lenox calm. The World and the Flesh were there, at least.
+
+In the hush of expectancy that preceded the minister's arrival there
+was much waving of scented fans, while the well-bred city glances took
+in everything without seeming to see. I felt that Bessie and I
+were being mentally discussed and ticketed. And as it was our first
+appearance at church since--well, _since_--perhaps there was just a
+little consciousness of our relations that made Bessie seem to retire
+absolutely within herself, and be no more a part of the silken crowd
+than was the grave, plain man who rose up in the pulpit.
+
+I hope the sermon was satisfactory. I am sure it was convincing to a
+brown-handed farmer who sat beside us, and who could with difficulty
+restrain his applauding comment. But I was lost in a dream of a near
+heaven, and could not follow the spoken word. It was just a quiet
+little opportunity to contemplate my darling, to tell over her
+sweetness and her charm, and to say over and again, like a blundering
+school-boy, "It's all mine! mine!"
+
+The congregation might have been dismissed for aught I knew, and
+left me sitting there with her beside me. But I was startled into the
+proprieties as we stood up to sing the concluding hymn. I was standing
+stock-still beside her, not listening to the words at all, but with
+a pleasant sense of everything being very comfortable, and an
+old-fashioned swell of harmony on the air, when suddenly the book
+dropped from Bessie's hand and fell heavily to the floor. I should
+have said she flung it down had it been on any other occasion, so
+rapid and vehement was the action.
+
+I stooped to pick it up, when with a decided gesture she stopped me.
+I looked at her surprised. Her face was flushed, indignant, I thought,
+and instantly my conscience was on the rack. What had I done, for my
+lady was evidently angry?
+
+Glancing down once more toward the book, I saw that she had set her
+foot upon it, and indeed her whole attitude was one of excitement,
+defiance. Why did she look so hot and scornful? I was disturbed and
+anxious: what was there in the book or in me to anger her?
+
+As quickly as possible I drew her away from the bustling crowd when
+the service was concluded. Fortunately, there was a side-door through
+which we could pass out into the quiet churchyard, and we vanished
+through it, leaving Mrs. Sloman far behind. Over into the Lebanon
+road was but a step, and the little porch was waiting with its cool
+honeysuckle shade. But Bessie did not stop at the gate: she was in no
+mood for home. And yet she would not answer my outpouring questions as
+to whether she was ill, or what _was_ the matter.
+
+"I'll tell you in a minute. Come, hurry!" she said, hastening along up
+the hill through all the dust and heat.
+
+At last we reached that rustic bit of ruin known popularly as the
+"Shed." It was a hard bit of climbing, but I rejoiced that Bessie, so
+flushed and excited at the start, grew calmer as we went; and when,
+the summit reached, she sat down to rest on a broken board, her color
+was natural and she seemed to breathe freely again.
+
+"Are they all hypocrites, do you think, Charlie?" she said suddenly,
+looking up into my face.
+
+"They? who? Bessie, what have I done to make you angry?"
+
+"You? Nothing, dear goose! I am angry at myself and at everybody else.
+Did it flash upon you, Charlie, what we were singing?"
+
+Then she quoted the lines, which I will not repeat here, but they
+expressed, as the sole aspiration of the singer, a desire to pass
+eternity in singing hymns of joy and praise--an impatience for the
+time to come, a disregard of earth, a turning away from temporal
+things, and again the desire for an eternity of sacred song.
+
+"Suppose I confess to you," said I, astonished at her earnestness,
+"that I did not at all know what I was singing?"
+
+"That's just it! just what makes it so dreadful! _Nobody_ was thinking
+about it--nobody! Nobody there wanted to give up earth and go straight
+to heaven and sing. I looked round at all the people, with their new
+bonnets, and the diamonds, and the footmen in the pews up stairs, and
+I thought, What lies they are all saying! Nobody wants to go to heaven
+at all until they are a hundred years old, and too deaf and blind and
+tired out to do anything on earth. My heaven is here and now in my own
+happiness, and so is yours, Charlie; and I felt so convicted of being
+a story-teller that I couldn't hold the book in my hand."
+
+"Well, then," said I, "shall we have one set of hymns for happy
+people, and another for poor, tired-out folks like that little
+dressmaker that leaned against the wall?" For Bessie herself had
+called my attention to the pale little body who had come to the church
+door at the same moment with us.
+
+"No, not two sets. Do you suppose that she, either, wants to _sing_ on
+for ever? And all those girls! Sorry enough they would be to have to
+die, and leave their dancing and flirtations and the establishments
+they hope to have! It wouldn't be much comfort to them to promise them
+they should _sing_. Charlie, I want a hymn that shall give thanks that
+I am alive, that I have _you_."
+
+"Could the dressmaker sing that?"
+
+"No;" and Bessie's eyes sought the shining blue sky with a wistful,
+beseeching tenderness. "Oh, it's all wrong, Charlie dear. She ought to
+tell us in a chant how tired and hopeless she is for this world; and
+we ought to sing to her something that would cheer her, help her, even
+in this world. Why must she wait for all her brightness till she dies?
+So perfectly heartless to stand up along side of her and sing _that_!"
+
+"Well," I said, "you needn't wait till next Sunday to bring her your
+words of cheer."
+
+In a minute my darling was crying on my shoulder. I could understand
+the outburst, and was glad of it.
+
+All athrill with new emotions, new purposes, an eternity of love,
+she had come to church to be reminded that earth was naught, that the
+trials and tempests here would come to an end some day, and after, to
+the patiently victorious, would come the hymns of praise. _Earth_
+was very full that morning to her and me; _earth_ was a place for
+worshipful harmonies; and yet the strong contrast with the poor
+patient sufferer who had passed into church with us was too much for
+Bessie: she craved an expression that should comprehend alike her
+sorrow and our abundant joy.
+
+The tempest of tears passed by, and we had bright skies again. Poor
+Mrs. Sloman's dinner waited long that day; and it was with a guilty
+sense that she was waiting too that we went down the hill at a
+quickened pace when the church clock, sounding up the hillside, came
+like a chiding voice.
+
+And a double sense of guiltiness was creeping over me. I must return
+to New York to-morrow, and I had not told Bessie yet of the longer
+journey I must make so soon. I put it by again and again in the short
+flying hours of that afternoon; and it was not until dusk had fallen
+in the little porch, as we sat there after tea, and I had watched the
+light from Mrs. Sloman's chamber shine down upon the honeysuckles and
+then go out, that I took my resolution.
+
+"Bessie," I said, leaning over her and taking her face in both my
+hands, "I have something to tell you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+"I have something to tell you;" and without an instant's pause I went
+on: "Mr. D---- has business in England which cannot be attended to
+by letter. One of us must go, and they send me. I must sail in two
+weeks."
+
+It was a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, and Bessie gave a little gasp
+of surprise: "So soon! Oh, Charlie, take me with you!" Realizing in
+the next instant the purport of the suggestion, she flung away from my
+hands and rushed into the parlor, where a dim, soft lamp was burning
+on the table. She sat down on a low chair beside it and hid her face
+on the table in her hands.
+
+Like a flash of lightning all the possibilities of our marriage before
+many days--arranging it with Mrs. Sloman, and satisfying my partners,
+who would expect me to travel fast and work hard in the short time
+they had allotted for the journey,--all came surging and throbbing
+through my brain, while my first answer was not given in words.
+
+When I had persuaded Bessie to look at me and to answer me in turn,
+I hoped we should be able to talk about it with the calm judgment it
+needed.
+
+"To leave my wife--my wife!"--how I lingered on the word!--"in some
+poky lodgings in London, while I am spending my day among dusty boxes
+and files of deeds in a dark old office, isn't just my ideal of our
+wedding-journey; but, Bessie, if _you_ wish it so--"
+
+What was there in my tone that jarred her? I had meant to be
+magnanimous, to think of her comfort alone, of the hurry and business
+of such a journey--tried to shut myself out and think only of her in
+the picture. But I failed, of course, and went on stupidly, answering
+the quick look of question in her eyes: "If you prefer it--that is,
+you know, I must think of you and not of myself."
+
+Still the keen questioning glance. What new look was this in her eyes,
+what dawning thought?
+
+"No," she answered after a pause, slowly withdrawing her hand from
+mine, "think of yourself."
+
+I had expected that she would overwhelm me in her girlish way with
+saucy protestations that she would be happy even in the dull London
+lodgings, and that she would defy the law-files to keep me long from
+her. This sudden change of manner chilled me with a nameless fear.
+
+"If _I_ prefer it! If _I_ wish it! I see that I should be quite in
+your way, an encumbrance. Don't talk about it any more."
+
+She was very near crying, and I wish to heaven she had cried. But she
+conquered herself resolutely, and held herself cold and musing before
+me. I might take her hand, might kiss her unresisting cheek, but she
+seemed frozen into sudden thoughtfulness that it was impossible to
+meet or to dispel.
+
+"Bessie, you know you are a little goose! What could I wish for in
+life but to carry you off this minute to New York? Come, get your hat
+and let's walk over to the parsonage now. We'll get Doctor Wilder to
+marry us, and astonish your aunt in the morning."
+
+"Nonsense!" said Bessie with a slight quiver of her pretty, pouting
+mouth. "Do be rational, Charlie!"
+
+I believe I was rational in my own fashion for a little while, but
+when I ventured to say in a very unnecessary whisper, "Then you will
+go abroad with me?" Bessie flushed to her temples and rose from the
+sofa. She had a way, when she was very much in earnest, or very much
+stirred with some passionate thought, of pacing the parlor with her
+hands clasped tightly before her, and her arms tense and straining at
+the clasping hands. With her head bent slightly forward, and her brown
+hair hanging in one long tress over her shoulder, she went swiftly
+up and down, while I lay back on the sofa and watched her. She would
+speak it out presently, the thought that was hurting her. So I felt
+secure and waited, following every movement with a lover's eye. But
+I ought not to have waited. I should have drawn her to me and shared
+that rapid, nervous walk--should have compelled her with sweet force
+to render an account of that emotion. But I was so secure, so entirely
+one with her in thought, that I could conceive of nothing but a
+passing tempest at my blundering, stupid thoughtfulness for her.
+
+Suddenly at the door she stopped, and with her hand upon it said,
+"Good-night, Charlie;" and was out of the room in a twinkling.
+
+I sprang from the sofa and to the foot of the stairs, but I saw only a
+glimpse of her vanishing dress; and though I called after her in
+low, beseeching tones, "Bessie! Bessie!" a door shut in the distant
+corridor for only answer.
+
+What to do? In that decorous mansion I could not follow her; and my
+impulse to dash after her and knock at her door till she answered me,
+I was forced to put aside after a moment's consideration.
+
+I stood there in the quiet hall, the old clock ticking away a solemn
+"I-told-you-so!" in the corner. I made one step toward the kitchen
+to send a message by one of the maids, but recoiled at the suggestion
+that this would publish a lovers' quarrel. So I retreated along the
+hall, my footsteps making no noise on the India matting, and entered
+the parlor again like a thief. I sat down by the table: "Bessie will
+certainly come back: she will get over her little petulance, and know
+I am here waiting."
+
+All about the parlor were the traces of my darling. A soft little coil
+of rose-colored Berlin wool, with its ivory needle sheathed among the
+stitches, lay in a tiny basket. I lifted it up: the basket was made
+of scented grass, and there was a delicious sweet and pure fragrance
+about the knitting-work. I took possession of it and thrust it into my
+breast-pocket. A magazine she had been reading, with the palest slip
+of a paper-knife--a bit of delicate Swiss wood--in it, next came in my
+way. I tried to settle down and read where she had left off, but the
+words danced before my eyes, and a strange tune was repeating in my
+ears, "Good-night, Charlie--good-night and good-bye!"
+
+One mad impulse seized me to go out under her window and call to her,
+asking her to come down. But Lenox nights were very still, and the
+near neighbors on either side doubtless wide awake to all that was
+going on around the Sloman cottage.
+
+So I sat still like an idiot, and counted the clock-strokes, and
+nervously calculated the possibility of her reappearance, until I
+heard, at last, footsteps coming along the hall in rapid tread. I
+darted up: "Oh, Bessie, I knew you would come back!" as through the
+open door walked in--Mary, Mrs. Sloman's maid!
+
+She started at seeing me: "Excuse me, sir. The parlor was so--I
+thought there was no one here."
+
+"What is it, Mary?" I asked with assumed indifference. "Do you want
+Miss Bessie? She went up stairs a few moments ago."
+
+"No, sir. I thought--that is--" glancing down in awkward confusion at
+the key she held in her hand. She was retiring again softly when I saw
+in the key the reason of her discomposure.
+
+"Did you come in to lock up, Mary?" I asked with a laugh.
+
+"Yes, sir. But it is of no consequence. I thought you had gone, sir."
+
+"Time I was, I suppose. Well, Mary, you shall lock me out, and then
+carry this note to Miss Bessie. It is so late that I will not wait for
+her. Perhaps she is busy with Mrs. Sloman."
+
+Something in Mary's face made me suspect that she knew Mrs. Sloman
+to be sound asleep at this moment; but she said nothing, and waited
+respectfully until I had scribbled a hasty note, rifling Bessie's
+writing-desk for the envelope in which to put my card. Dear child!
+there lay my photograph, the first thing I saw as I raised the dainty
+lid.
+
+"Bessie," I wrote, "I have waited until Mary has come in with her
+keys, and I suppose I must go. My train starts at nine to-morrow
+morning, but you will be ready--will you not?--at six to take a
+morning walk with me. I will be here at that hour. You don't know how
+disturbed and anxious I shall be till then."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Morning came--or rather the long night came to an end at last--and at
+twenty minutes before six I opened the gate at the Sloman cottage.
+It was so late in September that the morning was a little hazy and
+uncertain. And yet the air was warm and soft--a perfect reflex, I
+thought, of Bessie last night--an electric softness under a brooding
+cloud.
+
+The little house lay wrapped in slumber. I hesitated to pull the bell:
+no, it would startle Mrs. Sloman. Bessie was coming: she would surely
+not make me wait. Was not that her muslin curtain stirring? I would
+wait in the porch--she would certainly come down soon.
+
+So I waited, whistling softly to myself as I pushed the withered
+leaves about with my stick and drew strange patterns among them. Half
+an hour passed.
+
+"I will give her a gentle reminder;" so I gathered a spray from the
+honeysuckle, a late bloom among the fast-falling leaves, and aimed
+it right at the muslin curtain. The folds parted and it fell into the
+room, but instead of the answering face that I looked to see, all was
+still again.
+
+"It's very strange," thought I. "Bessie's pique is not apt to last so
+long. She must indeed be angry."
+
+And I went over each detail of our last night's talk, from her first
+burst of "Take me with you!" to my boggling answers, my fears, so
+stupidly expressed, that it would be anything but a picturesque
+bridal-trip, and the necessity that there was for rapid traveling and
+much musty, old research.
+
+"What a fool I was not to take her then and there! She _is_ myself:
+why shouldn't I, then, be selfish? When I do what of all things I want
+to, why can't I take it for granted that she will be happy too?" And
+a hot flush of shame went over me to think that I had been about to
+propose to her, to my own darling girl, that we should be married as
+soon as possible _after_ I returned from Europe.
+
+Her love, clearer-sighted, had striven to forestall our separation:
+why should we be parted all those weary weeks? why put the sea between
+us?
+
+I had accepted all these obstacles as a dreary necessity, never
+thinking for the moment that conventional objections might be
+overcome, aunts and guardians talked over, and the whole matter
+arranged by two people determined on their own sweet will.
+
+What a lumbering, masculine plan was mine! _After I returned from
+Europe!_ I grew red and bit my lips with vexation. And now my dear
+girl was shy and hurt. How should I win back again that sweet impulse
+of confidence?
+
+Presently the household began to stir. I heard unbarring and
+unbolting, and craftily retreated to the gate, that I might seem to be
+just coming in, to the servant who should open the door.
+
+It was opened by a housemaid--not the Mary of the night before--who
+stared a moment at seeing me, but on my asking if Miss Bessie was
+ready yet to walk, promised smilingly to go and see. She returned in
+a moment, saying that Miss Bessie begged that I would wait: she was
+hurrying to come down.
+
+The child! She has slept too soundly. I shall tell her how insensate
+she must have been, how serenely unconscious when the flower came in
+at the window.
+
+The clock on the mantel struck seven and the half hour before Bessie
+appeared. She was very pale, and her eyes looked away at my greeting.
+Passively she suffered herself to be placed in a chair, and then, with
+something of her own manner, she said hurriedly, "Don't think I got
+your note, Charlie, last night, or I wouldn't, indeed I wouldn't, have
+kept you waiting so long this morning."
+
+"Didn't Mary bring it to you?" I asked, surprised.
+
+"Yes: that is, she brought it up to my room, but, Charlie dear, I
+wasn't there: I wasn't there all night. I did shut my door, though I
+heard you calling, and after a little while I crept out into the entry
+and looked over the stairs, hoping you were there still, and that I
+could come back to you. But you were not there, and everything was so
+still that I was sure you had gone--gone without a word. I listened
+and listened, but I was too proud to go down into the parlor and see.
+And yet I could not go back to my room, next Aunt Sloman's. I went
+right up stairs to the blue room, and stayed there. Mary must have put
+your note on my table when she came up stairs. I found it there this
+morning when I went down."
+
+"Poor darling! And what did you do all night in the blue room? I am
+afraid," looking at her downcast eyes, "that you did not sleep--that
+you were angry at me."
+
+"At you? No, at myself," she said very low.
+
+"Bessie, you know that my first and only thought was of the hurry and
+worry this journey would cost you. You know that to have you with me
+was something that I had scarce dared to dream."
+
+"And therefore," with a flash of blue eyes, "for me to dare to dream
+it was--" and again she hid her face.
+
+"But, my precious, don't you know that it was for _you_ to suggest
+what I wanted all the time, but thought it would be too much to ask?"
+For I had discovered, of course, in my morning's work among the dead
+leaves on the porch, that I had desired it from the moment I had
+known of my journey--desired it without acknowledging it to myself or
+presuming to plan upon it.
+
+At this juncture breakfast was announced, and the folding doors thrown
+open that led into the breakfast-parlor, disclosing Mrs. Sloman seated
+by the silver urn, and a neat little table spread for three, so quick
+had been the housemaid's intuitions.
+
+"Good-morning, Charles: come get some breakfast. You will hardly be in
+time for your train," suggested Aunt Sloman in a voice that had in it
+all the gloom of the morning. Indeed, the clouds had gathered heavily
+during the parlor scene, and some large drops were rattling against
+the window.
+
+I looked at my watch. After eight! Pshaw! I will let this train go,
+and will telegraph to the office. I can take the night train, and thus
+lose only a few hours. So I stayed.
+
+What rare power had Bessie in the very depths of her trouble, and with
+her face pale and eyes so heavy with her last night's vigil--what gift
+that helped her to be gay? Apparently not with an effort, not forced,
+she was as joyous and frank as her sunniest self. No exaggeration of
+laughter or fun, but the brightness of her every-day manner, teasing
+and sparkling round Aunt Sloman, coquetting very naturally with me.
+It was a swift change from the gloomy atmosphere we had left behind in
+the parlor, and I basked in it delighted, and feeling, poor fool! that
+the storm was cleared away, and that the time for the singing of birds
+was come.
+
+I was the more deceived. I did not know all of Bessie yet. Her horror
+of a scene, of any suspicion that there was discord between us, and
+her rare self-control, that for the moment put aside all trouble,
+folded it out of sight and took up the serene old life again for a
+little space.
+
+"Aunt Maria," said Bessie, pushing aside her chair, "won't you take
+care of Mr. Munro for a little while? I have a letter to write that I
+want him to take to New York."
+
+Aunt Maria would be happy to entertain me, or rather to have me
+entertain her. If I would read to her, now, would I be so kind, while
+she washed up her breakfast cups?
+
+How people can do two things at once I am sure I cannot understand;
+and while the maid brought in the large wooden bowl, the steam of
+whose household incense rose high in the air, I watched impatient for
+the signal to begin. When the tea-cups were all collected, and Aunt
+Sloman held one by the handle daintily over the "boiling flood,"
+"Now," she said with a serene inclination of her head, "if you
+please."
+
+And off I started at a foot-pace through the magazine that had been
+put into my hands. Whether it was anything about the "Skelligs," or
+"Miss Sedgwick's Letters," or "Stanley-Livingstone," I have not the
+remotest idea. I was fascinated by the gentle dip of each tea-cup,
+and watched from the corner of my eye the process of polishing each
+glittering spoon on a comfortable crash towel.
+
+Then my thoughts darted off to Bessie. Was she indeed writing to her
+old trustee? Judge Hubbard was a friend of my father's, and would
+approve of me, I thought, if he did not agree at once to the hurried
+marriage and ocean journey.
+
+"What an unconscionable time it takes her! Don't you think so, Mrs.
+Sloman?" I said at last, after I had gone through three several papers
+on subjects unknown.
+
+I suppose it was scarcely a courteous speech. But Mrs. Sloman smiled a
+white-lipped smile of sympathy, and said, "Yes; I will go and send her
+to you."
+
+"Oh, don't hurry her," I said falsely, hoping, however, that she
+would.
+
+Did I say before that Bessie was tall? Though so slight that you
+always wanted to speak of her with some endearing diminutive, she
+looked taller than ever that morning; and as she stood before me,
+coming up to the fireplace where I was standing, her eyes looked
+nearly level into mine. I did not understand their veiled expression,
+and before I had time to study it she dropped them and said hastily,
+"Young man, I am pining for a walk."
+
+"In the rain?"
+
+"Pshaw! This is nothing, after all, but a Scotch mist. See, I am
+dressed for it;" and she threw a tartan cloak over her shoulder--a
+blue-and-green tartan that I had never seen before.
+
+"The very thing for shipboard," I whispered as I looked at her
+admiringly.
+
+Her face was flushed enough now, but she made no answer save to stoop
+down and pat the silly little terrier that had come trotting into the
+room with her.
+
+"Fidget shall go--yes, he shall go walking;" and Fidget made a gray
+ball of himself in his joy at the permission.
+
+Up the hill again we walked, with the little Skye terrier cantering in
+advance or madly chasing the chickens across the road.
+
+"Did you finish your letter satisfactorily?" I asked, for I was
+fretting with impatience to know its contents.
+
+"Yes. I will give it to you when you leave to-night."
+
+"Shall we say next Saturday, Bessie?" said I, resolving to plunge at
+once into the sea of our late argument.
+
+"For what? For you to come again? Don't you always come on Saturday?"
+
+"Yes, but this time I mean to carry you away."
+
+A dead pause, which I improved by drawing her hand under my arm and
+imprisoning her little gray glove with my other hand. As she did not
+speak, I went on fatuously: "You don't need any preparation of gowns
+and shawls; you can buy your _trousseau_ in London, if need be; and
+we'll settle on the ship, coming over, how and where we are to live in
+New York."
+
+"You think, then, that I am all ready to be married?"
+
+"I think that my darling is superior to the nonsense of other
+girls--that she will be herself always, and doesn't need any
+masquerade of wedding finery."
+
+"You think, then," coldly and drawing her hand away, "that I am
+different from other girls?" and the scarlet deepened on her cheek.
+"You think I say and do things other girls would not?"
+
+"My darling, what nonsense! You say and do things that other girls
+_cannot_, nor could if they tried a thousand years."
+
+"Thanks for the compliment! It has at least the merit of dubiousness.
+Now, Charlie, if you mention Europe once in this walk I shall be
+seriously offended. Do let us have a little peace and a quiet talk."
+
+"Why, what on earth can we talk about until this is settled? I can't
+go back to New York, and engage our passage, and go to see Judge
+Hubbard--I suppose you were writing to him this morning?"
+
+She did not answer, but seemed bent on making the dainty print of her
+foot in the moist earth of the road, taking each step carefully, as
+though it were the one important and engrossing thing in life.
+
+"--Unless," I went on, "you tell me you will be ready to go back with
+me this day week. You see, Bessie dear, I _must_ sail on the fixed
+day. And if we talk it over now and settle it all, it will save no end
+of writing to and fro."
+
+"Good-morning!" said a gay voice behind us--Fanny Meyrick's voice. She
+was just coming out of one of the small houses on the roadside. "Don't
+you want some company? I've been to call on my washerwoman, and I'm so
+glad I've met you. Such an English morning! Shall I walk with you?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+If I could have changed places with Fidget, I could scarce have
+expressed my disapproval of the new-comer more vehemently than he.
+Miss Meyrick seemed quite annoyed at the little dog's uncalled-for
+snapping and barking, and shook her umbrella at him in vain. I was
+obliged to take him in hand myself at last, and to stand in the road
+and order him to "Go home!" while the two young ladies walked on,
+apparently the best of friends.
+
+When I rejoined them Fanny Meyrick was talking fast and unconnectedly,
+as was her habit: "Yes, lodgings in London--the dearest old house in
+Clarges street. Such a butler! He looks like a member of Parliament.
+We stayed there once before for three days. I am just going to settle
+into an English girl. Had enough of the Continent. Never do see
+England now-a-days, nobody. All rush off. So papa is going to have a
+comfortable time. Embassy? Oh, I know the general well."
+
+I looked beseechingly at Bessie. Why wouldn't she say that we too
+would be there in London lodgings? Perhaps, then, Fanny Meyrick might
+take the hint and leave us soon.
+
+But Bessie gave no sign, and I relapsed into a somewhat impatient
+_resume_ of my own affairs. Yes: married quietly on Saturday; leave
+here on Monday morning train; take, yes, Wednesday's steamer. I could
+arrange it with my law-partners to be absent a little longer
+perhaps, that there might be some little rest and romance about the
+wedding-journey.
+
+Two or three times in the course of that morning--for she stayed with
+us all the morning--Fanny Meyrick rallied me on my preoccupation and
+silence: "He didn't use to be so, Bessie, years ago, I assure you.
+It's very disagreeable, sir--not an improvement by any means."
+
+Then--I think without any malice prepense, simply the unreasoning
+rattle of a belle of two seasons--she plunged into a description of
+a certain fete at Blankkill on the Hudson, the occasion of our first
+acquaintance: "He was so young, Bessie, you can't imagine, and blushed
+so beautifully that all the girls were jealous as could be. We were
+very good friends--weren't we?--all that summer?"
+
+"And are still, I hope," said I with my most sweeping bow. "What have
+I done to forfeit Miss Meyrick's esteem?"
+
+"Nothing, except that you used to find your way oftener to Meyrick
+Place than you do now. Well, I won't scold you for that: I shall make
+up for that on the other side."
+
+What did she mean? She had no other meaning than that she would have
+such compensation in English society that her American admirers would
+not be missed. She did not know of my going abroad.
+
+But Bessie darted a quick glance from her to me, and back again to
+her, as though some dawning suspicion had come to her. "I hope,"
+she said quietly, "that you may have a pleasant winter. It will be
+delightful, won't it, Charlie?"
+
+"Oh, very!" I answered, but half noting the under-meaning of her
+words, my mind running on deck state-rooms and the like.
+
+"Charlie," said Miss Meyrick suddenly, "do you remember what happened
+two years ago to-day?"
+
+"No, I think not."
+
+Taking out a little book bound in Russia leather and tipped with gold,
+she handed it to Bessie, who ran her eye down the page: it was open at
+September 28th.
+
+"Read it," said Fanny, settling herself composedly in her shawl, and
+leaning back against a tree with half-shut eyes.
+
+"'_September 28th_'" Bessie read, in clear tones which had a strange
+constraint in them, "'Charlie Munro saved my life. I shall love
+him for ever and ever. We were out in a boat, we two, on the
+Hudson--moonlight--I was rowing. Dropt my oar into the water. Leaned
+out after it and upset the boat. Charlie caught me and swam with me to
+shore.'"
+
+A dead silence as Bessie closed the book and held it in her hand.
+
+"Oh," said I lightly, "that isn't worth chronicling--that! It was
+no question of saving lives. The New York boat was coming up, if I
+remember."
+
+"Yes, it was in trying to steer away from it that I dropped my oar."
+
+"So you see it would have picked us up, any how. There was nothing but
+the ducking to remember."
+
+"Such a figure, Bessie! Imagine us running along the road to the gate!
+I could scarcely move for my dripping skirts; and we frightened papa
+so when we stepped up on the piazza out of the moonlight!"
+
+To stop this torrent of reminiscences, which, though of nothings, I
+could see was bringing the red spot to Bessie's cheek, I put out my
+hand for the book: "Let me write something down to-day;" and I hastily
+scribbled: "_September_ 28. Charles Munro and Bessie Stewart, to sail
+for Europe in ten days, ask of their friend Fanny Meyrick her warm
+congratulations."
+
+"Will that do?" I whispered as I handed the book to Bessie.
+
+"Not at all," said Bessie scornfully and coldly, tearing out the leaf
+as she spoke and crumpling it in her hand.--"Sorry to spoil your book,
+Fanny dear, but the sentiment would have spoiled it more. Let us go
+home."
+
+As we passed the hotel on that dreary walk home, Fanny would have
+left us, but Bessie clung to her and whispered something in a pleading
+voice, begging her, evidently, to come home with us.
+
+"If Mr. Munro will take word to papa," she said, indicating that
+worthy, who sat on the upper piazza smoking his pipe.
+
+"We will walk on," said Bessie coldly. "Come, Fanny dear."
+
+Strange, thought I as I turned on my heel, this sudden fond intimacy!
+Bessie is angry. Why did I never tell her of the ducking? And yet when
+I remembered how Fanny had clung to me, how after we had reached
+the shore I had been forced to remind her that it was no time for
+sentimental gratitude when we both were shivering, I could see why
+I had refrained from mentioning it to Bessie until our closer
+confidences would allow of it.
+
+No man, unless he be a downright coxcomb, will ever admit to one woman
+that another woman has loved him. To his wife--perhaps. But how much
+Fanny Meyrick cared for me I had never sought to know. After
+the dismal ending of that moonlight boat-row--I had been already
+disenchanted for some time before--I had scarce called at Meyrick
+Place more than civility required. The young lady was so inclined to
+exaggerate the circumstance, to hail me as her deliverer, that I felt
+like the hero of a melodrama whenever we met. And after I had met
+Bessie there were pleasanter things to think about--much pleasanter.
+
+How exasperating girls can be when they try! I had had my _conge_ for
+the walk home, I knew, and I was vexed enough to accept it and stay at
+the hotel to dinner.
+
+"I will not be played upon in this way. Bessie knows that I stayed
+over the morning train just to be with her, and piled up for to-morrow
+no end of work, as well as sarcastic remarks from D. & Co. If she
+chooses to show off her affection for Fanny Meyrick in these few hours
+that we have together--Fanny Meyrick whom she _hated_ yesterday--she
+may enjoy her friendship undisturbed by me."
+
+So I loitered with my cigar after dinner, and took a nap on the sofa
+in my room. I was piqued, and did not care to conceal it. As the clock
+struck five I bethought me it was time to betake me to the Sloman
+cottage. A sound of wheels and a carriage turning brought me to the
+window. The two young ladies were driving off in Fanny Meyrick's
+phaeton, having evidently come to the hotel and waited while it was
+being made ready.
+
+"Pique for pique! Serves me right, I suppose."
+
+Evening found me at the Sloman cottage, waiting with Mrs. Sloman by
+the tea-table. Why do I always remember her, sitting monumental by the
+silver urn?
+
+"The girls are very late to-night."
+
+"Yes." I was beginning to be uneasy. It was nearing train-time again.
+
+"Such lovely moonlight, I suppose, has tempted them, or they may be
+staying at Foxcroft to tea."
+
+Indeed? I looked at my watch: I had ten minutes.
+
+A sound of wheels: the phaeton drove up.
+
+"Oh, Charlie," said Bessie as she sprang out, "you bad boy! you'll
+miss your train again. Fanny here will drive you to the hotel. Jump
+in, quick!"
+
+And as the moonlight shone full on her face I looked inquiringly into
+her eyes.
+
+"The letter," I said, "for Judge Hubbard?" hoping that she would go to
+the house for it, and then I could follow her for a word.
+
+"Oh! I had almost forgotten. Here it is;" and she drew it from her
+pocket and held it out to me in her gloved hand. I pressed the hand
+to my lips, riding-glove and all, and sprang in beside Fanny, who was
+with some difficulty making her horse stand still.
+
+"Good-bye!" from the little figure at the gate. "Don't forget, Fanny,
+to-morrow at ten;" and we were off.
+
+By the wretched kerosene lamp of the car, going down, I read my
+letter, for it was for me: "I will not go to Europe, and I forbid you
+to mention it again. I shall never, never forget that _I_ proposed
+it, and that you--_accepted_ it. Come up to Lenox once more before you
+go."
+
+This was written in ink, and was sealed. It was the morning's note.
+But across the envelope these words were written in pencil: "Go to
+Europe with Fanny Meyrick, and come up to Lenox, both of you, when you
+return."
+
+SARAH C. HALLOWELL.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+INSIDE JAPAN.
+
+
+A double pleasure rewards the pioneer who is the first to penetrate
+into the midst of a new people. Besides the rare exhilaration felt in
+treading soil virgin to alien feet, it acts like mental oxygen to look
+upon and breathe in a unique civilization like that of Japan. To feel
+that for ages millions of one's own race have lived and loved, enjoyed
+and suffered and died, living the fullness of life, yet without the
+religion, laws, customs, food, dress and culture which seem to us
+to be the vitals of our social existence, is like walking through a
+living Pompeii.
+
+I confess to a chronic desire to explore the Island Empire in which I
+dwell. Having already, in the central provinces of Japan, trodden many
+a path never before touched by foreign foot, I yearned to explore
+the twin provinces of Kadzusa and Awa, which form the peninsula lying
+between the Gulf of Yeddo and the Pacific Ocean. A timely holiday and
+a passport from the Japanese foreign office enabled me to start toward
+the end of March, the time when all Japan is glorious with blossoming
+plum trees, and the camellia trees in forests of bloom are marshaled
+by thousands on the mountain-slopes.
+
+I was glad to get away from Yeddo: I had a fit of anti-Caucasianism,
+and wished to dwell a while amidst things purely Japanese. There
+were too many foreigners in Yeddo. In that city of only eight hundred
+thousand Japanese there are now full two hundred foreigners of all
+nationalities; and of these, fifty or more are Americans. It was too
+much like home and too little like Japan. Should I go to Yokohama,
+the case was worse. Nearly twelve hundred of the sons of Japheth dwelt
+there, and to reach that upstart European city one must travel on a
+railway and see telegraph-poles all along the line. What _was_ the
+use of living in Japan? Every young Japanese, too, in the capital is
+brainful of "civilization," "progress," "reform," etc. I half suspect
+a few cracks in the craniums belonging to some of the youths who wish
+to introduce law, religion, steam, language, frock-coats and tight
+boots by edict and ordinance. There was too much civilization. I
+yearned for something more primitive, something more purely Japanese;
+and tramping into the country I should find it. I should eat Japanese
+food--profanely dubbed "chow-chow;" sleep in Japanese beds--on the
+floor; talk Japanese--as musical as Italian; and live so much like an
+old-time native that I should feel as one born on the soil. By that
+time, returning to Yeddo as a Japanese of the period, I should of
+course burn to adopt railways, telegraphs and balloons, codify the
+laws, improve upon United States postage, coinage and dress-coats, and
+finish off by annexing the English language after I had cut out all
+irregularities and made all the crooked spelling straight.
+
+So, resolving to be a heathen for a week at least, I left Yeddo one
+afternoon, though it took several hours to do so: the big city is one
+of distances more magnificent than those of Washington. I started in
+a _jin-riki-sha_, which baby-carriage on adult wheels has already been
+described, so as to be tolerably familiar to all American readers.
+The "team" of this "man-power carriage" consists of two men, pulling
+tandem--one in the shafts, the other running ahead with a rope over
+his shoulder, and, until the recent passage of a law commanding
+decency, attired only in his cuticle and a loin-cloth two inches wide.
+You take three coolies when you wish to be stylish, while four are
+not an unknown sensation in Yeddo. With these and fresh relays you can
+travel sixty, or even eighty, miles a day; and I have known one man to
+run thirty miles on the stretch.
+
+Of all the modes of traveling in Japan, the jin-riki-sha is the most
+pleasant. The _kago_ is excruciating. It is a flat basket, swung on
+a pole and carried on the shoulders of two men. If your neck does
+not break, your feet go hopelessly to sleep. Headaches seem to lodge
+somewhere in the bamboos, to afflict every victim entrapped in it. To
+ride in a kago is as pleasant as riding in a washtub or a coffin slung
+on a pole. In some mountain-passes stout native porters carry you
+pickapack. Crossing the shallow rivers, you may sit upon a platform
+borne on men's shoulders as they wade. Saddle-horses are not to be
+publicly hired, but pack-horses are pleasant means of locomotion.
+These animals and their leaders deserve a whole chapter of description
+for themselves. Fancy a brass-bound peaked pack-saddle rising a foot
+above the animal's back, with a crupper-strap slanting down to clasp
+the tail. The oft-bandied slur, that in Japan everything goes by
+contraries, has a varnish of truth on it when we notice that the most
+gorgeous piece of Japanese saddlery is the crupper, which, even on
+a pack-horse, is painted crimson and gilded gloriously. The man who
+leads the horse is an animal that by long contact and companionship
+with the quadruped has grown to resemble him in disposition and
+ejaculation: at least, the equine and the human seem to harmonize well
+together. This man is called in Japanese "horse side." He is dressed
+in straw sandals and the universally worn _kimono_, or blue cotton
+wrapper-like dress, which is totally unfitted for work of any kind,
+and which makes the slovens of Japan--a rather numerous class--always
+look as if they had just got out of bed. At his waist is the usual
+girdle, from which hangs the inevitable bamboo-and-brass pipe, the
+bowl of which holds but a pellet of the mild fine-cut tobacco of the
+country. The pipe-case is connected with a tobacco-pouch, in which
+are also flint, steel and tinder. All these are suspended by a cord,
+fastened to a wooden or ivory button, which is tucked up through the
+belt. On his head, covering his shaven mid-scalp and right-angled
+top-knot, is a blue cotton rag--not handkerchief, since such an
+article in Japan is always made of paper. This head-gear is usually
+fastened over the head by twisting the ends under the nose. With a
+rope six feet long he leads his horse, which trusts so implicitly
+to its master's guidance that we suspect the prevalence of blindness
+among the Japanese pack-horses arises from sheer lack of the exercise
+of their eyesight. These unkempt brutes are strangers to curry-combs
+and brushes, though a semi-monthly scrubbing in hot water keeps them
+tolerably clean. Their shoes are a curiosity: the hoofs are not shod
+with iron, but with straw sandals, tied on thrice or oftener daily.
+Grass is scarce in Japan, and oats are unknown. The nags live on
+beans, barley, and the stalks, leaves and tops of succulent plants,
+with only an occasional wisp of hay or grass.
+
+In certain districts horses of one or the other sex, as the law
+determines, are kept exclusively. Horses of the gentler sex in Japan
+are usually led by women. During part of my journey to the place which
+I am about to describe the leader of the mare I bestrode was a maiden
+of some forty summers--a neat, spare, vinegar-faced sylph, who had
+evidently long since left the matrimonial market, and had devoted
+herself to making one horse happy for the rest of her pilgrimage. That
+she was neither wife nor widow I discovered, not by asking questions,
+but by the manner in which her hair was dressed. Japanese virgins and
+wives have each distinct coiffures, by which, apart from the shaven
+eyebrows and the teeth dyed black of the married women, the _musume_
+or young maiden may be known. The widow who has resolved never to
+marry again (always too old or ugly) is distinguished by her smooth
+skull, every hair of which is shaved off. A lady of rank may also be
+known by her coiffure; and many other distinctions are thus noted.
+
+I waited three-quarters of an hour for my horse and its leader to
+appear at the post-relay at which I sat down, and was stared at during
+that time by about three hundred pairs of eyes. The populace of
+each village turned out _en masse_ to see the foreigner, and they
+diligently improved their time in examining him from crown to
+boot-sole. Like everything else in the rural districts of Japan, my
+guide was not in a hurry, and could not understand why a foreigner
+should be. But finally arriving, she bowed very low and invited me
+to climb up on the saddle, and off we started for a mountain ride of
+eight miles.
+
+A Japanese pack-horse, at his best, seems always swaying between two
+opinions: his affection for the bestower of his beans and that for the
+repose of the stable mutually attract him. On this occasion the little
+woman gently led the horse over the rough places and down the steep
+paths with the ejaculation, _Mite yo! Mite yo!_ but when the beast
+stopped too long to meditate or to chew the bit, as if vainly trying
+to pick its teeth, a lively jerk of the rope and a "You old beast!
+come on," started the animal on its travels. Finally, when the
+creature stopped to deliberate upon the propriety of going forward at
+all, the vials of the wrath of the Japanese spinster exploded, and I
+was tempted to believe her affections had been blighted. But when we
+met any of her friends on the road, or passed the wayside shops or
+farm-houses, the scolder of horses was the lady who wished all _Ohaio_
+("Good-morning"), or remarked that the weather was very fine; and when
+joked for carrying a foreigner, replied, "Yes, it is the first time I
+have had the honor."
+
+I need not trouble the reader with many details of geography. My
+trip lasted eight days, during which I passed over two hundred miles,
+two-thirds of the way on foot. I made the entire circuit of the lower
+half of the peninsula, but shall dwell only on my visit to Kanozan
+(Deer Mountain), famous for its lovely scenery, temple and Booddhist
+monastery. From the top of the mountain there are visible innumerable
+valleys, nearly the whole of the Gulf of Yeddo, and the white-throned
+Foosiyama, called the highest mountain in Japan and the most beautiful
+in the world. We spent the night previous in Kisaradzu, the capital
+of the now united provinces, and a neat little city, just beginning to
+introduce foreign civilization. Its streets were lighted with Yankee
+lamps and Pennsylvania petroleum. Postal boxes after the Yankee custom
+were erected and in use. Gingham umbrellas were replacing those made
+of oiled paper. Barbers' poles, painted white with the spiral red
+band, were set up, and within the shops Young Japan had his queue
+cut off and his hair dressed in foreign style. Ignorant of the
+significance of the symbolic relic of the old days, when the barber
+was doctor and dentist also, and made his pole represent a bandage
+wound around a broken limb, the Japanese barber has, in many cases,
+added a green or blue band. Not being an adept in the use of that
+refractory language which Young Japan would so like to flatten out and
+plane down for vernacular use, the Japanese barber is not always happy
+in executing the English legend for his sign-board. The following are
+specimens:
+
+                  "A HAIR-DRESSING SALOON FOR
+                    JAPANES AND FOREIGNER."
+
+                        "SHOP OF HAIR."
+
+                   "HAIRS CUT IN THE ENGLISH
+                      AND FRENCH FASHION."
+
+Passing out of Kisaradzu, and winding up to Kanozan over the narrow
+bridle-path, we pass the usual terraced rice-fields watered by
+descending rivulets, and the usual thatched and mud-walled cottages,
+which characterize every landscape in Japan, besides long rows of
+tall _tsubaki_ (camellia) trees, forty feet high and laden with their
+crimson and white splendors. Along the road are the little wayside
+shrines and sacred portals of red wood which tell where the worshipers
+of the Shintoo faith adore their gods and offer their prayers without
+image, idol or picture. The far more numerous images and shrines
+of Booddha the sage, Amida the queen of heaven, and hundred-armed
+Kuannon, tell of the popular faith of the masses of Japan in the
+gentle doctrines of the Indian sage. The student of comparative
+religions is interested in noticing how a code of morals founded
+upon atheistic humanitarianism, in its origin utterly destitute
+of theology, has developed into a colossal system of demonology,
+dogmatics, eschatology, myths and legends, with a pantheon more
+populous than that of old Rome. Many of the images by the wayside are
+headless, cloven by frost, overturned by earthquakes, and so pitted
+by time as to resemble petrified smallpox patients rather than
+divinities. Nature neither respects dogma nor worships the gods made
+by men, and the moss and the lichens have muffled up the idols and
+eaten the substance of the sacred stone. Here Booddha wears a robe
+of choicest green, and there the little saxafrage waves its white
+blossoms from the shoulder of Amida, rending asunder her stone body.
+Even the little stone columns which contain a guiding hand pointing
+out the road to Kanozan are dedicated to Great Shaka (Booddha).
+Passing one of the larger temples, we meet a company of pilgrims.
+Actual sight and reasoning from experience in other lands agree in
+telling me that they are women, and most of them old women. They
+return my salute, politely striving to conceal their wonder at the
+first _to-jin_ they have ever looked upon.
+
+I would wager that these people, like most of the rustics in Japan,
+have always believed the foreigners from Europe and America to be
+certainly ruffians, and most probably beasts. Many of them,
+without having heard; of Darwin or Monboddo, believe all the "hairy
+foreigners" to be descendants of dogs. Their first meeting with a
+foreigner sweeps away the cobwebs of prejudice, and they are ashamed
+of their former ignorance. In extorting from Japanese friends their
+first ideas about foreigners, I have been forcibly reminded of some
+popular ideas concerning the people of China and Japan which are still
+entertained at home, especially by the queens of the kitchen and the
+lords of the hod.
+
+After the fashion in Japan, I inquire of the pilgrims whence they came
+and whither they are going. Leaning upon their staves and unslinging
+their huge round, conical hats, they give me to know that they have
+come on foot from Muja, nearly one hundred and fifty miles distant,
+and that they will finish their pilgrimage at Kominato--where the
+great founder of the Nichiren sect (one of the last developments of
+Booddhism in Japan) was born--twenty-seven miles beyond the point
+at which we met. I inform them that I have come over seven thousand
+miles, and will also visit Nichiren's birthplace. "_Sayo de gozarimos!
+Naru hodo?_" ("Indeed, is it possible?")
+
+I have reached their hearts through the gates of surprise. A foreigner
+visiting Nichiren's birthplace! And coming seven thousand miles too!
+The old ladies become loquacious. They pour out their questions
+by dozens. Do you have Booddhist temples in America? Of course the
+Nichiren sect flourishes there? When I politely answer No to both
+questions, a look of disappointed surprise and pity steals over both
+the ruddy and the wrinkled faces. "Then he is a heathen!" says the
+expression on their faces. How strange that no Booddhist temples exist
+in the foreigner's country! Ah, perhaps, then, the Shintoo religion is
+the religion of the foreigner's country? "No? _Naru hodo!_ Then what
+_do_ you believe in?"
+
+It did not take long to answer that question. There is no country in
+the world in which Christianity has been more publicly and universally
+advertised. For three centuries, in every city, village and hamlet and
+on every highway, the names of Christianity and its Founder have been
+proclaimed on the edict-boards and in the public law-books of the
+empire as belonging to a corrupt and hateful doctrine; which should
+a man believe, he would be punished on earth by fines, imprisonment,
+perhaps death, and in _jigoku_ (hell) by torments eternal. "Whosoever
+believeth in Christ shall be damned--whosoever believeth not shall be
+saved," was the formula taught by the priests for centuries. I pointed
+to the board on which hung the edicts prohibiting Christianity, and
+told them I believed in that doctrine, and that Christ was the One
+adored and loved by us. A volley of _naru hodos_, spoken with bated
+breath, greeted this announcement, and I could only understand the
+whispered "Why, that is the sect whose followers will go to hell!"
+The old ladies could not walk fast, and we soon parted, after many
+a strange question concerning morals, customs and the details of
+civilization in the land of the foreigner. Be it said, in passing,
+that the present liberal and enlightened government of Japan, in spite
+of priestly intolerance and the bigotry of ignorance, resisting even
+to blood, has decided upon the recission of the slanderous falsehoods
+against the faith of Christendom; and Japan, though an Asiatic nation,
+will soon grant toleration to all creeds.
+
+The path wound up through higher valleys, revealing bolder scenery.
+Afar off, in the sheen of glorified distance, the water slanted to the
+sky. The white bosoms of the square-sailed junks heaved with breezy
+pulses, the mountains were thrones of stainless blue, the floods
+of sunny splendor and the intense fullness of light, for which the
+cloudless sky of Japan is remarkable, told the reason for the naming
+of Niphon, of which "Japan" is but the foreigner's corruption,
+"Great Land of the Fountain of Light." Anon we entered the groves
+of mountain-pines anchored in the rocks, and with girths upon which
+succeeding centuries had clasped their zones. They seemed like
+Nature's senators in council as they whispered together and murmured
+in the breeze that reached us laden with music and freighted with
+resinous aroma. Reaching a hamlet called Mute ("six hands"), I sit
+outside an inn on one of the benches which are ever ready for the
+traveler, and shaded overhead by a screen of boughs. A young girl
+brings me water, the ever-ready cup of tea, and fire for the pipe
+which I am supposed to smoke. A short rest, another hour's climb and
+walk, and we are in the village of Kanozan, which is scarcely more
+than a street of hotels. Situated on the ridge of the mountain, it
+rises like an island in a sea of pines.
+
+In imagining a Japanese hotel, good reader, please dismiss all
+architectural ideas derived from the Continental or the Fifth Avenue.
+Our hotels in Japan, outwardly at least, are wooden structures, two
+stories high, often but one. Their roofs are usually thatched, though
+the city caravansaries are tiled. They are entirely open on the front
+_ground_ floor, and about six feet from the sill or threshold rises a
+platform about a foot and a half high, upon which the proprietor may
+be seen seated on his heels behind a tiny railing ten inches high,
+busy with his account-books. If it is winter he is engaged in the
+absorbing occupation of all Japanese tradesmen at that time of
+year--warming his hands over a charcoal fire in a low brazier. The
+kitchen is usually just next to this front room, often separated
+from the street only by a latticed partition. In evolving a Japanese
+kitchen out of his or her imagination, the reader must cast away the
+rising conception of Bridget's realm. Blissful, indeed, is the thought
+as I enter the Japanese hotel that neither the typical servant-girl
+nor the American hotel-clerk is to be found here. The landlord comes
+to meet me, and, falling on his hands and knees, bows his head to the
+floor. One or two of the pretty girls out of the bevy usually seen
+in Japanese hotels comes to assist me and take my traps. Welcomes,
+invitations and plenty of fun greet me as I sit down to take off my
+shoes, as all good Japanese do, and as those filthy foreigners don't
+who tramp on the clean mats with muddy boots. I stand up unshod, and
+am led by the laughing girls along the smooth corridors, across an
+arched bridge which spans an open space in which is a rookery, garden,
+and pond stocked with goldfish, turtles and marine plants. The room
+which my fair guides choose for me is at the rear end of the house,
+overlooking the grand scenery for which Kanozan is justly famous all
+over the empire. Ninety-nine valleys are said to be visible from
+the mountain-top on which the hotel is situated, and I suspect that
+multiplication by ten would scarcely be an exaggeration. A world of
+blue water and pines, and the detailed loveliness of the rolling
+land, form a picture which I lack power to paint with words. The water
+seemed the type of repose, the earth of motion.
+
+Enjoying to the full that rapture of first vision which one never
+feels twice, I turned and entered the room, which made up in neatness
+what it lacked in luxury. Furniture in a Japanese house there is
+none. Like all the others, the floor of my room was covered with soft
+matting two inches thick, made into sections six feet long and three
+feet wide, and bound with a black border. The dimensions of a room may
+always be expressed by the number of mats. The inside of the mats is
+of rice straw, the outside is of the finest and smoothest matting.
+There are no chairs, stools, sofas or anything to sit down upon,
+though, having long since forgotten the fact, we find a ready seat on
+the floor. On one side of the room, occupying one-half of its space,
+is the _tokonoma_, a little platform anciently used for the bed, two
+feet wide and five or six inches high. In one corner is a large vase
+containing four or five boughs broken from a plum tree crowded with
+blossoms, and a large bunch of white, crimson and dappled camellias,
+both single and double. In the centre is the sword-rack, found in
+every samurai's house, yet now obsolete, since Japan's chivalry have
+laid aside their two swords. On the other half of the room, occupying
+the same side as the tokonoma, is a series of peculiar shelves like
+those of an open Japanese cabinet, though larger; and at the top of
+these is a little closet closed by sliding doors. The other three
+sides of the room are of sliding partitions six feet high, made of
+fine white wood, latticed in small squares and covered with paper,
+through which mellow, softened light fills the room. On the plastered
+wall above the latticed sliding doors hangs a framed tablet on which
+are written Chinese characters, which, having the Japanese letters
+at the side, tell in terse and poetical phrase that "This room is the
+chamber of peaceful meditation, into which the moonlight streams."
+Some of the lattice and other work is handsomely carved and wrought,
+and a paper screen along the wall which separates this room from the
+next is covered with verses of Japanese poetry. Were it cold weather,
+a brazier, with some live coals in it, would be brought for us to
+toast our hands and feet and to shiver over, as stoves and hard coal
+are not Japanese institutions. First of all, however, at present, one
+of the _musumes_ brings me a _tobacco-bon_ or tray, in which is fire
+to light my pipe, the Japanese scarcely having a conception of a man
+who does not smoke.
+
+My description of a Japanese room will answer, in the main, for any
+in Japan _as it was_--from the artisan's to the emperor's. Even
+the palaces of the mikado in Kioto never contained tables, chairs,
+bedsteads or any such inconvenient and space-robbing thing. The tables
+upon which they ate, played chess or wrote were six inches or a foot
+high. A Japanese of the old style thinks the cumbrous furniture in our
+Western dwellings impertinent and unnecessary. In the eye of aesthetic
+Japanese a room crowded with luxurious upholstery is a specimen of
+barbaric pomp, delighting the savage and unrefined eye of the hairy
+foreigners, but shocking to the purged vision and the refined taste
+of one born in great Niphon. No such tradesman as an upholsterer or
+furniture-dealer exists in Japan. The country is a paradise for young
+betrothed couples who would wed with light purses. One sees love in a
+cottage on a national scale here. That terrible lion of expense, the
+furnishing of a house, that stands ever in the way of so many loving
+pairs desirous of marriage and a home of their own, is a bugbear not
+known in Japan. A chest of drawers for clothing, a few mats, two or
+three quilts for a bed on the floor, some simple kitchen utensils,
+and the house is furnished. Why should we litter these neatly matted
+rooms, why cover with paint and gilding virgin wood of faultless
+grain, or mar the sweet simplicity and airy roominess of our
+(Japanese) chambers by loading them with all kinds of unnecessary
+luxuries?
+
+These reflections are broken in upon by Miss Cherry-blossom, one of
+the maids, who glides in, kneels upon the floor, and sets down a tiny
+round tray with a baby tea-pot and a cup the size of an egg. Pouring
+out some tea, enough to half fill one of these porcelain thimbles, she
+sets it in the socket of another yet tinier tray, and bowing her head
+coquettishly, begs me to drink. Having long since learned to quaff
+Japan's fragrant beverage guiltless of milk or sugar, I drain the cup.
+Miss Cherry-blossom, sitting upright upon her heels, folds her dress
+neatly under her knees, gives her loose robe a twitch, revealing to
+advantage her white-powdered neck, the prized point of beauty in a
+Japanese maiden, and then asks the usual questions as to whence
+I came, whither I am going, and to what country I belong. These,
+according to the Japanese code of etiquette, are all polite questions;
+and in return, violating no dictum which the purists of Kioto or Yeddo
+have laid down, I inquire her age ("Your honorable years, how many?").
+The answer, "_Ju-hachi_," makes known that she is eighteen years of
+age. Chatting further, I learn what things there are to be seen in the
+neighborhood, whether foreigners have been there before, the distance
+to the next village, the history of the old temple near by, etc. All
+this is told with many a laugh and a little pantomime--she naturally
+committing the mistake of speaking louder and faster to the foreigner
+who cannot fully understand her dialect or allusions--when a new
+character appears upon the scene.
+
+A very jolly, matronly-looking woman, evidently the landlady, pulls
+aside one of the sliding paper doors, and bowing low on her hands and
+knees, smiles cavernously with her jet-black teeth, which, like all
+correct and cleanly women in Japan, she dyes on alternate days. She
+asks concerning dinner, and whether it is the honorable wish of the
+visitor to eat Japanese food. The answer being affirmative, both
+matron and maiden disappear to prepare the meal, evidently thinking it
+a fine joke. No such thing as a common dining-room exists in Japanese
+hotels. Caste has hitherto been too strictly observed to allow of such
+an idea. Every guest eats in his own room, sitting on his calves and
+heels. The preparations are simple, though of course I speak now of
+every-day life.
+
+Miss Peach-blossom appears, bearing in her hand a table four inches
+high, one foot square, and handsomely lacquered red and black. Behind
+her comes a young girl carrying a rice-box and plate of fish. Most
+gracefully she sets it down with the apology, "I have kept you long
+waiting," and the invitation, "Please take up."
+
+On the table are four covered bowls, two very small dishes containing
+pickles and soy, and a little paper bag in which is a pair of
+chopsticks. The place of each article is foreordained by gastronomic
+etiquette, and rigidly observed. In the first bowl is soup, in the
+second a boiled mixture consisting of leeks, mushrooms, lotus-root
+and a kind of sea-weed. In a third are boiled buckwheat cakes or
+dumplings, and _tofu_ or bean-curd. In the porcelain cup is rice. In
+an oblong dish, brought in during the meal, is a broiled fish in soy.
+Lifting off the covers and adjusting my chopsticks deftly, I begin.
+The bowl of rice is first attacked, and quickly finished. The
+attendant damsel proffers her lacquered waiter, and uncovering the
+steaming tub of rice paddles out another cupful. It is etiquette to
+dispose of unlimited cups of rice and soup, but a deadly breach of
+good manners to ask to have the other two bowls replenished. Of course
+at the hotels whatever the larder affords can be ordered. Boiled eggs,
+cracked and peeled before you by the tapering fingers of the damsels,
+are considered choice articles of food. Raw fish, thinly sliced and
+eaten with radish, sauce, ginger sprouts, etc., is highly enjoyed by
+the Japanese, who are surprised to find the dish disliked by their
+foreign guests. A member of one of the embassies sent to Europe
+confessed that amid the luxuries of continental tables, he longed for
+the raw fish and grated radish of his native land. Some articles of
+our own diet, especially cheese and butter, are as heartily detested
+by the Japanese as their raw fish is by us. The popular idea at home,
+that the Japanese live chiefly on mice and crawfish, and that the
+foreigners are in chronic danger of starvation, is matched by that of
+some Japanese, who, finding that the "hairy foreigners" do not eat
+the food of human beings--_i.e._ Japanese--wonder what they do eat. A
+member of the present embassy in Europe, when first leaving his native
+land, was thus addressed by his anxious mother: "Now, Yazirobe, you
+are going to those strange countries, where I am afraid you will get
+very little to eat: do take some rice with you." I confess that on
+first landing in Japan I could not relish Japanese diet and cookery.
+Barring eggs and rice, everything tasted like starch or sawdust. The
+flavors seemed raw and earthy, or suggested dishcloths not too well
+scalded. I suspect that a good deal of Philadelphia and Caucasian
+pride lined the alimentary canal of the writer. Now, after a ten-mile
+tramp, a Japanese meal tastes very much as it does to one native and
+to the diet born.
+
+Besides the young damsel who presides, there is another, less neatly
+dressed. Her apron is suggestive of the kitchen, and altogether she
+seems a Cinderella by the fireplace. This damsel is evidently a supe
+or scullion. She is not so self-possessed as her superior companion,
+and while observing the foreigner with a mild stare, unskillfully
+concealing her mirth, she finally explodes when he makes a _faux pas_
+with the chopsticks and drops a bit of fish on the clean matting.
+Thereupon she is dispatched to the kitchen for a floor-cloth, and
+severely lectured for laughing aloud, and is told to stay among the
+pots and pans till she learns better manners.
+
+Dinner over, a siesta on the soft mats is next in order. These mats
+seem made for sleep and indolence. No booted foot ever defiles them.
+Every one leaves his clogs on the ground outside, and glides about in
+his mitten-like socks, which have each a special compartment for the
+great toe. My waiting damsel having gone out, and there being no such
+things as bells, I do as the natives and clap my hands. A far-off
+answer of _Hei--i--i_ is returned, and soon the shuffling of feet
+is heard again. The housewife appears with the usual low bow, and,
+smiling so as to again display what resembles a mouthful of coal, she
+listens to the request for a pillow. Opening the little closet before
+spoken of, she produces the desired article. It is not a ticking bag
+of baked feathers enclosed in a dainty, spotless case of white linen,
+but a little upright piece of wood, six inches high and long, and one
+wide, rounded at the bottom like the rockers of a cradle. On the
+top, lying in a groove, is a tiny rounded bag of calico filled with
+rice-chaff, about the size of a sausage. The pillow-case is a piece of
+white paper wrapped around the top, and renewed in good hotels daily
+for each guest. One can rest about four or six inches of the side of
+his _os occipitis_ on a Japanese pillow, and if he wishes may rock
+himself to sleep, though the words suggest more than the facts
+warrant. By sleeping on civilized feathers one gets out of training,
+and the Japanese pillows feel very hard and very much in one place.
+The dreams which one has on these pillows are characteristic. In my
+first some imps were boring gimlet-holes in the side of my skull,
+until they had honeycombed it and removed so much brain that I felt
+too light-headed to preserve my equilibrium. On the present occasion,
+after falling asleep, I thought that the pillow on which I lay pressed
+its shape into my head, and the skull, to be repaired, was being
+trepanned. My head actually tumbling off the pillow was the cause of
+the fancied operation being suddenly arrested. A short experience in
+traveling among the Japanese has satisfied me that they are one of
+the most polite, good-natured and happy nations in the world. By
+introducing foreign civilization into their beautiful land they may
+become richer: they need not expect to be happier.
+
+W.E. GRIFFIS.
+
+
+
+
+JASON'S QUEST.
+
+
+I.
+
+This is a story of love for love, and how it came to naught. In it
+there shall be no marrying from mercenary motives; the manoeuvering
+mother-in-law is suppressed; Nature takes her course; and in the
+climax I strive to prove how sad a thing it is that men are modest and
+women weak.
+
+Still, I do not lose faith in humanity, but hope for better things in
+the broad, bright future. I would respectfully call attention to
+the moral of this tale, and, as for the heroes and heroines of the
+hereafter, I cheerfully leave them to regulate their affairs upon a
+different basis; which basis, I devoutly believe, will be one of the
+inevitable results of time.
+
+But, lo! the heroine approaches and the story begins!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Life with some of us is but the grouping of a few brilliant or sombre
+tableaux, which are like the famous lines in an epic that immortalize
+the whole. Maud's life was such a one, and her years had been rather
+unpicturesque until now, when the shadows began to deepen and the
+lights to grow more intense. In fact, she seemed to be approaching
+some sort of a climax, and she began to grow nervous about it, being
+just woman enough to dwell somewhat anxiously upon her anticipated
+_debut_, and to hope for at least a decent appearance in her
+extremity.
+
+The good-hearted, commonplace people of a pleasant country down the
+coast--which I will call Dreamland for convenience' sake--thought
+of Maud only as a gentle and humane little lady, with a comfortable
+income and a character above reproach. So Maud abode in peace with her
+maids at the seaside cottage, spending the still hours of Dreamland
+between her rose-garden on the sunny slope to the southward and the
+conservatory of lily-like nuns on the hill toward the sea.
+
+Maud was unhappy in a world which had treated her very kindly indeed,
+and it was simply because she had a dove's heart, that was always
+fluttering in a strange place, and the face of a nun, that was for
+ever getting looked at by all sorts of people, much as it disliked
+that kind of treatment from the best of them.
+
+The only reason why Maud preferred such a dull place as Dreamland to
+the splendid metropolis up the coast was that she might have a quiet
+time of it, and not be annoyed by the impudent metropolitans. In fact,
+she was tired of her lovers--all save one, a fine young fellow named
+Jason, but better known in Dreamland as John. I have mentioned, I
+believe, that Maud was in very good circumstances: I am sorry to
+add that Jason wasn't. He was rich only in his untried youth and the
+promises of a glorious manhood.
+
+Jason loved Maud, and she knew it as well as she ever knew anything in
+her life--she knew it without his having told her. Had she not divined
+it by the infallible intuition of the heart, she might have lived
+believing herself unloved, for Jason hadn't the remotest idea of
+mentioning the fact. He could barely live comfortably by himself,
+frugal as he was; and he would not go to her empty-handed, though
+Heaven knows she had enough for two, and was dying to share it with
+him. He went his way, and the way was tedious enough in those days.
+Like a mirage, happiness glimmered before him, but his upright and
+patient steps brought him no nearer to its alluring vista.
+
+Youth is impatient and sanguine, and Jason, in his impetuous and
+hopeful youth, besought the oracle, whose prophetic utterances seemed
+to imply that his future and his fortune lay in some distant land,
+and that it would be wise for him to seek it at once. Jason, like his
+illustrious predecessor, resolved to go over the sea in search of the
+golden fleece. It was the most adventurous thing he ever did, and Maud
+thought it a hopeless and a willful act; yet she could do nothing
+but hold her peace, while her poor heart was as near to breaking
+as possible--much nearer to breaking than it is usually safe for a
+maiden's heart to be.
+
+So Jason gathered his mates--a reckless lot they were, too--and,
+having laden his barque and swung into the stream, his men said their
+final adieux, receiving quantities of pincushions and bookmarks, so
+indispensable to Argonauts, as testimonials of eternal fidelity from
+the maids of Dreamland.
+
+Jason strode to the cottage and kissed the hand of Maud as if it
+were the hand of a princess; after which, with much embarrassment, he
+plucked a rose from her garden, while a pang pierced his heart till it
+ached again, and a thorn probed his finger till a drop of blood
+fell upon a myrtle leaf; which leaf Maud coveted, and keeps to this
+day--hugged to her in her grave-clothes.
+
+It is of course best that this life should not be perfect, for the
+life to come might suffer by comparison; yet it is one of the cruelest
+decrees of Nature--if Nature has really decreed what seems so wholly
+against her--that a woman's heart must bide its time and be silent in
+the presence of its natural mate while every attribute of her being
+implores his recognition; and that the truest men are too honorable
+or too proud to yield themselves, having no offering but their honest
+love to lay at the feet of their mistresses. If it were not so, the
+princess would not have mourned in her garden for her flown mate, and
+there would have been much happiness on short notice.
+
+Driven forth by the propitious winds, the barque fled from the shore,
+while Maud, seated among her roses, with weeping and wringing of
+hands, poured out upon the winds the burden of her love.
+
+Why didn't Jason catch a syllable of that fervent prayer, reef, and
+come home to her? Then I need not have written this history, and all
+would have been well in Dreamland. But he didn't. He heard nothing
+but the sibilant waters as they rushed under his keel: he thought of
+nothing but the rose that was withering in the secret locker of his
+cabin, and of the wound in his heart that was gaping and as fresh as
+ever. So the night-winds hurried him onward, and the darkness absorbed
+the outlines of the dear Dreamland coast.
+
+Maud watched the barque while it lessened and lessened in the
+distance, and the clouds blew over her, and it grew chilly and damp in
+the rose-garden--as chilly and damp as though it were not the abode of
+a princess who was beloved of the noblest of men. She watched the sail
+till it faded suddenly beyond the headland, and between it and her
+loomed the dark towers of the convent. Out on that troubled sea,
+seeking the golden fleece in some remote kingdom, tossed on the
+treacherous waves for her sake, in her white and radiant dreams she
+beheld Jason. Yet ever between him and her, hiding the lessening
+barque from the slope of the rose-garden, loomed the dark towers of
+the convent.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+Jason and his fellows coursed the seas, scanning with eager eyes
+the cloudy belt of the horizon, hopefully seeking some signs of the
+Fortunate Islands, of whose indescribable beauty and untold wealth
+they had heard many surmises. Day after day they pressed on between
+the same blank sky and the same blank sea, but there was no token to
+gladden the eyes of the watchers. Jason grew impatient at last: he had
+called upon nearly all the saints in the calendar, and was growing to
+be a very poor sort of a Catholic, inasmuch as he doubted the efficacy
+of his prayers and the ability of saints to answer them. He didn't
+realize that there might be good reasons for their not being answered
+under the existing circumstances; which is a matter worthy of the
+consideration of all of us.
+
+The fact was, the Fortunate Islands were not one-half so wonderful as
+had been represented; and the saints knew it well enough. Had Jason
+invested there, as he purposed doing at the time of his embarkment,
+he might have sunk all that he possessed--which was little enough
+to float, as one would think--and then Maud might have tended her
+rose-garden and carried fruit-offerings to the sweet-faced nuns
+till she was gray and limping, for all Jason's fine notions of
+independence--namely, a good income from the rise of stocks in the
+Fortunate Islands, and two souls and two hearts doing the same sort of
+thing at the same time, with complete and unqualified success, in that
+sweet rose-garden on the sunny slope to the southward.
+
+That was the way life went with Captain Jason of the Argonauts, called
+John, for short, in Dreamland, while the crew growled a good deal at
+their ill-luck, and began to fear that if things went on in that way
+much longer they would have more fasts than Fridays in the week. Those
+were trying times for all of them, and when land was made at last, and
+it proved to be a temptation and a snare, Jason ordered a special fast
+and a mass for the salvation of the souls in imminent peril. Out in
+the world at last, thousands of miles from the unsophisticated
+people of Dreamland, Jason beheld the dread Symplegades rocking their
+enormous bulks upon the waves, and liable at any moment to swing
+together with a terrific and deadly crash. Probably they were whales
+at play: it may have been two currents of the sea rushing into
+each other's arms: at all events, it was something deluding, though
+temporary, and perhaps the selfsame difficulty experienced by the
+original J. when he went after the original fleece.
+
+My hero was young and unschooled in the world's wickedness, but he
+knew that where two opposing elements come together with much force,
+whatever happens to lie between them must suffer. What should be done
+was a question of no little importance to the Argonauts. Most of
+them were in favor of running the risk of a collision and letting the
+vessel drive straight through. Jason thought this a judgment worthy
+of young men whose lady-loves give expression to their most sacred
+sentiments by gifts of pincushions and bookmarks. But he had something
+to consider more than they--yea, more than any other living man--in
+exemplification of the pleasing fallacy that besets all lovers in all
+ages. Blessed be God that it is so!
+
+The original Jason in the fable let loose a dove upon the waters, and
+the dove lost only a tail-feather or two when the clashing islands
+clashed their worst, and in the moment of the rebound the Argo swept
+through in safety. The modern J. thought of this in his predicament,
+and having turned it in his mind, he concluded that whereas the
+pioneer Argonaut did not meet his princess till after his encounter
+with the elements, he was not worthy of consideration; for had he
+known her and loved her as some one knew and loved some one else
+at that moment, most likely he would not have valued his life so
+slightly. He clewed up his canvas like a wise mariner, and lay to
+while the Symplegades butted one another with their foreheads of
+adamant, and the sea was white with terror all about them. Jason
+was no coward: he would have braved the passage had he alone been
+concerned in the result; but for Maud in her rose-garden and for the
+future, dear to him as his hope of heaven, he paused and trembled.
+
+It is a pity there should be so little pausing and trembling among
+the clashing islands when life hangs in the balance and the odds are
+against it. But there always has been and always will be this little,
+because we believe that nothing but experience is capable of teaching
+us, and experience invariably teaches it all wrong end to, so that we
+begin our lesson with a disaster and conclude it with a slow recovery.
+
+During Jason's hour of deliberation his guardian angel, who was the
+only one having his interests really at heart, and who loved him
+unselfishly,--this angel advised him in the similitude of a dream to
+"luff a little and go round the obstacles." Jason luffed, and passed
+on with colors flying; which was doubtless much better than trying to
+squeeze through the floating islands in the midst of an exceedingly
+disagreeable sea.
+
+Then came the land beyond, the long-sought kingdom, full of arts and
+wiles. Jason was beset with ten thousand temptations, and was more
+than once upon the point of falling into a snare, when, however, he
+seemed to behold the apparition of his withered rose, which bloomed
+and blushed again at such times, and gave out a faint fragrance, so
+like a breath from that Eden on the sunny slope that he paused and
+grew strong, and was saved.
+
+His troubles were not yet over. There was the bargaining for the
+golden fleece, and the tempting offer of the dragons' teeth which
+he was to sow. They were the lusts of the body, that, once planted,
+spring up an armed force of bloody and persistent accusers. But
+that precious rose! How it blossomed over and over for his especial
+benefit, a perpetual warning and an unfailing talisman--a very
+profitable sort of blossom to wear in one's button-hole in these
+times! But such blossoms are scarce indeed.
+
+In due course of time that potent charm got him the golden fleece in a
+very natural and business-like way, and, rejoicing in his possessions,
+Jason returned to his vessel and trimmed his sails for home.
+
+Merry the hearts that sailed with him, and fresh the winds that wafted
+them onward, while, as is usual at sea, nothing occurred during the
+voyage worth mentioning an hour after its occurrence. Jason in his new
+joy had almost forgotten that withered token. In deep remorse at his
+thoughtlessness, he sought his treasure, and, horror of horrors! every
+leaf had fallen from the stem, the blossom was annihilated for ever.
+He dwelt upon this episode morbidly, as upon a presentiment: he
+pictured in his mind the hill-slope cottage deserted, the rose-garden
+wasted and full of tares, and the bleak wind blowing whither it listed
+through those avenues of beauty, for desolation possessed them all. He
+groaned in spirit and wrestled with his new and invisible adversary,
+beseeching the Most Merciful, from the bitterness of his suspense, a
+speedy deliverance or a happy death.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+There were thistles and tares in the unkept rose-garden, and
+the cottage was abandoned to a sisterhood of doves, who mourned
+perpetually for their lost princess. The place was desolate, yet there
+had been no sudden desertion of it. For many months no news had been
+heard of the Argonauts. They were considerably overdue: the sages of
+Dreamland shook their grizzly heads. They were just as sage and shaky
+in those days as in these degenerate times. The maids of the hamlet
+wept for a season, then turned from sorrowing, dried their tears, took
+unto themselves new lovers, and the world wagged well in Dreamland.
+
+But Maud was a truer soul than any amongst them: she prayed hourly
+for Jason's prosperity, and was trusting and hopeful until it seemed
+almost that something had whispered to her the fate of the voyagers.
+Then she mourned night and day: she went into retirement with the
+sweet-faced nuns at the headland, whose secluded life had ever been
+very grateful to her. She gave out of her bounty to all who asked, and
+rested not then, but sought the sick and the suffering, and they were
+comforted, and blessed her who had blessed them. They began to think
+her half an angel in Dreamland, and it seemed as though she were not
+made for this world at all. The same thing happens now occasionally,
+and in this way we acknowledge our shortcomings before our fellow-men
+and women when we find some one considerably above the average who
+shames us into confessing it. I hope the Recording Angel is within
+hearing at these precious moments.
+
+The world certainly possessed no charms for one of Maud's temperament:
+it never did possess any for her. She was as out of place in it as a
+mourning dove in a city mob. Her spirit sought tranquillity, and she
+found it in the serene and changless convent life. You and I might
+seek in vain for anything like peace of spirit in such a place: we
+might find it a stale and profitless imprisonment; and perhaps it
+speaks badly for both of us that it is so. The violet finds its silent
+cell in the earth-crevice by the hidden spring a sufficient refuge,
+and rejoices in it, but the sea-grass that has all its life tossed in
+the surges would think that a very dull sort of existence. There are
+human violets in the world, and human sunflowers and poppies, and
+doves also, and apes and alligators; and some of them come within one
+of being inhuman; and sometimes that _one_ drops out, and the inhuman
+swallows up the human.
+
+Maud was the mourning dove seeking its bower of shade: she used to
+fancy herself a nun, and followed the prescribed duties of the house
+as faithfully as Sister Grace herself. She knelt in the little chapel
+of the convent till her back ached and her knees were lame, but it was
+a never-failing joy in time of trouble, and her time of tremble had
+come. Maud said many prayers before an altar of exceeding loveliness,
+where fresh flowers seemed to breathe forth an unusual fragrance.
+There was a statue of the Virgin, said to possess some miraculous
+qualities: tradition whispered that on two or three occasions the
+expression on the face of the statue had been seen to change visibly.
+Maud heard of this, and was very eager to witness the miracle, for it
+was thought to be nothing less than miraculous by the good Sisters.
+She bowed before the altar for hours, and dreamed of the marble face
+till she seemed to see its features smiling upon her and its small,
+slim hand beckoning her back to prayer. She grew nervous and pale and
+almost ill with watching and waiting, and at last was found prostrate
+and insensible at the foot of the statue, overcome with excitement
+and exhaustion. When she grew better she vowed she had seen the head
+bowing to her, and the hands spread over her in benediction: no one
+could deny it, for she was alone in the chapel. After that there was
+a feast of lilies at the convent, and Maud became Sister Somebody or
+other, and never again set foot beyond the great gates of the convent
+wall.
+
+The consecration was doubtless a blessing to her, for she was happy in
+her new home, and found a sphere of usefulness that employed her hours
+to the best advantage. Moreover, she grew to be a sensible nun, and
+ceased to look for supernatural demonstrations in the neighborhood of
+the chapel. She grew hearty, and was cheerful, and sang at her work,
+and prayed with more honesty and less sentiment. Her life was as
+placid as a river whose waters are untroubled by tempestuous winds,
+and upon her bosom light cares, like passing barges, left but a
+momentary wake.
+
+As Maud mused in her cell one day, through the narrow barred window
+she caught a glimpse of the burnished sea bearing upon its waves a
+weather-beaten barque inward bound. There was danger that her mind
+might wander off, piloted by her dreamy and worshipful eyes. She
+arose, drew across the opening a leathern curtain, and returned with
+undisturbed complacence to her prayers.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+Jason, having among his freights the veritable golden fleece, still
+coursed the seas, but beheld with rapture the fair outlines of the
+Dreamland coast traced in the far blue and mysterious horizon. The
+wind freshened: hour after hour they were nearing port, and as the
+whole familiar picture grew more and more distinct, Jason saw the
+convent towers looming like a great shadow, and afterward the sunny
+slope whereon the rose-garden grew.
+
+The manner of his quitting the barque before she was fairly within
+communication with the shore was hardly worthy of his calling. I
+forbear to dwell upon this exhibition of human weakness, for almost
+any one in Jason's shoes would have been equally regardless of the
+regulations, and in consequence proportionally unseamanlike.
+
+With soiled garments and unshorn beard Jason ran to the hill. No one
+of the idlers in port recognized the returned wanderer, and he assured
+himself of the fact before venturing upon his visit to the dove-cot
+where Maud dwelt, for he wished to gaze upon her from afar, and in
+silence to worship her, unknown and unregarded. When he reached the
+wicket, breathless with haste and excitement, he at once beheld the
+ruin of his hopes--the thistles in the paths, the roses overgrown and
+choked with weeds, the sad and general decay. Jason smote his breast
+in a paroxysm of despair, while the doves fluttered out from the porch
+of the cottage in amazement at the approach of a human foot to their
+domains.
+
+What could it mean? he asked himself again and again, while suspicions
+taunted him almost to madness. Up and down that disordered garden he
+paced like a ghostly sentinel; the doves fluttered to and fro, and
+were dismayed; the night-winds came in from the chilly sea, and the
+dews gathered in his beard. Through the deepening dusk he beheld the
+lights of the little town below him: across the solemn silence floated
+the clear notes of the vesper-bell. Jason turned toward the tower on
+the headland. A single ray of light stealing from one of the high,
+narrow windows shot through the mist toward heaven. "The ladder
+of Jacob's dream," said Jason: "on it the angels are ascending and
+descending in their visitations. Oh that I, like Jacob, might receive
+intelligence from these!"
+
+With the heaviest heart that ever burdened man he returned to the town
+and entered the open doors of the church, seeking a few moments of
+repose. An alien in his own land and unwelcomed of any, Jason sought
+the good priest and learned the fate of Maud. She was dead to the
+world and to him. It was but the realization of his fears, and he
+was in some measure prepared for it; yet the best part of the man was
+killed with the force of that blow. His only hope was gone. He set
+his house in order, like one about to leave it, never to return:
+his golden fleece was made over to enrich the convent, and, as the
+magnanimous offering of a homelesss and nameless voyager, it delights
+the happy creatures within those walls, and the shrine of the Virgin
+was made more wonderfully beautiful than it is possible to conceive.
+
+That night Jason walked in the shadow of the lofty walls and poured
+out his sorrowful prayers upon the winds that swept about them. Once
+in his agony he beat at the massive gates, demanding in the name of
+God and of mercy admittance for a lost soul that had no shelter save
+under that roof, and no salvation away from it; but his bleeding hands
+made no impression upon the ponderous doors, and the silent inmates
+at prayer heard nothing save their own whispers, or dreamed in their
+cells of heaven and of peace.
+
+So the cry of that hopeless soul rang up to the stars unanswered, and
+the night frowned down upon him with impenetrable darkness.
+
+End of the tragedy of Jason's Quest, which might easily have been a
+pleasant comedy if Maud had only spoken her mind in the right place.
+Will women never learn--since God has given them the same instincts
+with man, to love, to trust, to doubt, to hate and to make themselves
+at times disagreeable, even with a more complete success than men in
+each of these lines of dramatic business--that God must have intended
+also that they should have the equal right to choose the particular
+object upon which they may exercise those various offices of love,
+trust, etc., etc.? I shall never cease to wonder why they are
+persistently and stupidly silent through six thousand years, content
+to let their hearts wither and die within them, or surrender at
+last to the wretched apology for a lover who offers himself as a
+substitute, and is surprised at rinding himself accepted.
+
+To be sure, it is less dramatic. Jason might have come back and
+married Maud: there would have been a pretty wedding and some
+delightful hours before things grew dull and commonplace, as they must
+have done ultimately. That rose-garden would have come to grief
+when once the children got to playing in it; Jason, on some tedious
+afternoon, when overhauling old letters and the like, would have
+thrown out that withered rose (of precious memory), quite forgetful
+of its significance; Maud would have lost her myrtle leaf in
+house-cleaning. Yet what were the odds? A withered rose and a myrtle
+leaf are scarcely worth the keeping.
+
+You will remember how it turned out in the days of the gods: Jason
+wearied of Medea and the children; Medea was disgusted with such
+conduct, and behaved like a savage; there was general unhappiness in
+the family; and I blush for my sex--which is Jason's--whenever I think
+of it. Now, if my Jason had married his Maud, it would have scarcely
+been worth noticing beyond the simple register in the _Daily
+Dreamlander_, after having been thrice published from the pulpit
+between the Gospel and the Creed--"Jason to Maud."
+
+As Jason was not heard of after the windy night under the wall of the
+convent, there were many surmises concerning his disappearance. It was
+thought that he had again embarked upon some voyage of discovery.
+I believe he had, and it was a desperate one for him. The other
+Argonauts married such maids as were left unmarried, and they did
+well to do so. Some of the old sweethearts regretted their haste, and
+looked enviously upon the new brides of Dreamland; but most of them
+were satisfied with their children, and contented with such husbands
+as Heaven had sent them.
+
+Life grew slow in the little drowsy seaport; the old tales of
+the Symplegades were stale and tedious; the Argonauts had become
+spiritless and corpulent and lazy. One night a great gale swept in
+from the sea: the earth fairly trembled under the repeated shocks
+of the breakers. Old people looked troubled and young people looked
+scared, and on the worst night of all the convent bell was heard to
+toll, and then everybody feared something dreadful was happening to
+the nuns, and everybody lay still and hoped it would soon be over.
+The nuns wondered who rang the bell; and when every one had denied all
+knowledge of it, it was known that most likely the devil had rung it,
+for it was a dreadful night, and such a one as he best likes to be out
+in.
+
+In the morning, when the wind and the sea had gone down somewhat,
+the wreckers found a stark corpse among the rocks under the headland,
+lying with its face to the tower. It was dreadfully mangled: no
+one could identify it as being any one in particular, and it
+was impossible to know whether death had occurred by accident or
+intentionally; so it was shrouded and put away out of Christian burial
+in the common field of the unfortunate. The nuns sang a _requiem_, as
+was their custom, and Maud prayed earnestly for all followers of the
+sea; and the echo of her _miserere_ is the saddest line in the story
+of Jason's Quest.
+
+CHARLES WARREN STODDARD.
+
+
+
+
+FOREBODINGS.
+
+
+  What weight is this which presses on my soul?
+    Powerless to rise, I sink amidst the dust:
+  The days in solemn cycle o'er me roll,
+    While, praying, I can only wait and trust.
+
+  --Trust the dear Hand that all my life has led
+    Through pastures green, by waters pure and still:
+  If now He leads me through dark ways and dread,
+    Shall I dare murmur, whatsoe'er His will?
+
+
+
+
+DEER-PARKS.
+
+
+There is nothing in England at the present day much more distinctly
+an institution of that country than its deer-parks. Although it
+seems probable that the Saxons had some sort of enclosed or partially
+enclosed chases where deer were hunted or taken in the toils, the
+regular and systematic enclosure of parks would appear to have come
+in with the Normans. According to the old Norman law, no subject
+could form a park without a grant from the Crown, or immemorial
+prescription, which was held presumptive evidence of such a grant.
+
+On the Continent there would appear to have been much more strictness
+in this respect than in England. "In April, 1656," says Reresby in his
+travels, "I returned to Saumur, where I stayed two months: then I went
+to Thouars in Brittany, where the duke of Tremouille hath his best
+house. Thouars is looked upon as one of the best manors in all
+France, not so much for profit (a great extent of land there sometimes
+affording not much rent), but for greatness of tenure; five hundred
+gentlemen, it is said, holding their lands from it. Going to wait on
+the duke, I found him very kind when I told him my country, the late
+earl of Derby having married his sister. [1] He commanded me to dine
+with him, and the next time mounted me upon one of his horses to wait
+on him a-hunting in his park, which, not being two miles about, I
+thought of little compass to belong to so great a person, till I found
+that few are allowed to have any there save the princes of the blood.
+So true is it that there are more parks in England than in all Europe
+besides."
+
+A large park would appear to have been among the many luxuries of the
+princely Medici, for Reresby says: "Ten miles from Florence the duke
+hath another country-house, nothing so considerable in itself as in
+its situation, standing betwixt several hills on one side, covered
+with vines and olive trees, and a valley divided into many walks by
+rows of trees leading different ways: one leads to a park where the
+great duke hath made a paddock course by the direction of Signior
+Bernard Gascoigne, an Italian, who, having served our late king in
+his wars, carried the pattern from England. Near to this house,
+Poggio-Achaiano, is another park, the largest in Italy, or rather
+chase, said to be thirty miles in compass."
+
+Foremost amongst English parks is Windsor. The immense tracts by which
+Windsor was formerly surrounded consisted of park and forest. Windsor
+Forest has gradually diminished in size. In the time of Charles I. it
+contained twelve parishes, and probably covered not less than 100,000
+acres. According to a survey in 1789-92, it amounted to 59,600 acres,
+of which the enclosed property of the Crown amounted to 5454. Like all
+the other forests in England, it has been much encroached on, and now
+consists of only some 1450 acres adjoining Windsor Great Park. The
+rest of the land formerly composing it has been sold or leased. Enough
+of the forest remains, in conjunction with the park, to enable the
+visitor to make many delightful excursions. The most agreeable way
+of seeing this sylvan country is on horseback. Perhaps nowhere in the
+world can one get a more delicious canter. By a little management it
+is easy to take a ride of twenty-five miles without more than a couple
+of miles off the turf. In 1607 the Great Park was stated at 3650
+acres: it consists now of about one thousand acres less.
+
+The principal royal park in modern days, next to Windsor, is Richmond.
+This covers more than two thousand acres, and, thanks to the railway,
+may almost be regarded as a lung of London, being only eight miles
+distant from the city. Richmond Park is as replete as Windsor with
+historical association, and came into especial importance in the reign
+of Charles I. That king, who was excessively addicted to the sports of
+the field, had a strong desire to make a great park, for red as well
+as fallow deer, between Richmond and Hampton Court, where he had large
+wastes of his own, and great parcels of wood, which made it very fit
+for the use he designed it for; but as some parishes had rights of
+commonage in the wastes, and many gentlemen and farmers had good
+houses and farms intermingled with them which they had inherited or
+held on lease, and as, without including all these, the park would not
+be large enough for Charles's satisfaction, the king, who was willing
+to pay a very high price, expected people to gratify him by parting
+with their property. Many did so, but--like the blacksmith of Brighton
+who utterly refused to be bought out when George IV. was building his
+hideous pavilion, and the famous miller of Potsdam, that Mordecai at
+the gate of Sans Souci--"a gentleman who had the best estate, with a
+convenient house and gardens, would by no means part with it, and made
+a great noise as if the king would take away men's estates at his own
+pleasure." The case of this gentleman and his many minor adherents
+soon caused a regular row. The lord treasurer, Juxon, bishop of
+London, who accompanied Charles to the scaffold, and other ministers
+were very averse to the scheme, not only on account of the hostile
+feeling it had evoked, but because the purchase of the land and making
+a brick wall of ten miles around it, which was what the king wanted,
+was a great deal too costly for his depleted exchequer. However,
+Charles, with his usual fatal obstinacy, would not hear of abandoning
+the scheme, and told Lord Cottington, who did his utmost to dissuade
+him from it, "he was resolved to go through with it, and had already
+caused brick to be burned and much of the wall to be built." This
+beginning of the wall before people consented to part with their land
+or common rights, increased the public feeling on the subject, and,
+happening at a time when public opinion was growing strongly
+against arbitrary rule, was no doubt one of the circumstances which
+contributed to Charles's fall.
+
+George II. and Queen Caroline lived much at Richmond, and the
+interview between Jeanie Deans and Her Majesty took place here.
+Jeanie, it will be remembered, told her ducal friend that she thought
+the park would be "a braw place for the cows"--a sentiment similar
+to that of Mr. Black's Highland heroine, Sheila, who pronounced it "a
+beautiful ground for sheep."
+
+The practice of hunting deer in a park, now quite a thing of the past,
+appears to have been very prevalent at Richmond during this reign, and
+apparently was attended with considerable risk. In a chronicle of 1731
+we read:
+
+"_August_ 13, 1731. The royal family hunted a stag in Richmond new
+park: in the midst of the sport, Sir Robert Walpole's horse fell with
+him just before the queen's chaise, but he was soon remounted, and Her
+Majesty ordered him to bleed by way of precaution.
+
+"_Aug_. 28, 1731. The royal family hunted in Richmond Park, when the
+Lord Delaware's lady and Lady Harriet d'Auverquerque, daughter to the
+earl of Grantham, were overturned in a chaise, which went over them,
+but did no visible hurt. Mr. Shorter, one of the king's huntsmen, had
+a fall from his horse, and received a slight contusion in his head.
+
+"_Sept_. 13, 1731. Some of the royal family and persons of quality
+hunted a stag in Richmond Park. A stag gored the horse of Coulthorp
+Clayton, Esq., and threw him. The Lady Susan Hamilton was unhorsed.
+
+"_Sept_. 14, being Holy Rood Day, the king's huntsmen hunted their
+free buck in Richmond new park with bloodhounds, according to custom."
+
+It will be noted that this sport took place at a season when no
+hunting is now done in England.
+
+There are two other small royal parks within a walk of Richmond--Bushy
+and Hampton Court. Both contain magnificent trees.
+
+The New Forest is now the only royal appanage of the kind, and the
+House of Hanover has never made use of it for hunting purposes,
+although the Stuart kings were very fond of going there. It was to
+enjoy this territory that Charles II. commenced the magnificent
+palace at Winchester, the finished portions of which are now used as
+barracks. Nell Gwyn's quarters at the deanery are still shown. Up to
+1779 there was a great tract of royal forest-ground near London, on
+the Essex side, known as Enfield Chase, containing numbers of deer. If
+we remember rightly, it is alluded to in _The Fortunes of Nigel_.
+
+There are many more parks in the south than in the north of England--a
+circumstance which is remarkable, having regard to the wilder
+character of the ground in the former.
+
+According to a valuable work on parks published a few years ago by
+Mr. Shirley, a large landed proprietor, there are three hundred and
+thirty-four parks still stocked with deer in the different counties
+of England, and red deer are found in about thirty-one. It is
+supposed that the oldest is that attached to Eridge Castle, near that
+celebrated and most ancient of English watering-places, Tonbridge
+Wells, in Sussex. It is very extensive, and there are no less than
+ninety miles of grass drives cut through the park and woods. Almost
+the largest park is that attached to the present duke of Marlborough's
+famous seat, Blenheim. A large proportion of this magnificent demesne
+formed part of Woodstock Chase, a favorite hunting-seat of British
+sovereigns from an early date up to the time of Queen Anne. It was
+then granted by the Crown to the hero of Blenheim, far more fortunate
+in respect of the nation's gift than the hero of Waterloo, whose grant
+of lands lay in a swamp which it cost him a little fortune to drain.
+Next to Blenheim, in point of size, stands Tatton in Cheshire,
+the seat of Lord Egerton. It contains 2500 acres, and the portion
+appropriated to deer is far larger than at Blenheim. Tatton is from
+ten to eleven miles around.
+
+Another extensive park, 1500 acres, is that at Stowe, the duke of
+Buckingham's. When in 1848 the family misfortunes reached a climax
+which necessitated the sale of everything in Stowe House, the deer
+in the park were sold off. But twenty-five years have rolled by, and
+restored in a great degree the prosperity of the family. The duke is
+again living at his splendid ancestral seat, is by degrees restoring
+to their former home as the opportunity offers many of its scattered
+treasures, and has restocked the park with deer.
+
+Two parks pre-eminently famous for the magnificence of their oak
+timber are Keddleston, Lord Scarsdale's, in Derbyshire, and Bagot's
+Park, Lord Bagot's, in Staffordshire. The latter, which contains a
+thousand acres, is a very ancient enclosure. It contains, besides the
+deer, a herd of wild goats said to have been presented by Richard II.
+to an ancestor of the present owner.
+
+Parks vary from a paddock of twenty-one acres to twenty-eight hundred,
+but the most usual dimensions are from one hundred and fifty to four
+hundred acres. For a _multum in parvo_ of beautiful park scenery the
+traveler in search of these charming specimens of the picturesque may
+be advised to take a tour in Herefordshire and Worcestershire; and
+if he be a horseman he will do well to ride through the country.
+"Anyone," says Mr. Shirley, "who ascends the steep crest of the
+Malvern Hills in Worcestershire, and looks down from the summit of
+the ridge on the western side of the hills upon the richly wooded and
+beautifully undulating country which lies stretched beneath as far as
+the mountains of South Wales, would at once be struck with the 'bosky'
+nature of the scenery, and its perfect adaptation for the formation of
+deer-parks and sylvan residences."
+
+Grimsthorpe, Lady Aveland's (inherited from the dukes of Ancaster,
+extinct); Thoresby, Earl Manvers's, formerly the duke of Kingston's,
+father of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; and Knowsley, Lord Derby's, are
+also very large parks.
+
+A writer on Grimsthorpe in 1774 says: "On a former visit I was told
+that the park was sixteen miles and three quarters in circumference,
+and esteemed the largest in England: since then it has, nevertheless,
+been somewhat enlarged, but different spots in it are cultivated."
+
+A few parks have been created and others restocked during the present
+century. In Norfolk, Lord Kimberley, the present secretary of state
+for the colonies, has restored the deer which were removed during the
+present century, saying, it is reported, that "a place is not a place
+without deer"--a sentiment shared by many of his countrymen regarding
+an ancient grand-seigneur home. In the same county a new park has
+been created at Sandringham, the seat of the prince of Wales, the deer
+having been brought from Windsor. Sandringham Park and Woods were half
+a century ago a sandy waste, but fell into judicious hands and were
+admirably planted. The modern history of the place is remarkable.
+Toward the close of the century it became the property of a French
+refugee, Mr. Matou. This gentleman having been driven from his native
+country by the Revolution, conceived somehow the idea of importing
+from Sicily immense quantities of rabbit skins, which were used for
+making hats of a cheap kind which passed for beaver. In this way he
+acquired a large fortune. In England he mixed in the best society, and
+became very intimate with Earl Cowper, first husband of the well-known
+Lady Palmerston, and at his death bequeathed Sandringham to the
+Honorable Spencer Cowper, that nobleman's younger son, who married
+Lady Blessington's stepdaughter, Lady Harriet Gardiner, after her
+divorce from Count d'Orsay. When the prince of Wales was casting round
+for a country-seat, Sandringham was selected. Lord Palmerston was then
+in office, and some ill-natured things were said as to the sale of his
+stepson's place having been a much better thing for Mr. Cowper than
+for the prince of Wales. Vast sums have since been spent here.
+
+Where a deer-park has long existed on his paternal estate, it goes
+to an Englishman's heart to give it up. An incident in point occurred
+about twenty years ago. In a secluded part of Devonshire, approached
+by the narrow, high-hedged, tortuous lanes characteristic of that part
+of the country, stands a magnificent old Tudor mansion known as Great
+Fulford Hall. Here for upward of six hundred years have been seated
+the Fulfords, a family of Saxon origin, the rivals of the Tichbornes
+in antiquity. The mansion of Fulford was garrisoned by Charles I., and
+taken by a detachment of Cromwell's army in 1645. The marks they left
+behind them may be seen to this day. The Fulfords have supporters to
+their arms, a very rare circumstance in the case of commoners. These
+supporters are two Saracens, and were granted in consideration of
+services in the Crusades. "Sir Baldwin de Fulford fought a combat
+with a Saracen, for bulk and bigness an unequal match (as the
+representation of him cut in the wainscot at Fulford doth plainly
+shew), whom yet he vanquished, and rescued a lady." This gentleman's
+granddaughter was the mother of Henry VIII.'s favorite, Russell, first
+earl of Bedford, and the Fulfords are connected with a hundred other
+ancient and honorable houses. But for a long time the heads of the
+house have failed "to marry money;" and when this happens for two
+or three generations in the case of a country gentleman with a large
+family to portion off, the result must usually be impecuniosity. Thus,
+when the late Mr. Fulford succeeded to the family property in 1847,
+he found himself the owner of a majestic old dilapidated mansion,
+surrounded by a deer-park, which had been gradually growing less until
+the portion of the park devoted to this purpose was little more than a
+big field.
+
+Like his ancestor in the time of "the troubles," Mr. Baldwin Fulford
+was a Conservative, and had been very useful to his party. It was
+intended, therefore, to reward his services when the time came by a
+county office, which would have placed him at ease pecuniarily. When
+this office fell vacant the Tories were "in," and all seemed secure
+for Mr. Fulford's interest. But there's many a slip 'twixt cup and
+lip. A gentleman applied to the prime minister for the place for a
+friend of his, whose services to the party he duly dilated on.
+"I understood," said his lordship, "that Mr. Fulford's claims are
+considered paramount." "Mr. Fulford!" was the rejoinder. "I scarcely
+thought that such a place as this would be an object to Mr. Fulford--a
+gentleman of great position, with a deer-park and all that sort of
+thing." "A deer-park! You surprise me. I understood that Mr. Fulford's
+circumstances were extremely reduced. This alters the matter."
+Unfortunately, the, minister committed himself too far to draw back
+before making inquiries, when he learned that a deer-park having
+existed at Fulford for some four or five centuries, its owner had
+kept as a memento of grand old days a little remnant of the herd in
+a paddock, as before mentioned. He never recovered the blow of this
+disappointment. The heir to the property is, we believe, a son of the
+late bishop of Montreal. The family motto is "Bear up"--one eminently
+suited to its present condition, and we may hope that it will be
+followed so successfully that this ancient stock, which has held for
+so long a high place among the worthies of Devon, may once more win
+the smiles of Fortune.
+
+Many of the most picturesque parks are but little known, lying as
+they do remote from railway stations. Mr. Nesfield, the great
+landscape-gardener, considers that Longleat, the marquis of Bath's,
+near Warminster, has greater natural advantages than any park in
+England, and that these have been made the most of.
+
+Lord Stamford's park of Bradgate, in Leicestershire, is in the highest
+degree interesting. It is mostly covered with the common fern or
+brakes, and the projecting bare and abrupt rocks rising here and
+there, with a few gnarled and shivered oaks in the last stage of
+decay, present a scene of wildness and desolation in striking contrast
+to some of the beautiful adjoining valleys and fertile country.
+
+Another gem of its kind is Ugbrook. This is situated a few miles from
+the Newton-Abbot station of the South Devon Railway, and lies in a
+rocky nook on the confines of Dartmoor. Macaulay, whose brother was
+vicar of the neighboring parish of Bovey-Tracey, knew it well,
+and tells us in his _History_ that Clifford (a member of the Cabal
+ministry) retired to the woods of Ugbrook. He was a lucky man to have
+such paternal acres to retire to, but probably the visitor to-day sees
+this park in a condition which Charles's minister would indeed have
+enjoyed. There is no place in England where a man may feel more
+grateful to those who have gone before him for their taste and
+forethought in creating a sylvan paradise. Although not very large,
+this park contains almost every variety of scenery. There is a grove
+gloomy from the heavy shadows of the magnificent trees which compose
+it, glorious avenues of lime and beech, and monarch-like trees, which,
+standing alone amid an expanse of sward, show to the fullest advantage
+their superb proportions. Entering the park on one side, the road
+winds beside a river, to which the bank gently slopes on the one hand,
+whilst on the other it rises precipitately, clad with the greenest
+foliage. An especial feature of this place is what is known as "the
+riding park," a stretch of smooth turf extending some miles, from
+which you may get a view over thirty miles, with the rocky heights of
+Dartmoor Forest, where the autumn manoeuvres take place this year, on
+the one hand, and the Haldon Hills on the other. This ancient heritage
+is still the property of the Cliffords, the present peer being eighth
+baron in direct descent from the lord treasurer. The Cliffords have
+always remained constant to the Roman Catholic faith, and a Catholic
+chapel adjoins the mansion.
+
+A discriminating foreign tourist writes of Lord Hill's park,
+Hawkstone, in Shropshire, which, also lying rather off the beaten
+track, is comparatively little known: "I must in some respects give
+Hawkstone the preference over all I have seen. It is not art nor
+magnificence nor aristocratic splendor, but Nature alone to which it
+is indebted for this pre-eminence, and in such a degree that were I
+gifted with the power of adding to its beauty, I should ask, What can
+I add? Imagine a spot so commandingly placed that from its highest
+point you can let your eye wander over fifteen counties. Three sides
+of this wide panorama rise and fall in constant change of hill and
+dale like the waves of an agitated sea, and are bounded at the horizon
+by the strangely formed, jagged outline of the Welsh mountains, which
+at either end descend to a fertile plain shaded by thousands of lofty
+trees, and in the obscure distance, where it blends with the sky, is
+edged with a white misty line--the Atlantic Ocean."
+
+Moor Park, in Hertfordshire, is remarkable for the following tradition
+concerning it: In Charles II.'s reign it was bought by the duke of
+Monmouth, whose widow--she who
+
+  In pride of youth, in beauty's bloom,
+  Had wept o'er Monmouth's bloody tomb--
+
+is said to have ordered the heads of the trees in the park to be cut
+off on being informed of her husband's execution. This tradition is
+strengthened by the condition of many of the oaks here, which are
+decayed from the top. The duchess sold the place in 1720, thirty-five
+years after the duke's death. This is the Moor Park of apricot fame,
+but not the one where Sir William Temple lived when Swift was his
+secretary.
+
+Most of the oldest and finest trees in England are naturally to be
+found in the deer-parks. At Woburn, the duke of Bedford's, is the
+largest ash--ninety feet high and twenty-three feet six inches in
+circumference at the base. The Abbot's Oak, on which the last abbot
+was hung, stands, or lately stood, here. It is remarkable that oaks
+are more often struck by lightning than any other trees. At Tortworth,
+Lord Ducie's, in Gloucestershire, is a chestnut asserted to have been
+a boundary tree in the time of King John. So late as 1788 it produced
+great quantities of chestnuts. At five feet from the ground this tree
+measured fifty feet in circumference.
+
+The lover of fine trees should wander through the glades of Lord
+Leigh's park at Stoneleigh, in Warwickshire, where tall and shapely
+oaks grow with such symmetry that you do not guess their size, and are
+surprised to discover on measuring them how great it is.
+
+  Oh, how I love these solitudes
+    And places silent as the night--
+  There where no thronging multitudes
+    Disturb with noise their sweet delight!
+  Oh, how mine eyes are pleased to see
+    Oaks that such spreading branches bear,
+  Which, from old Time's nativity,
+    And th' envy of so many years,
+  Are still green, beautiful and fair
+  As at the world's first day they were!
+
+Writing of the confines of the ancient forest of Sherwood, Mr. Howitt
+says of those sylvan delights: "The great woods have fallen under the
+axe, and repeated enclosures have reduced the open forests, but at
+the Clipstone end still remains a remnant of its ancient woodlands,
+unrifled except of deer--a specimen of what the whole once was, and a
+specimen of consummate beauty and interest. The part called Bilhaghe
+is a forest of oaks, and is clothed with the most impressive aspect
+of age that can be presented to the eye in these kingdoms. Stonehenge
+does not give you a feeling of greater eld, because it is not composed
+of a material so easily acted on by the elements. But the hand of Time
+has been on these woods, and has stamped them with a most imposing
+character. The tempests, lightnings, winds and wintry violence of a
+thousand years have flung their force on these trees, and there they
+stand, trunk after trunk, scathed, hollow, gray, gnarled, stretching
+out their bare, sturdy arms, or their mingled foliage and ruin, a life
+in death. All is gray and old. The ground is gray beneath, the trees
+are gray with clinging lichens--the very heather and fern that spring
+beneath them have a character of the past. If you turn aside and step
+amongst them, your feet sink in a depth of moss and dry vegetation
+that is the growth of ages, or rather that ages have not been able to
+destroy. You stand and look round, and in the height of summer all
+is silent: it is like the fragment of a world worn out and forsaken.
+These were the trees under which King John pursued the red deer six
+hundred years ago, these were the oaks beneath which Robin Hood led
+up his bold band of outlaws.... Advance up this long avenue, which the
+noble owner of the forest tract has cut through it, and, looking right
+and left as you proceed, you will not be able long to refrain from
+turning into the tempting openings that present themselves. Enter
+which you please, you cannot be wrong. These winding tracks, just
+wide enough for a couple of people on horseback or in a pony phaeton,
+carpeted with a mossy turf which springs under your feet with a
+delicious elasticity, and closed in with shadowy trunks and flowery
+thickets--are they not lovely?"
+
+In the time of Elizabeth the largest park in Warwickshire, and one
+of the very finest in England, was that which surrounded the castle
+rendered classic ground by the immortal limning of Scott--Kenilworth.
+In a survey taken in the time of James I. it is stated that "the
+circuit of the castle mannours, parks and chase lying round together
+contain at least nineteen or twenty miles in a pleasant country, the
+like both for strength, state and pleasure not being within the realme
+of England." Kenilworth came to an end in Cromwell's time, a period
+very unfavorable to these sylvan paradises. He had the park cut up and
+divided amongst various grantees. How much damage was done to the
+park interest by the civil wars the following extract from the Life of
+Margaret, duchess of Newcastle, attests: "Of eight parks which my
+lord had before the wars, there was but one left that was not quite
+destroyed--viz. Welbeck Park of about four miles compass; for my
+lord's brother, Sir Charles Cavendish, who bought out the life of my
+lord in that lordship, saved most part of it from being cut down; and
+in Blore Park there were some few deer left. The rest of the parks
+were totally defaced and destroyed, both wood, pales and deer; amongst
+which was also Clipston Park of seven miles compass, wherein my lord
+had taken much delight formerly, it being rich of wood, and containing
+the greatest and tallest timber trees of all the woods he shad;
+insomuch that only the pale-row was valued at two thousand pounds. It
+was watered by a pleasant river that runs through it, full of fish and
+otters; was well stocked with deer, full of hares, and had great
+store of partridges, poots, pheasants, etc., besides all sorts of
+water-fowl; so that this park afforded all manner of sports, for
+hunting, hawking, coursing, fishing, etc., for which my lord esteemed
+it very much. And although his patience and wisdom is such that
+I never perceived him sad or discontented for his own losses and
+misfortunes, yet when he beheld the ruins of that park I observed him
+troubled, though he did little express it, only saying he had been
+in hopes it would not have been so much defaced as he found it, there
+being not one timber tree in it left for shelter."
+
+The number of deer-parks in Scotland and Ireland is small. The
+principal park in the former is that of the duke of Buccleuch at
+Dalkeith Palace, near Edinburgh. At Hamilton, belonging to the duke of
+that ilk, are wild cattle similar to those at Chillingham.
+
+A wonderfully picturesque Irish park is Rockingham, the Hon. L. King
+Harinan's, in the county Roscommon. The traveler will observe this
+beautiful and very extensive demesne as he goes from Boyle to Sligo.
+It is at the foot of the Curlew Mountains, and contains a magnificent
+sheet of water surrounding an island on which stands an ancient
+castle, still inhabitable. At Strokestown, in the same county, is a
+small park, where Mr. Mahon, its former owner, planted many years ago
+all sorts of forest trees, to see how far the deer would eat them: the
+only tree they entirely avoided was the beech.
+
+There is nothing grander in the three kingdoms than Lord Waterford's
+seat, Curraghmore. Taken with the adjoining woods, the demesne
+contains five thousand acres. The special feature of this superb place
+is grandeur; "not that arising from the costly and laborious exertions
+of man, but rather the magnificence of Nature. The beauty of
+the situation consists in the lofty hills, rich vales and almost
+impenetrable woods, which deceive the eye and give the idea of
+boundless forests. The variety of the scenery is calculated to please
+in the highest degree, and to gratify every taste."
+
+At Lyme Park, the splendid old seat of the Leghs in Cheshire, "a very
+remarkable custom," says Lysons, "of driving the red deer, which has
+not been practiced in any other park, either in England or abroad, was
+established about a century ago by an old park-keeper, who occupied
+that position for seventy years, dying at over one hundred years of
+age. It was his custom in May and June, when the animals' horns were
+tender, to go on horseback, with a rod in his hand, round the hills
+of this extensive park, and, having collected the deer, to drive them
+before him like a herd of common horned cattle, sometimes even opening
+a gate for them to pass through. When they came to a place before the
+hall called the Deer-Clod, they would stand in a collected body as
+long as the spectators thought fit; the young ones following their
+dams, and the old stags rising one against another and combating with
+their fore feet, not daring at this season of the year to make use of
+their horns. At the command of the keeper they would then move forward
+to a large piece of water and swim through the whole length of it,
+after which they were allowed to disperse."
+
+Following the example of the abbots, many of the bishops formerly had
+deer-parks, and up to 1831 the bishop of Durham, a prince-palatine
+in his diocese, had a park at his country-seat, still his residence,
+Bishops-Auckland; but now the only prelate enjoying this distinction
+is the bishop of Winchester, at Farnham Castle, in Hampshire.
+
+"There are some," says a writer in an early number of the _Westminster
+Review_, "who enclose immense possessions with walls and gates, and
+employ keepers with guns to guard every avenue to the vast solitudes
+by which they choose to be surrounded. Let such men pitch their
+tents in the deserts of Sahara or the wild prairies of America. What
+business have they here in the midst of a civilized community,
+linked together by chains of mutual obligation and dependence?" These
+observations apply to few private parks now-a-days. Permission to
+drive, ride or walk through them is rarely refused. Almost the only
+cases where there is much strictness in this respect are those of
+parks situated near a great watering place, such as Brighton or
+Tonbridge Wells. Thus, at the former, Lord Chichester's rule is that
+all persons on horseback or in carriages may pass through his ground,
+but foot-passengers are not allowed. The late Lord Abergavenny, a man
+of very shy and retiring disposition, was the least liberal park-owner
+in England. The gates of his superb demesne of Eridge very rarely
+revolved on their hinges; and this was the more remarkable, inasmuch
+as he did not reside there more than three months in the year. The
+story was told that at his accession to the property he had been
+more liberal, but that one day he was seated at luncheon alone when,
+suddenly looking up, he observed to his horror three proletarians
+flattening their noses against the window-pane, and gaping with
+exasperating interest at the august spectacle of a live lord at
+luncheon. To pull the bell and issue an order for the immediate
+removal of the intruders was, in the graphic language of the dime
+novel, the work of a moment; and from that hour the gates of Eridge
+were so rigorously sealed that it was often a matter of difficulty
+even for invited guests to obtain admittance.
+
+It may seem very ill-natured sometimes to refuse admittance on
+easy terms to such places, and to act apparently in a sort of
+dog-in-the-manger spirit. But it should be borne in mind that the
+privilege when accorded has not unfrequently been abused, more
+especially by the "lower middle class" of the English people, whose
+manners are often very intrusive. Such persons will approach close
+to the house, peer into the windows of private apartments, or push
+in amongst the family and guests while engaged in croquet or other
+out-door amusements. Another common offence is leaving a disgusting
+_debris_ lying about after a picnic in grounds which it costs the
+owners thousands of pounds yearly to keep in order. The sentiment from
+which such places are kept up is not that of vulgar display. They
+are hallowed by associations which are well depicted by the late Lord
+Lytton in an eloquent passage in _Earnest Maltravers_:
+
+"It is a wild and weird scene, one of those noble English parks at
+midnight, with its rough forest-ground broken into dell and valley,
+its never-innovated and mossy grass overrun with fern, and its
+immemorial trees, that have looked upon the birth, and look yet upon
+the graves, of a hundred generations. Such spots are the last proud
+and melancholy trace of Norman knighthood and old romance left to the
+laughing landscapes of cultivated England. They always throw something
+of shadow and solemn gloom upon minds that feel their associations,
+like that which belongs to some ancient and holy edifice. They are the
+cathedral aisles of Nature, with their darkened vistas, and columned
+trunks, and arches of mighty foliage. But in ordinary times the gloom
+is pleasing, and more delightful than all the cheerful lawns and sunny
+slopes of the modern taste."
+
+REGINALD WYNFORD.
+
+[Footnote 1: This was the famous Charlotte de la Tremouille, so
+admirably portrayed by Scott in _Peveril of the Peak_. Her direct
+male heirs terminated in her grandson, the tenth earl, and she is now
+represented in the female line by the duke of Atholl, who through her
+claims descent from the Greek emperors.]
+
+
+
+
+RAMBLES AMONG THE FRUITS AND FLOWERS OF THE TROPICS.
+
+TWO PAPERS.--I.
+
+
+"Well, Abdallah, what have you in view that can tempt one to a ramble
+on such a breezeless morning as this?" was my question of the turbaned
+exquisite who had just presented himself on the balcony where we sat
+at sunrise inhaling the fragrant breath of a thousand flowers. We
+were at Singapore, that little ocean gem at the foot of the Malayan
+peninsula, where, fair as a pearl, she nestles in the crested coronet
+of the deep blue sea. The whole island is but twenty-seven miles long,
+with a width varying from three to twelve; but in no other area of
+such limited dimensions can the tourist find so much of enchanting
+beauty and picturesqueness, or such a variety of tropical products, as
+in this "garden of the East." Without mountains, but with its central
+peak of Bookit Tima rising about six hundred feet above the sea, the
+scenery is diversified with richly-wooded hills, evergreen dales,
+and luxuriant jungle-growth drooping over and reflecting its graceful
+fringes in many a little babbling brook. The fruits of the island are
+varied and luscious, the foliage perennial, and its myriads of flowers
+so gorgeously tinted, so redolent of balmy odors, that one is fairly
+bewildered with the superabundance of sweets. Of course we were
+nothing loath to tarry a few weeks on this fairy isle, and we gladly
+availed ourselves of the opportunity thus afforded to enrich our
+herbariums and sketchbooks with new specimens by making occasional
+excursions to the jungles, and now and then a picnic to some of the
+thirty smaller islands that surround Singapore. But as the foreign
+tourist in those enervating tropical regions is not slow to acquire
+the Oriental love of ease and inveterate aversion to fatigue even in
+pleasure-seeking, we usually left our Mussulman comprador to seek out
+objects of interest and report to us beforehand, thus saving us from
+the weariness of many a bootless expedition, and catering to the
+precise tastes and desires of each of us in the way of adding to our
+treasures.
+
+On the morning in question Abdallah had just brought in the invariable
+morning coffee, served in the purest and tiniest of porcelain cups;
+and while we listlessly sipped the fragrant Mocha he seemed scanning
+our faces with more than usual interest, evidently expecting just such
+a question as I had asked. What a picture he was as he stood there
+in flowing robes and huge turban, with his jet black moustache and
+bronze-brown complexion, one small hand placed over the heart in token
+of his absolute devotion to the foreign sahibs, and his lithe, supple
+form leaning forward in the most obsequious attitude imaginable! His
+answer was characteristic:
+
+"Well, Madam Sahib, I find much beautiful flower, but not all where
+lady sahib can go, unless she can ride in sampan. Some roads too small
+for palanquin, and lady sahib's satin slipper must not be soiled with
+dust or mud. But I engage one big sampan with six men to pull, and, if
+the foreign sahibs all please, we make one grand picnic to Pulo Nanas
+(Pineapple Island) and Pulo Panjan. They can ride first to where boat
+is waiting, visit Pulo Nanas, take breakfast under orange tree, see
+much fine fruit trees, and then go to Pulo Panjan, where I gave orders
+for dinner to be served for the sahibs."
+
+"But pray tell us who is to serve it," laughingly responded one of our
+party. "Are we to have monkeys or wild squirrels for caterers? It must
+be one or the other, as I am sure I have been informed that neither of
+those islands are inhabited by human beings."
+
+"No man there, true, sahib," was our Mussulman's ready rejoinder.
+"But I send small boat with two men to pull, and two cooks, with rice,
+fowls, and everything wanted for breakfast and dinner. I believe they
+already at Pulo Nanas, cooking breakfast; the palanquins are also at
+the door; and so, if it be the sahibs' pleasure, it is better to start
+before the sun gets very high."
+
+All this certainly promised well for us pleasure-seekers, and was no
+doubt quite as satisfactory an arrangement for our scheming comprador,
+who always took care to add to every charge a very liberal commission
+for his own valuable services. We well knew that he was cheating us
+on a grand scale, but of what avail was such knowledge? We should
+gain nothing by discharging one who had at least the merit of being
+good-looking, well-mannered and pleasant-speaking, only to engage
+another less civil and probably no more honest. And in India all
+disbursements for personal and household expenses are made through
+these compradors or stewards--not of necessity, but because it is
+the custom of the country, and in the East one never rebels against
+established usage.
+
+Our preparations were soon made: sketchbooks, drawing materials and
+covered baskets for specimens were transferred to the keeping of
+our faithful Mussulman, and we set out, anticipating a day of rare
+enjoyment. We were fortunate in securing the company of Mr. M----,
+the accomplished president of the Anglo-Chinese College, who had
+spent some thirty years in Singapore, and was well acquainted with its
+localities and objects of interest. He was like a complete volume with
+illustrations on everything pertaining to the East, could answer all
+manner of unheard-of questions about things that everybody else had
+forgotten, and had always ready an appropriate anecdote or story just
+to the point. His very dress was characteristic. It consisted of loose
+trousers of gray linen, and an old-fashioned white hunting-coat with
+Quaker collar, and huge pockets that would have answered very well
+for the saddle-bags of an itinerant surgeon. These were designed
+as receptacles for such stray "specimens" in botany, geology or
+conchology as he might chance to discover _en route_; while thrust
+into a smaller breast-pocket he carried a brace of huntsman's pistols,
+with antique powder-horn and shot-pouch slung over the shoulder. His
+hat was a Panama with low, round crown and a rim nearly as large as
+an ordinary umbrella. A Chinese youth, an orphan adopted by Mr. M----
+years before, accompanied his patron in a full suit of yellow nankin
+made _a la Chinoise_, with broad-brimmed straw hat, long, braided
+queue, and the inevitable Chinese fan. The rest of us donned our white
+linen "fatigue suits," and leghorn hats of such vast dimensions as
+bade the wearers have no thought for umbrellas. Thus equipped, we
+were ready for all sorts of emergencies--climbing rocks, diving into
+jungles or wading through muddy creeks.
+
+The drive was for the most part through spice plantations and groves
+of orange and palm, and, without delays, would have brought us in an
+hour's time to the coast. But we could not consent to press onward
+to the goal ahead without pausing for at least a glimpse of the many
+objects of interest on the way. First we strolled over a plantation
+of black pepper cultivated by Chinamen. The vine is a creeper with
+a knotty stem that if unpruned will reach the height of near thirty
+feet, but in order to render the vines more productive they are kept
+down to about a dozen or fifteen feet, and each is trained over a
+separate pole or prop. At each joint of the stem the plant puts out
+its fibrous tendrils, grasping the prop, and so climbing to the top.
+Whenever a vine happens to trail on the ground these tendrils, like
+strawberry "runners," shoot into the earth, but then they bear no
+fruit. The branches are short, brittle and easily broken, the leaves
+deep-green, heart-shaped and very abundant, and the blossom a cluster
+of small white flowers, almost destitute of odor. The fruit hangs in
+long clusters of some forty or fifty grains each, somewhat after the
+fashion of the wild grape, though much more diminutive in size. Until
+after it has reached its full size it is green, when at maturity of
+a bright red, and black only after it has become thoroughly dry. When
+the berries begin to redden the bunches are gathered and spread upon
+mats in the sun to dry: then the corns soon wither, turn black and
+drop from the stems, becoming thus the shriveled black pepper known in
+commerce. What is known among us as white pepper was formerly supposed
+to be a different species from the black; but the sole difference is
+in the curing, that intended for white pepper being placed in baskets
+under water until sufficiently swollen for the exterior pellicle to
+rub off by rolling in the hands after being again dried in the sun.
+The plants are propagated by cuttings, which are generally placed some
+six feet apart, sometimes being trained over the trunk of an old tree,
+and at others over a strong stake. The vines commence bearing the
+third year, and continue to do so for a dozen or more, when they
+are rooted up, new ones having been previously planted to take their
+places.
+
+We next called at two gambier plantations, both owned and conducted by
+Chinamen who came to the island a few years before as common coolies.
+The gambier (_Funis uncatis_) was formerly called terra japonica, from
+being supposed to be an earth and to come from Japan. It is grown
+on sandy soil or dry hills, and requires very little labor in
+cultivation. It is a slender-stemmed, vine-like shrub with oval-shaped
+leaves and pale purplish flowers in clusters. The seeds germinate in
+forty days, and the seedlings are transplanted when about nine inches
+high. When full grown they reach a height of ten feet or more, and
+after the first year the leaves and branches are regularly gathered
+and prepared for the market. Men and boys were engaged in plucking
+the leaves and conveying them, in mat-bags suspended on each end of a
+bamboo staff, to the boiling-ground. Here they were boiled until the
+water was evaporated, and the inspissated juice deposited, which we
+afterward saw drying in little squares. It is a powerful astringent,
+having one-tenth more tannin than any other substance known. It is
+used by the natives as a dye, also as a salve for wounds and for
+chewing with betel-nut and tobacco, besides being largely exported
+to Europe for tanning leather and for dyeing. All through the gambier
+plantations, and in every department of the labor of preparing it
+for the boiler, I observed that not a female was to be seen, and on
+inquiring the reason was gravely told that gambier plants would not
+flourish if touched by a woman! "Sensitive plants" indeed, so readily
+to discern the difference between the handling of the two sexes!
+
+Our next call was at a coffee plantation, where we saw sixty thousand
+young and healthy coffee trees, and two-thirds of them in a bearing
+condition, yielding in the aggregate not less than fifty thousand
+pounds of dry coffee per annum. The trees are beautifully formed, and
+rise naturally to the height of sixteen feet or more, but when under
+culture are kept at five or six feet for the convenience of collecting
+the ripe fruit. They are planted in rows, the leaves grow opposite
+each other, and many sessile flowers are produced at their insertion.
+The blossoms are pure white, and when the plants are in full bloom
+nothing can exceed their beauty or fragrance, the branches looking
+as if frosted with snow, while the air is filled with the delicate
+perfume. But the scene is brief as enchanting: the flowers fade a few
+hours after they are full blown, to be succeeded by tiny berries that
+are at first green, then a yellowish red, and finally ripen into a
+rich crimson or purple; after which, unless gathered at once, they
+shrivel and drop from the tree. This is about seven months after the
+blooms make their appearance. The pulp is torn off and separated
+from the seeds by means of a machine, and the grains, after being
+thoroughly washed, are dried in the sun and put up in bags. Chek
+Kongtwau, the Chinese proprietor of the plantation, not only walked
+with us over his grounds, and answered all our questions with
+exemplary patience, but insisted that we should go into the house, be
+presented to his wife and partake of a lunch. He regaled us with tea
+and coffee of his own growing and curing, excellent turtle steaks,
+boiled rice, and curry made of shrimps and cucumbers stewed together.
+For vegetables there were the Malay lobak, a tender white radish, and
+the cocoa-nut bud stewed in the milk of the ripe fruit; and as dessert
+we had placed before us, for the first time, the far-famed durian, so
+universal a favorite among Orientals as to command a higher price than
+any other fruit in market, yet so abominably disgusting in smell that
+the olfactories of few strangers can tolerate its approach. To me the
+odor seemed precisely that supposed to be produced by the admixture of
+garlic and assafoetida; and as a plate piled with the rich golden pulp
+was placed before me by our hostess, I came so near fainting as to be
+compelled to seek the open air. The old Chinaman followed me, and
+when he had learned the cause of my indisposition, laughed heartily,
+saying, "Wait a year or two. You have not been in the country long
+enough to appreciate this rare luxury. But when you have become
+initiated into a knowledge of its surpassing excellences, never an
+orange, pineapple or other fruit will you touch when a durian can be
+had."
+
+Just as we were re-entering our palanquins, Chek Kongtwau inquired
+whether we had yet seen the anoo palm or sago tree, of which he said
+there was but a solitary specimen in the island, most of the sago
+manufactured at Singapore being brought in its crude state from the
+swamps of Sumatra. He told us the famous tree was several miles from
+his house, out of our direct route, but if we had time to visit it he
+would undertake to guide us safely through the jungle to and from the
+tree. We found it standing in solitary grandeur in a low swamp, and
+lifting its long pinnated leaves from the extreme top of a trunk full
+thirty feet high and twenty-eight inches in diameter. Its general
+appearance is not unlike the cocoa-nut palm. Our conductor called the
+sago tree _sibla_, but the Malays give it the name of _rumbiga_. They
+say that each tree, if kept properly pruned down, will produce at
+least five hundred pounds of pith per annum; but it soon degenerates
+if suffered to grow to any considerable height. The pith is soaked
+in large troughs of running water until it dissolves and afterward
+settles, the sand and heavy dirt sinking beneath it, and the fibres
+and scum floating on top. After being separated from these impurities
+the sago is dried, and then granulated by passing it through
+perforated plates till it becomes smooth and polished like so many
+pearls, when it is packed in boxes and bags for sale. We did not see
+the process that day, of course, but afterward at the large factory on
+the river a few miles above the settlement.
+
+One more plantation, a grove of the stately areca-nut or betel trees,
+we determined to visit before taking the boat. The smooth road was
+bordered everywhere with the beautiful melastoma or Singapore rose, of
+perennial foliage and always in bloom, underneath acacias and palms;
+and the very earth was carpeted with beauty and fragrance enough to
+have formed the bridal-couch of a fairy queen. Over such a highway
+three miles were quickly made, and we alighted at the entrance of a
+narrow lane that led to the abode of Cassim Mootoo, the Malay owner
+and cultivator of the betel-nut plantation. At the outer door a stone
+monster of huge proportions and uncouth features kept guard against
+the uncanny spirits that are supposed to frequent out-of-the-way lanes
+and dreary passages. The planter received us pleasantly, accepted our
+apologies for troubling him, and offered to show us over the grounds.
+He was far less courtly in manners than the Chinese coffee-cultivator,
+to whom we should scarcely have ventured to offer a fee, while out of
+the Malay's cunning eyes there gleamed the evident expectation of a
+snug bonus of silver rupees, which he received as a matter of course
+when we bade him adieu, and having counted them over and jingled
+them for a moment in his fingers, he thrust them into his pouch as he
+re-entered the house.
+
+We found the areca trees planted in rows, and growing to the height of
+some forty feet, with straight, branchless trunks, terminated at the
+top with ten or twelve pinnated leaves, each of which is full five
+feet long. The fruit grows in clusters immediately below the tuft
+of leaves. The outer shell is of a bright golden hue, that gradually
+deepens to crimson as the fruit matures, and when opened shows a
+brown, astringent nut about the size of a nutmeg. This is the portion
+chewed with chunam and tobacco all over the East; and its use is so
+universal that one seldom meets a man, woman or child of any Oriental
+nation whose mouth is not filled, always and everywhere, with the
+execrable mixture. Pepper leaves are sprinkled with chunam (lime) and
+rolled up: a slice of betel-nut with a quid of tobacco is placed in
+the mouth first, and then the rolled-up leaf is bitten off, and all
+masticated together. When a visitor calls the betel-box is immediately
+passed to him; and as in regard to the eating of salt in Western Asia,
+so, in the eastern and southern portions, those who have once partaken
+of betel-nut together are ever after sworn to faithful and undying
+friendship. The use of the areca-nut preserves the teeth from decay,
+but keeps them stained of a disgusting brick-red color.
+
+On the outer edge of Cassim's plantation, where the soil was damp, we
+noticed several long rows of the nepah palm, generally known as attap,
+and extensively used for thatching houses in the East. It has the same
+huge pinnated leaves as most of the other palms, but is destitute of
+the long straight trunk, the leaves commencing from near the root, and
+the entire height being seldom more than twelve or fourteen feet. We
+saw also a few specimens of the hutan, a strange-looking palmate shrub
+with leaves fifteen feet long, which are generally used by the Malays
+for sails, in lieu of canvas, for their piratical proas. But the
+strangest of all the palms we saw was the talipat, so called from the
+Bali word _talipoin_, a priest; and the name was originally derived
+from the fact that the sacred fans used by Booddhist priests in
+their religious ceremonies are formed of its leaves. This fan is a
+prescribed item of clerical costume, and no conscientious Booddhist
+priest ever appears without this long-handled fan held directly in
+front of his face, to prevent the sacred countenance from coming in
+contact with anything unclean. The sacred books of the Booddhists and
+Brahmins are also written on the talipat palm leaves, as are many
+of their historical records and scientific works. This mammoth tree
+sometimes reaches the height of nearly two hundred feet, and its trunk
+the circumference of twelve feet. It lives to the age of nearly a
+century, but blossoms only a single time; during the whole period of
+its existence. The flower, some thirty feet in length, bursts with a
+loud explosion at maturity, and in dying scatters the seeds that are
+to produce the next generation of trees. A single leaf will sometimes
+measure forty feet in circumference; and it is no unusual sight on the
+Malabar coast, where storms are so fierce and sudden, to see ten or
+fifteen men finding shelter in a boat over which is spread a single;
+palm leaf, which effectually shields all from both wind and rain. When
+the storm has subsided the huge leaf may be folded up like a lady's
+fan, and is so light as to be readily carried by a man under one arm.
+The talipat never grows wild, it is said, as do most of the other
+palms; and it reaches its greatest perfection in the island of Ceylon.
+All that I ever met with were under cultivation, being tended and
+nursed with the utmost care. Indeed, half a dozen talipat palm trees
+are a fortune in themselves, the leaves being very profitable as
+merchandise, while a crop may be gathered every year during a long
+life, and then the tree be of sufficient value to be bequeathed to the
+heirs of the owner.
+
+Bidding adieu to our Malayan host, we once more entered the
+palanquins, and in a little while were set down on the coast, where
+lay our sampan with flag hoisted and pennons gayly flaunting in the
+breeze. First we passed Battu Bliah, "the sailing rock"--so called
+from its fancied resemblance to a ship under widespread canvas; then
+around an abrupt projection of Erskine's Hill, in a narrow passage
+between Singapore and Baltan Mateo, we came in full view of
+the promontory upon the highest point of which is built the
+palace-bungalow of the old sultan-rajah who held sway over the island
+previous to its purchase by Sir Stamford Raffles for the British
+government, in 1819. The old rajah has passed away, but the bungalow
+is still occupied by his son, a pensioner on the English Crown, and
+one of the most daring pirates in all that region--successful enough
+to have achieved a fame for prowess, but too crafty ever to be caught.
+
+At Pulo Nanas, where we were to lunch, we found the cloth was already
+laid on the green grass under the protecting shadow of a huge orange
+tree, whose ripe golden fruit offered a dainty dessert. We took our
+seats with the "professor" at the head, and were soon discussing the
+merits of boiled chicken, fried fish, omelette, oysters, turtle eggs
+and sundry fruits and confections with the zest created by seven hours
+of active exercise in the open air. Then came the reaction, inclining
+every one more to repose than research, and the hours would probably
+have been dreamed away barren of adventures, had it not been for our
+indomitable professor. We had missed him but a moment, when suddenly
+he reappeared, holding at arm's length what seemed in the distance
+about a dozen brown, scaly snakes a yard long, all strung together.
+Simultaneously the entire company sprang to their feet and started for
+a race as this regiment of frightful reptiles was thrust into their
+midst by the radiant "dominie," whose face was fairly aglow with
+mischief. "Where did they come from? What are you going to do with
+them?" exclaimed everybody at once, turning to look at the monsters as
+they lay passive and motionless where the professor had thrown them.
+"Give them to Saint Patrick, to keep company with those he drove out
+of the Emerald Isle; or we'll have them for dinner if you prefer,"
+was the laughing response. Reassured by the non-combatant air of the
+dreaded reptiles, we ventured a nearer approach, and our astonishment
+may readily be imagined when we found not snakes, but simply a cluster
+of the pendent blossoms of the rattan tree (_Arundo bambos_), one of
+the strangest of all the floral products of the tropics. They hang
+from the tree in clusters usually of ten or twelve, each a yard or
+more in length, looking like a soldier's aigrettes suspended among the
+green leaves, or perhaps still more like a string of chestnut-colored
+scales threaded through the centre. Waving to and fro in the summer
+breeze, as I afterward saw them, intertwined with the graceful
+tendrils of the beautiful passion-flower with its rare feathery
+chalice of purple and gold, and flanked on every side by ferns of
+exquisite symmetry, reflecting their dainty fringes in the clear
+waters, the _tout ensemble_ is one of radiant loveliness, seemingly
+too fair to be hidden away among lonely jungles.
+
+Consigning our newly acquired treasure to the keeping of the
+comprador, we sauntered forth in search of other discoveries, and were
+richly rewarded by finding several perfect specimens of the monkey-cup
+or pitcher-plant (_Nepenthes distillatoria_). This plant is found in
+moist places, such as are suited to the growth of ferns, mangroves
+and palmate shrubs. It has pendent from each leaf a natural pitcher or
+elongated cup, growing perfectly upright and capable of holding a pint
+or more of liquid. It is provided also with a natural cover, which
+when closed prevents the ingress of leaves or rubbish falling from
+other trees. The most curious circumstance connected with this strange
+plant is, that it is nearly always found full of pure, sparkling
+water, and that the lid closes of itself as soon as the receptacle is
+full, and opens whenever it is empty. The water is thus protected from
+dust, and kept always fit for the use of thirsty travelers, as well as
+of the immense troops of monkeys that inhabit tropical jungles. When
+the dainty cup has been drained of its refreshing contents, this
+wonderful little plant again throws wide the portals of its exhausted
+receptacle for the free entrance of rain or dew. Another plant, one
+we had often heard of, and sought for without success, the so-called
+oyster tree, was found, and proved to be nothing very wonderful after
+all. It is simply an ordinary oyster or other shell-fish, that, tired
+of lying in the mud, concludes by way of variety to try swinging
+in the air for a while, and so fastens itself to the long, pendent
+branches of the mangroves that grow luxuriantly on the shores of most
+tropical islands.
+
+There seeming to be no more objects of interest to detain us at Pulo
+Nanas, and our chuliahs having already gone on to prepare dinner at
+Pulo Panjan, we rallied our forces and followed suit. It was already
+four o'clock, and so near the equinoctial line, where there is no
+twilight, it is dark soon after six; but then Pulo Panjan was on our
+route homeward, and we should have time at least to dine and gather
+some of the beautiful flowers for which the island is famous, as well
+as to taste the white pineapple, a rare and exquisite variety that
+grows here in great abundance. Both rind and pulp are of a pale
+straw-color; hence the name, to distinguish this species from the
+ordinary golden-colored fruit, which is far inferior to the white.
+Those we obtained were magnificent specimens--large and juicy, with a
+flavor to tempt the appetite of the veriest epicure. Abdallah peeled
+them in such a way as to remove the bur entire, and brought them
+to our grassy "board" on pure white porcelain plates garnished with
+wreaths of fragrant flowers. Never were the gods feasted on nectar
+and ambrosia more divinely luscious than the white pines and golden
+mangoes, the rich juicy grapes and sparkling sherbet, with which
+we were regaled on that bright summer eve at the base of the old
+flagstaff towering above our heads.
+
+We had not much time for roaming, but gathered whole handfuls of the
+lotus or water-lily, with its pale-blue, golden or rose-tinted blooms
+gleaming up from the sparkling waters like the fabled charms of
+mermaid or sea-nymph. There are many varieties of this exquisite
+flower--blue, pink, carnation, bright yellow, royal purple fringed
+with gold, and, more beautiful than all, pure, virgin white, with
+the faintest possible rose tinge in the centre of each section of the
+corolla, a just perceptible blush, as of its own conscious loveliness.
+This last variety is the royal flower of Siam: it is borne before
+the king at weddings, funerals and all state festivals, and the royal
+reception-rooms are always beautifully decorated with the young buds
+arranged in costly vases of exquisite workmanship. The costly silk and
+lace canopies over the cradles of the infants of the king's family
+are also made in the form of a lotus reversed; and it is said that in
+cases of fever or eruptive diseases the leaves of the fresh lotus are
+spread over the royal couches, as being not only sanitary, but more
+agreeable to the invalid than the ordinary linen or silk bedding.
+Guided by the rare rich perfume of its waxen buds, we found a choice
+specimen of the bride-like moon-creeper, and bore if off, vine, blooms
+and all, to a place among the floral adornments of our own home.
+
+We reached home at eight o'clock, after a cruise, by sea and by land,
+of thirteen hours; but the day had been so replete with enjoyment that
+we scarcely felt conscious of fatigue, and were off again the next
+morning, soon after sun-rise, for a ride to Bookit Tima ("hill of
+tin"), the central and loftiest peak of Singapore Island. It is nine
+miles from the city, with a smooth road to the very summit, so that
+we might go either in pony palanquins or on horseback. We chose the
+latter, as affording us better opportunity for observation and
+the collection of "specimens," and, as we could readily gain the
+mountain-top in season for a nine o'clock breakfast, the heat would
+not be oppressive. Abdallah despatched the chuliahs, each with a stout
+load of provisions, table-ware and cooking-utensils, at dawn, and
+when we arrived our _dejeuner_ was ready to be served. The viands were
+tempting and the cookery faultless, but we could scarce do justice to
+either, so eager were we to begin our explorations on the summit and
+sides of this beautiful hill, or rather hills, for there are twin
+peaks closely connected, and each presenting an enchanting view of
+verdant fields and fertile valleys, of the neighboring city, the wide
+expanse of blue waters beyond, and the shipping in the harbor. Having
+satisfied ourselves with gazing at the distant prospect, we began to
+descend in search of adventures, sending our ponies ahead to await
+us at the base of the mountain, where we were to dine. Onward
+we strolled, gradually descending, every step marked by
+novelties--flowers, grasses, weeds and shrubs vieing with each other
+in varied and glad-some beauty. At length we sat down to rest beneath
+a huge bombax or cotton tree (_Bombax ceiba_), its widespread branches
+and thick foliage shielding us effectually from the noonday sun, a
+fragrant blossom falling occasionally into our laps or pelting us over
+head and shoulders, while with every passing zephyr the fleecy down
+from the ripe bolls floated hither and thither, looking for all the
+world like a snow-storm, except that the sun was shining luminously
+in the clear heavens. This tree must have been sixty feet in height,
+a grand, noble type of a green old age after scores of years well
+and usefully spent, still vigorous and productive. We met specimens
+afterward even taller and larger than this, and they are said
+sometimes to reach the height of a hundred feet. The timber is light
+and porous, and is in great demand for boats. Lower down, the various
+palms, especially the cocoa-nut and cabbage, were all about us. The
+former is found in nearly every tropical clime, and is of all trees
+the one most indispensable to the East Indian, furnishing him with
+meat, drink, medicine, clothing, lodging and fuel. The ripe kernel of
+the nut, besides being eaten, has expressed from it an excellent oil,
+that feeds all the lamps in an Oriental house, supplies the table with
+a most palatable substitute for butter, and the belle with a choice
+article of perfumery; the green nut affords a delicious beverage
+to the thirsty traveler; the fibrous covering of the nut is readily
+converted into strong and durable cordage, and the polished shells
+into drinking-cups, ladles and spoons; the leaves are frequently used
+for thatch, the wood for lathing and musical instruments, and the sap
+for toddy, an intoxicating drink very common in the East. The tree is
+graceful and pretty, with a tuft of large pinnated leaves at the top,
+and nestled cosily in their midst are the clusters of fruit. It grows
+to the height of forty or fifty feet, is long-lived, and bears fruit
+nearly the whole year round. The cabbage palm is much less common in
+a wild state, and few planters will take the trouble to cultivate
+it, since a whole tree must be destroyed to obtain a single dish. The
+edible part consists of snow-white flakes found just inside the bark
+near the top of the tree. When stewed in the expressed juice of the
+cocoa-nut it constitutes one of the most luscious dishes I have ever
+eaten. The tree is tall and large, and the pinnated leaves very long.
+
+In the moist portions of the jungle toward the foot of the hill were
+whole groves of the fragrant pandanus, ferns of infinite variety, and
+a species of wild mignonette with a perfume like that of commingled
+strawberries and lemon. Now and then we paused beneath the thick
+green foliage of the _Magnolia grandiflora_, as it towered in stately
+grandeur above its sister flowers, acknowledged queen of the parterre,
+and dispensing with genuine Oriental profusion its rare and delicious
+perfume. A step farther and our gaze was riveted by the modest purity
+of the spotless japonica, the fragrant tuberose and Cape jessamine,
+the graceful passion-flower, with its royal beauty and storied
+reminiscences, the peerless dauk-male, fragrant and fair, the _Kalla
+Indica_, with its five long petals of heavenly blue, the gold-plant
+of the Chinese, and crimson boon-gah-riah of the Malays, the last two
+consecrated symbols in the religious rites of those nations. What a
+medley of sweets, flaunting their gay colors in the bright tropical
+sunshine! Then the innumerable company of roses--tea, moss, perpetual,
+cluster, climbing, variegated, and a score of others--how fair, fresh
+and fragrant they are, peerless, queen-like still, even amid such a
+gorgeous array of ripe floral charms! These, and a thousand others for
+which we have no names in our language, are scattered profusely over
+those sunny lands of dreamy beauty, vieing with each other in rare,
+rich perfume, exquisite grace of form and matchless blending of their
+warm, ripe colors.
+
+The next day we dined at Dr. Almeida's, and in his magnificent garden
+found several choice specimens of both the _Victoria regia_ and the
+_Rafflesia Arnoldi_, the two largest flowers in the world, each bloom
+measuring two feet in diameter. But the rarest of all the doctor's
+treasures was the night-blooming cereus. There were six blooms in full
+maturity--four on one stalk and two on another--creamy, waxen flowers
+of exquisite form, the leaves of the corolla of a pale golden hue
+and the petals intensely white. The calyx rises from a long, hollow
+footstalk, which is formed of rough plates overlapping each other like
+tiles on a roof. From the centre of this footstalk rises a bundle of
+filaments that encircle the style, stamens springing also from the
+insertion of the leaves of the corolla, lining it with delicate beauty
+and waving their slender forms with exquisite grace. But the
+real charm of the cereus is its wondrous perfume, exhaled just at
+night-fall, and readily discernible over the circuit of a mile. The
+peculiar odor cannot be understood by mere description, but partakes
+largely of that of sweet lilies, violets, the tuberose and vanilla.
+After the bud appears the growth is very rapid, often two or three
+inches a day--that is, in the height of the stalk, the flower
+expanding proportionately. When fully grown it begins to unfold
+its charms as the twilight deepens into night, and reaches perfect
+maturity about an hour before midnight: at three o'clock its glory is
+already beginning to wane, though scarcely perceptibly; but at dawn
+it is fading rapidly, and by sun-rise only a wilted, worthless wreck
+remains, good for nothing but to be "cast out and trodden under foot
+of men."
+
+FANNIE R. FEUDGE.
+
+
+
+
+A PRINCESS OF THULE.
+
+BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF "THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON."
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+TRANSFORMATION.
+
+
+Had Sheila, then, Lavender could not help asking himself, a bad
+temper, or any other qualities or characteristics which were apparent
+to other people, but not to him? Was it possible that, after all,
+Ingram was right, and that he had yet to learn the nature of the girl
+he had married? It would be unfair to say that he suspected something
+wrong about his wife--that he fancied she had managed to conceal
+something--merely because Mrs. Lavender had said that Sheila had a bad
+temper; but here was another person who maintained that when the days
+of his romance were over he would see the girl in another light.
+
+Nay, as he continued to ask himself, had not the change already begun?
+He grew less and less accustomed to see in Sheila a beautiful wild
+sea-bird that had fluttered down for a time into a strange home in
+the South. He had not quite forgotten or abandoned those imaginative
+scenes in which the wonderful sea-princess was to enter crowded
+drawing-rooms and have all the world standing back to regard her and
+admire her and sing her praises. But now he was not so sure that that
+would be the result of Sheila's entrance into society. As the date of
+a certain dinner-party drew near he began to wish she was more like
+the women he knew. He did not object to her strange sweet ways of
+speech, nor to her odd likes and dislikes, nor even to an unhesitating
+frankness that nearly approached rudeness sometimes in its scorn
+of all compromise with the truth; but how would others regard these
+things? He did not wish to gain the reputation of having married an
+oddity.
+
+"Sheila," he said on the morning of the day on which they were going
+to this dinner-party, "you should not say _like-a-ness_. There are
+only two syllables in _likeness_. It really does sound absurd to hear
+you say _like-a-ness_."
+
+She looked up to him with a quick trouble in her eyes. When had he
+spoken to her so petulantly before? And then she cast down her eyes
+again, and said submissively, "I will try not to speak like that. When
+you go out I take a book and read aloud, and try to speak like you;
+but I cannot learn all at once."
+
+"_I_ don't mind," he said. "But you know other people must think it
+so odd. I wonder why you should always say _gyarden_ for _garden_ now,
+when it is just as easy to say _garden_?"
+
+Once upon a time he had said there was no English like the English
+spoken in Lewis, and had singled out this very word as typical of one
+peculiarity in the pronunciation. But she did not remind him of that.
+She only said in the same simple fashion, "If you will tell me my
+faults I will try to correct them."
+
+She turned away from him to get an envelope for a letter she had been
+writing to her father. He fancied something was wrong, and perhaps
+some touch of compunction smote him, for he went after her and took
+her hand, and said, "Look here, Sheila. When I point out any trifles
+like that, you must not call them faults, and fancy I have any serious
+complaint to make. It is for your own good that you should meet the
+people who will be your friends on equal terms, and give them as
+little as possible to talk about."
+
+"I should not mind their talking about me," said Sheila with her eyes
+still cast down, "but it is your wife they must not talk about; and if
+you will tell me anything I do wrong I will correct it."
+
+"Oh, you must not think it is anything so serious as that. You will
+soon pick up from the ladies you will meet some notion of how you
+differ from them; and if you should startle or puzzle them a little at
+first by talking about the chances of the fishing or the catching of
+wild-duck, or the way to reclaim bogland, you will soon get over all
+that."
+
+Sheila said nothing, but she made a mental memorandum of three things
+she was not to speak about. She did not know why these subjects should
+be forbidden, but she was in a strange land and going to see strange
+people, whose habits were different from hers. Moreover, when her
+husband had gone she reflected that these people, having no fishing
+and no peat-mosses and no wild-duck, could not possibly be interested
+in such affairs; and thus she fancied she perceived the reason why she
+should avoid all mention of those things.
+
+When in the evening Sheila came down dressed and ready to go out,
+Lavender had to admit to himself that he had married an exceedingly
+beautiful girl, and that there was no country gawkiness about her
+manner, and no placid insipidity about her proud and handsome face.
+For one brief moment he triumphed in his heart, and had some wild
+glimpse of his old project of startling his small world with this
+vision from the northern seas. But when he got into the hired
+brougham, and thought of the people he was about to meet, and of the
+manner in which they would carry away such and such impressions of the
+girl, he lost faith in that admiration. He would much rather have
+had Sheila unnoticeable and unnoticed--one who would quietly take her
+place at the dinner-table, and attract no more special attention than
+the flowers, for example, which every one would glance at with some
+satisfaction, and then forget in the interest of talking and dining.
+He was quite conscious of his own weakness in thus fearing social
+criticism. He knew that Ingram would have taken Sheila anywhere in her
+blue serge dress, and been quite content and oblivious of observation.
+But then Ingram was independent of those social circles in which a
+married man must move, and in which his position is often defined for
+him by the disposition and manners of his wife. Ingram did not know
+how women talked. It was for Sheila's own sake, he persuaded himself,
+that he was anxious about the impression she should make, and that he
+had drilled her in all that she should do and say.
+
+"Above all things," he said, "mind you take no notice of me. Another
+man will take you in to dinner, of course, and I shall take in
+somebody else, and we shall not be near each other. But it's after
+dinner, I mean: when the men go into the drawing-room don't you come
+and speak to me or take any notice of me whatever."
+
+"Mayn't I look at you, Frank?"
+
+"If you do you'll have half a dozen people all watching you, saying
+to themselves or to each other, 'Poor thing! she hasn't got over her
+infatuation yet. Isn't it pretty to see how naturally her eyes turn
+toward him?'"
+
+"But I shouldn't mind them saying that," said Sheila with a smile.
+
+"Oh, you mustn't be pitied in that fashion. Let them keep their
+compassion to themselves."
+
+"Do you know, dear," said Sheila very quietly, "that I think you
+exaggerate the interest people will take in me? I don't think I can be
+of such importance to them. I don't think they will be watching me as
+you fancy."
+
+"Oh, you don't know," he said. "I know they fancy I have done
+something romantic, heroic and all that kind of thing, and they are
+curious to see you."
+
+"They cannot hurt me by looking at me," said Sheila simply. "And they
+will soon find out how little there is to discover."
+
+The house being in Holland Park they had not far to go; and just as
+they were driving up to the door a young man, slight, sandy-haired and
+stooping, got out of a hansom and crossed the pavement.
+
+"By Jove!" said Lavender, "there is Redburn, I did not know he knew
+Mrs. Lorraine and her mother. That is Lord Arthur Redburn, Sheila:
+mind, if you should talk to him, not to call him 'my lord.'"
+
+Sheila laughed and said, "How am I to remember all these things?"
+
+They got into the house, and by and by Lavender found himself, with
+Sheila on his arm, entering a drawing-room to present her to certain
+of his friends. It was a large room, with a great deal of gilding and
+color about it, and with a conservatory at the farther end; but the
+blaze of light had not so bewildering an effect on Sheila's eyes as
+the appearance of two ladies to whom she was now introduced. She had
+heard much about them. She was curious to see them. Many a time had
+she thought over the strange story Lavender had told her of the woman
+who heard that her husband was dying in a hospital during the war, and
+started off, herself and her daughter, to find him out; how there was
+in the same hospital another dying man whom they had known some years
+before, and who had gone away because the girl would not listen to
+him; how this man, being very near to death, begged that the girl
+would do him the last favor he would ask of her, of wearing his name
+and inheriting his property; and how, some few hours after the strange
+and sad ceremony had been performed, he breathed his last, happy in
+holding her hand. The father died next day, and the two widows were
+thrown upon the world, almost without friends, but not without means.
+This man Lorraine had been possessed of considerable wealth, and the
+girl who had suddenly become mistress of it found herself able to
+employ all possible means in assuaging her mother's grief. They began
+to travel. The two women went from capital to capital, until at
+last they came to London; and here, having gathered around them
+a considerable number of friends, they proposed to take up their
+residence permanently. Lavender had often talked to Sheila about
+Mrs. Lorraine--about her shrewdness, her sharp sayings, and the odd
+contrast between this clever, keen, frank woman of the world and the
+woman one would have expected to be the heroine of a pathetic tale.
+
+But were there two Mrs. Lorraines? That had been Sheila's first
+question to herself when, after having been introduced to one
+lady under that name, she suddenly saw before her another, who was
+introduced to her as Mrs. Kavanagh. The mother and daughter were
+singularly alike. They had the same slight and graceful figure, which
+made them appear taller than they really were, the same pale, fine
+and rather handsome features, the same large, clear gray eyes, and
+apparently the same abundant mass of soft fair hair, heavily plaited
+in the latest fashion. They were both dressed entirely in black,
+except that the daughter had a band of blue round her slender waist.
+It was soon apparent, too, that the manner of the two women was
+singularly different; Mrs. Kavanagh bearing herself with a certain
+sad reserve that almost approached melancholy at times, while her
+daughter, with more life and spirit in her face, passed rapidly
+through all sorts of varying moods, until one could scarcely tell
+whether the affectation lay in a certain cynical audacity in her
+speech, or whether it lay in her assumption of a certain coyness and
+archness, or whether there was any affectation at all in the matter.
+However that might be, there could be no doubt about the sincerity of
+those gray eyes of hers. There was something almost cruelly frank
+in the clear look of them; and when her face was not lit up by some
+passing smile the pale and fine features seemed to borrow something
+of severity from her unflinching, calm and dispassionate habit of
+regarding those around her.
+
+Sheila was prepared to like Mrs. Lorraine from the first moment she
+had caught sight of her. The honesty of the gray eyes attracted her.
+And, indeed, the young widow seemed very much interested in the young
+wife, and, so far as she could in that awkward period just before
+dinner, strove to make friends with her. Sheila was introduced to
+a number of people, but none of them pleased her so well as Mrs.
+Lorraine. Then dinner was announced, and Sheila found that she was
+being escorted across the passage to the room on the other side by the
+young man whom she had seen get out of the hansom.
+
+This Lord Arthur Redburn was the younger son of a great Tory duke;
+he represented in the House a small country borough which his father
+practically owned; he had a fair amount of ability, an uncommonly high
+opinion of himself, and a certain affectation of being bored by the
+frivolous ways and talk of ordinary society. He gave himself credit
+for being the clever member of the family; and if there was any
+cleverness going, he had it; but there were some who said that his
+reputation in the House and elsewhere as a good speaker was mainly
+based on the fact that he had an abundant assurance and was not easily
+put out. Unfortunately, the public could come to no decision on
+the point, for the reporters were not kind to Lord Arthur, and the
+substance of his speeches was as unknown to the world as his manner of
+delivering them.
+
+Now, Mrs. Lorraine had intended to tell this young man something about
+the girl whom he was to take in to dinner, but she herself had been
+so occupied with Sheila that the opportunity escaped her. Lord Arthur
+accordingly knew only that he was beside a very pretty woman, who was
+a Mrs. Somebody--the exact name he had not caught--and that the few
+words she had spoken were pronounced in a curious way. Probably, he
+thought, she was from Dublin.
+
+He also arrived at the conclusion that she was too pretty to know
+anything about the Deceased Wife's Sister bill, in which he was, for
+family reasons, deeply interested, and considered it more likely that
+she would prefer to talk about theatres and such things.
+
+"Were you at Covent Garden last night?" he said.
+
+"No," answered Sheila. "But I was there two days ago, and it is
+very pretty to see the flowers and the fruit; and then they smell so
+sweetly as you walk through."
+
+"Oh yes, it is delightful," said Lord Arthur. "But I was speaking of
+the theatre."
+
+"Is there a theatre in there?"
+
+He stared at her, and inwardly hoped she was not mad.
+
+"Not in among the shops, no. But don't you know Covent Garden
+Theatre?"
+
+"I have never been in any theatre, not yet," said Sheila.
+
+And then it began to dawn upon him that he must be talking to Frank
+Lavender's wife. Was there not some rumor about the girl having come
+from a remote part of the Highlands? He determined on a bold stroke:
+"You have not been long enough in London to see the theatres, I
+suppose."
+
+And then Sheila, taking it for granted that he knew her husband very
+well, and that he was quite familiar with all the circumstances of the
+case, began to chat to him freely enough. He found that this Highland
+girl of whom he had heard vaguely was not at all shy. He began to feel
+interested. By and by he actually made efforts to assist her frankness
+by becoming equally frank, and by telling her all he knew of the
+things with which they were mutually acquainted. Of course by this
+time they had got up into the Highlands. The young man had himself
+been in the Highlands--frequently, indeed. He had never crossed to
+Lewis, but he had seen the island from the Sutherlandshire coast.
+There were very many deer in Sutherlandshire, were there not? Yes, he
+had been out a great many times, and had had his share of adventures.
+Had he not gone out before daylight, and waited on the top of a hill,
+hidden by some rocks, to watch the mists clear along the hillsides and
+in the valley below? Did not he tremble when he fired his first shot,
+and had not something passed before his eyes so that he could not see
+for a moment whether the stag had fallen or was away like lightning
+down the bed of the stream? Somehow or other, Lord Arthur found
+himself relating all his experiences, as if he were a novice begging
+for the good opinion of a master. She knew all about it, obviously,
+and he would tell her his small adventures if only that she might
+laugh at him. But Sheila did not laugh. She was greatly delighted to
+have this talk about the hills and the deer and the wet mornings.
+She forgot all about the dinner before her. The servants whipped off
+successive plates without her seeing anything of them: they received
+random answers about wine, so that she had three full glasses standing
+by her untouched. She was no more in Holland Park at that moment than
+were the wild animals of which she spoke so proudly and lovingly. If
+the great and frail masses of flowers on the table brought her any
+perfume at all, it was a scent of peat-smoke. Lord Arthur thought that
+his companion was a little too frank and confiding, or rather that she
+would have been had she been talking to any one but himself. He rather
+liked it. He was pleased to have established friendly relations with
+a pretty woman in so short a space; but ought not her husband to give
+her a hint about not admitting all and sundry to the enjoyment of
+these favors? Perhaps, too, Lord Arthur felt bound to admit to himself
+there were some men who more than others inspired confidence in women.
+He laid no claims to being a fascinating person, but he had had his
+share of success, and considered that Sheila showed discrimination
+as well as good-nature in talking so to him. There was, after all,
+no necessity for her husband to warn her. She would know how to guard
+against admitting all men to a like intimacy. In the mean time he
+was very well pleased to be sitting beside this pretty and agreeable
+companion, who had an abundant fund of good spirits, and who showed no
+sort of conscious embarrassment in thanking you with a bright look
+of her eyes or by a smile when you told her something that pleased or
+amused her.
+
+But these flattering little speculations were doomed to receive
+a sudden check. The juvenile M.P. began to remark that a shade
+occasionally crossed the face of his fair companion, and that she
+sometimes looked a little anxiously across the table, where Mr.
+Lavender and Mrs. Lorraine were seated, half hidden from view by a
+heap of silver and flowers in the middle of the board. But though they
+could not easily be seen, except at such moments as they turned to
+address some neighbor, they could be distinctly enough heard when
+there was any lull in the general conversation. And what Sheila heard
+did not please her. She began to like that fair, clear-eyed young
+woman less. Perhaps her husband meant nothing by the fashion in which
+he talked of marriage and the condition of a married man, but she
+would rather have not heard him talk so. Moreover, she was aware that
+in the gentlest possible fashion Mrs. Lorraine was making fun of her
+companion, and exposing him to small and graceful shafts of ridicule;
+while he seemed, on the whole, to enjoy these attacks.
+
+The ingenuous self-love of Lord Arthur Redburn, M.P., was severely
+wounded by the notion that, after all, he had been made a cat's-paw
+of by a jealous wife. He had been flattered by this girl's exceeding
+friendliness; he had given her credit for a genuine impulsiveness
+which seemed to him as pleasing as it was uncommon; and he had, with
+the moderation expected of a man in politics who hoped some day to
+assist in the government of the nation by accepting a junior lordship,
+admired her. But was it all pretence? Was she paying court to him
+merely to annoy her husband? Had her enthusiasm about the shooting of
+red-deer been prompted by a wish to attract a certain pair of eyes at
+the other side of the table? Lord Arthur began to sneer at himself for
+having been duped. He ought to have known. Women were as much women
+in a Hebridean island as in Bayswater. He began to treat Sheila with a
+little more coolness, while she became more and more preoccupied with
+the couple across the table, and sometimes was innocently rude in
+answering his questions somewhat at random.
+
+When the ladies were going into the drawing-room, Mrs. Lorraine
+put her hand within Sheila's arm and led her to the entrance to the
+conservatory. "I hope we shall be friends," she said.
+
+"I hope so," said Sheila, not very warmly.
+
+"Until you get better acquainted with your husband's friends you will
+feel rather lonely at being left as at present, I suppose."
+
+"A little," said Sheila.
+
+"It is a silly thing altogether. If men smoked after dinner I could
+understand it. But they merely sit, looking at wine they don't drink,
+talking a few common-places and yawning."
+
+"Why do they do it, then?" said Sheila.
+
+"They don't do it everywhere. But here we keep to the manners and
+customs of the ancients."
+
+"What do you know about the manners of the ancients?" said Mrs.
+Kavanagh, tapping her daughter's shoulder; as she passed with a sheet
+of music.
+
+"I have studied them frequently, mamma," said the daughter with
+composure, "--in the monkey-house at the Zoological Gardens."
+
+The mamma smiled, and passed on to place the music on the piano.
+Sheila did not understand what her companion had said; and indeed
+Mrs. Lorraine immediately turned, with the same calm, fine face and
+careless eyes, to ask Sheila whether she would not, by and by, sing
+one of those northern songs of which Mr. Lavender had told her.
+
+A tall girl, with her back hair tied in a knot and her costume copied
+from a well-known pre-Raphaelite drawing, sat down to the piano and
+sang a mystic song of the present day, in which the moon, the stars
+and other natural objects behaved strangely, and were somehow mixed up
+with the appeal of a maiden who demanded that her dead lover should be
+reclaimed from the sea.
+
+"Do you ever go down to your husband's studio?" said Mrs. Lorraine.
+
+Sheila glanced toward the lady at the piano.
+
+"Oh, you may talk," said Mrs. Lorraine, with the least expression of
+contempt in the gray eyes. "She is singing to gratify herself, not
+us."
+
+"Yes, I sometimes go down," said Sheila in as low a voice as she could
+manage without falling into a whisper, "and it is such a dismal place.
+It is very hard on him to have to work in a big bare room like that,
+with the windows half blinded. But sometimes I think Frank would
+rather have me out of the way."
+
+"And what would he do if both of us were to pay him a visit?" said
+Mrs. Lorraine. "I should so like to see the studio! Won't you call for
+me some day and take me with you?"
+
+Take her with her, indeed! Sheila began to wonder that she did not
+propose to go alone. Fortunately, there was no need to answer the
+question, for at this moment the song came to an end, and there was a
+general movement and murmur of gratitude.
+
+"Thank you," said Mrs. Lorraine to the lady who had sung, and who was
+now returning to the photographs she had left--"thank you very much.
+I knew some one would instantly ask you to sing that song: it is the
+most charming of all your songs, I think, and how well it suits your
+voice, too!"
+
+Then she turned to Sheila again: "How did you like Lord Arthur
+Redburn?"
+
+"I think he is a very good young man."
+
+"Young men are never good, but they may be very amiable," said
+Mrs. Lorraine, not perceiving that Sheila had blundered on a wrong
+adjective, and that she had really meant that she thought him honest
+and pleasant.
+
+"You did not speak at all, I think, to your neighbor on the right:
+that was wise of you. He is a most insufferable person, but mamma
+bears with him for the sake of his daughter, who sang just now. He is
+too rich. And he smiles blandly, and takes a sort of after-dinner view
+of things, as if he coincided with the arrangements of Providence.
+Don't you take coffee? Tea, then. I have met your aunt--I mean, Mr.
+Lavender's aunt: such a dear old lady she is!"
+
+"I don't like her," said Sheila.
+
+"Oh, don't you, really?"
+
+"Not at present, but I shall try to like her."
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Lorraine calmly, "you know she has her
+peculiarities. I wish she wouldn't talk so much about Marcus Antoninus
+and doses of medicine. I fancy I smell calomel when she comes near.
+I suppose if she were in a pantomime, they'd dress her up as a phial,
+tie a string round her neck and label her 'POISON.' Dear me, how
+languid one gets in this climate! Let us sit down. I wish I was as
+strong as mamma."
+
+They sat down together, and Mrs. Lorraine evidently expected to be
+petted and made much of by her new companion. She gave herself pretty
+little airs and graces, and said no more cutting things about anybody.
+And Sheila somehow found herself being drawn to the girl, so that she
+could scarcely help taking her hand, and saying how sorry she was to
+see her so pale and fine and delicate. The hand, too, was so small
+that the tiny white fingers seemed scarcely bigger than the claws of
+a bird. Was not that slender waist, to which some little attention was
+called by a belt of bold blue, just a little too slender for
+health, although the bust and shoulders were exquisitely and finely
+proportioned?
+
+"We were at the Academy all the morning, and mamma is not a bit tired.
+Why has not Mr. Lavender anything in the Academy? Oh, I forgot" she
+added, with a smile. "Of course, he has been very much engaged. But
+now I suppose he will settle down to work."
+
+Sheila wished that this fragile-looking girl would not so continually
+refer to her husband; but how was any one to find fault with her when
+she put a little air of plaintiveness into the ordinarily cold gray
+eyes, and looked at her small hand as much as to say, "The fingers
+there are very small, and even whiter than the glove that covers them.
+They are the fingers of a child, who ought to be petted."
+
+Then the men came in from the dining-room. Lavender looked round to
+see where Sheila was--perhaps with a trifle of disappointment that she
+was not the most prominent figure there. Had he expected to find all
+the women surrounding her and admiring her, and all the men going up
+to pay court to her? Sheila was seated near a small table, and Mrs.
+Lorraine was showing her something. She was just like anybody else. If
+she was a wonderful sea-princess who had come into a new world, no one
+seemed to observe her. The only thing that distinguished her from
+the women around her was her freshness of color and the unusual
+combination of black eyelashes and dark blue eyes. Lavender had
+arranged that Sheila's first appearance in public should be at a very
+quiet little dinner-party, but even here she failed to create any
+profound impression. She was, as he had to confess to himself again,
+just like anybody else.
+
+He went over to where Mrs. Lorraine was, and sat down beside her.
+Sheila, remembering his injunctions, felt bound to leave him there;
+and as she rose to speak to Mrs. Kavanagh, who was standing by,
+that lady came and begged her to sing a Highland song. By this time
+Lavender had succeeded in interesting his companion about something or
+other, and neither of them noticed that Sheila had gone to the piano,
+attended by the young politician who had taken her in to dinner. Nor
+did they interrupt their talk merely because some one played a few
+bars of prelude. But what was this that suddenly startled Lavender to
+the heart, causing him to look up with surprise? He had not heard the
+air since he was in Borva, and when Sheila sang
+
+  Hark, hark! the horn
+  On mountain-breezes borne!
+  Awake, it is morn,
+      Awake, Monaltrie!--
+
+all sorts of reminiscences came rushing in upon him. How often had
+he heard that wild story of Monaltrie's flight sung out in the small
+chamber over the sea, with a sound of the waves outside and a scent of
+sea-weed coming in at the door and the windows! It was from the shores
+of Borva that young Monaltrie must have fled. It must have been in
+Borva that his sweetheart sat in her bower and sang, the burden of all
+her singing being "Return, Monaltrie!" And then, as Sheila sang now,
+making the monotonous and plaintive air wild and strange--
+
+  What cries of wild despair
+  Awake the sultry air?
+  Frenzied with anxious care,
+      She seeks Monaltrie--
+
+he heard no more of the song. He was thinking of bygone days in Borva,
+and of old Mackenzie living in his lonely house there. When Sheila had
+finished singing he looked at her, and it seemed to him that she was
+still that wonderful princess whom he had wooed on the shores of the
+Atlantic. And if those people did not see her as he saw her, ought he
+to be disappointed because of their blindness?
+
+But if they saw nothing mystic or wonderful about Sheila, they at all
+events were considerably surprised by the strange sort of music she
+sang. It was not of a sort commonly heard in a London drawing-room.
+The pathos of its minor chords, its abrupt intervals, startling
+and wild in their effect, and the slowly subsiding wail in which it
+closed, did not much resemble the ordinary drawing-room "piece." Here,
+at least, Sheila had produced an impression; and presently there was
+a heap of people round the piano, expressing their admiration, asking
+questions and begging her to continue. But she rose. She would rather
+not sing just then. Whereupon Lavender came out to her and said,
+"Sheila, won't you sing that wild one about the farewell--that has the
+sound of the pipes in it, you know?"
+
+"Oh yes," she said directly.
+
+Lavender went back to his companion.
+
+"She is very obedient to you," said Mrs. Lorraine with a smile.
+
+"Yes, at present," he said; and he thought meanly of himself for
+saying it the moment the words were uttered.
+
+  Oh, soft be thy slumbers, by Tigh-na-linne's waters;
+  Thy late-wake was sung by Macdiarmid's fair daughters;
+  But far in Lochaber the true heart was weeping
+  Whose hopes are entombed in the grave where thou'rt sleeping.
+
+So Sheila sang; and it seemed to the people that this ballad was even
+more strange than its predecessor. When the song was over, Sheila
+seemed rather anxious to get out of the crowd, and indeed walked away
+into the conservatory to have a look at the flowers.
+
+Yes, Lavender had to confess to himself, Sheila was just like anybody
+else in this drawing-room. His sea-princess had produced no startling
+impression. He forgot that he had just been teaching her the necessity
+of observing the ways and customs of the people around her, so that
+she might avoid singularity.
+
+On one point, at least, she was resolved she would attend to his
+counsels: she would not make him ridiculous by any show of affection
+before the eyes of strangers. She did not go near him the whole
+evening. She remained for the most part in that half conservatory,
+half ante-room at the end of the drawing-room; and when any one talked
+to her she answered, and when she was left alone she turned to the
+flowers. All this time, however, she could observe that Lavender and
+Mrs. Lorraine were very much engrossed in their conversation; that
+she seemed very much amused, and he at times a trifle embarrassed;
+and that both of them had apparently forgotten her existence. Mrs.
+Kavanagh was continually coming to Sheila and trying to coax her back
+into the larger room, but in vain. She would rather not sing any more
+that night. She liked to look at flowers. She was not tired at all,
+and she had already seen those wonderful photographs about which
+everybody was talking.
+
+"Well, Sheila, how did you enjoy yourself?" said her husband as they
+were driving home.
+
+"I wish Mr. Ingram had been there," said Sheila.
+
+"Ingram! He would not have stopped in the place five minutes, unless
+he could play the part of Diogenes and say rude things to everybody
+all round. Were you at all dull?"
+
+"A little."
+
+"Didn't somebody look after you?"
+
+"Oh yes, many persons were very kind. But--but--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Nobody seemed to be better off than myself. They all seemed to be
+wanting something to do; and I am sure they were all very glad to come
+away."
+
+"No, no, no, Sheila. That is only your fancy. You were not much
+interested, that is evident; but you will get on better when you know
+more of the people. You were a stranger--that is what disappointed
+you--but you will not always be a stranger."
+
+Sheila did not answer. Perhaps she contemplated with no great hope or
+longing the possibility of her coming to like such a method of getting
+through an evening. At all events, she looked forward with no great
+pleasure to the chance of her having to become friends with Mrs.
+Lorraine. All the way home Sheila was examining her own heart to try
+to discover why such bitter feelings should be there. Surely that girl
+was honest: there was honesty in her eyes. She had been most kind to
+Sheila herself. And was there not at times, when she abandoned the
+ways and speech of a woman of the world, a singular coy fascination
+about her, that any man might be excused for yielding to, even as any
+woman might yield to it? Sheila fought with herself, and resolved that
+she would cast forth from her heart those harsh fancies and indignant
+feelings that seemed to have established themselves there. She would
+_not_ hate Mrs. Lorraine.
+
+As for Lavender, what was he thinking of, now that he and his young
+wife were driving home from their first experiment in society? He
+had to confess to a certain sense of failure. His dreams had not been
+realized. Every one who had spoken to him had conveyed to him, as
+freely as good manners would admit, their congratulations and their
+praises of his wife. But the impressive scenes he had been forecasting
+were out of the question. There was a little curiosity about her on
+the part of those who knew her story, and that was all. Sheila bore
+herself very well. She made no blunders. She had a good presence, she
+sang well, and every one could see that she was handsome, gentle and
+honest. Surely, he argued with himself, that ought to content the most
+exacting. But, in spite of all argument, he was not content. He did
+not regret that he had sacrificed his liberty in a freak of romance;
+he did not even regard the fact of a man in his position having dared
+to marry a penniless girl as anything very meritorious or heroic; but
+he had hoped that the dramatic circumstances of the case would be
+duly recognized by his friends, and that Sheila would be an object of
+interest and wonder and talk in a whole series of social circles. But
+the result of his adventure was different. There was only one married
+man the more in London, and London was not disposed to pay any
+particular heed to that circumstance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON.
+
+
+If Frank Lavender had been told that his love for his wife was in
+danger of waning, he would have laughed the suggestion to scorn. He
+was as fond of her and as proud of her as ever. Who knew as well as
+himself the tenderness of her heart, the delicate sensitiveness of her
+conscience, the generosity of self-sacrifice she was always ready to
+bestow? and was he likely to become blind, so that he should fail to
+see how fair and frank and handsome she was? He had been disappointed,
+it is true, in his fancies about the impression she would produce on
+his friends; but what a trifle was that! The folly of those fancies
+was his own. For the rest, he was glad that Sheila was not so
+different from the other women whom he knew. He hit upon the profound
+reflection, as he sat alone in his studio, that a man's wife, like
+his costume, should not be so remarkable as to attract attention.
+The perfection of dress was that you should be unconscious of its
+presence: might that not be so with marriage? After all, it was better
+that he had not bound himself to lug about a lion whenever he visited
+people's houses.
+
+Still, there was something. He found himself a good deal alone. Sheila
+did not seem to care much for going into society; and although he did
+not much like the notion of going by himself, nevertheless one had
+certain duties toward one's friends to perform. She did not even
+care to go down to the Park of a forenoon. She always professed her
+readiness to go, but he fancied it was a trifle tiresome for her; and
+so, when there was nothing particular going on in the studio, he would
+walk down through Kensington Gardens himself, and have a chat with
+some friends, followed generally by luncheon with this or the other
+party of them. Sheila had been taught that she ought not to come so
+frequently to that studio. Bras would not lie quiet. Moreover, if
+dealers or other strangers should come in, would they not take her
+for a model? So Sheila stayed at home; and Mr. Lavender, after having
+dressed with care in the morning--with very singular care, indeed,
+considering that he was going to his work--used to go down to his
+studio to smoke a cigarette. The chances were that he was not in a
+humor for working. He would sit down in an easy-chair and kick his
+heels on the floor for a time, watching perhaps the sunlight come in
+through the upper part of the windows and paint yellow squares on
+the opposite wall. Then he would go out and lock the door behind him,
+leaving no message whatever for those crowds of importunate dealers
+who, as Sheila fancied, were besieging him with offers in one hand and
+purses of gold in the other.
+
+One morning, after she had been indoors for two or three days, and had
+grown hopelessly tired of the monotony of watching that sunlit square,
+she was filled with an unconquerable longing to go away, for however
+brief a space, from the sight of houses. The morning was sweet and
+clear and bright, white clouds were slowly crossing a fair blue sky,
+and a fresh and cool breeze was blowing in at the open French windows.
+
+"Bras," she said, going down stairs and out into the small garden, "we
+are going into the country."
+
+The great deer-hound seemed to know, and rose and came to her with
+great gravity, while she clasped on the leash. He was no frisky animal
+to show his delight by yelping and gamboling, but he laid his long
+nose in her hand, and slowly wagged the down-drooping curve of his
+shaggy tail; and then he placidly walked by her side up into the hall,
+where he stood awaiting her.
+
+She would go along and beg of her husband to leave his work for a day
+and go with her for a walk down to Richmond Park. She had often heard
+Mr. Ingram speak of walking down, and she remembered that much of the
+road was pretty. Why should not her husband have one holiday?
+
+"It is such a shame," she had said to him that morning as he left,
+"that you will be going into that gloomy place, with its bare walls
+and chairs, and the windows so that you cannot see out of them!"
+
+"I must get some work done somehow, Sheila," he said, although he did
+not tell her that he had not finished a picture since his marriage.
+
+"I wish I could do some of it for you," she said.
+
+"You! All the work you're good for is catching fish and feeding ducks
+and planting things in gardens. Why don't you come down and feed the
+ducks in the Serpentine?"
+
+"I should like to do that," she answered. "I will go any day with
+you."
+
+"Well," he said, "you see, I don't know until I get along to the
+studio whether I can get away for the fore-noon; and then if I were to
+come back here, you would have little or no time to dress. Good-bye,
+Sheila."
+
+"Good-bye," she had said to him, giving up the Serpentine without much
+regret.
+
+But the forenoon had turned out so delightful that she thought she
+would go along to the studio, and hale him out of that gaunt and dingy
+apartment. She should take him away from town: therefore she might put
+on that rough blue dress in which she used to go boating in Loch Roag.
+She had lately smartened it up a bit with some white braid, and she
+hoped he would approve.
+
+Did the big hound know the dress? He rubbed his head against her
+arm and hand when she came down, and looked up and whined almost
+inaudibly.
+
+"You are going out, Bras, and you must be a good dog and not try to
+go after the deer. Then I will send a very good story of you to Mairi;
+and when she comes to London after the harvest is over, she will bring
+you a present from the Lewis, and you will be very proud."
+
+She went out into the square, and was perhaps a little glad to get
+away from it, as she was not sure of the blue dress and the small hat
+with its sea-gull's feather being precisely the costume she ought to
+wear. When she got into the Uxbridge road she breathed more freely,
+and in the lightness of her heart she continued her conversation
+with Bras, giving that attentive animal a vast amount of information,
+partly in English, partly in Gaelic, which he answered only by a low
+whine or a shake of his shaggy head.
+
+But these confidences were suddenly interrupted. She had got down to
+Addison Terrace, and was contentedly looking at the trees and chatting
+to the dog, when by accident her eye happened to light on a brougham
+that was driving past. In it--she beheld them both clearly for a brief
+second--were her husband and Mrs. Lorraine, so engaged in conversation
+that neither of them saw her. Sheila stood on the pavement for a
+couple of minutes absolutely bewildered. All sorts of wild fancies and
+recollections came crowding in upon her--reasons why her husband was
+unwilling that she should visit his studio, why Mrs. Lorraine never
+called on her, and so forth and so forth. She did not know what to
+think for a time; but presently all this tumult was stilled, and she
+had resolved her doubts and made up her mind as to what she should do.
+She would not suspect her husband--that was the one sweet security
+to which she clung. He had made use of no duplicity: if there were
+duplicity in the case at all, he could not be the author of it. The
+reasons for his having of late left her so much alone were the true
+reasons. And if this Mrs. Lorraine should amuse him and interest him,
+who ought to grudge him this break in the monotony of his work? Sheila
+knew that she herself disliked going to those fashionable gatherings
+to which Mrs. Lorraine went, and to which Lavender had been accustomed
+to go before he was married. How could she expect him to give up all
+his old habits and pleasures for her sake? She would be more generous.
+It was her own fault that she was not a better companion for him; and
+was it for her, then, to think hardly of him because he went to the
+Park with a friend instead of going alone?
+
+Yet there was a great bitterness and grief in her heart as she turned
+and walked on. She spoke no more to the deer-hound by her side. There
+seemed to be less sunlight in the air, and the people and carriages
+passing were hardly so busy and cheerful and interesting as they had
+been. But all the same, she would go to Richmond Park, and by herself;
+for what was the use in calling in at the studio? and how could she go
+back home and sit in the house, knowing that her husband was away at
+some flower-show or morning concert, or some such thing, with that
+young American lady?
+
+She knew no other road to Richmond than that by which they had driven
+shortly after her arrival in London; and so it was that she went down
+and over Hammersmith Bridge, and round by Mortlake, and so on by East
+Sheen. The road seemed terribly long. She was an excellent walker,
+and in ordinary circumstances would have done the distance without
+fatigue; but when at length she saw the gates of the Park before her,
+she was at once exceedingly tired and almost faint from hunger. Here
+was the hotel in which they had dined: should she enter? The place
+seemed very grand and forbidding: she had scarcely even looked at it
+as she went up the steps with her husband by her side. However, she
+would venture, and accordingly she went up and into the vestibule,
+looking rather timidly about. A young gentleman, apparently not a
+waiter, approached her and seemed to wait for her to speak. It was a
+terrible moment. What was she to ask for? and could she ask it of this
+young man? Fortunately, he spoke first, and asked her if she wished to
+go into the coffee-room, and if she expected any one.
+
+"No, I do not expect any one," she said; and she knew that he would
+perceive the peculiarity of her accent; "but if you will be kind
+enough to tell me where I may have a biscuit--"
+
+It occurred to her that to go into the Star and Garter for a biscuit
+was absurd; and she added wildly, "--or anything to eat."
+
+The young man obviously regarded her with some surprise; but he was
+very courteous, and showed her into the coffee-room and called a
+waiter to her. Moreover, he gave permission for Bras to be admitted
+into the room, Sheila promising that he would lie under the table
+and not budge an inch. Then she looked round. There were only three
+persons in the room--one, an old lady seated by herself in a far
+corner, the other two being a couple of young folks too much engrossed
+with each other to mind any one else. She began to feel more at home.
+The waiter suggested various things for lunch, and she made her choice
+of something cold. Then she mustered up courage to ask for a glass of
+sherry. How she would have enjoyed all this as a story to tell to her
+husband but for that incident of the morning! She would have gloried
+in her outward bravery, and made him smile with a description of
+her inward terror. She would have written about it to the old man in
+Borva, and bid him consider how she had been transformed, and what
+strange scenes Bras was now witnessing. But all that was over. She
+felt as if she could no longer ask her husband to be amused by her
+childish experiences; and as for writing to her father, she dared
+not write to him in her present mood. Perhaps some happier time would
+come. Sheila paid her bill. She had heard her husband and Mr. Ingram
+talk about tipping waiters, and knew that she ought to give something
+to the man who had attended on her. But how much? He was a very
+august-looking person, with formally-cut whiskers and a severe
+expression of face. When he had brought back the change to her she
+timidly selected a half crown and offered it to him. There was a
+little glance of surprise: she feared she had not given him enough.
+Then he said "Thank you!" in a vague and distant fashion, and she
+knew that she had not given him enough. But it was too late. Bras was
+summoned from under the table, and again she went out into the fresh
+air.
+
+"Oh, my good dog!" she said to him as they together walked up to the
+gates and into the Park, "this is a very extravagant country. You have
+to pay half a crown to a servant for bringing you a piece of cold pie,
+and then he looks as if he was not paid enough. And Duncan, who will
+do everything about the house, and will give us all our dinners, it
+is only a pound a week he will get, and Scarlett has to be kept out of
+that. And wouldn't you like to see poor old Scarlett again?"
+
+Bras whined as if he understood every word.
+
+"I suppose now she is hanging out the washing on the gooseberry
+bushes, and you know the song she always used to sing then? Don't you
+know that Scarlett carried me about long before you were born, for you
+are a mere infant compared with me? and she used to sing to me--
+
+  Ged' bheirte mi' bho'n bhas so,
+      Mho Sheila bheag og!
+
+And that is what she is singing just now in the garden; and Mairi
+she is bringing the things out of the washing-house. Papa is over in
+Stornoway this morning, arranging his accounts with the people there;
+and perhaps he is down at the quay, looking at the Clansman, and
+wondering when she is to bring me into the harbor. The castle is all
+shut up, you know, with cloths over all the wonderful things, and the
+curtains all down, and most of the shutters shut. Do you think papa
+has got my letter in his pocket, and does he read it over and over
+again, as I read all his letters to me over and over again? Ah--h! You
+bad dog!"
+
+Bras had forgotten to listen to his mistress in the excitement of
+seeing in the distance a large herd of deer under certain trees.
+She felt by the leash that he was trembling in every limb with
+expectation, and straining hard on the collar. Again and again she
+admonished him in vain, until she had at last to drag him away down
+the hill, putting a small plantation between him and the herd. Here
+she found a large, umbrageous chestnut tree, with a wooden seat round
+its trunk, and so she sat down in the green twilight of the leaves,
+while Bras came and put his head in her lap. Out beyond the shadow
+of the tree all the world lay bathed in sunlight, and a great silence
+brooded over the long undulations of the Park, where not a human
+being was within sight. How strange it was, she fell to thinking, that
+within a short distance there were millions of men and women, while
+here she was absolutely alone! Did they not care, then, for the
+sunlight and the trees and the sweet air? Were they so wrapped up in
+those social observances that seemed to her so barren of interest?
+
+"They have a beautiful country here," she said, talking in a rambling
+and wistful way to Bras, and scarcely noticing the eager light in his
+eyes, as if he were trying to understand. "They have no rain and no
+fog; almost always blue skies, and the clouds high up and far away.
+And the beautiful trees they have too! you never saw anything like
+that in the Lewis, not even at Stornoway. And the people are so rich
+and beautiful in their dress, and all the day they have only to think
+how to enjoy themselves and what new amusement is for the morrow. But
+I think they are tired of having nothing to do; or perhaps, you know,
+they are tired because they have nothing to fight against--no hard
+weather and hunger and poverty. They do not care for each other as
+they would if they were working on the same farm, and trying to save
+up for the winter; or if they were going out to the fishing, and very
+glad to come home again from Caithness to find all the old people very
+well and the young ones ready for a dance and a dram, and much joy and
+laughing and telling of stories. It is a very great difference there
+will be in the people--very great."
+
+Bras whined: perhaps he understood her better now that she had
+involuntarily fallen into something of her old accent and habit of
+speech.
+
+"Wouldn't you like, Bras, to be up in Borva again--only for this
+afternoon? All the people would come running out; and it is little
+Ailasa, she would put her arms round your neck; and old Peter
+McTavish, he would hear who it was, and come out of his house groping
+by the wall, and he would say, 'Pless me! iss it you, Miss Sheila,
+indeed and mir-over? It iss a long time since you hef left the Lewis.'
+Yes, it is a long time--a long time; and I will be almost forgetting
+what it is like sometimes when I try to think of it. Here it is always
+the same--the same houses, the same soft air, the same still sunlight,
+the same things to do and places to see--no storms shaking the windows
+or ships running into the harbor, and you cannot go down to the
+shore to see what has happened, or up the hill to look how the sea
+is raging. But it is one day we will go back to the Lewis--oh yes, we
+will go back to the Lewis!"
+
+She rose and looked wistfully around her, and then turned with a sigh
+to make her way to the gates. It was with no especial sort of gladness
+that she thought of returning home. Here, in the great stillness, she
+had been able to dream of the far island which she knew, and to fancy
+herself for a few minutes there: now she was going back to the dreary
+monotony of her life in that square, and to the doubts and anxieties
+which had been suggested to her in the morning. The world she was
+about to enter once more seemed so much less homely, so much less full
+of interest and purpose, than that other and distant world she had
+been wistfully regarding for a time. The people around her had neither
+the joys nor the sorrows with which she had been taught to sympathize.
+Their cares seemed to her to be exaggerations of trifles--she could
+feel no pity for them: their satisfaction was derived from sources
+unintelligible to her. And the social atmosphere around her seemed
+still and close and suffocating; so that she was like to cry out at
+times for one breath of God's clear wind--for a shaft of lightning
+even--to cut through the sultry and drowsy sameness of her life.
+
+She had almost forgotten the dog by her side. While sitting under the
+chestnut she had carelessly and loosely wound the leash round his neck
+in the semblance of a collar, and when she rose and came away she let
+the dog walk by her side without undoing the leash and taking proper
+charge of him. She was thinking of far other things, indeed, when she
+was startled by some one calling to her, "Look out, miss, or you'll
+have your dog shot!"
+
+She turned and caught a glimpse of what sent a thrill of terror to her
+heart. Bras had sneaked off from her side--had trotted lightly over
+the breckans, and was now in full chase of a herd of deer which were
+flying down the slope on the other side of the plantation. He rushed
+now at one, now at another: the very number of chances presented to
+him proving the safety of the whole herd. But as Sheila, with a swift
+flight that would have astonished most town-bred girls, followed the
+wild chase and came to the crest of the slope, she could see that the
+hound had at length singled out a particular deer--a fine buck with
+handsome horns that was making straight for the foot of the valley.
+The herd, that had been much scattered, were now drawing together
+again, though checking nothing of their speed; but this single buck
+had been driven from his companions, and was doing his utmost to
+escape from the fangs of the powerful animal behind him.
+
+What could she do but run wildly and breathlessly on? The dog was now
+far beyond the reach of her voice. She had no whistle. All sorts of
+fearful anticipations rushed in on her mind, the most prominent of all
+being the anger of her father if Bras were shot. How could she go back
+to Borva with such a tale? and how could she live in London without
+this companion who had come with her from the far North? Then what
+terrible things were connected with the killing of deer in a royal
+park! She remembered vaguely what Mr. Ingram and her husband had been
+saying; and while these things were crowding in upon her, she felt
+her strength beginning to fail, while both the dog and the deer had
+disappeared altogether from sight.
+
+Strange, too, that in the midst of her fatigue and fright, while she
+still managed to struggle on with a sharp pain at her heart and a
+sort of mist before her eyes, she had a vague consciousness that her
+husband would be deeply vexed, not by the conduct or the fate of Bras,
+but by her being the heroine of so mad an adventure. She knew that he
+wished her to be serious and subdued and proper, like the ladies
+whom she met, while an evil destiny seemed to dog her footsteps
+and precipitate her into all sorts of erratic mishaps and "scenes."
+However, this adventure was likely soon to have an end. She could go
+no farther. Whatever had become of Bras, it was in vain for her to
+think of pursuing him. When she at length reached a broad and smooth
+road leading through the pasture, she could only stand still and press
+her two hands over her heart, while her head seemed giddy, and she did
+not see two men who had been standing on the road close by until they
+came up and addressed her.
+
+Then she started and looked round, finding before her two men who were
+apparently laborers of some sort, one of them having a shovel over his
+shoulder.
+
+"Beg your pardon, miss, but wur that your dawg?"
+
+"Yes," she said eagerly. "Could you get him? Did you see him go by? Do
+you know where he is?"
+
+"Me and my mate saw him go by, sure enough; but as for getting
+him--why the keepers'll have shot him by this time."
+
+"Oh no!" cried Sheila, almost in tears, "they must not shoot him. It
+was my fault. I will pay them for all the harm he has done. Can't you
+tell me which way he will go past?"
+
+"I don't think, miss," said the spokesman quite respectfully, "as you
+can go much furder. If you would sit down and rest yourself, and keep
+an eye on this 'ere shovel, me and my mate will have a hunt arter the
+dawg."
+
+Sheila not only accepted the offer gratefully, but promised to give
+them all the money she had if only they would bring back the dog
+unharmed. She made this offer in consequence of some talk between her
+husband and her father which she had overheard. Lavender was speaking
+of the civility he had frequently experienced at the hands of Scotch
+shepherds, and of the independence with which they refused to accept
+any compensation even for services which cost them a good deal of
+time and trouble. Perhaps it was to please Sheila's father, but at any
+rate, the picture the young man drew of the venality and the cupidity
+of folks in the South was a desperately dark one. Ask the name of a
+village, have your stick picked up for you from the pavement, get into
+a cab or get out of it, and directly there was a touch of the cap and
+an unspoken request for coppers. Then, as the services rendered
+rose in importance, so did the fees--to waiters, to coachmen, to
+game-keepers. These things and many more sank into Sheila's heart. She
+heard and believed, and came down to the South with the notion that
+every man and woman who did you the least service expected to be paid
+handsomely for it. What, therefore, could she give those two men if
+they brought back her deer-hound but all the money she had?
+
+It was a hard thing to wait here in the greatest doubt and uncertainty
+while the afternoon was visibly waning. She began to grow afraid.
+Perhaps the men had stolen the dog, and left her with this shovel as
+a blind. Her husband must have come home, and would be astonished and
+perplexed by her absence. Surely, he would have the sense to dine
+by himself, instead of waiting for her; and she reflected with some
+glimpse of satisfaction that she had left everything connected with
+dinner properly arranged, so that he should have nothing to grumble
+at.
+
+"Surely," she said to herself as she sat there, watching the light
+on the grass and the trees getting more and more yellow--"surely I am
+very wicked or very wretched to think of his grumbling in any case.
+If he grumbles, it is because I will attend too much to the affairs of
+the house, and not amuse myself enough. He is very good to me, and I
+have no right to think of his grumbling. And I wish I cared to amuse
+myself more--to be more of a companion to him; but it is so difficult
+among all those people."
+
+The reverie was interrupted by the sound of footsteps on the grass
+behind, and she turned quickly to find the two men approaching her,
+one of them leading the captive Bras by the leash. Sheila sprang to
+her feet with a great gladness. She did not care even to accuse the
+culprit, whose consciousness of guilt was evident in his look and
+in the droop of his tail. Bras did not once turn his eyes to his
+mistress. He hung down his head, while he panted rapidly, and she
+fancied she saw some smearing of blood on his tongue and on the side
+of his jaw. Her fears on this head were speedily confirmed.
+
+"I think, miss, as you'd better take him out o' the Park as soon as
+may be, for he's got a deer killed close by the Robin Hood Gate, in
+the trees there; and if the keepers happen on it afore you leave the
+Park, you'll get into trouble."
+
+"Oh, thank you!" said Sheila, retaining her composure bravely, but
+with a terrible sinking of the heart; "and how can I get to the
+nearest railway station?"
+
+"You're going to London, miss?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, I suppose the nearest is Richmond; but it would be quieter for
+you--don't you see, miss?--if you was to go along to the Roehampton
+Gate and go to Barnes."
+
+"Will you show me the gate?" said Sheila, choosing the quieter route
+at once.
+
+But the men themselves did not at all like the look of accompanying
+her and this dog through the Park. Had they not already condoned a
+felony, or done something equally dreadful, in handing to her a dog
+that had been found keeping watch and ward over a slain buck? They
+showed her the road to the Roehampton Gate, and then they paused
+before continuing on their journey.
+
+The pause meant money. Sheila took out her purse. There were three
+sovereigns and some silver in it, and the entire sum, in fulfillment
+of her promise, she held out to him who had so far conducted the
+negotiations.
+
+Both men looked frightened. It was quite clear that either good
+feeling or some indefinite fear of being implicated in the killing of
+the deer caused them to regard this big bribe as something they could
+not meddle with; and at length, after a pause of a second or two, the
+spokesman said with great hesitation, "Well, miss, you've kep' your
+word; but me and my mate--well, if so be as it's the same to you--'d
+rather have summut to drink your health."
+
+"Do you think it is too much?"
+
+The man looked at his neighbor, who nodded.
+
+"It was only for ketchin' of a dawg, miss, don't you see?" he remarked
+slowly, as if to impress upon her that they had had nothing to do with
+the deer.
+
+"Will you take this, then?" and she offered them half a crown each.
+
+Their faces lightened considerably: they took the money, and with a
+formal expression of thanks moved off, but not before they had taken a
+glance round to see that no one had been a witness of this interview.
+
+And so Sheila had to walk away by herself, knowing that she had been
+guilty of a dreadful offence, and that at any moment she might be
+arrested by the officers of the law. What would the old King of Borva
+say if he saw his only daughter in the hands of two policemen? and
+would not all Mr. Lavender's fastidious and talkative and wondering
+friends pass about the newspaper report of her trial and conviction?
+A man was approaching her. As he drew near her heart failed her, for
+might not this be the mysterious George Ranger himself, about whom her
+husband and Mr. Ingram had been talking? Should she drop on her knees
+at once and confess her sins, and beg him to let her off? If Duncan
+were with her or Mairi, or even old Scarlett Macdonald, she would not
+have cared so much, but it seemed so terrible to meet this man alone.
+
+However, as he drew near he did not seem a fierce person. He was an
+old gentleman with voluminous white hair, who was dressed all in black
+and carried an umbrella on this warm and bright afternoon. He regarded
+her and the dog in a distant and contemplative fashion, as though he
+would probably try to remember some time after that he had really
+seen them; and then he passed on. Sheila began to breathe more freely.
+Moreover, here was the gate, and once she was in the high road, who
+could say anything to her? Tired as she was, she still walked rapidly
+on; and in due time, having had to ask the way once or twice, she
+found herself at Barnes Station.
+
+By and by the train came in: Bras was committed to the care of the
+guard, and she found herself alone in a railway-carriage for the first
+time in her life. Her husband had told her that whenever she felt
+uncertain of her where-abouts, if in the country, she was to ask for
+the nearest station and get a train to London; if in town, she was to
+get into a cab and give the driver her address. And, indeed, Sheila
+had been so much agitated and perplexed during this afternoon that
+she acted in a sort of mechanical fashion, and really escaped the
+nervousness which otherwise would have attended the novel experience
+of purchasing a ticket and of arranging about the carriage of a dog in
+the break-van. Even now, when she found herself traveling alone, and
+shortly to arrive at a part of London she had never seen, her crowding
+thoughts and fancies were not about her own situation, but about the
+reception she should receive from her husband. Would he be vexed
+with her? Or pity her? Had he called with Mrs. Lorraine to take her
+somewhere, and found her gone? Had he brought home some bachelor
+friends to dinner, and been chagrined to find her not in the house?
+
+It was getting dusk when the slow four-wheeler approached Sheila's
+home. The hour for dinner had long gone by. Perhaps her husband had
+gone away somewhere looking for her, and she would find the house
+empty.
+
+But Frank Lavender came to meet his wife in the hall, and said, "Where
+have you been?"
+
+She could not tell whether there was anger or kindness in his voice,
+and she could not well see his face. She took his hand and went into
+the dining-room, which was also dusk, and standing there told him all
+her story.
+
+"This is too bad, Sheila!" he said in a tone of deep vexation. "By
+Jove! I'll go and thrash that dog within an inch of his life."
+
+"No," she said, drawing herself up; and for one brief second--could he
+but have seen her face--there was a touch of old Mackenzie's pride and
+firmness about the ordinarily gentle lips. It was but for a second.
+She cast down her eyes and said meekly, "I hope you won't do that,
+Frank. The dog is not to blame. It was my fault."
+
+"Well, really, Sheila," he said, "you are very thoughtless. I wish you
+would take some little trouble to act as other women act, instead of
+constantly putting yourself and me into the most awkward positions.
+Suppose I had brought any one home to dinner, now? And what am I to
+say to Ingram? for of course I went direct to his lodgings when I
+discovered you were nowhere to be found. I fancied some mad freak had
+taken you there; and I should not have been surprised. Indeed, I don't
+think I should be surprised at anything you do. Do you know who was in
+the hall when I came in this afternoon?"
+
+"No," said Sheila.
+
+"Why that wretched old hag who keeps the fruit-stall. And it seems you
+gave her and all her family tea and cake in the kitchen last night."
+
+"She is a poor old woman," said Sheila humbly.
+
+"A poor old woman!" he said impatiently. "I have no doubt she is a
+lying old thief, who would take an umbrella or a coat if only she
+could get the chance. It is really too bad, Sheila, your having all
+those persons about you, and demeaning yourself by amending on them.
+What must the servants think of you?"
+
+"I do not heed what any servants think of me," she said.
+
+She was now standing erect, with her face quite calm.
+
+"Apparently not," he said, "or you would not go and make yourself
+ridiculous before them."
+
+Sheila hesitated for a moment, as if she did not understand; and then
+she said, as calmly as before, but with a touch of indignation about
+the proud and beautiful lips, "And if I make myself ridiculous by
+attending to poor people, it is not my husband who should tell me so."
+
+She turned and walked out, and he was too surprised to follow her. She
+went up stairs to her own room, locked herself in and threw herself on
+the bed. And then all the bitterness of her heart rose up as if in a
+flood--not against him, but against the country in which he lived, and
+the society which had contaminated him, and the ways and habits that
+seemed to create a barrier between herself and him, so that she was
+a stranger to him, and incapable of becoming anything else. It was a
+crime that she should interest herself in the unfortunate creatures
+round about her--that she should talk to them as if they were human
+beings like herself, and have a great sympathy with their small hopes
+and aims; but she would not have been led into such a crime if she
+had cultivated from her infancy upward a consistent self-indulgence,
+making herself the centre of a world of mean desires and petty
+gratifications. And then she thought of the old and beautiful days up
+in the Lewis, where the young English stranger seemed to approve of
+her simple ways and her charitable work, and where she was taught to
+believe that in order to please him she had only to continue to be
+what she was then. There was no great gulf of time between that period
+and this; but what had not happened in the interval? She had not
+changed--at least she hoped she had not changed. She loved her husband
+with her whole heart and soul: her devotion was as true and constant
+as she herself could have wished it to be when she dreamed of the
+duties of a wife in the days of her maidenhood. But all around her was
+changed. She had no longer the old freedom--the old delight in living
+from day to day--the active work, and the enjoyment of seeing where
+she could help and how she could help the people around her. When,
+as if by the same sort of instinct that makes a wild animal retain
+in captivity the habits which were necessary to its existence when
+it lived in freedom, she began to find out the circumstances of such
+unfortunate people as were in her neighborhood, some little solace was
+given to her; but these people were not friends to her, as the poor
+folk of Borvabost had been. She knew, too, that her husband would be
+displeased if he found her talking with a washerwoman over her family
+matters, or even advising one of her own servants about the disposal
+of her wages; so that, while she concealed nothing from him, these
+things nevertheless had to be done exclusively in his absence. And was
+she in so doing really making herself ridiculous? Did he consider her
+ridiculous? Or was it not merely the false and enervating influences
+of the indolent society in which he lived that had poisoned his mind,
+and drawn him away from her as though into another world?
+
+Alas! if he were in this other world, was not she quite alone? What
+companionship was there possible between her and the people in this
+new and strange land into which she had ventured? As she lay on the
+bed, with her head hidden down in the darkness, the pathetic wail of
+the captive Jews seemed to come and go through the bitterness of her
+thoughts, like some mournful refrain: "By the rivers of Babylon, there
+we sat down; yea we wept when we remembered Zion." She almost heard
+the words, and the reply that rose up in her heart was a great
+yearning to go back to her own land, so that her eyes were filled with
+tears in thinking of it, and she lay and sobbed there in the dusk.
+Would not the old man living all by himself in that lonely island be
+glad to see his little girl back again in the old house? And she would
+sing to him as she used to sing, not as she had been singing to those
+people whom her husband knew. "For there they that carried us away
+captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us
+mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion." And she had sung in
+the strange land, among the strange people, with her heart breaking
+with thoughts of the sea and the hills and the rude and sweet and
+simple ways of the old bygone life she had left behind her.
+
+"Sheila!"
+
+She thought it was her father calling to her, and she rose with a
+cry of joy. For one wild moment she fancied that outside were all the
+people she knew--Duncan and Scarlett and Mairi--and that she was once
+more at home, with the sea all around her, and the salt, cold air.
+
+"Sheila, I want to speak to you."
+
+It was her husband. She went to the door, opened it, and stood there
+penitent and with downcast face.
+
+"Come, you must not be silly," he said with some kindness in his
+voice. "You have had no dinner. You must be hungry."
+
+"I do not care for any: there is no use troubling the servants when I
+would rather lie down," she said.
+
+"The servants! You surely don't take so seriously what I said about
+them, Sheila? Of course you don't need to care what the servants
+think. And in any case they have to bring up dinner for me, so you may
+as well come and try."
+
+"Have you not had dinner?" she said timidly.
+
+"Do you think I could sit down and eat with the notion that you might
+have tumbled into the Thames or been kidnapped, or something?"
+
+"I am very sorry," she said in a low voice, and in the gloom he felt
+his hand taken and carried to her lips. Then they went down stairs
+into the dining-room, which was now lit up by a blaze of gas and
+candles.
+
+During dinner of course no very confidential talking was possible,
+and indeed Sheila had plenty to tell of her adventures at Richmond.
+Lavender was now in a more amiable mood, and was disposed to look
+on the killing of the roebuck as rather a good joke. He complimented
+Sheila on her good sense in having gone in at the Star and Garter for
+lunch; and altogether something like better relations was established
+between them.
+
+But when dinner was finally over and the servants dismissed, Lavender
+placed Sheila's easy-chair for her as usual, drew his own near hers,
+and lit a cigarette.
+
+"Now, tell me, Sheila," he said, "were you really vexed with me when
+you went up stairs and locked yourself in your room? Did you think I
+meant to displease you or say anything harsh to you?"
+
+"No, not any of those things," she said calmly: "I wished to be
+alone--to think over what had happened. And I was grieved by what you
+said, for I think you cannot help looking at many things not as I
+will look at them. That is all. It is my bringing up in the Highlands,
+perhaps."
+
+"Do you know, Sheila, it sometimes occurs to me that you are not quite
+comfortable here? And I can't make out what is the matter. I think you
+have a perverse fancy that you are different from the people you meet,
+and that you cannot be like them, and all that sort of thing. Now,
+dear, that is only a fancy. There need be no difference if only you
+will take a little trouble."
+
+"Oh, Frank!" she said, going over and putting her hand on his
+shoulder, "I cannot take that trouble. I cannot try to be like those
+people. And I see a great difference in you since you have come back
+to London, and you are getting to be like them and say the things they
+say. If I could only see you, my own darling, up in the Lewis again,
+with rough clothes on and a gun in your hand, I should be happy. You
+were yourself up there, when you were helping us in the boat, or when
+you were bringing home the salmon, or when we were all together at
+night in the little parlor, you know--"
+
+"My dear, don't get so excited. Now sit down, and I will tell you all
+about it. You seem to have the notion that people lose all their finer
+sentiments simply because they don't, in society, burst into raptures
+over them. You mustn't imagine all those people are selfish and
+callous merely because they preserve a decent reticence. To tell you
+the truth, that constant profession of noble feelings you would like
+to see would have something of ostentation about it."
+
+Sheila only sighed. "I do not wish them to be altered," she said by
+and by, with her eyes grown pensive: "all I know is, that I could
+not live the same life. And you--you seemed to be happier up in the
+Highlands than you have ever been since."
+
+"Well, you see, a man ought to be happy when he is enjoying a holiday
+in the country along with the girl he is engaged to. But if I had
+lived all my life killing salmon and shooting wild-duck, I should have
+grown up an ignorant boor, with no more sense of--"
+
+He stopped, for he saw that the girl was thinking of her father.
+
+"Well, look here, Sheila. You see how you are placed--how we are
+placed, rather. Wouldn't it be more sensible to get to understand
+those people you look askance at, and establish better relations with
+them, since you have got to live among them? I can't help thinking
+you are too much alone, and you can't expect me to stay in the house
+always with you. A husband and wife cannot be continually in each
+other's company, unless they want to grow heartily tired of each
+other. Now, if you would only lay aside those suspicions of yours, you
+would find the people just as honest and generous and friendly as any
+other sort of people you ever met, although they don't happen to be
+fond of expressing their goodness in their talk."
+
+"I have tried, dear--I will try again," said Sheila.
+
+She resolved that she would go down and visit Mrs. Lavender next day,
+and try to be interested in the talk of such people as might be there.
+She would bring away some story about this or the other fashionable
+woman or noble lord, just to show her husband that she was doing her
+best to learn. She would drive patiently round the Park in that close
+little brougham, and listen attentively to the moralities of Marcus
+Aurelius. She would make an appointment to go with Mrs. Lavender to
+a morning concert; and she would endeavor to muster up courage to ask
+any ladies who might be there to lunch with her on that day, and go
+afterward to this same entertainment. All these things and many more
+Sheila silently vowed to herself she would do, while her husband sat
+and expounded to her his theories of the obligations which society
+demanded of its members.
+
+But her plans were suddenly broken asunder.
+
+"I met Mrs. Lorraine accidentally to-day," he said.
+
+It was his first mention of the young American lady. Sheila sat in
+mute expectation.
+
+"She always asks very kindly after you."
+
+"She is very kind."
+
+He did not say, however, that Mrs. Lorraine had more than once made
+distinct propositions, when in his company, that they should call in
+for Sheila and take her out for a drive or to a flower-show, or some
+such place, while Lavender had always some excuse ready.
+
+"She is going to Brighton to-morrow, and she was wondering whether you
+would care to run down for a day or two."
+
+"With her?" said Sheila, recoiling from such a proposal instinctively.
+
+"Of course not. I should go. And then at last, you know, you would see
+the sea, about which you have been dreaming for ever so long."
+
+The sea! There was a magic in the very word that could, almost at
+any moment, summon tears into her eyes. Of course she accepted
+right gladly. If her husband's duties were so pressing that the
+long-talked-of journey to Lewis and Borva had to be repeatedly and
+indefinitely postponed, here at least would be a chance of looking
+again at the sea--of drinking in the freshness and light and color of
+it--of renewing her old and intimate friendship with it that had been
+broken off for so long by her stay in this city of perpetual houses
+and still sunshine.
+
+"You can tell her you will go when you see her to-night at Lady
+Mary's. By the way, isn't it time for you to begin to dress?"
+
+"Oh, Lady Mary's!" repeated Sheila mechanically, who had quite
+forgotten about her engagement for that evening.
+
+"Perhaps you are too tired to go," said her husband.
+
+She was a little tired, in truth. But surely, just after her promises,
+spoken and unspoken, some little effort was demanded of her; so she
+bravely went to dress, and in about three-quarters of an hour was
+ready to drive down to Curzon street. Her husband had never seen her
+look so pleased before in going out to any party. He flattered himself
+that his lecture had done her good. There was fair common sense in
+what he had said, and although, doubtless, a girl's romanticism was
+a pretty thing, it would have to yield to the actual requirements of
+society. In time he should educate Sheila.
+
+But he did not know what brightened the girl's face all that night,
+and put a new life into the beautiful eyes, so that even those who
+knew her best were struck by her singular beauty. It was the sea that
+was coloring Sheila's eyes. The people around her, the glare of the
+candles, the hum of talking, and the motion of certain groups dancing
+over there in the middle of the throng,--all were faint and visionary,
+for she was busily wondering what the sea would be like the next
+morning, and what strange fancies would strike her when once more
+she walked on sand and heard the roar of waves. That, indeed, was
+the sound that was present in her ears while the music played and
+the people murmured around her. Mrs. Lorraine talked to her, and was
+surprised and amused to notice the eager fashion in which the girl
+spoke of their journey of the next day. The gentleman who took her in
+to supper found himself catechised about Brighton in a manner which
+afforded him more occupation than enjoyment. And when Sheila drove
+away from the house at two in the morning she declared to her husband
+that she had enjoyed herself extremely, and he was glad to hear it;
+and she was particularly kind to himself in getting him his slippers,
+and fetching him that final cigarette which he always had on reaching
+home; and then she went off to bed to dream of ships and flying clouds
+and cold winds, and a great and beautiful blue plain of waves.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+GOLD.
+
+
+  A day of bright reflections on the pond,
+  And wavering shadows over moss and frond:
+  A wayward breeze, the summer's latest born,
+  Teased the stiff grain and bent the stately corn,
+  Or rocked the bird-nests in the prickly thorn.
+
+  Above, the lavish sun filled air with gold;
+  Again, below, on mimic waves it rolled,
+  And hid in lily cups. Her netted hair
+  Gleamed in the splendor, bright beyond compare,
+  Forming about her head a nimbus rare.
+
+  The velvet mullen raised its yellow head,
+  The buttercups like precious ore were spread:
+  Like golden shuttles flung by spirit hands,
+  Weaving invisible their magic strands,
+  Darted quick orioles in joyous bands.
+
+  Fond helianthus turned her fervent face,
+  Meek antirrhinum paled and grew apace;
+  Late dandelions, robed in cloth of gold,
+  With golden-rod, upsprung from out the mould,
+  And pensive, gold-eyed daisies pranked the wold.
+
+  As snowy, gold-rimmed cloudlets hide the sky,
+  So hid her eyelid's golden fringe her eye:
+  As every growing beauty of the earth
+  But figures forth great Nature's hidden worth,
+  So my love's charms from her pure heart had birth.
+
+  Pure heart of gold to me that day was given,
+  And promise true as gold made earth a heaven;
+  Then far away fled every doubt forlorn;
+  We felt for us the Golden Age reborn,
+  And envied none their gold from labor torn.
+
+ITA ANIOL PROKOP.
+
+
+
+
+GLIMPSES OF GHOST-LAND.
+
+
+It is no longer the fashion to scoff at tales of the supernatural.
+On the contrary, there is a growing tendency to investigate subjects
+which were formerly pooh-poohed by most persons claiming to be well
+informed and capable of reasoning. It is, however, without propounding
+any theory or advancing any opinion that I record a few instances of
+apparently supernatural, or at least inexplicable, occurrences. I can
+vouch for the truth of nearly all the stories I am about to relate,
+one of them only not being either my personal experience or narrated
+to me by some one of the actors in the scene.
+
+My first story shall be one that was told to me by an aged lady who
+was one of the friends of my youth, and who often mentioned this
+strange incident of her placid, yet busy life. She was a sensible,
+practical woman, the last person in the world likely to be led astray
+by an overheated imagination or deceived by hallucinations. Her early
+youth had been passed in the country, her father being a wealthy
+farmer. She had formed a close intimacy with the daughter of a
+gentleman living at some distance from her father's farm, and the two
+were seldom apart. An invitation given to my friend (whom I shall call
+Mrs. L----) to visit some relatives in a neighboring city caused a
+brief separation between the two girls, and they parted with many
+protestations of enduring affection. On the day appointed for Mrs.
+L----'s return she set out at the prescribed hour. The latter part
+of her journey was to be performed on horseback. On a bright sunny
+afternoon in June she found herself, about five o'clock, drawing
+near her father's house. Suddenly in the broad road before her she
+perceived a female form walking rapidly toward her, and, to her
+delight, recognized her friend coming, as she thought, to meet her.
+
+"I will make her go back with me and take tea," was Mrs. L----'s
+thought as she whipped up her horse in her haste to greet the dear
+one, who was all the more beloved on account of their temporary
+separation. But as she approached the figure, and before she had had
+time to speak, or indeed to do more than notice that her friend looked
+very pale and ill, her horse, an unusually quiet, steady animal,
+seemed struck with sudden terror, reared, shied, and finally plunged
+into a hollow by the roadside, from which she had some difficulty
+in extricating him. When she did succeed in bringing him back to the
+level road she found, to her astonishment, that the young girl had
+disappeared. Around her lay the open fields, before her and behind
+her the road--all in the bright lustre of the summer afternoon--but no
+trace of the figure could she see. Completely mystified, she hastened
+home, there to learn that her friend had died suddenly that very
+morning.
+
+The next incident I shall narrate was told me by a German gentleman
+whose mother was the heroine of the tale. His father had been
+appointed to some public office in a small German town, and among
+the emoluments of the place was the privilege of residing in a large,
+old-fashioned, but very handsome mansion. The husband and wife set off
+in high spirits to inspect their new abode, to which some portion of
+their furniture had already been transferred. They went from room
+to room, inspecting and planning, till they came to an apartment
+the ceiling of which was elaborately decorated with plaster Cupids,
+baskets of flowers, etc., modeled in high relief, and with a
+centre-piece of unusual size and magnificence. A small table, the only
+article of furniture the room contained, was placed directly under
+this centre-piece. The young wife, rather weary of her researches, was
+standing beside this table, and was leaning on it while she went on
+talking with her husband, when suddenly a loud, imploring voice called
+from down stairs, "Caroline! Caroline! come down to me--come!"
+
+"Who can that be?" asked the husband in amazement. "I fastened all the
+doors and windows before we left the lower rooms."
+
+Again came the loud call, this time with an accent of agonized
+entreaty: "Caroline! oh, Caroline! come down--_do_ come!"
+
+The young couple hesitated no longer, but hastened down stairs. There
+was no one there. Doors and windows were securely fastened, and the
+old house looked as solitary as when they had first entered it.
+
+"Very strange!" said the gentleman. "But now that we _are_ down here,
+Caroline, suppose we take a look at the garden?" So they sallied forth
+to examine that portion of their new domain, but scarcely had they
+entered it when they were startled by a loud crash within the house.
+Looking up, they saw volumes of what appeared to be smoke issuing from
+the window of the room they had just quitted, and fearing that the
+room was on fire, they quickly returned to it. There was no fire: what
+had appeared to be smoke was only a cloud of dust, for the massive and
+elaborately ornamented ceiling had fallen, and the heavy centre-piece
+had crushed to fragments the table against which the young wife had so
+lately been leaning. But for the warning voice her destruction would
+have been inevitable. My informant went on to state that the pieces
+of the shattered table were preserved as sacred relics by his parents,
+and that his mother always declared that she had recognized in the
+mysterious voice that of a dear relative long before deceased.
+
+It was once my fortune to pass some weeks in a "haunted house." I was
+quite young then, a mere school-girl in fact, and the friend whom I
+came to visit was also very young; and both of us were too gay and
+frolicsome to care much for whatever was strange or startling in our
+surroundings. Not that we ever saw anything--my friend herself, the
+daughter of the house, had never done so--but the sounds we heard were
+sufficiently odd and inexplicable to fill us with astonishment, if not
+with terror. Twice during my visit I was roused from a sound slumber
+by a loud, heavy crash, resembling that which might be caused by
+the overthrow of a marble-topped washstand or bureau, or some other
+equally ponderous piece of furniture. The room actually vibrated, and
+yet a close scrutiny of that and the adjoining apartments failed to
+reveal any cause for the peculiar noise. It was a sound which could
+not possibly have been produced by cracking furniture, falling bricks,
+scampering rats, or any other of the numerous causes of supposed
+ghostly sounds. The room overhead was used as a linen-room, and was
+always kept locked; and besides, the noise (which I afterward heard
+on another occasion in broad daylight, when I was wide awake) was
+unmistakably _in_ the room where we found ourselves. My friend told me
+that she had heard it very often--so often, in fact, that she had
+got quite used to it, and no longer felt any emotion save that of
+curiosity.
+
+There was another room in which (also in broad daylight) I heard a
+strange crackling sound like the rustling of a large sheet of stiff
+paper or parchment turned slowly in the reader's hands. This noise
+also was one of frequent occurrence. Among the things seen by other
+members of the family was a light that glided over walls and ceiling
+in points inaccessible to outside light or reflection. Then there was
+a lady in black silk who had more than once been seen gliding about
+the house, but who always disappeared when accosted or followed. Three
+slow, solemn raps sometimes sounded at dead of night at the door of
+one member of the family, a skeptical and irascible old gentleman.
+
+But, strange to say, all these uncanny sights and sounds portended
+nothing, and seemed to be utterly without a purpose or a cause. The
+house was a cheerful modern one, and the father of my friend was
+its first occupant; so there was nothing in the past to which these
+unearthly occurrences could refer. Nor were they warnings of coming
+misfortune. Neither death nor disaster ever followed in their train,
+and in due course of time the family ceased to trouble their heads
+about them--were not at all frightened, and scarcely even annoyed.
+There were other sounds which I did not myself hear, but of which I
+was told--stealthy footsteps that paced a certain corridor at dead
+of night; a sharp, rattling noise like hail dashing against the
+window-panes, and one or two other trifling yet equally unaccountable
+occurrences. Once, too, a young lady visiting the house heard in the
+next room to that in which she was loud and lamentable sounds, as of
+a woman weeping bitterly and in sore distress. She listened in
+considerable perplexity for some time, fearing to intrude on the
+sorrows of some member of the family; but at last she resolved to go
+and proffer aid, if not consolation. As he approached the door between
+the two rooms the sound suddenly ceased, and, to her amazement, she
+found the adjoining apartment not only empty, but with the door locked
+and bolted on the inside.
+
+I once knew a young lady who, on going to pay a visit to a friend who
+had recently moved into a new house, was asked to walk up stairs,
+and on complying saw an old woman preceding her up the staircase.
+Supposing her to be one of the servants, she took but little notice
+of her, though struck by the peculiarity of her gait, a sort of jerky
+limp, as though one leg was shorter than the other. In the course of
+conversation with her friend she mentioned the old woman, and asked if
+she was the housekeeper. "Housekeeper? no," said the lady: "we have no
+such person about our house. You must have been mistaken." The visitor
+then described the person she had seen, and when she mentioned the
+peculiar limp her hostess seemed startled. After a pause she said:
+"No such person lives here _now_, but the woman who took care of this
+house before we rented it was exactly such a person as you describe,
+and was lame in just such a manner. But she died here about six weeks
+ago--I think in this very room--so your eyes must certainly have
+deceived you." The lady still persisted that she had seen the old
+woman; so the servants were called and the house thoroughly searched,
+but no intruder was discovered.
+
+I have known several instances of persons who have seen the "fetch" or
+apparition of a living person, called in Germany the "Doppelgaenger;"
+yet, though such appearances are usually supposed to portend the death
+or illness of the person thus strangely "doubled," I have never
+yet heard of a case where any unpleasant consequences followed. For
+instance, an old friend of mine, a gentleman of undoubted veracity,
+once told me that on one occasion he entered his house about
+five o'clock in the afternoon, and ran up stairs to his mother's
+bed-chamber, where he saw her standing near the centre of the room,
+clad in a loose white gown and engaged in combing out her long black
+hair. He remained looking at her for some moments, expecting that
+she would speak to him, but she did not take notice in any way of his
+presence, and neither spoke nor looked at him. He then addressed her,
+but, receiving no reply, became indignant and went down stairs, where,
+to his amazement, he found his mother seated by the parlor window,
+dressed and _coiffee_ as usual. It was some years before he would
+trust himself to tell her of what he had seen, fearing that she might
+consider it an omen of approaching death, and indeed, though not a
+superstitious man, he was inclined so to view it himself; but his
+mother lived for many years after the appearance of her wraith. I also
+knew a young gentleman to whom the unpleasant experience of beholding
+his own double was once vouchsafed. He had been spending a quiet
+evening with some young ladies, and returned home about eleven
+o'clock, let himself into the house with his latch-key and proceeded
+to his own room, where he found the gas already lighted, though turned
+down to a mere blue spark. He turned it up, and the full light of the
+jet shone on his bed, which stood just beside the burner, and there,
+extended at full length, lay--himself. His first idea was of a
+burglar or some such intruder. But his second glance dispelled that
+impression. He stood for some moments gazing at the prostrate figure
+with feelings which must have been anything but agreeable: he noticed
+little peculiarities of his own dress and features, and marked the
+closed eyelids and easy respiration of slumber. At length, plucking up
+courage, he attempted to pass his hand under the pillow to draw out a
+small revolver which he usually kept there, and as he did so he felt
+the pressure of the pillow as though weighed down by a reclining head.
+This completely unnerved him. He went out of the room, locking the
+door on the outside, and spent the remainder of the night on a sofa in
+the parlor. He did not re-enter his chamber till broad daylight, when,
+to his delight, he found that his ghostly visitor had vanished.
+
+The next story on my list was narrated to me by one of the most
+sensible and intelligent women I ever met--a lady of great strength
+of character, joined to a fine and highly cultivated mind. During
+her childhood my friend (whom I shall call Mrs. X----) dwelt with her
+parents in a large, roomy house in the vicinity of one of our inland
+cities. The house was a double one, a solid, substantial structure
+built of stone, and had been purchased by her father a short time
+before the occurrences which I am about to relate. A wide lawn at the
+back of the mansion sloped down to the bank of a small stream,
+along the verge of which, without intervening bank or path, ran the
+terminating wall of the grounds. The stables were also situated at the
+foot of this lawn, and the back windows of these stables looked out on
+the water. Mrs. X---- had several brothers and sisters, all of whom,
+as well as herself, were still children at the period of which she
+spoke.
+
+One summer evening her parents accepted an invitation to take tea with
+a friend, and went out, leaving the children at play in the library, a
+room which opened on the main hall on the ground floor. The front
+door was open, and as it grew dark a large hanging lamp which fully
+illuminated the hall was lighted, so that every part of it, as well as
+the staircase, was fully illuminated. Late in the evening the children
+were disturbed at their play in the library by the sound of heavy
+footsteps ascending the outer steps and then pacing along the hall.
+Imagining that it was their parents who had returned earlier than
+they expected, they rushed to the door to greet them, but to their
+astonishment they could see no one, though the heavy steps were
+still heard traversing the hall, ascending the staircase, and finally
+resounding on the floor of a room overhead. The children summoned the
+servants, who merely laughed at their story, till one of the maids,
+who had been busy up stairs, came down and said that her master and
+mistress must surely have returned, as she had heard them walking
+along the entry and afterward entering one of the rooms. Upon this,
+one of the men-servants went up stairs and made a careful search, but
+without rinding any one. In the midst of the excitement the lady and
+gentleman of the house returned home, and upon hearing the story the
+gentleman himself instituted a second and more vigorous search, which,
+like the first, was wholly without result.
+
+Some time after this the children were playing under their nurse's
+care on the lawn at the back of the house one gray, dismal afternoon
+in the early autumn. The attention of the whole party was suddenly
+attracted by the figure of a man passing slowly outside of the
+stone wall that stretched along the foot of the lawn, and finally
+disappearing behind the stable. As he did so a tremendous uproar arose
+among the horses in the stable, and on examination one of them, a
+remarkably fine and docile animal, whose stall happened to be next the
+window that opened on the water, was found to be in a perfect ecstasy
+of terror, plunging, rearing and struggling to get loose in a manner
+that rendered the task of releasing and removing him anything but an
+easy or even a safe one. After the horse was got out of the stable and
+led away, the question arose, What had frightened him? Could the man
+they had seen passing behind the stable have done anything to terrify
+him? Then, for the first time, it dawned on the minds of the whole
+party that no human being could have walked where they had seen the
+passing figure, as the wall rose straight from the verge of the water,
+and there was no pathway between the wall and the stream, which in
+that spot was deep, though not very wide. Strange to say, the horse
+could never be induced to re-enter that stable, but always manifested
+signs of wild alarm and excitement when brought even to the door,
+though in all other respects he was perfectly gentle and tractable.
+
+Owing to the size of the family, one of the large garret-rooms
+had been fitted up as a bed-room for one of the younger boys, who
+preferred having a chamber of his own to sharing the apartment of
+one of his brothers. He had not occupied it long before he began to
+complain of frightful dreams, and more than once he came trembling
+down stairs and took refuge in his mother's room, terrified by
+something horrible--_what_, he could not define, but something that
+came into his room at night and roused him from his slumbers. Thinking
+that the child was merely nervous and excitable, she changed the
+arrangements, put him to sleep in the bed-room of one of his brothers,
+and gave up the apartment in the garret to one of the servants. But
+in a very short time the complaints were renewed: the girl could not
+sleep on account of that vague, strange horror, which often drove her
+shrieking and half awakened from her bed. So the lady had the room
+dismantled, and used it as a lumber-room, and during the remaining
+years of her occupancy of the house was troubled no more.
+
+As time passed on, the increasing exigencies of his growing family
+induced Mrs. X----'s father to purchase a house in town, and he
+accordingly rented his country-mansion to a childless pair, a
+clergyman and his wife. The new residents had not been long installed
+when a series of ghostly disturbances began in real earnest. I believe
+that nothing more was ever _seen_, but the kitchen at night, when all
+the family had retired, would at times become the seat of an appalling
+uproar of inarticulate voices and clashing dishes and dragging
+furniture. If any one was bold enough to venture down stairs, the
+noise would suddenly cease, and the kitchen itself never showed any
+trace of these unearthly revels, every plate, dish, cup and chair
+remaining in its accustomed place. Then, too, the footsteps of the
+invisible intruder were heard again, and often while the minister was
+writing in his study the steps would be heard coming through the door
+and across the room, and the unseen visitor would seat himself in
+the chair that usually stood opposite to that of the clergyman at the
+writing-table, when a sound as of the pages of a large book with stiff
+paper leaves being slowly turned would usually ensue. The minister
+often addressed his invisible companion, but never received any reply
+to his questions or his appeals.
+
+On hearing these strange stories, Mrs. X----'s father determined upon
+trying to trace out the history of the house before it came into his
+possession. He learned that it had originally been occupied by the
+person who built it, a man of low origin, who, being looked upon as
+a pillar of the Church by the congregation to which he belonged,
+had been entrusted with the task of collecting certain sums due to
+it--whether actual income or subscriptions I do not now recollect. At
+all events, he never paid over the money, but launched out into sundry
+extravagances rather unusual for a man in his station of life, amongst
+which was the erection of this large and handsome house. But from the
+time the house was finished a blight seemed to fall upon his life. He
+gave up all his religious and regular habits, frequented evil company,
+took to drinking, and finally, in a fit of delirium tremens, hanged
+himself in the very garret room of which I have before spoken. The
+scenes at his funeral were said to baffle description. The corpse
+was laid out in the kitchen, and thither all his late boon-companions
+repaired and turned the sad ceremonial into a hideous orgy. Among
+other horrible deeds, they took the corpse from the coffin, propped it
+up in a chair and poured whisky down its throat.
+
+The incidents which I have related happened when Mrs. X---- was a
+child, and she is now in the prime of womanhood. When she finished
+her story I recollected that scarce a year ago I had read in a
+Philadelphia paper an extract from one of the journals of the town
+near which this house stood, giving an account of an investigation
+which was then taking place of the cause of sundry strange
+disturbances occurring in this very house. The extract closed with the
+history of its builder and first occupant, tallying exactly with what
+she related to me, though with fewer details. So, after all these
+years, the perturbed spirit still refuses to rest.
+
+The narrative with which I shall conclude this chapter of ghostly
+experiences is one for the truth of which I am not prepared to vouch,
+as I was neither an actor in its scenes nor was it related to me by
+one who was. Yet were the incidents of any other than a supernatural
+nature I should consider the authority from which I learned them as
+unquestionable.
+
+A few years ago a lady in quest of summer lodgings for herself, her
+sister and her children (her husband being absent) was offered a
+large, old-fashioned house in the vicinity of one of our seashore
+resorts on highly advantageous terms. Having inspected the house and
+found it, though old, in good repair, she engaged it joyfully, and
+a few weeks after the date of her first negotiations she was settled
+there with her family. For some time nothing occurred to mar the peace
+of the household. The children enjoyed the fresh sea-breezes, their
+pleasant sports on the beach and the large airy rooms, while the
+ladies sewed and read and looked after household matters and took long
+walks after the fashion of most people during the summer season by the
+seaside. One night, when the mother was about to retire to rest, one
+of her younger children, a bright little boy, called to her from his
+sleeping-room. Fearing that he was ill, she hastened to him.
+
+"Mamma," he said very earnestly, "I wish you would tell that strange
+woman to keep out of my room."
+
+"What woman, dear?" asked his mother, convinced that he had been
+dreaming.
+
+"I don't know her name, and I can't see her face because she wears a
+big sun-bonnet, but she comes and stands at the foot of my bed, and
+she frightens me."
+
+"Well, never mind, dear. Go to sleep, and if ever she troubles you
+again, come into my room and sleep with me," answered the mother,
+still thinking that the child had been wakened by an uneasy dream. The
+little fellow, thus soothed and consoled, soon fell asleep, and
+slept soundly till morning. But a few nights afterward the child
+came running into his mother's room at dead of night, panting and
+terrified, and exclaiming, "Mamma! mamma! she has come again!" His
+mother took him into her arms, and soon caressed away his fears, but
+thinking that the child's uneasiness was caused by his sleeping alone,
+she had his bed moved into her own chamber, and fitted up the vacant
+apartment as a guest-chamber. Soon after this the servants began
+to complain of strange sights and sounds for which they could not
+account, and one burning July day the sister, who was seated by the
+parlor window, happened to say, "Oh, I am so warm!" when a voice,
+seemingly from the cellar, made answer, "And _I_ am so cold!" Struck
+with amazement, she called, but no one replied, and subsequent
+investigation proved that there was no one in the cellar at that
+moment, nor could there have been, as its only door was always kept
+locked.
+
+I cannot now recall the details of various strange occurrences which
+afterward took place, but will pass on to the final one, which may be
+considered as the denoument of the whole story. The lady of the house,
+a strong-minded, practical woman, had always sternly rejected the
+theory that the odd incidents that annoyed her had any supernatural
+origin; so, disregarding them wholly, she sent an invitation to an
+old friend of hers, a clergyman, to pay her a visit of some weeks'
+duration. Her invitation was accepted, and in due time her guest
+arrived and was put in possession of the spare bed-room. Night coming
+on, the whole household retired to rest. Early in the morning the
+active hostess rose to see that all was in order for the further
+entertainment of her guest, when, on going into the parlor to unfasten
+the shutters, what was her amazement to find him there extended on the
+sofa, and looking very ill, as though he had passed a wretched night!
+In answer to her anxious questioning he stated that on retiring to
+rest he had fallen into a profound slumber, from which he suddenly
+woke, and saw a woman wearing a large sun-bonnet, which completely
+concealed her face, standing beside his bed, the moonlight which shone
+into the room rendering every detail of her figure distinctly visible.
+Supposing that she was one of the servants who had come to his room to
+see that he was perfectly comfortable and wanted nothing, he spoke to
+her. What she replied, or how he first became convinced that the Thing
+before him was no form of flesh and blood, I cannot now remember; but
+I recollect two particulars of the interview: one was, that she told
+him to look for her in the cellar; the other, that he asked her why
+she wore a sun-bonnet, and she answered, "Because the lime has
+spoilt my face." At this his failing senses forsook him, and when
+consciousness returned his ghostly visitor had disappeared.
+
+His hostess heard him in silence. As soon as breakfast was over she
+requested him to accompany her to the cellar. Careful examination soon
+revealed a spot where some of the stones with which it was paved had
+been removed and afterward replaced. Assistants with proper tools were
+procured, the stones were lifted, and after a few minutes of vigorous
+digging a mass of lime was disclosed, in which was found imbedded
+a quantity of calcined fragments of bone, which medical authority
+afterward pronounced to be portions of a human skeleton. These poor
+remains were carefully removed, placed in a box and interred in a
+neighboring cemetery, and the "woman in a sun-bonnet" was seen no
+more.
+
+Subsequent investigation into the history of the old house revealed
+the following facts. It had originally been occupied by a retired
+sea-captain and his only son, the latter a wild, reckless youth of
+evil character and confirmed bad habits. A young girl went to live
+there as a servant, and for some months seemed well contented with her
+place, but afterward she became gloomy and unhappy, and was frequently
+seen in tears by the neighbors. At last she disappeared, and it was
+given out by her employers that she had gone to visit some friends at
+a distance, but she did not return, and suspicion was already directed
+toward the old man and his son, when one morning the house was found
+to be shut up, its inhabitants having found it expedient to remove
+as silently and secretly as possible. The girl was never heard of
+afterward. The discovery of the bones led to the supposition that the
+younger man had seduced her, had afterward murdered her to conceal his
+original crime, and that he had then buried the body in the cellar,
+taking the precaution to cover it with quicklime.
+
+As I said at the beginning of this article, I neither wish to propound
+any theories nor to deduce any conclusions from the relations I have
+given. I can only reiterate my statement that they came to me from
+sources the reliability of which I cannot question. I have carefully
+excluded everything relating to the supernatural which I ever heard
+from the lips of ignorant and superstitious persons, and have only
+recorded such incidents as bore an added weight of evidence in the
+shape of the sense, intelligence and unquestionable veracity of their
+relators.
+
+LUCY H. HOOPER.
+
+
+
+
+AFTERNOON.
+
+
+        Small, shapeless drifts of cloud
+  Sail slowly northward in the soft-hued sky,
+    With blue half-tints and rolling summits bright,
+  By the late sun caressed; slight hazes shroud
+    All things afar; shineth each leaf anigh
+        With its own warmth and light.
+
+        O'erblown by Southland airs,
+  The summer landscape basks in utter peace:
+    In lazy streams the lazy clouds are seen;
+  Low hills, broad meadows, and large, clear-cut squares
+    Of ripening corn-fields, rippled by the breeze,
+        With shifting shade and sheen.
+
+        Hark! and you may not hear
+  A sound less soothing than the rustle cool
+    Of swaying leaves, the steady wiry drone
+  Of unseen crickets, sudden chirpings clear
+    Of happy birds, the tinkle of the pool,
+        Chafed by a single stone.
+
+        What vague, delicious dreams,
+  Born of this golden hour of afternoon,
+    And air balm-freighted, fill the soul with bliss,
+  Transpierced like yonder clouds with lustrous gleams,
+    Fantastic, brief as they, and, like them, spun
+        Of gilded nothingness!
+
+        All things are well with her.
+  'Tis good to be alive, to see the light
+    That plays upon the grass, to feel (and sigh
+  With perfect pleasure) the mild breezes stir
+    Among the garden roses, red and white,
+        With whiffs of fragrancy.
+
+        There is no troublous thought,
+  No painful memory, no grave regret,
+    To mar the sweet suggestions of the hour:
+  The soul, at peace, reflects the peace without,
+    Forgetting grief as sunset skies forget
+        The morning's transient shower.
+
+EMMA LAZARUS.
+
+
+
+
+OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
+
+WASHINGTON'S BIRTHPLACE IN 1873.
+
+
+Was George Washington born in Great Britain or America? Absurd as
+this question must sound to an American, it has been gravely discussed
+within the last few months by a writer in the London _Notes and
+Queries_, who has the effrontery to say that Washington's own brief
+assertion in a letter to the effect that he was born in Virginia
+cannot be conclusive. "No man's unsupported testimony," he adds, "as
+to the place of his birth would be taken in evidence in a court of
+justice, for his knowledge of the event must necessarily be from
+hearsay or from records." This is silly enough. I did not see the
+whole article, or learn by what arguments the writer endeavored
+to substantiate his doubts, if he really had any, as to the true
+birthplace of the _Pater Patriae_, but, feeling some interest in the
+matter, I cut out the slip containing the quotation just given,
+and enclosed it in a letter to a prominent gentleman living in
+Westmoreland not far from Wakefield, the estate on which the
+birthplace--or rather the site of it--is situated, with a request that
+he would reply to it. He did so promptly and almost indignantly.
+
+"I am amazed," says he, "at the contents of the printed slip you send
+me. That any man of ordinary intelligence, living within the bounds
+of civilization, could be ignorant of or doubt the fact that General
+Washington was born in America, I did not for a moment suppose." He
+goes on to say that if Washington's biography, written by so many
+competent hands, and founded upon sources the most authentic, and
+particularly the Lives of Marshall, Sparks and Irving, were not
+sufficient to convince incredulity itself, he is at a loss to know
+what would. Certainly, he would not attempt the task himself. In
+addition to the well-known biographies, traditions and memoranda
+attest the fact beyond the possibility of enlightened doubt.
+Other credible and corroborative records are not wanting. "Had the
+question," he concludes, "been asked of Dr. Livingstone by some
+savage in the depths of the African jungles, it would not have been
+surprising; but to come from a writer in _London_, it is inexpressibly
+marvelous, and looks like a relapse into barbarism."
+
+Among the memoranda alluded to is a fac-simile of the entry of the
+birth of Washington in the Bible of his mother, which is given in
+Howe's _Historical Collections of Virginia_, as follows:
+
+"_George Washington son to Augustine and Mary his Wife was Born 11'th
+Day of February_ 173-1/2 _about_ 10 _in the Morning and was Baptized
+the_ 3'th (sic) _of April following M'r Beverley Whiting and Cap'n
+Christopher Brooks godfathers and M'rs Mildred Gregory God-mother."_
+
+There are no marks of punctuation, and Howe states that the original
+entry is supposed to have been made by Washington's mother. If so, the
+handwriting, not very unlike Washington's own, is unusually masculine,
+compact, even and clear for a woman's. Howe's book was published in
+1836. At that time the old family Bible, a much dilapidated quarto
+with the title-page missing, and covered with the striped Virginia
+cloth so common in old days, was in the possession of George
+W. Bassett, Esq., of Farmington, Hanover county, who married a
+grand-niece of Washington. At that time, too, the birthplace, which
+had been destroyed previous to the Revolution, was much more plainly
+marked than it is now. From its associations, and from its natural
+beauties as well, the place was doubly interesting. Standing half
+a mile from the junction of Pope's Creek with the Potomac River,
+it commanded a view of the Maryland shore and of the course of the
+Potomac for many miles. The house was a low-pitched, single-storied
+frame dwelling, with four rooms on the first floor, and a huge chimney
+at each end on the outside--the style of the better class of houses of
+those days. A stone, placed there to mark its site by G.W.P. Custis,
+bore the simple inscription:
+
+"HERE, ON THE 11TH OF FEBRUARY (O.S.), 1732, GEORGE WASHINGTON WAS
+BORN."
+
+Such was its appearance in 1834 or '35, when Howe visited it. Its
+present condition may be gathered from what the writer of the letter
+in response to the London querist has to say about the site itself,
+that being all that is left of a place so memorable and so deserving
+of perpetuation:
+
+"I have had no opportunity to obtain the sketch I promised you.
+Indeed, there is virtually no material to make a sketch of. The
+birthplace is now simply an old field lying waste, with indistinct
+vestiges of a human habitation. An old chimney stands which belonged
+to an outhouse (kitchen or laundry), some remains of a cellar, and the
+foundations of a house in which tradition states Washington was born.
+There was a stone slab, with a simple inscription, placed on the spot
+some sixty years ago by G. W: P. Custis, to denote the place, but it
+was long ago removed from its original position, mutilated and broken,
+so that only a fragment remains."
+
+That a place of such interest--one might call it sacred--should be
+left to decay and obliteration is no new thing in Virginia. Enemies
+might well declare that neglect of her mighty dead is characteristic
+of the old commonwealth. The truth is, she has a great many dead to
+care for, and of late years all her time has been absorbed in the care
+of her living. But something has been done, or attempted to be done,
+to rescue Washington's birthplace from oblivion. As far back as 1858
+an act was passed by the General Assembly of Virginia, accepting from
+Lewis Washington a grant of the "site of the birthplace of George
+Washington, and the home and graves of his progenitors in America,"
+and appropriating five thousand dollars "to enclose the same in an
+iron fence," etc. Hon. Henry A. Wise, governor of Virginia at the time
+this act was passed, entered with zeal and alacrity upon the work, the
+execution of which was entrusted to him by the Legislature--went in
+person to Westmoreland, examined carefully the sites, negotiated with
+the owner of the adjacent farm for right of way, adopted a plan for
+the enclosures and tablets, and began a correspondence with mechanics
+and artisans at the North with a view to the speedy completion of the
+work, and--just then his term expired, the war soon followed, and the
+matter was of course dropped.
+
+The money appropriated, together with the accrued interest, is now
+in the treasury of Virginia, and although Governor Walker in his late
+message did not bring the subject to the attention of the Legislature,
+the long-delayed work will be consummated sooner or later, and "a neat
+iron fence" with a few plain slabs will be erected on the hallowed
+spot. But it strikes the present writer that five thousand dollars, or
+even ten thousand dollars, form rather a small sum for such an object,
+and that "a neat iron fence" is not exactly the thing that the place
+and its memories demand. But not a dollar more may be expected of
+Virginia at this time. She owes too much, and has too little. If one
+of the many Northern gentlemen who are lavishing their hundreds of
+thousands on colleges and other charities would come to Westmoreland
+and put something a little better than a "neat iron fence" around the
+birthplace of Washington, he would do a noble deed for himself and for
+both sections of his lately estranged country.
+
+R.B.E.
+
+
+
+
+VICISSITUDES IN HIGH LIFE.
+
+
+The London papers lately recorded the death of a lady who was the
+representative and last descendant, save one sister, of a house famous
+in English history. This was Lady Langdale, widow of Bickersteth,
+first and last Lord Langdale, and sister of Harley, last earl of
+Oxford. Lady Langdale had but one child, who married Count Teleki, a
+Hungarian nobleman, and pre-deceased her mother, dying childless. Lord
+Langdale was the son of Mr. Bickersteth, surgeon, of Kirby-Lonsdale,
+Westmoreland. He was brought up to his father's vocation, and
+traveled, as physician, with the earl of Oxford.
+
+Impressed, no doubt, with Mr. Bickersteth's extraordinary abilities,
+Lord Oxford advised him to go to college and read for the law, which
+offered greater prizes than the medical profession. Accordingly,
+he entered at Cambridge, and in 1808 graduated as senior wrangler.
+Twenty-seven years later, in 1835, he married the daughter and heiress
+of his friend and patron, and the year following was created a peer.
+
+His brother Edward was the celebrated evangelical leader in the Church
+of England. Bred to the law, he abandoned that profession for holy
+orders. Their nephew, son of their brother John, is the present bishop
+of Ripon.
+
+The Harleys have been seated for six or seven centuries in
+Herefordshire, at Brampton-Bryan and Egwood, properties which in part
+remained in Lady Langdale's possession. By marriage! with the heiress
+of the Vaughans in the fifteenth century, they became possessed of
+Wigmore Castle, the ancient heritage of the extinct earls of Mortimer,
+and great estates which added to their consequence.
+
+When Charles II. made a batch of peers on his restoration, the
+Harley of that day displayed a rare modesty. The king offered him a
+viscounty, but he declined the honor, "lest his zeal and services
+for the restoration of the ancient government should be reproached as
+proceeding from ambition, and not conscience;" and so scrupulous was
+he that his being made a knight of the Bath even was done without his
+knowledge, he being then at Dunkirk, and Charles inserting with his
+own hand his name in the list. But his son was destined for a higher
+dignity, for he it was who became in the tenth year of the reign of
+Charles II.'s niece, Queen Anne, earl of Oxford and Mortimer, being
+the famous Harley of that reign, linked in our memories with St. John
+Lord Bolingbroke, the Mashams, Marlboroughs, Swift, Addison, Pope, and
+the host of brilliant men which makes the reign of one of the feeblest
+women who ever sat on a throne a period of almost pre-eminent interest
+in English annals to men of cultivated mind subject to the influence
+of association. By Elizabeth Foley, daughter of the first Lord Foley,
+of Witley Court (sold, about thirty-five years ago, with the bulk
+of the Foley estates, for L990,000 to Lord Dudley, who married Lady
+Mordaunt's sister), the famous lord treasurer, Oxford, had one
+son, the second earl. He was the friend of Swift, to whom the dean
+addressed so many letters. A man of literary tastes, he spent a
+portion of his immense fortune in forming the finest library of the
+period, and it is to him the student is indebted for the magnificent
+collection known as the "Harleian," which subsequently became, by
+purchase, the property of the nation, and is deposited in the British
+Museum. He married the greatest heiress of the day, Lady Henrietta
+Cavendish-Holies, only daughter and heir of the duke of Newcastle (of
+the Holies creation--the present duke, a Pelham-Clinton, derives from
+a different descent). He left but one daughter. She married the second
+duke of Portland, grandson of Dutch William's pet page Bentinck, whom
+he imported into England, and loaded with honors and emolument until
+even the House of Commons of _that_ day cried out loudly, "Enough!
+stop!" Through this lady the Bentincks got Welbeck, the duke of
+Portland's chief seat to-day.
+
+Meanwhile, the Oxford honors and patrimonial estates in Herefordshire
+passed to the second earl's first cousin, and so on, in regular
+succession, until the earldom became extinct by the death of Lady
+Langdale's brother a few years ago. One of Lady Langdale's sisters
+married a General Bacon. At the time of the marriage he was but a poor
+captain, and his wealth did not much increase, whilst his family did,
+and his wife, the once beautiful Lady Charlotte, Byron's "Ianthe"--to
+whom he addressed the famous lines which form the prelude of _Childe
+Harold_, beginning,
+
+  Not in those climes where I have late been straying--
+
+had to see her daughter a governess in the family of a Cornishman,
+once a common miner! One of her daughters is now married to the son
+of Lord Mount Edgecumbe's agent. It seems that the sisters could not
+forgive the mesalliance, as they deemed it, for Lady Langdale's will
+shows no bequest to the Bacons.
+
+Lady Langdale had another sister, who married a son of Doctor
+Vernon-Harcourt, long archbishop of York, grandfather of "Historicus,"
+the well-known political letter-writer of the London _Times_. This
+lady died about the same time as Lady Langdale. One sister only, the
+wife of a foreign nobleman, survives. She is the last of the Harleys
+of the great minister's line.
+
+
+
+
+A GLASS OF OLD MADEIRA.
+
+
+We had met in Europe some dozen years ago--I from Massachusetts,
+he from Carolina. We both looked grave for an instant as a friend
+presented us to each other, naming our respective residences, and then
+both laughed cheerily, and were good friends ever after. We enjoyed
+_Tartuffe_ and the _Mariage de Figaro_ in company with each other at
+the Theatre Francois, heard Mario, Grisi, Gratiano and Borghi Mamo in
+Verdi's _Trovatore_ at the Opera Italien, danced with _les filles
+de l'Opera_ at Cellarius's saloons, and had many a midnight
+carouse afterward at the Maison Dore. Nor had our time always been
+unprofitably spent. Toward Easter we journeyed together to Rome, and
+stood side by side before the masterpieces of Raphael and Domenichino
+in the Vatican, strolled by moonlight amid the ruins of the Coliseum,
+and drank out of the same cup from the Fountain of Trevi; often
+visited Crawford's studio, where then stood the famous group which
+now adorns the frieze of the Capitol at Washington, and by actual
+observation agreed in thinking his Indian not unworthy of comparison
+with the famous statue of the Dying Gladiator. We stood together on
+the Tarpeian Rock, and, looking down upon the mutilated Column of
+Trajan and all the ruins of ancient Rome, read out of the same copy of
+Horace the famous ode beginning, "Exegi monumentum aere perennius."
+We were both passionately fond of sculpture and of painting, and often
+sat for hours before the glorious Descent from the Cross of Daniel da
+Volterra in the Chiesa della Trinita dei Monti, the principal figure
+in which is said to have been sketched by Michael Angelo, and which,
+although less widely known, appeared to our minds equal in execution
+and superior in grandeur to any other painting in the world.
+
+After our return to this country I happened to go South one winter,
+and spent a month with my friend on his plantation in the low country
+of Carolina. It seemed to be our fate to meet amid the ruins of
+the past. But the war had not then occurred, and we had many a hunt
+together, in which, after a glorious burst of the hounds through the
+open savannas, I brought down more than one noble buck. On other days
+we would drive with the ladies along the broad beach upon which stood
+the summer residences of the neighboring planters. And sometimes we
+would stroll lazily about the lanes of his estate, basking in the
+mellow sunshine in the midst of February, and chatting of Capri and
+Sorrento in a climate equal to that of Italy.
+
+And we met again the other day in the streets of a Northern city. He
+looked older certainly, and very careworn, but his eye was as bright
+as ever and his voice as cheery.
+
+"Come and dine with me," he said after we had given each other a
+hurried account of our present abodes and occupations. "You will find
+me in rather modest and decidedly airy lodgings, and I cannot offer
+you either wild-ducks or venison. A rasher of bacon and a glass of
+madeira as we chat over old times: what say you to the bill-of fare?
+You remember the old French adage, 'Quand on n'a pas ce que l'on aime,
+faut bien aimer ce que l'on a.'"
+
+"A quelle heure, mon ami?"
+
+"Four o'clock."
+
+And at five that afternoon we were seated together, the remnants
+of our frugal repast removed, and on the scrupulously polished old
+mahogany table which separated us stood a cut-glass decanter of
+old Carolina madeira, the bouquet of which filled the room with its
+fragrance.
+
+"Fill your glass, Harry: 'tis not the fragrance of the wine, but the
+sentiment connected with it, which prevents me from offering you a
+pipe. The odor of the best Virginia would seem to me a desecration.
+There are only a dozen bottles left in that cupboard. I never uncork
+one except for a near friend. 'Tis out of fashion now: hock and
+champagne have taken its place; but, do you know, I like it the better
+on that account. It reminds me of the past, and, though still a young
+man, it is one of my greatest pleasures to dwell on the picture which
+a glass of it never fails to recall to my imagination. You remember
+Woodlawn? For five-and-twenty years, during the whole of a long
+minority and subsequent travels abroad, those old bottles stood
+wreathed with cobwebs in the garret of the old mansion. You drank one
+with me in 1859. The rest were buried at the commencement of the war,
+and this is one of the few which survived it. There are not many of
+your compatriots to whom I would tell the story of its preservation,
+for it illustrates a feature of feudal attachment which they
+persistently refuse to believe possible.
+
+"You remember the stately old negro who occupied the porter's lodge at
+Woodlawn, and who told you with such pride that he and his ancestors
+had always occupied a favored post near the great house? You remember,
+too, his grand air, fashioned after the gentlemen of the olden time,
+the contemporaries of Washington, Rutledge and Pinckney? And in what
+awe and reverence his fellow-servants stood of him! Well, when the war
+fairly began, and all hope of amicable adjustment was exhausted, I did
+what every true man on either side was bound to do--raised a company
+for the service, removed my family to an up-country farm, and left Old
+John in charge of my residence and interests in the low country. The
+Federal gunboats soon appeared upon the coast, entered the bay and
+ran up the rivers. Many of the younger people went off with them, but
+during the long and dreary four years which ensued Old John remained
+staunch at his post, cultivating the land as best he might, and
+sending constantly supplies of money and provisions to his mistress.
+At last the whole thing broke down: Lee surrendered, Johnston
+surrendered. Troops as well as gunboats swarmed in all directions. Not
+only regular soldiers, but raw negro levies, occupied the towns and
+were posted through the country. Stories were circulated that I was
+killed, that I was captured; and the latter statement was true. There
+were rumors that the land was to be divided among the negroes, and one
+dark night in the early summer of 1865 some drunken sailors, escaped
+from the gunboats lying in the bay, raised a mob of negroes from the
+various plantations and gutted nearly every house in the parish. Among
+others they came to mine eager for wine, and John was pointed out by
+some of the neighboring negroes as knowing where it was concealed. The
+sailors threatened his life: he refused to tell. They held a pistol to
+his head, but the old man remained staunch in his refusal. Provoked by
+his fidelity, at length they brutally beat him with the butts of their
+pistols until his gray hairs were dabbled in gore, and went off to
+other plunder, telling their followers to take what they wanted from
+my residence. But, bruised, bleeding and crippled though he was, Old
+John still defended his master's property, and sitting on the front
+steps of the house kept the whole crowd at bay by the firmness and
+dignity of his attitude. I heard of the affair first from a white man
+who lived in the neighborhood, and it was not until I asked him about
+it that he told me himself. The next day he gave to my own people
+the furniture remaining in the house to keep until I came back, but
+positively refused to allow them to take of the crops that had been
+gathered any more than was required for their subsistence, and this
+he regularly shared out to them at stated intervals. And when, after
+a long imprisonment and much enfeebled myself, I landed one evening at
+the wharf which leads up to the house, the first figure which met my
+sight was the old man faithfully guarding the barns. His eyesight was
+too dim for him to see me, but as soon as he heard my voice he seized
+my hand with passionate fervor, pressing it repeatedly to his lips and
+bedewing it with tears. Can you wonder if he has shared my fortunes
+ever since? But not at Woodlawn. The negroes generally were wild with
+the notion of freedom, and utterly ignorant of the practical meaning
+of the term. To me they were always civil and affectionate, but I
+preferred that some other than myself should teach them its rugged
+lesson, and immediately leased the place for a term of years to one
+better fitted than I to derive profit from it under the new system.
+The gentlemen and the negroes are the two classes upon whom the first
+results of the fearful revolution in society caused by the war fell
+with heaviest weight. Both were totally unprepared for it, and both
+have so far suffered cruelly. A year ago Old John died, faithful
+and cared for to the last. A few months ago the lease I had executed
+expired, and I visited the estate again. All the glamour of the past
+had disappeared. The home of my fathers knew me no more, and I have
+sold it. Cuffee, whom you remember as my body-servant, who followed
+me through the war, and bore me on his back from the battlefield upon
+which I was severely wounded, and who would have come with me here
+had circumstances permitted of my retaining his services,--Cuffee has
+taken to politics, and now represents the county in the Legislature
+of the State; and the last figure that I remember seeing as I left
+the place was that of old Sary, the sick nurse, her long black hair
+streaming in the wind (you remember she was an Indian half-breed), her
+feet bare, her petticoat ragged and limp, standing in the lane
+which leads from the house--her arms akimbo, a sort of miniature Meg
+Merrilies--screaming out to me, 'You left you own plantashun.' Yes,
+I have left my own plantation, and am grubbing out a modest and
+sometimes a rather precarious existence elsewhere. But for all that,
+it is more wholesome than mouldering among the ruins of a past that
+can never return. The fight has been fairly fought, and New England
+has won the day. Germany is up, France is down; Italy united, the pope
+existing on sufferance in the palace where erstwhile emperors did him
+homage. I don't quarrel with Fortune. Nay, in many things I dare say
+the world has benefited by the change. And so, when I take my children
+sometimes to look at Crawford's famous group, I even enjoy the spirit
+of pride with which they look upon the figure of America, and the zest
+with which they enjoy the vigorous onslaught of the pioneer on the
+forest tree; but my own eyes seek the Indian chieftain reclining in
+mute despair on the right of the group, and I have a strange sympathy
+with the fortune which his very attitude so forcibly indicates. Our
+battle of Dorking has been fought, and, whatever may be the fate of
+the next generation, all that is left to me of home or of country are
+the golden drops which sparkle in this tiny glass."
+
+RAMBLER.
+
+
+
+
+AT A MATINEE: A MONOLOGUE.
+
+
+Oh Dear! I meant to be very early, people do look so cross when you
+squeeze by them. I don't think it is exactly proper, either, when
+they are men. Here is my seat, No. 10: that girl has piled all her
+waterproofs on it. Why don't she take them away quicker? and I wish
+she wouldn't grope about my feet for her overshoes.
+
+I never sat right next to the orchestra before. What a convenient
+railing to hang my umbrella on! Provoking it should rain so to-day.
+There now! my waterproof is all disposed of, and I know my dress is
+all right, so I shall enjoy myself.
+
+What a ridiculous girl beside me! _Such_ a bunch of curls! The two
+young men on the other side look like gentlemen: the one this way
+especially nice--lovely eyes and moustache. I'll look round the house
+as far as I can without moving. Can't see much, though, for I'm so
+near the front. Why on earth didn't brother Bob put me where I could
+see the people?
+
+Why, there's Lucy Morris! I can't bear that girl: her hair is almost
+the color of mine. A vacant seat beside her, too; so she came with
+some one. Wonder who it is? I hope she won't see me.
+
+Oh, how funny! The musicians come up out of a hole just like the tame
+rats at the Museum, nasty things!--the rats, I mean. The man right
+in front of me has a trombone. I know what it is, because the name
+is written on his music. I'm so glad, for I never knew exactly what a
+trombone was until now. And what a funny instrument! He doesn't blow
+at all for ever so long, and then suddenly comes in with two or three
+toots.
+
+But, good gracious! there's Dick Livingstone! I saw him come in at
+that door. I'm so glad I came! He asked me night before last at Mrs.
+Harris's if I was coming to the matinee, and of course I said "Yes,"
+though I didn't have the slightest idea of doing so until he spoke.
+But what--! He has taken the seat by that Lucy Morris, and has given
+her a programme. I hate that girl!
+
+There goes the curtain. What a stupid play! Why did I come? The damp
+will ruin my dress. Oh, that horrid girl! Well, of all the ridiculous
+acting I ever saw, this is the worst! I should think they would be
+ashamed to put such people on the stage. He is opening her fan. A fan
+to-day! absurd! I _won't_ look again. How that man rants! I'm sure I
+don't know why I came: I might have known how poor it would be.
+Even _I_ can see that Leicester and Mortimer have dresses at least
+a hundred years apart. I wonder if their legs are stuffed? Oh dear!
+that's hardly proper. What Dick can see to admire in that girl is
+beyond my comprehension. Such airs and graces!--all put on; and how
+she makes eyes at him! I can feel it behind my back.
+
+How absurdly Queen Elizabeth is dressed! and what a fright she is! And
+I wore my new hat, too: he said he liked blue so much. I could just
+cry, I am so provoked. It's all her fault, I know. Oh! the play! Yes,
+Dudley is making love. Ridiculous! There, the curtain's down at
+last, and--what--! Dick is getting up: he looks as if he were saying
+good-bye. There's Lucy's uncle: he sits down beside her--he must have
+brought her. Oh, what a relief! After all, it was very natural for
+Dick to take the vacant seat, he is so thoughtful always. Lucy can
+talk pretty well sometimes, too. If she only had some idea of dress!
+There! I'm sure Dick saw me, but of course I shall take no notice.
+
+Upon my word, the young man next me is admiring the girl's hair on the
+other side of me. It's hideous--red as a carrot, and stuck on at that.
+Thank Goodness! my hair hasn't a tinge of red in it--pure _blonde
+cendre_--but I have to pay awfully to match it. Wish I could tell that
+young fellow her hair is all stuck on. Hark! the nice one says,
+
+"Why, it is all her own--I see it growing" "S-s-s-h!" says the other:
+"she'll hear you." "Loveliest hair I ever saw," continues No. 1: "pure
+gold, not a tinge of red--" It's _my_ hair they are discussing. What a
+nice fellow he is! I'll just turn a little away, so he can study
+that curl which really does grow out of my head. It is worth all
+the trouble it gives me, for it makes the others seem so natural. I
+declare, he is looking right at me: suppose he should speak? I should
+_die_! Nonsense! he is bowing to a lady in the dress-circle. I know
+he'd like to do something for me. Brother Bob says girls can't be too
+careful. I might drop something. Not my handkerchief--that _would_ be
+improper--but my opera-glass case: nothing could be said against that.
+Oh my! I haven't used my glasses yet, I'm so near the stage. I'll
+look round the house; so here goes. "Thank you, sir," with my sweetest
+smile and such a nice flutter. I saw him nudge his friend.
+
+There goes the curtain again. Mary queen of Scots: I thought she was
+prettier. Oh, the act is really over; I actually forgot everything but
+the stage. My eyes are all wet. But it won't do to cry: they would be
+red. I don't quite like some of the words they use, though--they make
+one feel queer. Now, why couldn't they say "illegitimate child"? It
+means just the same; besides, it's longer.
+
+I wonder how Dick Livingstone liked it? _Mr_. Livingstone, I should
+say. Brother Bob doesn't think it nice for girls to speak of young men
+by their first names. But then brothers are so particular about their
+own sisters, though, Goodness knows, they flirt enough with other
+people's. Bob and Kate Harris, for example, and yet he preaches at
+_me_!
+
+Oh, the young men are going out. They push by as well as they can,
+but still they crowd unpleasantly. I am sure I've seen that nice one
+somewhere. They are going to stay away, too, I think, for they have
+taken their over-coats. If only Dick--Mr. Livingstone, I mean--
+
+Oh, there's the curtain again. It's really quite interesting. I was
+mistaken about the actors: they do very well indeed. Queen Elizabeth
+is excellent, and so are they all. It shows how careful one ought to
+be not to judge too hastily. That's what mother always says. I won't
+do so again.
+
+Well, that play is over--now for the comedy. Some one says it is still
+raining. I hate a waterproof, my figure looks so well in this suit.
+I might carry my cloak over my arm, but then I'm afraid the rain will
+ruin my dress. I _must_ wear the waterproof and be a dowdy. I don't
+believe, after all, that it would hurt the underskirt, and then, with
+the umbrella up, I should have to take his arm. I shouldn't like
+to get this dress spoiled, either. I know mother wouldn't give me
+another. Brother Bob says men don't care so much about women's dress:
+they like to see a sensible girl. I don't believe that; besides, I
+have thick boots, and I'm sure that's sensible. I don't care: I won't
+wear the waterproof unless it is a perfect deluge. My goodness! I
+don't see Dick anywhere! Suppose, after all, he didn't come to meet
+me? and I gave him that flower at Mrs. Leslie's, too! I wish the thing
+was over.
+
+But oh, what a pretty dress! and how sweet she is! I had no idea she
+could be so cunning, after being such a tragedy queen. The man on the
+stage actually kissed her. Bob says they don't really kiss, though.
+
+I'm sorry it's over. Oh dear! I don't like being alone in such a
+crowd. Brother Bob wouldn't have let me come, I know, only he thought
+I should meet the Davidsons. No matter: I'll never tell him. I do
+believe Dick hasn't stayed, after all. I'll just put on my waterproof
+and thick veil, and go home and have a good cry.
+
+Oh, Mr. Livingstone, how you startled me! I had no idea you were here.
+Yes, I am by myself: certainly you may escort me home. Take a walk in
+this pouring rain? Why, it's all sunshine!
+
+C.A.D.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES.
+
+
+Wellnigh half a century has elapsed since the discovery of the
+beautiful Venus of Milo (the exact year was 1825), and yet now, for
+the first time, the endless discussions regarding two doubtful and
+interesting points in its history have been set at rest. These two
+points are--first, the original pose of the statue; and, secondly, the
+reason of its being armless. After so many years of dispute over
+these questions, it occurred at length to M. Jules Ferry to do what of
+course ought to have been done long ago--namely, go to the very spot
+whence the statue was exhumed, and there talk with all the surviving
+witnesses of the exhumation. M. Ferry not long since put his idea into
+execution, went to Milo, took into consultation with him M. Brest,
+son of the consul who procured the statue for France, and found and
+cross-questioned two Greeks who were present at the unearthing of
+the statue. M. Ferry has collected the details of his labors in an
+elaborate communication to the Academie des Beaux Arts, but a brief
+indication of the results obtained may be made as follows:
+
+First, then, the Venus was found in 1825 at the foot of a little hill,
+where it had been covered up by successive crumblings of the earth
+above. The proprietor of the ground, wishing to clear a little more
+of the soil for his planting, chanced to strike the statue with his
+shovel. "It was on its base, erect," said the two Greek peasants to
+the French minister. "With one hand she held together her draperies,
+and in the other an apple"--the same, doubtless, that Paris had just
+given her. Such, very briefly, is the clear, short, definite, decisive
+story which puts an end to ten thousand disquisitions and hypotheses
+about the pose. The evidence thus given is that of people who actually
+saw what they describe. But, secondly, what of those "long-lost arms"?
+and how came they to be lost? The body of the Venus was formed of
+two blocks, and the arms were afterward fastened upon the trunk. When
+discovered, it was intact. M. Brest, the French consul, instantly
+bought the Venus for five hundred dollars, while the Turkish
+government on its part hurried off a small vessel to bring it away,
+offering the owner of the farm fivefold the French price, or something
+like two thousand five hundred dollars. A French _aviso_, sent by M.
+de Riviere, the ambassador at Constantinople, arrived on the scene at
+the very moment when the Turks had got possession of the statue, and
+were embarking it on their vessel. A dispute arose at once, and in the
+material as well as legal confusion the arms of the Venus, which had
+been detached for safer transportation, were missed. The people of
+the neighborhood got up a story that the arms were carried off by the
+Turkish vessel out of chagrin and spite, but this seems to be mere
+surmise where all else is clear.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The story of Demosthenes and the pebbles is familiar. Less familiar,
+we venture to say, is the theory that declamation is sometimes the
+cause of stammering; or, rather, that stuttering impels a man to
+talkativeness, and the yielding to this tendency fixes the habit of
+stammering and makes it worse. Hence it might plausibly be argued that
+it is the rostrum, or the very emotion of speaking in public, which
+makes some orators become stammerers. At all events, in Paris an
+institution has been founded expressly to remedy stuttering; and M.
+Chervin, its director, not long ago presented before a meeting of the
+learned societies at the Sorbonne some interesting statistics on his
+specialty. These statistics seem to show that stuttering is in direct
+proportion with the habit of speaking, and that the more one speaks
+the more one stutters. This is certainly an unexpected result of the
+restoration of freedom of speech in France. M. Chervin mentions a
+village of eighteen hundred souls where everybody, without exception,
+undeniably stutters. What strange dialogues, says Jules Claretie (who
+cites these points in _l'Independance Belge_), must take place there!
+A very curious fact is, that stammering is less frequent in the north
+of France than in the south. In the north-east it is least known, and
+most in the south-east. For example, all things being equal, for six
+stammerers in Paris there would be twenty-five in Lyons and seventy in
+Marseilles. The admitted garrulity or fluency of southern speaking
+is often the cause or the preface to stammering. Thus, comically
+concludes M. Claretie, oratorical habits threaten to make stammering
+become the order of the day, and for one Vergniaud there will be ten
+stutterers, and ten more stutterers for one General Foy. Nevertheless,
+in earlier days, Camille Desmoulins stammered, and yet spoke but
+little at the Convention. It does not appear that Charles Lamb was
+a garrulous person, and in the familiar experience of daily life we
+rarely find stutterers to be rapid talkers. Still, this latter
+fact really helps M. Chervin's theory, since we may conclude it
+is precisely because stammerers find that a very rapid utterance
+increases their defect that they force themselves to speak
+deliberately, and also not to tire the vocal muscles. Hence, apart
+from the jesting inference which M. Claretie, in French journalist's
+fashion, is bent son twisting out of the scientific statistics, there
+would appear to be a mutual influence, perfectly comprehensible,
+of rapidity in utterance and a tendency to stammering. We could not
+safely go on to generalize that only voluble people become stutterers,
+or that all stutterers are unusually garrulous and unusually eager in
+enunciation; but we may conclude that if they are thus careless and
+rattling in delivery, their peculiarity will be likely to grow more
+marked, and that accordingly a natural tendency to the same defect is
+developed by the same habits or necessities of much and rapid talking.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two illustrations of nineteenth-century precocity, rather superior
+to the generality of anecdotes regarding the wisdom of the rising
+generation, we find in recent French papers. One of them is originated
+by the _Moulin-a-Parole_. Madame de B. was visiting, with her baby,
+her friend Madame X. After chattering three-quarters of an hour,
+without giving anybody else a chance to put in a word, Madame X.
+pauses, when Baby immediately takes up the burden of conversation.
+Madame X., getting tired at last, says, "Why do you talk so much,
+mignonne? It isn't nice for a little girl like you to do so." "Oh,"
+replies Baby very graciously, "it is only so that mamma may rest!" A
+little lad furnishes the other instance of the premature sagacity of
+modern childhood. A famous merchant has four children, three daughters
+and a boy named Arthur. Two of the former die successively of
+consumption, and at the funeral of the second a friend of the family
+comes to offer his compliments of condolence, and, patting little
+Arthur's head, tells the poor lad the house must seem lonely to him
+now. "Yes," briskly replies Arthur, whom his father has brought up
+to accurate ideas, "here we children are reduced _fifty per cent_."
+Worthy to take charge of these children would have been the prudent
+bonne of whom _Charivari_ speaks. The morning after engaging herself
+to Madame R. she hastened to that lady with her finger wrapped in a
+handkerchief, and in an agitated voice asked if the _converts_ were
+real silver. "Why so, Nannette?" "Because, I just pricked my finger
+with a fork, and I know that if it is plated copper I ought to take
+the precaution of having the place bled." "Don't be alarmed," replies
+the lady, smiling despite herself at the young girl's innocence, "my
+plate is all solid." "Ah," says the bonne with a sigh of relief, "I
+am so glad!" The day after, the simple young lady disappeared with all
+the silver. It is not every bonne that would take such precautions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Paris has always been famous among modern cities for its genius and
+industry in adding variety to its cuisine, either by the audacious
+invention of new dishes or the felicitous combination of old
+ones--either by discovering new sources of food or new methods of
+preparing it. It was a curious incident in the late history of
+the city that what had been a fashionable whim became a hard
+necessity--that after Saint-Hilaire and the hippophagists had
+struggled to introduce horseflesh as regular provender, the siege of
+Paris made horseflesh a prized rarity. But the zest resulting from
+the enforced diet of dogs, cats, rats and monkeys in bombardment days
+appears to have been so great that we now hear of an enterprise worthy
+to have a Brillat-Savarin to celebrate it--namely, the formation of
+a society under the presidency of the naturalist Lespars, designed to
+bring into vogue as eatable a great class of living creatures whose
+presence now inspires ordinary persons only with disgust. A naturalist
+who devotes himself to eating such creatures with a motive so
+philanthropic deserves our praise, though we may not be able to
+personally imitate his heroic example. Among the choice dishes
+mentioned by one paper as selected to figure at the first public
+banquet of M. Lespars are a plate of white worms, a bushel of
+grasshoppers, and a broil of magpies seasoned with the slugs that
+infest certain green berries. One regards this announcement with more
+or less incredulity; but little doubt seems to hang over the assertion
+that the dormouse has just been introduced into the list of French
+game-dishes. The puzzle for the cooks seems to be with regard to the
+proper sauce for the new delicacy; but this matter does not trouble
+the little chimney-sweeps, who find the animal so long associated in
+poetry and in fact chiefly with their own humble career, now rising
+to the dignity of game, and commanding a price for the table. Piedmont
+has thus far furnished the larger part of the displays of _marmottes_
+in Paris stalls. The chief trouble in making rats, magpies and other
+delicacies of that sort really popular amongst the poorer classes is
+that the latter do not possess adroit cooks to disguise the original
+flavor under aromatic adjuncts, nor yet the money to buy the necessary
+spices and side-dishes, nor the high grade of champagne wines with
+which the wealthy and noble patrons of "food reform" commonly wash
+down unpalatable viands.
+
+
+
+
+LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
+
+
+Rousseau. By John Morley. 2 vols. London: Chapman & Hall.
+
+It was in the natural course of things that modern criticism,
+ever aiming at a wider comprehension, a keener analysis, a greater
+independence of judgment and expression, should test itself anew on a
+subject affording so full a scope and so sure a touchstone as the life
+and writings of Rousseau. The character of Rousseau, with its strange
+blending of delicate beauty and repulsive infirmity, requires to be
+handled with the firm but tender and sympathetic touch which the nurse
+or the physician lays upon a child afflicted with sores. His career,
+with its alternations of obscurity and conspicuousness, of tumult and
+torpidity, of wretchedness and rapture, must be followed with an
+eye keen to detect the springs and alive to the subtle play of
+circumstance and impulse. His influence, if not more profound, more
+varied, extensive and direct than that of any thinker and writer since
+Luther, is to be traced in the whole history of his own and of later
+times, under manifold aspects and amid momentous changes of spirit and
+of form. In the case of most men who have helped to mould the
+ideas and direct the tendencies of an age, it would be difficult to
+determine what each has contributed to the general result, or to say
+with certainty that the work performed by one would not, if he had
+been wanting, have been equally accomplished by others. On the other
+hand, there are a few master-spirits--men not of an age but for
+all time--whose power has been so deeply infused, so generally
+and silently absorbed, that it would be vain to inquire how it has
+operated in detail. We cannot indicate the course or fix the limits
+of its action: we perceive only that without it our intellectual life
+must have been dormant or extinct. Rousseau belongs to neither of
+these classes. His power was not general but specific, not creative
+but stimulative, not a source of perennial light but the torch of
+a conflagration; yet it was original and independent, it did not
+co-operate but clashed with that of his contemporaries, and while it
+acted upon minds far higher and broader than his own, it received no
+aid except from disciples and imitators. Of the French Revolution
+we may say with precision and confidence that it owed primarily its
+peculiar character--its austere ideals and wild distortions, its
+illimitable aspirations and chaotic endeavors--to the extent to which
+the nation had become imbued with his spirit and theories. In regard
+to literature, it is not sufficient to point to a long list of
+celebrated writers, from Chateaubriand and De Stael to Lamartine and
+George Sand, whose works have reflected the characteristic hues of
+his sentiment and style; or to adduce particular instances of his
+influence upon writers of higher and more contrasted genius, such
+as Goethe and Byron, Schiller and Richter: what is to be noted, as
+underlying all such examples and illustrations, is the fact that a
+literature distinguished from that which had immediately preceded
+it by earnestness, simplicity and depth, by spontaneous and vivid
+conceptions and freedom from conventional restraints, had its
+beginning with him, appealing to emotions and ideas which he was the
+first to call into renewed and general activity. In education, in art,
+in modifications of religious opinion and of social life, the same
+force, if less measurable and distinct, is everywhere apparent either
+as an active participant or a strong original impulse.
+
+It need hardly be said that, as productions of genius, the writings of
+Rousseau cannot hold any rank proportionate to the effect which they
+thus produced. They are not among the treasures that constitute our
+intellectual capital, the possessions which we could not lose without
+becoming bankrupt. They are rather among the instruments which,
+having served their purpose, may be laid aside, however interesting as
+mementoes or admirable as curiosities. Their highest qualities--their
+fervor, simplicity and grace--do not of themselves disclose the secret
+of their power. From the point of view of mere literary criticism we
+are apt to be more observant of their defects than their beauties. By
+the side of earlier and later models they are seen to be deficient in
+the very qualities--force of passion and depth of thought--by which
+they startled or enthralled contemporary readers.
+
+If we turn to the man himself, we might imagine at the first glance
+that none could have been less fitted for the position of a leader of
+thought, a founder of systems and schools, the apostle of a new era.
+The career for which Nature seemed to have destined him, and which, in
+truth, he may almost be said to have followed, was that of a vagabond,
+or at the best a recluse. Of all the advantages we desire and
+anxiously seek for our children, Rousseau enjoyed none. Poverty,
+degradation and neglect weighed upon him from his birth. The evil
+in him was unchecked, the good unfostered, by any training hand. The
+opportunity and the faculty of acquiring any substantial nutriment
+from books seemed alike denied him. His intercourse with mankind
+through all his earlier and the greater part of his later life was
+confined to the ignorant, and with these alone was he ever able
+to hold any harmonious relations or any grateful interchange of
+sentiment. Physically, mentally and morally diseased, weak yet stern,
+sensitive but unpliant, equally devoid of courage and of tact, he
+could not come in contact with the world without suffering a shock
+and swift recoil that drove him back to the refuge of solitude--to the
+mute companionship of external Nature or the brooding contemplation of
+himself. Even the ideals which, despite his practical aberrations
+from them, he yet intensely worshiped, had, in his conception of them,
+little connection with the activities of life: truth, simplicity,
+order, purity and peace were ideas that occupied his soul only to fill
+it with a horror of reality, with yearnings for an idyllic repose,
+with dreams of a state which he persuaded himself had been the
+original condition of the race, in which virtue and right must prevail
+through the mere absence of occasion for wrong or temptation to evil.
+
+Yet it is not in some radiance breaking through this cloudy
+environment, it is not in this or that faculty overcoming all
+obstacles, it is in the entirety of his nature as originally formed,
+and as moulded or marred by circumstance and fate, that we shall find
+the secret of that spell which he exercised over men of all classes
+and characters. The culture which might have sweetened and perhaps
+ennobled his life would have unfitted him for his mission. It would
+have brought him more or less into harmony with his age; and it was by
+his utter and vehement opposition to its habits and opinions that
+he turned the stream into a different channel. Not only his finer
+intuitions and purer tastes, but his unsatisfied desires, his errors,
+his remorse, urged him to make war upon it, as the step-mother that
+had sought to enervate or brutalize his mind while defrauding him of
+his inheritance. He held up the image of its corruption, shallowness
+and false refinement, and that of a life of simple manners and
+unperverted instincts. That he depicted this as the real life of
+a primitive epoch only gave greater pungency to the contrast.
+The eighteenth century, aroused to the consciousness of its own
+degeneracy, its false and artificial existence, readily accepted an
+idealized Geneva, an idealized Sparta, as the type of a primitive
+community, the model on which society was to be refashioned. What the
+"pure word of God" had been to the Reformers, that "Nature" became to
+the revolutionists in all departments of thought and action, in poetry
+and music as in philosophy and politics--a shibboleth to rally and
+unite all the elements of discontent and aspirations for change, a
+universal test by which to try all doctrines and systems. In either
+case, as was soon discovered, the test would itself admit of diverse
+interpretations; but in the mean while the solvent had taken effect,
+the authority of custom and tradition had been overthrown, old
+organizations had crumbled into dust.
+
+That the agitation thus evoked should have produced many grotesque,
+many frightful results, cannot seem strange. Long before the lower
+strata had been reached the surface was in a state of ebullition.
+Polite society was delightfully thrilled with a feeling of its own
+depravity, and found in the novel sensation the zest that had been
+wanting to its jaded powers of enjoyment. Nor was it awakened from its
+illusions by the first eruption from below. In a transport of delirium
+it threw away, as if they had been idle gems, of use only when cast
+into the public treasury, the privileges and prerogatives that had
+formed the basis of the monarchy. Thenceforth the only effort was to
+secure a _tabula rasa_ on which to rear that new and perfect state
+of which the model was at hand, if only the proper materials could be
+found and the foundations be laid. Of the men who acquired a temporary
+mastery, three only, by the massive force of practical genius, were
+able to free themselves from the fascination of the common ideal. But
+Mirabeau and Danton were overborne by the full tide, and Napoleon,
+when he arrested it in its languor, turned it into depths from
+which it emerged the other day to sweep away his column in the Place
+Vendome.
+
+In thus glancing at the vast proportions of the subject, we have
+wandered far from the range of Mr. Morley's work, which has a special
+purpose with well-defined limits. It is not a complete biography of
+Rousseau, much less a history of his times. It gives no full or vivid
+portraiture of character, no adequate narrative of events, no summary
+even of results. It is an analytical study, an examination of the life
+and works of Rousseau with a view to determine their precise nature
+and quality, rather than their relative value or bearings. Within
+these limits it exhibits ample knowledge and skill, combined with
+a searching but tolerant judgment. Without labored discussion or
+passionate apology, it clears away entangling prejudices and current
+misconceptions, to assume a position from which undistorted views may
+be obtained. At times, indeed, Mr. Morley carries his impartiality
+to the verge of indifference. His certificate of Grimm's "integrity"
+rests on very slender grounds, and the Memoirs of Madame d'Epinay
+are subjected to no such scrutiny as the circumstances of their
+composition and preservation call for, before their statements can be
+accepted as authority. But whatever minor defects may be found in the
+book, the general spirit and execution are admirable. It is full of
+interest and suggestiveness both for readers to whom the subject may
+not be unfamiliar, and for those who may hitherto have neglected to
+explore it. Above all, it is valuable as marking the line to which
+English criticism has advanced, its capacity for treating complicated
+and delicate questions with clearness, frankness and entire fairness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pascarel: Only a Story. By "Ouida," author of "Tricotrin,"
+"Folle-Farine," "Under Two Flags," etc. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott
+& Co.
+
+The genius of "Ouida" is _sui generis_, and must in part create the
+standards by which it is to be judged. Her works are so different from
+the common type of modern novels that they demand to be looked at from
+a different point of view. The present standard of excellence in prose
+fiction seems to be the conformity of character and incident to what
+is actually seen in life. It is a good test for all mere stories, but
+is manifestly _not_ the test by which to gauge the recent works of
+"Ouida." She does not aim at this pre-Raphaelite delineation of men
+and things as they are. Her characters are idealizations: her later
+books are prose-poems, not only in the affluence and rhythm of their
+style, but in the allegoric form and purpose which, pervade them. This
+characteristic is plain enough in _Tricotrin_ and _Folle-Farine_, but
+finds its most marked expression in _Pascarel_. "Only an Allegory"
+would be a more expressive sub-title for the book than "Only a Story,"
+for the story is the mere thread which sustains and binds together a
+series of parables and crystallized truths. Most of these, indeed,
+she has embodied in former works, but nowhere as in _Pascarel_ is the
+author's design to teach them made so manifest.
+
+The book is almost wholly free from that extravagance of expression
+and recklessness of all established codes of taste which have diverted
+attention from her purpose, and led to a false estimate of the
+character and tendency of her writings. It has none of the hindrances,
+for instance, which prevent many from seeing the magnificence of the
+conception in _Folle-Farine_. Its object is to enforce the lesson that
+the only true greatness is that which loses sight of self--that Love,
+and Love alone, is, both in its insight and its purpose, divine.
+"Love sees as God sees, and with infinite wisdom has infinite pardon."
+"Laughter and love are all that are really worth having in the world,"
+but to gain them "one must seek them first for others, with a wish
+pure from the greed of self." "The world owes nothing to so personal
+a passion as ambition." "The first fruits of a man's genius are always
+pure of greed." What makes a great artist is the "vital, absolute
+absorption of personality in his love of art." The experience of the
+donzella (which constitutes what there is of the story), a nobler,
+and, we think, a _truer_, type of womanhood than Viva, yet with a like
+over-estimate of the advantages of wealth and position, brings her
+to the conviction that Pascarel is right. These truths, however, find
+their most effective illustration in the wealth of Italian tradition
+and history with which the pages abound. "Here is the secret of
+Florence, sublime aspiration--the aspiration which gave her citizens
+force to live in poverty and clothe themselves in simplicity, so as
+to give up their millions of florins to bequeath miracles in stone
+and metal and color to the future." "In her throes of agony she kept
+always within her that love of the ideal, impersonal, consecrate, void
+of greed, which is the purification of the individual life and
+the regeneration of the body politic." "Her great men drew their
+inspiration from the very air they breathed, and the men who knew they
+were not great had the patience and unselfishness to do their minor
+work for her zealously and perfectly." The workmen who chiseled the
+stones and the boys who ground the colors "did their part mightily
+and with reverence." The unrivaled works of art which are the true
+greatness of Italy owe their existence to the self-forgetfulness of
+their makers. So the love of Italy is in its essence a love for that
+which is best and noblest in human nature--"the consecration of self
+to an object higher than self." This love, however, to be true, must
+be more than perception or sentiment--it must bear fruit in _likeness_
+to that which it admires. "Each gift which men receive imposes a
+corresponding duty." "We are Italians," says Pascarel after recounting
+the glories of Italian achievement: "great as the heritage is, so
+great the duty likewise." As a companion-book of Italian travel,
+_Pascarel_ has a special value, suffused as it is throughout with
+the blended charm of picturesque beauty and magical associations that
+belongs to the country and the people.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Books Received_.
+
+The Great Events of History, from the Creation of Man till the Present
+Time. By William Francis Collier, LL.D., Trinity College, Dublin.
+Edited by an experienced American Teacher, New York: J.W. Schermerhorn
+& Co.
+
+Words and their Uses, Past and Present: A Study of the English
+Language. By Richard Grant White. New edition, revised and corrected.
+New York: Sheldon & Co.
+
+Manual of Land Surveying, with Tables. By David Murray, A.M.,
+Ph.D., Professor of Mathematics in Rutgers College. New York: J.W.
+Schermerhorn & Co.
+
+The Greatest Plague of Life; or, The Adventures of a Lady in Search of
+a Good Servant. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers.
+
+Snatches of Song. By Jeanie Morison (Mrs. Campbell of Ballochyle).
+London: Longmans, Green & Co.
+
+The Life and Times of Philip Schuyler. By Benson J. Lossing, LL.D. New
+York: Sheldon & Co.
+
+Lewis Arundel: A Novel. By Frank E. Smedley. Philadelphia: T.B.
+Peterson & Brothers.
+
+Our Forest Home. By the author of "Robert Joy's Victory." Illustrated.
+Boston: Henry Hoyt.
+
+Philip Earnscliffe: A Novel. By Mrs. Annie Edwards. New York: Sheldon
+& Co.
+
+Heart's Delight. By Mrs. Caroline E.K. Davis. Illustrated. Boston:
+Henry Hoyt.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular
+Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873., by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 13828.txt or 13828.zip *****
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author	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-15 04:43:01 -0700
committer	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-15 04:43:01 -0700
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